Teach Effectively!

Over on Science-Based Medicine, Dr. Amy Tuteur has an entry that’s worth reading. In the piece, she exoriates the publication of medical news that amount to little more than reprints of press releases. Dr. Tuteur’s analysis serves as a worthwhile reminder for people to exercise caution when reading, watching, or hearing reports in the popular press about the benefits of medical therapies.

Even more, the analysis offers a reminder for people who consume educational research via popular media. I have repeatedly read reports of new educational and psychological research published in apparently trustworthy sources which, upon investigation, actually are just a reprint of a press release from a university or other entity with an interest in promoting the finding.

This is really problemsome when even further investigation shows that the press release may not completely accurately reflect the findings of the original research. Shoot, I suspect that some of what passes as content on some Web sites is actually generated by a robot that scans relevant sources (e.g., press releases) and scapes content that meets certain criteria (e.g., includes key words) into a database that can then be served according to a new style sheet.

That’s why one’s supposed to depend on a careful reading of the original report! Here on Teach Effectively, I sometimes include snippets from press releases, but I depend on my own reading of the original research when I write about a new study.

Last week I wrote about a study that purported to show that antidepressants have no effect in mild to moderate depression. A careful reading of the paper shows that the authors dramatically overstated their findings, particularly in their public statements to the media. The study has another implication beyond the misleading claims about antidepressants. It is an object lesson in an ongoing and disturbing phenomenon in mainstream journalism, the wholesale reprinting of press releases of scientific papers instead of reading and analyzing the papers themselves.

Jump to Science by press release.

Teach Effectively pal Dan Willingham has another treatment of the learning-styles myth at the Washington Post. In a guest entry for Valerie Strauss’ “The Answer Sheet,” Professor Willingham mentions the recent scientific review of research that debunked the myth (yet again) and provides responses to some of the pro-myth arguments that he’s encountered. Here’s a link to “Willingham: No evidence exists for learning style theories.”

Robert Slavin and colleagues reported that reading programs that provide extensive professional development on instructional strategies which promote student participation, strengthen phonics competence, and explicitly teach comprehension strategies are the best bets for improving reading achievement. The clearest examples of the programs that led to the highest achievement were Direct Instruction and Success for All.

Writing in the December 2009 issue of the Review of Educational Research, Professor Slavin and colleagues reported the results of their examination of 142 studies. They wanted to determine whether curricula, technology, instructional processes, or combinations of curricula and processes produce greater reading achievement. The curriculum group included core reading programs, such as Reading Street and Open Court Reading. The technology group included programs that employ computers or similar methods such as computer-assisted instruction, multimedia (e.g., Reading Reels, or Writing to Read). The instructional process group included approaches that provide teachers effective strategies for teaching reading, such as Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) and Cooperative Integrated Reading and Composition (CIRC). The combined curriculum-and-instructional-process group included programs that function as core curricula and also provide detailed professional development about using instructional strategies, such as Direct Instruction and Success for All. The researchers separated the studies into two groups: those with outcomes at the (a) beginning reading level vs. upper elementary level.
Continue reading ‘Go for DI and SFA’

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education under the headline “Matching Teaching Style to Learning Style May Not Help Students,” David Glenn describes the hook of a forth-coming paper the examines the popular, but unsupported, notion that instruction must be differentiated according to personal characteristics of the learners.

If you’ve ever sat through a teaching seminar, you’ve probably heard a lecture about “learning styles.” Perhaps you were told that some students are visual learners, some are auditory learners, and others are kinesthetic learners. Or maybe you were given one of the dozens of other learning-style taxonomies that scholars and consultants have developed.

Almost certainly, you were told that your instruction should match your students’ styles. For example, kinesthetic learners—students who learn best through hands-on activities—are said to do better in classes that feature plenty of experiments, while verbal learners are said to do worse.
Continue reading ‘Learning styles gets academic attention’

Over on LD Blog last August I posted a note about how the educational system’s failure by one student serves as an illustration of the refusal to adopt effective teaching practices, favoring ideology instead. I pointed to coverage of a story about a boy named Miguel, a 12-year-old student to whom a local education agency apparently denied appropriate educational services.

The case of Miguel illustrates how educators reject reasonable and evidence-based methods in favor of ideologically driven policies. In place of employing powerful instructional practices and adapting instruction to individuals, schools too often explain away students’ difficulties. They make what amount to excuses!

In contrast to this sorry state of affairs, I was happy to see a post by Pam Wright of Wrightslaw regarding explicit statements about “methodology” in students’ Individual Education Plans.

By including frequent references to the need to use scientific, research based instruction and interventions, Congress clarified that methodology is vitally important. By requiring the child’s IEP to include “a statement of special education, related services and supplementary aids and services, based on peer reviewed research …” (Section 1414(d)(1)(A)) Congress clarified that IEPs must include “research-based methodology.”

Given schools’ failure to adopt evidence-based methods and implement them faithfully, it seems to me increasingly important that those parents who have the clout of an IEP employ that instrument to secure appropriate services for their children. I’ll continue to post entries here on Teach Effectively that identify techniques, procedures, practices, and methods that have strong track records for effectiveness, hoping that parents and advocates can use the contents of these posts to request evidence-based methods for their children.

Link Ms. Wright’s “Methodology in the IEP” from Wrightslaw and to “Miguel might show us what’s wrong” from LD Blog.

I only occasionally read the Ed Week team blog by Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch, Bridging Differences, but I was avidly gobbling up the content and comments of one recent post. Why? Well, the much admired Mary Damer had waded into the fray and was tossing around a lot of sensible comments. It’s worth reading, so here’s a link to the entry entitled “What Works for Rich Kids Works for All Kids.”

Under the headline “Harvard Offers New Doctorate for School Leaders Who Aim to Shake Up Status Quo” in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Peter Schmidt reported that Harvard University announced a grant-funded doctoral degree program to leaders in education. The graduates are supposed to be people who can engender “major school reform.”

The program’s mission will be to train top officials of school districts, government agencies, nonprofit groups, and private organizations who will be equipped to shake up the status quo in elementary and secondary education.

“Our goal is not to develop leaders for the system as it currently exists; rather, we aim to develop people who will lead system transformation,” Kathleen McCartney, dean of the Graduate School of Education, said in written statement.

What reform, one might wonder? Transformed to what? Just any old transformation? I’d like it if the transformation was toward adopting evidence-based practices. Will the graduates of the program know anything about effective teaching?

Read Mr. Schmidt’s article.

Over on Children of the Code David Boulton published a transcript of an interview with Siegfried Engelmann, the primary force behind the development of the Direct Instruction methods. In “Instructional Design 101: Learn from the Learners!,” which provides only part of the material that CoC will publish, Mr. Boulton asked Mr. Engelmann a wide range of questions and recorded his answers.

Engelmann recounts how he entered education, how he came to develop scripts, and lots more. Also, there are insightful anecdotes. For example, in one segment Mr. Engelmann recounts a story about the development of the Corrective Reading Program.
Continue reading ‘Engelmann interview on instructional design’