Evidence-based teaching methods for helping students who are at risk for school failure or who have disabilities.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a policy paper examining a report the Human Rights Watch and the ACLU about corporal punishment in US schools. It provides a clear and powerful indictment of what amounts to a state-sanctioned assault on children.
A Violent Education
Corporal Punishment of Children in U.S. Public Schools
Continue reading ‘Corporal punishment needs to be beaten’
Over on Ed News, Kerry Hempenstall has a paper examining the phonics-vs-whole-language question that vexed educators for many years in the late 1900s. With his typical appreciation of irony, Professor Hempenstall recounts in one place many of the disparate factors that affected that “great debate.” Here’s his abstract:
Over the past twenty years, there has been considerable controversy over the competing emphases to beginning reading known as Whole Language and phonics. To provide a context for the debate, this paper examines the history of disputes about reading instruction, particularly as it applies to at-risk students. It commences with a brief discussion of the advantages and challenges of our English alphabetic writing system, and of the literacy issues associated with it. Identification of the major attempts to deal with the complexity of our writing system is followed by a history of the search for the most efficacious means of evincing reading development. An examination of early research efforts, such as The Great Debate, The USOE Study, Follow Through, and Becoming a Nation of Readers helps illuminate the current debate by highlighting which issues are novel, and which are from the past but as yet unresolved. A thread throughout the paper involves the role of educational research in influencing practice in beginning reading instruction.
Hempenstall, K. R. (2009). The whole language-phonics controversy: A historical perspective. Education News. Retrieved 30 July 2009 from http://ednews.org/articles/the-whole-language-phonics-controversy-a-historical-perspective.html.
Zig Engelmann, progenitor of Direct Instruction (DI), has posted a video of a talk he gave earlier this month. The presentation is an explication of the underlying principles of DI, “Theory of Direct Instruction.”
In the presentation (video below the jump), Mr. Engelmann shows some of his chops from his undergraduate degree in philosophy. He starts with philosophers’ fundamental arguments and shows how those correspond (or don’t) with learning and teaching concepts. For example, as he works through John Stuart Mills’ five methods of induction from A System of Logic, he makes clear how each would apply to teaching. I suspect that this particular sequence will show many people why DI instruction (the examples used in the scripts, not the teaching behavior) is structured the way it is.
Continue reading ‘Engelmann explains’
In a paper to appear in Education and Urban Society, Joy Valenti and Diana Tracey report that preschool experience contributes to subsequent reading achievement. Here’s the abstract.
This study examined the relationships between students’ attendance at fullday, half-day, or no preschool and first grade reading achievement. 214 urban, low SES public first grade students of mixed ethnicities were studied. Using the students’ Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA2) scores (Beaver, 2006), results indicated that by the middle of first grade students who completed one year of full-day preschool significantly outperformed students who did not attend preschool. Students who completed one year of full-day preschool also outperformed students who completed half-day preschool, although not to a significant degree. Additionally, students who completed half-day preschool outperformed students who did not attend preschool, although not to a significant degree. The results further showed that significant differences between the groups were not apparent at the start of first grade, demonstrating that preschool attendance may not show immediate, positive benefits.
Valenti, J. E., & Tracey, D. H. (2009). Full-day, half-day, and no preschool effects on urban children’s first-grade reading achievement. Education and Urban Society (online first: doi:10.1177/0013124509336060).
Link to the journal home. I doubt that this link will be of much use except to those working from computers at institutions that subscribe to the journal.
Jeanne Wherrett’s comment on an old post prompted me to update the links there. If one of the three or four TE readers have been frustrated by the 404 results for the links pointing to the old mega-analysis (Steve Forness’s term), those links have been fixed.
For those unfamiliar with that old site, it’s a compilation of meta-analyses about cognitive-behavioral treatment of adolescent depression, cognitive-behavioral treatments, computer-assisted instruction, decreasing disruptive behavior, direct instruction (big DI), early intervention, Feingold hyperactivity diet, formative evaluation of students’ progress, medication for students with mental retardation, mnemonic strategies instruction, modality-based reading instruction, peer tutoring, perceptual training, psycholinguistic training, psychotherapy (including behavior modification), reducing class size, social skills training for students with emotional or behavioral disorders, social skills training for students with learning disabilities, special class placement, stimulant treatment of hyperactivity, teaching reading comprehension, treatment of classroom behavior problems.
Jump to the mega site. Flash of the electrons to Ms. Wherrett (see her site) for alerting me to the issue.
Over on Britannica Blog, Dan Willingham has a new post entitled “What Makes a Good Fourth-Grade Reader? Knowledge.” Professor Willingham asks, “What makes for effective reading instruction?” and then answers, “A new study indicates that an important contributor is integrating material from other subjects into reading instruction.”
He’s talking about a recently released study by Wai Ming Cheung and colleagues from the University of Hong Kong. They examined predictors of reading literacy among fourth graders and found that “the most powerful predictor [of high outcomes] was the use of materials from other subjects as reading resources.”
This finding is consistent with points made elsewhere as well as here on TE: It’s not sufficient to teach decoding and abstract strategies. Kids need to read stuff! That means they need real content, and certainly one of the best sources of that content would be what they’re learning in other courses. It’s relevant, probably pitched at their level, etc.
Reading literacy of fourth-grade students in Hong Kong showed a remarkable improvement from 2001 to 2006 as shown by international PIRLS studies. This study identified various aspects of the teacher factor contributing to the significant improvement among students. A total of 4,712 students and 144 teachers from 144 schools were randomly selected using probability proportional-to-size technique to receive the Reading Assessment Test and complete the Teacher’s Questionnaire, respectively. A number of items pertaining to teachers’ instructional strategies and activities, opportunities for students to read various types of materials, practices on assessment, and professional preparation and perception, were found to be significantly correlated with the outcome of students’ reading literacy. Stepwise regression procedure revealed four significant predictors for students’ overall reading achievement. The most powerful predictor was the use of materials from other subjects as reading resources. Suggestions to improve quality of teaching of reading and further studies are made.
Cheung, W. M, Tse, S. K., Lam, J. W. I., & Loh, E. K. Y. (2009). Progress in international reading literacy study 2006 (PIRLS): Pedagogical correlates of fourth-grade students in Hong Kong. Journal of Research in Reading, 32, 293-308.
Link to Professor Willingham’s blog entry. Link to the abstract for the study by Professor Cheung.
US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan spoke to the National Education Association today, calling on its members to work with him toward the goal of ensuring that “every child in America is learning from an effective teacher—no matter what it takes.”
That’s a noble goal. In my view, it requires that educators shed their allegiance to theory and adopt effective teaching practices. That’s what it takes.
To be sure, there is a lot of emphasis on high-stakes testing. Mr. Duncan even discussed it as one of the four features of his plan for reforming education. The effective teacher idea is another of the four. High-stakes tests (which need reform of their own, in my view—that’s another post) are only part of the game. Another is using evidence to guide instruction.
But even in the absence of results on high-stakes tests and from pristine research projects, educators can ascertain whether they’re using effective methods. That is, we can devise our own means of ascertaining whether teaching practices are effective at a more micro level. In a lot of ways, the process is relatively simple:
Sure, I’ve simplified it here. Sure, the goals and objectives would need to be integrated in a fashion consistent with an epistemology of various subject areas. And, you’ll have to cut me a little slack about my use of words such as “tell” and “correct”; telling would need to include providing materials to read, for example. But the idea is just about as simple as I’ve sketched it here.
The area of early reading has been mapped according to this perspective on teaching. We can say how we would recognize a competent reader (i), what the component skills are (ii), and how to teach those skills. But the to-be-learned material doesn’t have to be elementary level reading. If the area is chemistry and the objectives were conducting an experiment using electrophoresis, I think we could perform a similar analysis.
Of course, the real trick will be to get people on board with such thinking. Mr. Duncan seems to want to do something like that, but he’s talking about things at a much grander scale.
Remarks of Arne Duncan to the National Education Association—Partners in Reform
Howard Gardner’s Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences seems to occupy a special place in the pantheon of education memes. I was reminded of this when I read “Not Every Child Is Secretly a Genius” by Christopher Ferguson. Mr. Ferguson’s essay—it appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education, the news source of record for higher educators—politely explains that sustaining Multiple Intelligences (MI) theory is not a good idea.
Rational analyses of the MI evidence by Dan Willingham and Lynn Waterhouse have shown that there are problems with both the theory itself (e.g., most of the eight intelligences are highly correlated, meaning that they are likely measuring the same “thing” for the most part) and its application in education (e.g., methods based on MI do not lead to better outcomes).
Mr. Ferguson’s essay continues in that same tradition. He makes a strong case for his conclusion that “Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences was a great idea and worth investigating. It’s just not panning out.”
Continue reading ‘Multiple intelligences ain’t’
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