This week in the science of learning, September 8, 2024
The instructional hierarchy, math research, how to study and more
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What to watch/listen to: Bite-sized pieces of media for the weekend
It’s all audio/visual media for me this week
* I’m happy to report I recently discovered Evidence Snacks, roundups of educational research by Peps McCrea, the director of education at UK professional development outfit Steplab. In this video, McCrea shares what he thinks is standout research from the last year for educators and leaders to pay attention to, including a study showing teachers tended to over-inflate praise for students from disadvantaged backgrounds; students who received that too-much praise were perceived as less smart by their peers.
In another astonishing study published in Nature Peps talks about in the video, an analysis of the math test scores of 5 million students in 48 countries on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies assessment, or TIMMS, showed that low-income students performed significantly worse on “real-world” math problems focused on items like money or food.
* “Fluency building is always the path to creative, flexible problem solving in math...It is always the path to comprehension in reading…it's always the path to being able to successfully fly an airplane or conduct a surgery or play a musical instrument,” says researcher Amanda VanDerHeyden on this week’s Reading Road Trip podcast, produced by the Ontario, Canada chapter of the International Dyslexia Association. VanDerHeyden, who studies mostly math and how kids reach fluency, has been featured in a couple of reported stories I’ve done about math instruction (here and here), because all of her work is based on the kind of gold-standard, empirical research often lacking in the math education space (see last week’s post for more on that).
* “Effort is the cornerstone of learning,” says Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, back with more talk about the science of learning on his podcast, and this one on “Optimal Protocols for Studying and Learning.” It’s worth a listen. This episode is especially good for older students, I thought; I sent it to my college kid and high school senior. He covers all the best evidence on learning from the student perspective, and describes the importance of things like sleep and attention, as well as techniques like retrieval practice, citing evidence and scientific reasons, but without all the jargon.
What you might have missed Friday at The Bell Ringer
Friday’s post took a little detour from teaching and learning research to mental health, since Monday is World Suicide Prevention Day and many children are still suffering. I have done a little reporting on a new kind of treatment for childhood clinical anxiety seen as counterintuitive to traditional treatments. This new “independence therapy” hypothesizes that students with serious anxiety might be able to reduce symptoms by doing more things on their own, and a new study shows promising results.
Here’s Camilo Ortiz, the psychologist who developed the technique, on what he noticed and how independence therapy works:
Clinical psychologist Camilo Ortiz, a professor at Long Island University-Post, began noticing a few years ago that some of his young patients, mostly children being treated for anxiety, would “fold very quickly” at the first sign of adversity. Ortiz uses what he calls the “four Ds” to explain what was happening: Today’s kids experienced less “discomfort, distress, disappointment and danger” than previous generations did, because their parents, who have the best intentions, deprive them of these opportunities. He began to wonder whether kids who didn’t get much of the four Ds were missing an important opportunity to be uncomfortable and then persist — and whether they might help clinically anxious children.
Beginning last year, Ortiz began a pilot treatment program for childhood clinical anxiety that is based on independence and “getting parents out of their hair.”
“This is not a traditional anxiety treatment,” he said. “My approach is something like: So you’re afraid of the dark? Go to the deli and buy me some salami.” A lot of anxiety is based in fear of the unknown, so the treatment involves having an experience full of uncertainty, like riding the subway alone or going to the grocery alone. If the child can tolerate the discomfort in that situation, Ortiz hypothesized that those lessons might translate to whatever is causing the child anxiety.
Coming up at The Bell Ringer
What does it look like when conceptual and procedural understanding work together?
The teaching crisis
Why so many students don’t have flexibility with numbers
When, if ever, should a parent prepare a child to become an independent, self-sufficient adult? Right from the start, a little at a time.