has significant, negativeramifications for their learning and achievement.
DW: Punishment gets compliance only as long as &8220;punisher&8221; is present. Rewards are longer lasting.
DW: Rewards change behavior, often to the point of internalization&8212;e.g., I&8217;m a kid who turns in things on-time.
This blog, The Window, ismoving to a new site:
a place in the curriculum.
DW: If you want child to value the outcome, the outcome needs to be almost immediate. Promised future rewards have no appeal.
The move is part of a total revision of theClerestory LearningWeb site, where more information is presented in a snappy new look. We hope you will visit us there soon!
DW: The potential loss is the weightier ctor in choices, not the potential gain. What are student losses.
Kevin D. Washburn holds a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership with an emphasis in instruction and curriculum. His experience as a teacher in elementary through college level classrooms and positions in curriculum and instruction combine with his penchant for reading and research in both educational and scientific areas to uncover important implications for learning. Whether speaking in the classroom or convention setting, Dr. Washburn seeks to imbue a passion for quality instruction. He is the author of The Architecture of Learning: Designing Instruction for the Learning Brain (9780984345908)
I&8217;m going to ponder these questions as I head out for a run. Anyone care to join either the run or conversation? Looking forward to your comments! For now, I&8217;ll give John Ratey the last word:
DW: Students need to feel 1) I&8217;m needed here, and 2) I can contribute. How do we encourage this.
DW: Teachers think in terms of interest. Better to think about probability&8212;how can we make students successful.
Status? Are we insisting on &8220;academic writing&8221; because it separates journals from the &8220;rags&8221; intended for the masses or textbooks from the unlearned? If so, our goal must be to maintain some perceived elite readership&8212;a readership probably not teaching or sitting in our classrooms. And thankfully so! Who wants children to be in a classroom where the teacher communicates with consistent complexity? &8216;Children, today the teacher (the academic style outlaws use of the personal pronoun I!) will initiate a discussion of the upper atmosphere in post-sunset conditions.&8221; In other words, &8220;Today we&8217;re going to talk about stars.&8221; SImplicity produces clarity; complexity produces confusion.
Lest I be guilty hypocrisy, here&8217;s a sample of my own convoluted academic writing:
Alignment? Do we think that our research and subject matter is complicated, therefore our communicating should also be complex? This is so contrary to logic and sound teaching that it&8217;s an oxymoron. A basic principle of writing (and teaching) rebuts this argument:, especially when the reader likely lacks the author&8217;s background knowledge and experience. This is almost always the case when a researcher seeks to address individuals who were not part of the research team or involved in similar research themselves, or when experts in a field seek to articulate concepts for students.
Day 2: Back to the grind
And unanswered questions, by their nature, help us maintain a learning mindset. When we realize that we do not know all there is to know about something in which we are interested, we thirst. We pursue. We act as though what we do not know is more important than what we do. Humility allows us to question; asking questions keeps us humble.
DW: Example, value of money given now considered more valuable than same amount promised to be given to you later.
, it overlays new data with known experiences, connections that help construct understanding. Medina relates a new, complex topic to a miliar childhood activity&8212;origami (even though he is not writing for children). By giving us a reference point for understanding DNA, he equips us with the tools needed to construct understanding. Isn&8217;t this what we should be striving for, both in our textbooks and our journals?
The technical aspects of life involve the complex chemical interactions that take place among the several thousand different kinds of molecules found in any living cell. Of these, DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) is the master molecule in whose structure is encoded all of the information needed to create and direct the chemical machinery of life. Analysis of the flow and regulation of this genetic information among DNA, RNA (ribonucleic acid), and protein is the subject of molecular genetics.
DW: Policy-makers only think in terms of personality: &8220;Kids just need more &8216;grit.&8217;&8221;
. For example, children engaged in regular fitness activity score higher on tests of self-regulation, an executive function that provides critical support for learning. Self-regulation is the ability to consciously suppress or delay responses in order to work for a higher goal. It predicts academic success better than IQ. It also better predicts GPA, standardized test achievement, homework completion, the potential for GPA gains during the course of a year, and even SAT scores. Self-regulation is like the support struts of a bridge; it is not the roadway to learning, but without it, an individual lacks the emotional and cognitive control that optimize learning.Schools minimizing physical education classes to spend more time on academic subjects may actually dampen the academic performance of their students.
DW: Opportunity to gain more is not the sole ctor in choices&8212;e.g., 50% of winning $30 vs. risk of losing $20.
&8220;Education is an all-encompassing institution where schools can be found in each and every continent, culture, and society; their functional principles, organizational structure, and modus operandi are quite universal.&8221;
Dr. John Ratey, The Window washburn technical schoolwho literally wrote the book on this subject, uses a school in Naperville, IL to illustrate an emphasis on fitness. During one physical education session Ratey observed, students ran a mile while wearing heart rate monitors. In addition to completing the distance, students focused on reaching a target heart rate and on improving their times recorded in earlier previous sessions. Ratey then explains this focus:
recommend we teach students &8220;academic language.&8221;
DW: Dweck&8217;s work indicates beliefs about intelligence contribute to this different view of ilure. (More info on student beliefs & learning.)
&8221; to describe an effective approach.
Does academia serve its purpose by maintaining its own language? Why can&8217;t &8220;academic&8221; journals and textbooks utilize common principles of good writing. Why do we insist on communication complexity when our goals would be better served by clarity?
DW: Make sure students experience successes. Minimize the &8220;loss&8221;&8212;e.g., ilure is not a terrible thing.
DW: Another approach: fuse a task with a more desirable task&8212;charities do this: attend a concert rather than give $ outright.
is different from merely increasing unstructured play time or adding more days of dodgeball into the schedule. (Forgive me, PE Teachers. I know that many of you do not consider dodgeball to be a beneficial way to spend a physical education class. I&8217;m speaking to the erroneous perception, not your work!)
DW: Emphasize classroom as community, everyone has responsibilities, everyone participate in range of activities.
DW: Scheduling also helps&8212;daily schedule for completing a term works better than just deadlines for final s.
The paragraph, from an article withcontent I appreciate, illustrates several &8220;rules&8221; of academic writing. As a result, it violates several principles of good writing.
Consider these recent findings:
Middle and high school students who read fluently in English class and on the Web may find that they cannot understand their science texts. And their science teachers may be ill prepared to guide them in reading the academic language in which science information is presented.
As an example, consider the topic of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) previously discussed in the textbook example. Complex? Absolutely, yet note how beautifully and simply John Medina writes about it:
DW: &8220;Time discounting&8221;: time between choice & outcome influences power of influence&8212; e.g., ice cream in store vs. ice cream in bowl.
DW: Factors of choice: 1. Outcome of choice 2. Probability of outcome 3. Costs of choice 4. Personality.
This additional distance between the writer and reader decreases the likelihood that the journals will actually be read. And if the journals are not read by teachers, the research will be slow to influence educational practice, if it does at all. With some research, a &8220;translator&8221; will eventually convert the findings into easily understood material for teachers. Research that does not attract the attention of such a translator may remain unknown and unused. We are spending time, effort, and sometimes money on research doomed to remain idle because it&8217;s not communicated well. The poor writing prevents worthwhile application.
Why, then, do we not insist that good, clear writing characterize our journals, the journals researchers want us to read and heed, and the textbooks we use in our classrooms? We&8217;re. Let&8217;s write like we want people to actually learn something.
Unfortunately, it&8217;s not just our journals that speak their own language. This same gap often exists between students and their textbooks. Consider the following passage from an advanced high school biology text:
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DW: Group work where students are responsible to one another&8212;hard to pull-off, but effective if achieved.
Weight training alone did not provide the same effect.
So what? Why pick on paragraphs pulled from their contexts? If you read (or try to read) educational journals, you&8217;ll find that these examples are not isolated. They illustrate the &8220;academic style&8221; characterizing such periodicals. These periodicals, their supporters argue, provide the link between research and classroom practice. But the poor communication&8212;the academic writing&8212;requires the reader to add steps to the usually efficient cognition of comprehension. The reader is forced to pause and ask,
. For example, in-shape children have &8220;significantly larger basal ganglia, a key part of the brain that aids in maintaining attention and &8216;executive control,&8217; or the ability to coordinate actions and thoughts crisply.&8221;(Executive function is &8220;an umbrella term for the complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors,&8221; including goal setting, planning, organizing and initiating behavior over time, flexibility, attention, working memory capacity, and self-regulation. It comprises abilities to plan for the future, control impulses, and make sense of incoming data.) In a similar study, fit children possessed larger hippocampi&8212;more than 10% larger&8212; and scored significantly higher on tests of associated memory than their less fit peers. (The hippocampus is a brain structure associated with memory, both encoding and retrieval.) The researchers concluded that &8220;interventions to increase childhood physical activity could have an important effect on brain development.&8221;.
Tradition? Are we trying to honor the past by continuing to insist on outdated standards? If so, then we should rethink our goals. Journals are not meant to influence the present but to carry on conventions of the past. Textbooks are not meant to inform but to complicate learning. If this is their purpose, teachers and students ignoring journal and textbook content should not be considered a problem.
The Window washburn technical school,If you receive new posts via an RSS feed, you will need to change the address in your reader.
it work). We value somethingotherthan our previously gained understandings. We place ourselves in the role of humble learner rather than overconfident know-it-all.
DW: Small goals help because they seem achievable. &8220;Good grade&8221; goal&8212;success unknown. &8220;Do this today&8221;&8212;manageable outcome.
DW: When psychological pain of risk is higher than psychological gain, people do not want to participate.
DW: Example of framing: UVA honor system&8212;most profs emphasize the penalty of dismissal rather than how students can live up to idea.
DW: Reasonable goals for each &8220;session&8221; (e.g., exercise) promote success. Daily targets are better than full goal.
DW: Challenges for teachers: creating community, vulnerability (teacher&8217;s willingness to il, tendency to control).
points that were mysteriously lost (&8220;I&8217;ll prove that I&8217;m better than you think I am.&8221;). Either way the opportunity for learning from mistakes is likely lost.
DW: Personality elements: student&8217;s self-image as a student. Students who feel they don&8217;t belong in school are overwhelmed by image.
DW: &8230;everyone tastes success and ilure. Curriculum needs to be broad (e.g., science gets only about 5-6% of 3rd grade time.)
continent and culture, then, by deult, it iscontinent and culture. After the semicolon, good verbs become weak adjectives:and. The entire paragraph could be restructured as an easily
...but theres still so much left
Sure, I&8217;m concerned about the childhood obesity rate (estimates put the number around 23 million children in the US&8212;more than thirty times the number during my youth). Being overweight influences movement, both physical AND cognitive, and it&8217;s this latter impact that interests me.
DW: Teachers should frame for positive outcomes not negative outcomes. Emphasize reward not punishment.
DW: It&8217;s a tough sell, but unique to schools. Kids il at video games, but see it as learning. Think of academic work differently.
DW: At every possibility, emphasize the malleability of intelligence&8212;something you get not something you are.
This will be thefinal post at this site.
