Teach Effectively!

I stumbled across a site that is touted as “Scientifically Based Research: A Link from Research to Practice” on the Web, created by Amanda VanDerHeyden, a professor in school psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara (CA, US). Although there are links to many materials and procedures she has developed, the site does not at this time provide links to procedures and practices available elsewhere.

I only had a chance to glance at the details of the site. It has sections for different academic areas (reading, writing, etc.) as well as assessment. It seems mostly focused on very young children. There are references to individual studies reported by Professor VanDerHeyden, and the procedures are similar to some that have more extensive scientific documentation of their value.

WARNING: The front end of this site employs a big dose of Flash, so there is a lot of waiting, even with a very high-speed connection. Readers may wish to bookmark the subordinate HTML pages so that they can go directly to them rather than having to load the Flash navigation page. It also opens pages in new windows, so an individual who uses a full-screen display for her browser (as do most Windows users) and explores the site thoroughly may have at least a half dozen windows open at the end of the visit.

Link to the GOSBR site, to Professor VanDerHeyden’s UCSB bio page

Mayor Daily announced an “historic day” for Chicago Public Schools, with a dramatic jump in 8th grade math scores. Scores went to 62.5 percent passing the the Illinois State Achievemnt Standards Test this year from 47.3 percent last year.

The Mayor did not report that the Illinois State Board lowered the passigng score for 8th grade math to the 38th percentile this year from the 67th percentile last year.

The Chicago Tribune commented that “We didn’t dramatically improve performance. We dramatically lowered the bar.”

Here is the Chicago Tribune July, 17, 2006 story about these dramatic improvements.

An ‘A’ for everybody!

They must be teaching some new kind of fuzzy math at Chicago Public Schools.

This week Mayor Richard Daley and school officials announced a dramatic jump in the number of pupils who passed their state standardized tests last spring. Daley said this was a “historic day”

“With these results,” said Daley, “it’s clear we are on our way to becoming the best urban school district in the nation.”

Whoa there, Mr. Mayor. How did we get this “historic” jump in performance?

Illinois State Board of Education officials Sharply reduced the requirement for a passing Score in 8th grade math. We didn’t dramatically Improve performance. We dramatically lowered The bar.

The desire to show progress in the City’s public School system is easy to understand. Progress seems to have slowed after the initial revolution just over a decade ago, when City Hall took over the reins. Indeed that has been frustrating. But please, don’t try to sell this as dramatic progress.

City officials reported that 62.5 percent of 3rd Through 8th graders hi Chicago public schools Passed the Illinois Standards Achievement Test. That was a jump from 47.3 percent the previous year.

But the state board in that time lowered the Passing score for 8th grade math from the 67th to the 38th percentile. Yes, the score for meet the state standards was cut almost in half.

Back in February, the Illinois Business Round Table said the change would result in 32,000 more Illinois pupils meeting the math requirement “on the basis of an administrative stroke of the pen.”

“This action…diminishes the work and achievement of those who have met our standards; and it tells those who have failed to meet our standards that it’s OK…our administration will change the rules before changing the education our students receive,” the business group wrote in a sharply critical letter to the board.

Other changes helped to improve results. Pupils were given 10 more minutes to complete their reading, math and science exams. A new color format offered more vibrant charts and graphics. In Chicago, for the first time, student; took two preliminary tests that highlighted their deficits. The city also dropped the Iowa Test of Basic Skills, which allowed teachers to focus their efforts on one test.

Those aren’t all unreasonable steps—but some seem clearly designed to produce better numbers, not better-educated kids.

With the changes, it’s very difficult if not Impossible to compare this year’s results with last year’s. Maybe Chicago public school students did make progress. But how can anyone tell?

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I’m pleased to note that Janet Lerner was willing to post a piece to Teach Effectively. As most people in special education know, Professor Lerner is a pioneer in teaching students with disabilities. In one of my first classes about special education, I was assigned Professor Lerner’s book on Learning Disabilities. It’s a great honor to have her as a contributor to Teach Effectively. Professor Lerner will be posting as “JanetL.”

Over on “Your Mama’s Mad Tedious,” Miss Dennis had a post covering the WNYC series to which we referrered here, here, and here last month. Miss Dennis’ comments are very worth contemplating. For instance:

Two of my former principals issued IEP diplomas to students who showed up to school maybe 20 percent of the time. They also gave them to students who showed up every day, tried their best, and could have easily gotten local diplomas, if not Regents diplomas, if they had just stayed one extra semester in high school. Such students should be encouraged to stay in school for a few more months to get a diploma that will actually help them succeed in the future.

This is an interesting proposition. Couldn’t students who have IEPs and who are just a few credits short of an earned regular diploma get an extra semester or two after their age-peers graduate? I need some consultation on this matter. Wouldn’t students in such a situation be eligible for services continuing when they are 18+ years?

The US government’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention provides a Model Programs Guide (MPG) that is extensive, detailed, and searchable. The databbase covers more than thirty types of programs ranging from “academic skills enhancement” to “wraparound services” and classifies the individual programs as “expemplary,” “effective,” or “promising” depending on the quality of the evidence for the benefits of each.

The MPG includes information about scientifically proven prevention and intervention programs that target problem behaviors among youth. To be included in the guide, programs must focus on one of the following problem behaviors: delinquency, violence, youth gang involvement, alcohol, tobacco and drug use, academic difficulties, family functioning, trauma exposure or sexual activity/exploitation and accompanying mental health issues.

Because it is very broad and the standards are not quite as rigorous as some other projects (e.g., What Works Clearinghouse), MPG should serve only as an screening system for identifying effective models. However, it provides an excellent first cut and some of the model programs rated “exemplary” would be ones that would be recognized by experts employing demanding standards for evaluating programs.

Link to the home page and a link for a specific search (exemplary, prevention, academic skills enhancement, 6-12 years age) as an example of using the MPG data base.

In the cover article of Science (what an honor!), Alex Thornton (a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge [UK]) and Katherine McAuliffe (also in Zoology at Cambridge) described their research about teaching. “So what?” you say. Well, they studied adult meerkats’ teaching of skills that young meerkats need in hunting food. This is the way that Michael Balter summarized the study:

Teaching is found in all human societies. Are there unambiguous examples of teaching in other species? Thornton and McAuliffe (p. 227; see the cover) describe observational and experimental field studies on the role of teaching in the development of prey capture in wild meerkats. Teachers modified their behavior in the presence of pups by gradually introducing them to live prey, monitoring their handling behavior, nudging prey, and retrieving and further modifying prey if necessary. Dangerous food items (such as scorpions) were more likely to be killed or disabled than other mobile prey. Helpers gained no direct benefits from their provisioning behavior and incurred costs through giving pups prey that was difficult to handle and that might escape.

Previous research has reported observations of teaching by ants but few other animal species. The standard used in studying animal teaching was described by R. Caro and M. Hauser (full reference at end of entry):

An individual actor A can be said to teach if it modifies its behaviors only in the present of a naïve observer, B, at some cost or at least without obtaining an immediate benefit for itself. A’s behavior thereby encourages or punishes B’s behavior, or provides B with experience or sets an example for B. As a result, B acquires knowledge or learns a skill earlier in life or more rapidly or efficiently than it might otherwise do, or that it would not learn at all. (Caro & Hauser, 1992, p. 153)

What if one applies the Caro and Hauser criteria to human teaching? There can be little debate about the first two criteria (teacher modifies own behavior and modifications don’t have benefit to teacher), but it’s that third criterion that matters, in my view. It’s not teaching if the learners’ behavior doesn’t change.

This gives me a chance to define teaching (for which I’m endebted to B. Bateman and S. Engelmann, but I don’t have an exact quote): “Teaching is the manipulation of environmental variables to cause predicted changes in learners’ behavior.” Now let me analyze that statement.

• Manipulation of environmental variables: Yep, the teacher’s got to do something, change something. About the only things teachers can change are aspects of the environment surrounding the learners, the displays the learners see, the words the learners hear, etc. If a teacher doesn’t alter and control the alteration of environmental variables, then the learner just experiences a natually random or static world; there will not be explicit comparison or contrast between aspects of that world. The environmental variables include not just antecedents, but also consequences (what happens after learners do something), and teachers manipulate them, too; they provide feedback, rewards, corrections, and such.
• Cause: Yes, cause. Teaching should be intentional on the part of the teacher. If a teacher does not want to cause—precipitate or induce—something, then why “teach?”
• Predicted changes: It’s important to be have a goal or an objective for teaching. After all, if one does not predict the outcomes of teaching, then doing anything can count as teaching. You can do anything and then point to whatever the learner does later and say, “See, I taught that.” Predicting what learners will be able to do as a result of what one calls “teaching” makes the teacher accountable. And that change part is important, too. Without some relatively permanent difference in what they learners know or can do compared to what they used to be able to do, it’s hard to argue that there was anything learned.
• Behavior: Of course. How else would one have a sure means of documenting change? What can the learners now do that they couldn’t do before? If in answering this question one retreats to what learners “know,” that knowledge is not a behavior, I have this question: How do the learners show their knowledge? Speaking is a behavior. Writing is a behavior. Nodding and shaking one’s head are behaviors. Reading? Computing? Solving? They reduce to behaviors. So, don’t be reluctant to monitor learners’ behavior and use it as an index of teaching’s effects.

Oh well. That’s sort of an off-handed reflection. Surely, it’s a view that will distress some readers. Others will find ways to modify and improve it. Teach me, please. Click that link labeled “comments” and have have your say.

Links for the meerkats story: Mr. Balter’s ScienceNOW summary of Mr. Thornton’s and Ms. McAuliffe’s paper (full article; subscription required). Ira Flatow covered this story on Talk of the Nation: Science Friday; one can listen to Mr. Flatow’s discussion of the study with Mr. Thornton in mp3, Real Media, or Windows Media format.

Reference

Caro, T. M., & Hauser, M. D. (1992). Is there teaching in nonhuman animals? Quarterly Review of Biology, 67, 151-174.

Lori Aratani, a staff writer for the Washington Post recounts evidence indicating that reading instruction is needed in the upper grades in her story headlined, “Upper Grades, Lower Reading Skills.” She identifies an important issue, one that I hope policy-makers will recognize and pursue. It should go without saying that I also hope evidence-based interventions will be at the forefront of efforts to address the problems.

Kansas (US) State Board of Education met to hear proposed guidelines for the use of restraints that might be needed for students who are out of control, according to a story by Gena Terlizzi Lawrence Journal-World.

Advocates for the disabled said the mandates are necessary to prevent mistreatment of the students.

Rocky Nichols, executive director of the Disability Rights Center, said during the 2005 legislative session he heard many parents speak about the mistreatment of their children.

“Hundreds and hundreds of parents from around the state came forward, testified and talked about how their kids were secluded and restrained inappropriately,” Nichols said. “We have kids who have been sat on by gym teachers. Their arms have been duct-taped together as a form of restraint. They’ve been rolled up in gym mats. They’ve been placed in little boxes.”

There are effective instrucational procedures to (a) create environments that reduce the probability of students behavior escalating to out-of-control status and (b) teach student appropriate ways to respond to difficult situations without losing control. One would hope that local and state education agencies (as well as teacher education institutions) prepare special and general educators (and administrators) to use those procedures. Sadly, this is too rarely the case. (See Ms. Frizzle’s illustration of a staff development session devoted to this topic reported previously here on Teach Effectively.)

Although Ms. Terlizzi’s story is about restraints, it also mentions “time out” (TO). Sadly, the discussion of TO perpetuates myths about the procedure. The term “time out” is routinely used in a generic way to refer to exclusion, especially placing a child in a physical space away from others. There is a more formal use referring to a well-studied procedure which involves, essentially, making reinforcement temporarily unavailable. I would like to encourage folks to distinguish between the informal and the formal uses, if for no other reason than that the formal use of TO very effectively reduces the frequency of targeted behavior whereas the informal use has, as far as I know, little or no scientifically documented effectiveness.

Link to Ms. Terlizzi’s story. Check the sidelinks to other coverage, too.