2017 – Page 14 – Education & Teacher Conferences

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

Guest Blogger

March 19, 2017

Classroom Note Taking: A Solution to the Technology Conundrum?

[Editor’s note: this guest blogger piece is by Cindy Gadziala, Chairperson of Theology at Fontbonne Academy in Milton, MA.]

I am a veteran teacher, and yet sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all that I am supposed to be doing in my 21st century classroom.

The “wave of the future,” instructional technology—with its one-to-one initiatives, and Google platforms—offers many benefits: for example, individualized instruction, or applications that promote problem-solving skills. I have had students demonstrate their learning by creating electronic posters and comic strips. I have even sent them on a virtual archaeological dig!

But, there are days where classroom 102 becomes a battleground; and my enemy appears to be technology. As a Theology teacher I am supposed to love my enemy, but I need the best help I can get.

Enter — brain science!

Technology Problems: Working Memory and Attention

Psychology researchers are working diligently to understand how we get information “in and out” of our brains, and working memory is now understood as an essential gateway for learning. We also know that working memory is both precious and limited. [1]

Part of our challenge in the classroom is to avoid overloading a student’s working memory, thereby causing a catastrophic failure…those glazed looks and blank stares that send a chill through the fiber of any teacher’s being!

So, teachers can employ proactive strategies to reduce the strain on working memory to facilitate learning. For example: lots of new information, or too many instructions, can create working memory burdens for overtaxed students.

And yet, paradoxically, classroom technology can sometimes require students to master new material, and to follow all sorts of instructions.

Just as it might overwhelm working memory, technology can also distract students’ attention.

For example: I often project images from my iPad to help my students focus. And yet, when the projector times out and kicks over to a screen saver, the swirling colors and images can disorient the very students whom I was helping focus.

These kinds of problems intensify all my questions about use of technology in the classroom:

Should I be allowing students to take notes on their laptops and tablets?
What happens to working memory when a student clicks a tab to go someplace else?
How does this affect the working memory of the student seated next to the web surfer?

While I hope that I am creating brilliantly engaging lessons to minimize such distractions, I have my limits.

Enter — “the conundrum!.”

Technology Possibilities

One of the boasts of technology in the classroom has been that students can use their devices for efficient note taking, yet the well-known Mueller and Oppenheimer study [2] suggests that laptops make note-taking too easy. Counter-intuitively, this ease reduces cognitive processing, and thereby reduces learning. Between the risk of distraction and the reduction to learning I hear the cry go forth from teachers everywhere: Victory! Ban technological devices in the classroom!

While tempting, this is not the best response. (Remember, I am trying to love my enemy!)

I have seen kids take amazing notes on a laptop. Often, they work quite thoughtfully with information, creating their own visual representations and mind maps as they go. I do not want to take this beneficial tool away from them.

So, my task is to teach appropriate use of technological devices, build note-taking skills and…oh, by the way…teach content: all without overwhelming my students’ working memory.

I wanted to know: how can I make technology my ally in the classroom to accomplish all these objectives? I have found an option that may help teachers to reduce strain on working memory in class, and facilitate cognitive processing both in class and at home.

Enter — the Rocketbook.

Paper, Improved?

The Rocketbook is a notebook, made from acid free fine grain paper with a dot grid pattern , that combines the benefits of handwriting and technology.

Because the Rocketbook has QR codes built into its pages, students can take handwritten notes in class, and then use a cell phone app to upload notes into the cloud. (Rocketbook supports Google Drive and Evernote, for example.)

Symbols on each page can be assigned to different destination folders, and so students can upload work for multiple disciplines to distinct places in the cloud. Once their notes are uploaded, students can re-work them into a mind map or graphic organizer.

From a teacher’s perspective, Rocketbook’s combination of paper and technology provides many benefits:

I reduce the strain on working memory in class because no devices should be open when students are engaged in note taking. In this way, I also make my classroom management easier.
I increase their cognitive processing, because they are writing by hand.
I increase their touches with content, because they are re-organizing their notes into the cloud.
I can use my LMS and Google Drive in concert to make this process part of their homework. When students provide me with a link to their uploaded notes, I can see their work from class, provide feedback on their note taking, see how they are processing and reorganizing the information, and create the opportunity to correct misinformation or redirect them to concepts they missed.

Of course, all innovations include some downsides; in this case, I sacrifice teaching my students about appropriate use of their devices in the classroom.

(A unique feature of the Rocketbook is that when the notebook is full, you can zap it in the microwave; the ink disappears and you start all over!)

Choices, Choices

While I have used the Rocketbook myself and find it both functional and cost effective (under $40.00 for pens and notebook!), there are some other interesting options available that teachers and students could use in a similar fashion. (My thanks to Learning and the Brain tech guru Scott MacClintic for these suggestions.)

First, there is the LiveScribe Echo Pen by Anoto. There are several versions of this product and the functions increase with the price tag. (Average setup cost comes in around $200.00.) The premise here is that as you write your notes, the pen records what is being said in class. This recording allows students to sync notes with the audio, review what was said and expand, revise and reorganize material from class.

While the Echo Pen’s marketing is often directed to LD students, their tagline “write less, listen more” speaks to all learners. If students are coached on how best to use the tool, hearing class again combined with re-working the material could reap cognitive processing benefits.

Equil’s Smartpen 2, (coming in around $160.00) does not offer the audio feature, but it does not require special ink or paper either. When students take notes with a special Bluetooth-enabled pen, those notes appear both on the paper where they write and on a Bluetooth-linked tablet. Like the Rocketbook, in other words, it converts pen-and-paper notes into a laptop version—eliminating potential distractions from websites, advertisements, and Facebook.

In Sum…

While technology offers both challenges and benefits to students and teachers, it is clear to me that there are no magic bullet solutions with technology alone. Teachers cannot abdicate their role to technology. To use it effectively, we need to know how it affects learning and the brain. We must be all the more deliberate in our lesson planning, classroom management, and relationship building with our students.

We equally must inform the art of teaching with the science of the brain. When we start integrating instructional technology, brain science and good pedagogical practice, as teachers we provide truly great opportunities for student learning!

Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers question about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 1-10, doi: 10:1177/0956797614524581. [link]

Andrew Watson

March 17, 2017

Using IQ Scores Thoughtfully

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Debates about the meaning and value of IQ have long raged; doubtless, they will continue to do so.

This article, by a scholar steeped in the field, argues that — even for those who see real benefit in focusing on IQ — it is essential to distinguish between fluid intelligence (the ability to solve new problems) and crystallized intelligence (knowledge already stored in long-term memory).

If you’ve read Todd Rose’s book The End of Average, you will remember that “talent is always jagged.” That is: two people who have the same IQ might nonetheless be very different thinkers — in part because their score might result from dramatically different combinations of fluid and crystallized subscores.

In short: even advocates for IQ see potential perils in misusing this well-known metric.

Debate: E-Readers and Reading Comprehension

Scott MacClintic

March 15, 2017

Debate: E-Readers and Reading Comprehension

[Editor’s note: Scott’s post is in response to this earlier article.]

Most times when I get asked about the e-reader debate, it is usually not a sincere question from a person who does not already hold a strong opinion on the matter. In these moments I am reminded of the expression “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!”

No matter how many studies I mention or which side of the issue I am trying to argue on behalf of, as soon as I provide a brief pause, I am confronted with “yeah, but…” and then the person proceeds to tell me why his/her long-held belief is the final word on the subject.

As for where I come down on the issue, I tend to defer to people who are way smarter than me on the subject — such as Daniel Willingham.

As Willingham concludes in his review of some of the literature on the subject, If the choice is read on a device or read on paper, I believe that the paper is still slightly in the lead if you are looking at straight up comprehension. The problem I have is that this shift to digital is really only a lateral move or a substitution situation, and perhaps not a wise one if you want improved student comprehension!

As a teacher, I choose to incorporate technology in the design of my lessons if I believe it is going to result in noticeable and definable modification or redefinition of the learning tasks and outcomes (SAMR model). The question I ask is “what will the use of this technology allow me or my students to do that previously could not have been accomplished?” If the answer is a “not much” then I do not bother to use the technology. The technology itself should not be the focus of the lesson; student learning must be front and center.

So…”to e-reader or not to e-reader” is actually not the question that we should be asking; rather, we should be asking “does this technology add transformative value to the learning experience for my students?” If we want to go even further, we should ask “How might I measure this value and know that my students are benefiting?”

Austin Matte

March 12, 2017

Head Start: Right on Time

“Children who grow up in poverty often exhibit delays in academic and social-emotional school readiness that undermine their school progress at kindergarten entry and initiate a lifelong trajectory of underachievement and underemployment.”

What a powerful concept — a lifelong trajectory of underachievement that is initiated by the time a child reaches kindergarten. Kindergarten! Most people are just aging out of childhood amnesia by this point, and already, a potentially lifelong trajectory has been established.

In a research article published last month, Karen Bierman and colleagues (2017) open with the line quoted above. They go on to mention that, in addition to the differences in academic and professional outcomes, there are also disparities in physical and mental health experienced by children growing up in poverty.

One focus of the study is a well-known problem regarding early childhood interventions: fadeout. Fadeout occurs when children show immediate gains in response to a given education program only for these gains to dissipate over time, leaving the children ostensibly no better off than those who did not participate in the program.

Such fadeout was found to be the case with the federally-funded Head Start program, which is also the focus of the Bierman study. Those who founded the Head Start program recognized the formative potential of the earliest years of life, though studies have found that the program does not live up to its potential. A 2012 federal impact study noted that Head Start “improved children’s preschool outcomes across developmental domains, but had few impacts on children in kindergarten through 3rd grade“ (Puma, et al., 2012).

Another study assessing federal- and state-funded preschools found the instructional quality of such institutions to be “especially problematic” (Early, et al., 2005). Policy-makers have cited such research to back their argument that the Head Start program is not worth the billions of dollars it receives.

I understand not wanting to invest in a program which was found to have no lasting results (of what was measured). Though let us not forget that the issue isn’t whether or not to invest in young children — investing in young children may be the most efficacious way to spend education dollars. This issue then is how we are investing in young children. We ought to be making sustained investments to figure out what program elements produce the best results, and for whom.

Bierman and her colleagues suggest that, in part, the nature of the intervention is to blame for the fading of positive, initial gains. They say that the transient results may be due to the quality of the program.

I agree that improvements made to a given program can make for more lasting results, however, there’s an additional point to be made: people misunderstand the implications of fadeout. Fadeout has been framed to mean that a given program did not achieve what was intended, despite the fact that just the opposite may be true.

I will go into further detail about this when I talk about fadeout below, but first, I’ll review the Bierman study.

The Current Study

Bierman and her colleagues understand that high-quality early childhood education yields positive results. In this study, they go a step further and attempt to elucidate which may be the active ingredients that enable programs to produce positive, long-term outcomes.

Toward that end, the researchers designed a study with one control group and two experimental groups to receive different interventions in preschool. Then, they assessed the students years later when they neared the end of second grade. Below is a simplified summary of the groups and assessments.

Group 1 – The Control Group

Students in this group attended their Head Start center, just as they would have otherwise.

Group 2 – Added Classroom Program

Students in this group also attended their Head Start center, though their classrooms benefitted from an added curriculum that promoted the development of children’s social-emotional, language, and literacy skills.

Group 3 – Added Classroom Program and Home Visits

In addition to the added curriculum that the students in group 2 received, the parents of students in group 3 also received home visits. During these home visits parents were shown how to encourage their children’s literacy growth and develop their children’s learning and self-control.

The Assessments

Three years later, when the students were finishing second grade, the researchers assessed the students’ mental health and academic outcomes via teacher reports, student self-reports, and assessments of reading and math skills.

Results

Group 1 Vs. Group 2

Relative to children in the control group, those in a Head Start classroom with the added curriculum showed improved mental health on four out of five teacher-rated measures: classroom participation, social competence, student–teacher relationships, and reduced peer problems. These students also showed near-significant improvements on the fifth measure: learning behaviors. These students also saw improvements in their perceptions of their own social competence.

These students did not appear to benefit academically from the added curriculum.

Group 2 Vs. Group 3

Adding home visits did not further improve any of the mental health measures as rated by the teachers, above and beyond the gains that the children experienced due to the added curriculum alone. Though these children experienced enhanced perceptions of their own social competence, in addition to reduced perceptions of peer problems.

Interestingly, students who received the added curriculum and whose parents received home visits showed improved results on three of the five academic measures (sight words, reading skills, and math skills), with near significant improvements in a fourth measure (letter-word identification).

In brief: the additional class prompted mental health benefits, whereas the home visits yielded additional mental health and academic benefits.

What Have We Learned

Parents matter

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: work through the parents. The current study produced the best results when parents were purposefully encouraged and enabled to bolster their children’s learning.

I feel we have yet to truly harness the influential power of the parents. Studies testing this notion continue to show promising results, and I am convinced that the purposeful design and application of programs meant to build the capacity of caretakers will yield impactful results. These positive effects will be compounded when combined with high-quality, targeted curricula and tailored experiences for young children.

Fadeout

I’d like to make two points about fadeout.

My first point is that the fading out of initial gains brought about from a preschool intervention is not the rule. Because the academic gains achieved by Head Start do not last does not mean that an early intervention’s academic gains cannot last. As we see with the present study, the intervention made improvements to the program and was thus able to bring about sustained change.

Whether or not positive results are attained at all, and whether or not these results last, is completely contingent on each individual’s experience with the given program. Different programs will yield different results with different individuals, the effects of which will last varying durations with each participant. Programs will fare better when they meet children’s individual needs.

The second point I’d like to make regarding fadeout is the following: in order for there to be fadeout, gains must have been made initially. And if gains were made initially, the program worked! Is it the fault of the intervention for not creating gains that are present years later, or is it the fault of the subsequent years of schooling for not maintaining those gains?

Allow me to draw a parallel. You, a novice runner, decide you’re going to run a marathon. You hire a trainer. This trainer assesses your abilities, designs a day-by-day training program for you, and shows up every day to motivate you to do that day’s activities. Within a few months, you’re on pace to run the entire marathon in sub-eight-minute miles. All you need to do is stick with the program.

But, a couple months before the marathon your trainer has to move away and can no longer work with you. So, you hire another trainer. This new trainer shows up everyday with a different progression of activities for you to do, to which you completely commit. However, over the subsequent weeks, you notice your mile time is slipping. Your time is not substantially improving, even though you do all the activities this new trainer has prescribed. Finally, on marathon day, you run the entire race but your average mile time is just over nine minutes.

Would you say it is the fault of the first trainer that your initial gains did not last? Saying that an early childhood program does not make an impact because students’ grades are no better off three years after the fact, in a sense, is saying just that. Providing high-quality early experiences (your first trainer), followed by suboptimal grade school experiences (your second trainer), might not yield stellar long-term results. Surprise!

Learning happens on a continuum. Experiences build on experiences. High-quality early childhood experiences will set an individual up to make the most out of the following experiences (and studies have shown that these experiences alone leave individuals better off across the lifespan). However, high-quality experiences must also follow in order to make the most of the foundation that has already been laid. Early childhood education is powerfully formative, though it is only the beginning.

Conclusion

When he announced the creation of the Head Start program in 1965, President Johnson said, “We set out to make certain that poverty’s children would not be forevermore poverty’s captives.” President Johnson’s intention of improving people’s lives by investing in them when they’re young was insightful, even though the program may have been lacking. Bierman and her colleagues also note that reducing discrepancies across the population through early intervention would be “highly strategic for public health.”

According to the National Center for Children in Poverty at Columbia University, 47% of children age 5 years or younger are living in low-income households (link). While early childhood education is not poverty’s panacea, research has shown that quality programs can make a substantial, lifelong impact. Further, improving caretakers’ capacities will only compound the benefits reaped from providing high-quality early childhood education, making for sustained gains in academics and in life. Lastly, if we are to capitalize on high-quality early experiences, they must be followed by more high-quality experiences. Neglecting all of this is choosing to pass up on potential.

References

Bierman, K. L., Heinrichs, B. S., Welsh, J. A., Nix, R. L., & Gest, S. D. (2017). Enriching preschool classrooms and home visits with evidence‐based programming: sustained benefits for low‐income children. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry 58(2), 129–137. [link]

Early, D., Barbarin, O., Bryant, D., Burchinal, M., Chang, F., Clifford, R., … & Kraft-Sayre, M. (2005). Pre-kindergarten in eleven states: NCEDL’s multi-state study of pre-kindergarten and study of state-wide early education programs (SWEEP). Preliminary Descriptive Report. NCEDL Working Paper. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. [link]

Puma, M., Bell, S., Cook, R., Heid, C., Broene, P., Jenkins, F., … & Downer, J. (2012). Third grade follow-up to the Head Start Impact Study final report, OPRE Report # 2012-45, Washington, DC: Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. [link]

Andrew Watson

March 09, 2017

Website of the Day…

You’d like to understand probability and statistics more richly? Perhaps you’d like to visualize some of the more abstract concepts?

Here’s a website that will make your day. The landing page alone is worth the click…

Andrew Watson

March 07, 2017

Practice Makes Myelin

Here’s a helpful TedEd video on the neuroscience of physical practice. I quibble with some of the details, but think the overall description — and suggestions — are sound.

Andrew Watson

March 04, 2017

E-Readers and Reading Comprehension

The invaluable Daniel Willingham briefly reviews the literature, and concludes that — for the time being — students understand more when they read on paper than when they use e-readers.

Willingham acknowledges that his review isn’t comprehensive. However, he’s recently written a book about reading instruction, and so I suspect he’s more up-to-date than most in this field.

If he’s right, this conclusion should give pause to the many (MANY) schools that are switching to e-textbooks. I know they have advantages; they’re less expensive, more portable, easier to modify to suit a specific teacher’s or student’s needs.

And yet, if students learn less when reading them, none of those advantages matters!

Willingham is hopeful that the quality of e-readers will improve enough to eliminate this discrepancy. Until that happens, and until we have good research showing that students can learn well from e-readers, old-fashioned books seem like the best technology we have.

(Scott MacClintic, this blog’s tech guru, will have some thoughts on this topic soon…)

Lindsay Clements

March 01, 2017

“Nevertheless, She Persisted”

President Barack Obama greets 2010 Fermi Award recipients Dr. Burton Richter, right, and his wife Laurose, and Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, third from right, and her husband Gene, in the Oval Office, May 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.Ê — President Barack Obama greets 2010 Fermi Award recipient Dr. Mildred S. Dresselhaus, in the Oval Office, May 7, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

If you watched the Oscars this past weekend, or simply had lucky t.v. timing over the past few weeks, you may have caught GE’s newest commercial featuring MIT scientist Millie Dresselhaus. The ad aims to promote GE’s upcoming diversity endeavor: 20,000 women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) jobs by 2020. It’s a lofty goal, and I’m rooting for ‘em.

This initiative comes in response to only 18% of GE’s technical workforce being female. Although worrisome for both equity and economic reasons, this statistic is not unusual in the STEM student or professional world. We may be wondering: how has GE, and numerous other similar companies, achieved such low female employment and retention? Which is also to ask: what does it mean for women to persist in the STEM world, and what kind of internal oomph does it take? Luckily, researchers have begun to tackle both questions.

(It’s Not Just GE)

Fewer girls and young women engage with STEM at the advanced placement, college, and career levels than do males. A report published by the National Science Foundation (NSF) found that women represent only around 35% of college students enrolled in physics, mathematics, and computer science courses, and less than 10% of those studying physics and engineering at the graduate level. [1]

Also of concern is the high rate of attrition seen in those who complete undergraduate study and enter the workforce. This turnover leaves women holding only 22% of the math and science jobs available in the U.S.

A Couple of Questions Out of the Way…

Researchers have approached this gender disparity from different angles in hopes of better understanding what is happening.

Some have asked: is it perhaps so that males are just more able mathematicians than females? This conclusion seems unlikely, given that gender differences in math performance barely exist early in development, and tend to emerge at the high-school and college levels. [2]

Others hypothesized: maybe boys are just more interested in STEM than girls? This also seems a stretch, with research showing that throughout at least the elementary school years, a high percentage of both boys and girls (68 and 66 percent, respectively) report liking science. [3]

(See also my fellow-blogger’s post about raising girls’ levels of math participation in the US and India.)

A different approach, then. Several studies have gone beyond theories of disproportionate aptitude and interest and begun to question if social pressures and expectations affect girls’ pursuit of STEM. If yes, then how?

How?

In one such study, researchers at Brown University and Williams College studied the interaction of stereotype threat and mathematics performance in female students. [4]

Stereotype threat is a social occurrence whereby the targets of intellectual inferiority stereotypes, such as women or racial or ethnic minorities, perform more poorly at a task when in an environment that reminds them of this stereotype, such as in the presence of males or the racial or ethnic majority. [5]

In the experiment, college students completed a challenging math or verbal task in groups of three. Each trio included the study participant plus two others: two people of the same gender as the participant (the same-sex condition) or two people of the opposite gender of the participant (the minority condition).

The researchers found that women in the minority condition performed more poorly on the math test than did women in the same-sex condition (males did well on the test despite condition).

The female participants’ performance was also found to be proportional to the number of males in their group, such that women in a mixed-sex majority condition (i.e. two women and one male) still experienced performance deficits as compared to women in the same-sex condition.

Given their findings, the researchers suggested that women in STEM courses or jobs, where their colleagues are predominantly male, may experience stereotype threat. As a result, they are at-risk of performing below their ability, and thus at-risk for attrition.

In another study, students at two universities completed assessments of working memory and mathematics, as well as a self-report anxiety scale regarding their feelings about math. [6] The results statistically demonstrated a chain effect: female students had higher anxiety about math, which in turn affected the working memory resources they needed to complete the math tasks, which in turn lead to lower performance.

The researchers discussed this chain as lending support for Processing Efficiency Theory, which suggests that anxiety negatively affects the central executive component of working memory. The central executive is responsible for processing information stored in verbal and visuospatial working memory, both of which come in pretty handy when completing mathematics tasks.

There’s Probably More to Persist Through than we Think

Studies such as these suggest that our social environment likely has a large impact on how women navigate, among other things, the STEM world. So we ask: what engenders women’s worried feelings around mathematics? How are messages of inferiority transmitted? After all, most girls grow up with some combination of family members, teachers, and/or other role models reciting the message that girls can excel in STEM just as boys can. Yet we still see that, by age six, girls are more likely to group boys into the category of “really, really smart” than they are to categorize their fellow ladies as such. [7]

First, let’s not underestimate the messages that waft in the background of girls’ daily lives. For example, picture a middle school student sitting down at her kitchen table to work on science homework. She can faintly hear CNN from the living room t.v. as she works on a diagram of Newton’s laws of motion. And what CNN happens to be covering that evening is Nobel scientist Tim Hunt’s rationale for promoting gender-segregated workplaces, which is that women in science laboratories are too at-risk of falling in love with their male colleagues.

Collective groan…but so what? Surely CNN will move to another story, the diagram will be skillfully completed, and the student will clear her books from the table so that she can eat her dinner. But not so surely will that story’s message be erased from her subconscious. And that’s a big ‘what’.

Second, as adult women and educators, we should try to get in the habit of taking a look at our own emotional navigation of STEM. Again, let’s not underestimate: one study recently found that heightened math anxiety in female teachers at the beginning of the school year is associated with lower math performance over that school year for their female students. [8] And that anxiety is communicated much more subtly than seeing a math problem and making a run for it.

In other words: better understanding our own subconscious relationship with, and reactions to, STEM disciplines can help us better understand the implicit messages that we transmit to young girls.

Third, let’s talk about it. Now, I would be remiss not to include the caveat that we cannot fully encourage girls to pursue, and persist in, STEM without also considering the importance of encouraging boys and young men to pursue female-dominated fields, such as nursing and early childhood education. Nonetheless, researchers have suggested that efforts to mitigate gender differences in math-related fields are inadequate unless they target specific factors, such as worry about math, in girls and women. [9]

So let’s talk about that worry. And, given what we know about social psychological phenomena (e.g., the prevalence of stereotype threat), the positive effects of such conversations may be maximized within all-girls STEM classes and extracurriculars. A quick Google search can lead us to organizations, such as Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS), the Laurel School’s Center for Research on Girls, and NSF’s National Girls Collaborative Project, that are eager to provide guidance and resources for exactly this purpose.

Because oddly enough, the best way to empower girls to brush off gendered nonsense like Tim Hunt’s argument for workplace segregation, may just be to separate boys and girls for a bit.

National Science Foundation (1996). Women, minorities, and persons with disabilities in science and engineering: NSF Publication No. 96–311. Arlington, VA: Author. [link]
Lindberg, S. M., Hyde, J. S., Petersen, J. L., & Linn, M. C. (2010). New trends in gender and mathematics performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 136, 1123–1135. [link]
National Science Foundation (2007). Back to school: Five myths about girls and science. NSF Press Release No. 07-108. Arlington, VA: Author. [link]
Inzlicht, M. & Ben-Zeev, T. (2000). A threatening intellectual environment: Why females are susceptible to experiencing problem-solving deficits in the presence of males. Psychological Science, 11, 365-371. [link]
Aronson, J., Lustina, M.J., Good, C., Keough, K., Steele, C.M., & Brown, J. (1999). When white men can’t do math: Necessary and sufficient factors in stereotype threat. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 35, 29–46. [link]
Ganley, C. M., & Vasilyeva, M. (2014). The role of anxiety and working memory in gender differences in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106 (1), 105-120. [link]
Bian, L., Leslie, S.J., Cimpian, A. (2017). Gender stereotypes about intellectual ability emerge early and influence children’s interests. Science, 355(6323), 389-391. [link]
Beilock, S. L., Gunderson, E. A., Ramirez, G., & Levine, S. C. (2010). Female teachers’ math anxiety affects girls’ math achievement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 107, 1860–1863. [link]
Ganley, C. M., & Vasilyeva, M. (2014). The role of anxiety and working memory in gender differences in mathematics. Journal of Educational Psychology, 106 (1), 105-120. [link]

Andrew Watson

February 27, 2017

Gender and Competition

According to new research, a key difference might be the choice of opponent. Whereas men typically prefer to compete against others, women often choose to compete against themselves.

(As always: be careful about oversimplifcation of gender roles. I myself am much likelier to compete against myself than others. As Todd Rose notes, averages often give us useful information about groups, but never about individuals.)

Andrew Watson

February 25, 2017

Motivation Revolution?

Here’s the magic question: how can teachers help motivate students?

After all, most of our students don’t lack the cognitive capacity to learn the material; instead, all too often, they lack the desire to do so.

Frankly, those of us who work in the classroom would LOVE some help from the world of psychology and neuroscience to understand what gets our kids energized…

Trinsic: In- or Ex-

For well over a decade, the field of Mind, Brain, Education has been guided and informed by the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.

When I curl up with a crossword puzzle, for example, I do so for the crisp pleasure of problem solving. I don’t get anything from these puzzles, other than the joy of doing them. That’s intrinsic motivation.

Often, however, we undertake a particular activity to get something else from it. Perhaps I take a class in research methodology not because I’m fascinated by it, but because I know I need that credit to get my psychology degree. Or, I take it because my parents have made it a condition of helping with my college tuition. (Quirky parents, I know.)

In these cases, I’m driven by extrinsic motivation.

Of course, these motivations differ from person to person. I might go to an art museum because I love the works of Archibald Motley, Jr. (intrinsic), or because I want my boss to see me at the exhibit (extrinsic). You might go camping because the great outdoors refreshes your soul (intrinsic), or because a certain special someone might also be joining the group (extrinsic).

So, too, some of our students solve math problems because they are genuinely fascinated to discover the area under a curve; whereas others want to impress a classmate, or get a good grade, or earn admission to MIT.

The Whole is Greater than the Sum of the Parts?

What, then, do teachers do with this information? How does it help us to distinguish between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation?

At the very first Learning and the Brain conference I attended, Edward L. Deci offered one answer to that question. His answer is, in fact, the one you hear most often.

What happens, Deci wanted to know, when you add extrinsic and intrinsic motivation together? For example: if a student loves learning to spell new words for the pure pleasure of doing so (that’s intrinsic), what happens if I also give him a sticker for every ten new words he learns (that’s extrinsic)?

When Deci started exploring this question, no one had thought much about it. He remembers there was a vague sense that adding two kinds of motivation together should—common sense tells us—create even greater levels of motivation. But no one new how much, or precisely why.

Deci’s research, however, led to a surprising conclusion: extrinsic motivation undermines intrinsic motivation. That is: my enthusiastic speller will feel less enthusiastic once I start rewarding him. In Deci’s research, he is less likely to break out the dictionary on his own, and more likely to wait until I break out the sticker packs again.

How did Deci find this out?

In one well-known study [1], he had college students solve a particularly intriguing kind of puzzle—sort of an early Rubik’s cube. He then offered half of them a reward for solving more puzzles, while simply instructing the other half to do so. Third, he gave both groups some free time—and watched whether they continued to solve puzzles, or instead read magazines that he provided.

The result: the students who had been rewarded were less likely than the unrewarded group to continue solving puzzles.

That is: the extrinsic reward sapped intrinsic enthusiasm.

Classroom Implications

Deci’s remarkable finding provides a direct challenge to one of education’s most enduring traditions: grades.

When school folk try to justify grades as a useful incentive—they motivate our students!—Deci’s team can argue right back: yes, but at such a cost!

Even if grades do motivate (and, do they?), they undermine the love of learning that we want to instill. Students who once spent their free time obsessing about Civil War battlefields will now do so only for the promise of extra credit. What kind of motivation is that?

Deci and his frequent co-author Richard Ryan have an explanation for this effect. They argue that people are motivated by a desire for—among other things—autonomy. When you give me a grade for something that I already want to do, I feel that you’re trying to control me: that is, trying to reduce my autonomy.

In other words: your extrinsic rewards reduce my intrinsic drives by taking away my independence.

January 2017: Revolution

This account of motivation—and the tension between intrinsic and extrinsic rewards—has been common in the field of MBE for at least a decade. But in January, a new study came out which challenges this whole logical chain [2].

Two scholars at the University of Chicago—Goswami and Urminsky—ask this question: what if extrinsic motivation only seems to reduce intrinsic motivation because we’ve been measuring the wrong way? The problem is not in the motivation, but in our research paradigms?

Here’s their argument: when Deci gave those students another chance to solve puzzles, he measured their motivation immediately after they had completed the reward round. If their intrinsic motivation was only temporarily reduced, this research paradigm would have no way of capturing that result. After all, their desire to draw might bounce back. It might even come back more strongly than before.

To test this hypothesis, Goswami and Urminsky developed a new research method: one that gave participants multiple chances to demonstrate intrinsic desire to do something—before, during, and after a reward.

Participants in their study chose between solving a fun math puzzle (a problem that involved a little cognitive effort) and watching a short video (which involved no cognitive effort). In either case, this particular activity took only half a minute. They made this choice not a few times times (as in Deci’s study), but 30 times.

The first eight times, participants simply chose between solving a math problem and watching a video. Because the math problems were—in fact—fun to do, participants chose them almost 70% of the time.

During the next section of the study—ten more trials—half of the participants were given a small reward for choosing to do the math problem. (That is: an extrinsic reward was added to their obvious intrinsic interest.) Unsurprisingly, they now chose the math problems almost 90% of the time.

In the third round of the study—twelve more trials—the reward was removed. If, as Deci and Ryan predict, extrinsic rewards reduce intrinsic motivation, we would expect to see a persistent change. Participants should now prefer the video to the math problem, perhaps by a considerable margin.

What did Goswami and Urminsky find?

Round 3, Trial #4

Consistent with Deci’s study of college puzzle solvers, participants initially turned away from the math problems. Whereas 90% had chosen them during the reward round, only 50% did so during the next trial, and only 55-60% during the two trials after that.

But then, something remarkable happened.

Participants returned to the math. In fact, in trial #4 of the third round, more people chose math problems than those in the control group—who had never been offered a reward. In fact, for the remainder of the study—7 more trials—the participants who had been offered rewards chose math problems more often than the control group even though the reward was no longer available.

In other words: in this study, extrinsic motivation did not reduce intrinsic motivation. Instead, it (very slightly) increased intrinsic motivation.

To be sure of their results—and to test some other predictions as well—Goswami and Urminsky repeated versions of this study 4 more times, and consistently got the same answer.

Boom. Revolution.

Where Do We Go from Here? (Round 1)

Goswami and Urminsky’s study has quite literally just been published. Because their conclusions upend such widely known research, they will doubtless be debated, challenged, explored, perhaps contradicted.

In the meantime, what’s a teacher to do?

First: we can, I think, no longer say with such confidence that “extrinsic motivation reduces intrinsic motivation.” (Of course, it might—after all, lots of research suggests that conclusion.)

However, Goswami and Urminsky propose a new way of exploring this question, and I think we should admit the reasonableness of their critique and the usefulness of their methodology. We’ve got a chance to learn more, and we should take it.

For now, that means we should look frankly and honestly at the value of grades, prizes, and rewards. They might be beneficial, or harmful, or both; but we can’t be sure that their extrinsic motivation is harmful. (If you’d like some guidance in these discussions, you might look at Timothy Quinn’s book, On Grades and Grading.)

As a simple example: I’m married to someone whose interest in school was based ENTIRELY on grades, prizes, and competition. In at least this one case, grades provided an immensely useful extrinsic motivation that made up for a real lack of intrinsic motivation.

Where Do We Go from Here? (Round 2)

This research revolution might also inspire us to return to Deci and Ryan with fresh eyes and clearer understanding. Here’s what I mean:

In my experience, teachers who read up on this research often infer that students will naturally become intrinsically motivated to pursue schoolwork if we don’t get in their way. Because extrinsic motivation interferes with intrinsic motivation, the absence of extrinsic motivation will naturally produce intrinsic motivation.

But Deci and Ryan don’t say that [3]. In fact, they say quite the opposite: “it is critical to remember that intrinsic motivation will occur only for activities that hold intrinsic interest for an individual—those that have the appeal of novelty, challenge, or aesthetic value for that individual” (p. 59-60); as they say elsewhere, it is “catalyzed (rather than caused)” (p. 58).

Instead, Deci and Ryan accept that students simply aren’t intrinsically motivated to do many of the things that school asks them to do. It is not our job to cause them to be intrinsically motivated—because we can’t.

Instead, it is the teacher’s job to find healthy extrinsic motivators rather than unhealthy ones: “because many of the tasks that educators want their students to perform are not inherently interesting or enjoyable, knowing how to promote more active and volitional (versus passive and controlling) forms of extrinsic motivation becomes an essential strategy for successful teaching” (p. 55).

When they champion classrooms that foster autonomy, relatedness, and competence, Deci and Ryan are partly trying to allow intrinsic motivation to flourish. But, more often, they are trying to promote good kinds of extrinsic motivation—in which students recognize the value of the work that they are doing, and take it on willingly to benefit themselves and their world.

After all: I might not have taken that research methodology class with intrinsic enthusiasm, but the extrinsic motivation that got me through has been a great boon to my understanding of science.

Deci, E. L. (1971). Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation. Journal of personality and Social Psychology, 18(1), 105. [link]
Goswami, I., & Urminsky, O. (2017). The dynamic effect of incentives on postreward task engagement. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146(1), 1. [link]
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary educational psychology, 25(1), 54-67. [link]

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