One of the reasons education gets led by the nose from one fad to the next may be that there is no organized effort to evaluate the claims made by groups and individuals offering professional development workshops for teachers. In his second post on how teachers can get more respect at Britannica Blog, Dan Willingham suggests that the American Association of School Administrators take on the role of evaluating claims made by those hawking PD.
Suppose that every professional development workshop came with a research disclosure statement that put it into one of three categories: (1) there is some research evidence backing the idea; (2) there is no evidence bearing on the idea, positive or negative; (3) the idea has been tested and data do not support it. It’s hard to believe that districts would be eager to sign on for workshops in the latter two categories.
“If school districts were more selective in the professional development activities that they pursued, some of the faddishness would be drained out of education,” Willingham believes. Doctors rely on a data-driven approach before adopting new treatments. “The public does not view the education establishment as similarly measured, and that is to the detriment of teachers and administrators,” he concludes.
Being more selective about professional development would certainly be a good place to start. However I see this as more of an education culture issue. Just presenting research based professional development does not mean things will change. Personal preferences rule and “I’ve always done it my way” or “I’m not in favor of that” is the norm. Can you imagine your doctor refusing to change your medication after a warning was issued by the FDA because “I’ve always used this medication and I like it”?
Definitely on target is the quote, “The public does not view the education establishment as similarly measured, and that is to the detriment of teachers and administrators.” Good and relevant educational research tends to be unknown at best or ignored at worst. Until educators adopt a culture that personal preferences are irrelevant and do (or avoid doing) certain practices whose sole objective is to improve student outcomes, how can they be taken seriously as professionals?
Tom
In part I agree, but let me turn your final question on its head: why should teachers take education research seriously? Does the education research establishment speak with one voice? Absolutely not. So who can blame teachers for saying, in effect, “You researchers obviously have not sorted this issue out; Researcher One says ‘do A’ whereas Researcher Two says ‘do the opposite of A.’ So I’m going to do what my experience tells me is best.”
Dan
I agree with Dan. All too often, we are told “research has shown” this or that, but if we actually take a look at the research, we see that it has shown nothing definitively. Moreover, those conducting the research often have a vested interest in the results, and those translating it into policy take its conclusions to extremes. Research may suggest benefits of cooperative learning, but that does not mean that all learning should be cooperative. Yet teachers are told that they must always “engage” the students through some sort of small-group or partner activity and talk. It goes against sense. It goes against the research itself.
To Diana:
I agree that you need to look at the conflict of interest aspect of some researchers. Look instead at relevant and independent studies and try to apply them to an educational setting.
For example: A while ago I read an article where a school wants to reward students with good behavior by excusing them from one or more semester exams. The article focused on whether it seemed to be popular among the students (it was!) and teachers and administrators generally seemed to be in favor of it.
However, researchers who study the human brain and memory have shown that students who take cumulative knowledge tests (semester exams, end-of-course exams, etc.) have improved long-term memory capacity as compared to those students that don’t. If you agree that “long-term memory capacity” is a desirable student outcome and the researchers themselves are independent and don’t appear to have a conflict of interest, then excusing students from semester exams is not an educationally valid practice. Whether educators are for or against it or whether it is popular among the students, should be irrelevant. The watchword should be that it doesn’t improve student outcomes.
I agree with Dan and Diana. I am tired of the dogmatism involved with the latest educational fads and I’ve been around long enough to see them come and see them go. I’m sorry to say I think that much of the disdain for educational research is justified. The phrases “the research shows” or “best practices are” too often come from those who have too little time in the classroom. The search for THE one technique or methodology or philosophy too often misses the point that what works well for one teacher in one classroom in one district won’t work elsewhere with another teacher under different circumstances. Teaching is, at its heart, an artform not a science. There’s much to be learned from research and discussions about learning, but what it comes down to more times than not is the energetic, knowledgable teacher in the classroom who develops a rapport with the students, does his/her best to ignore the distractions (pedagogic and otherwise) and get the job done, day after day, year after year.
I cannot imagine any reputable researcher publishing findings in any scholarly peer-reviewed journal that suggest that they have found THE one technique, methodology or philosophy. Whether one makes that misinterpretation frequently lies in what one wants to see. Have there been wholesale misapplications of research in the classroom (and elsewhere), yes there have. This is scarcely the fault of the researchers. And from my observation point, I would say that educators of every stripe (from teachers up through policy wonks) fall prey to this delusion on occasion.
While I think it is a fair and valid criticism to say that on the whole educational research and development is not well supported in this country, as e. g. e. suggests, it ought not be the teachers leading the charge to dump the research in favor of, well, non-research. There is an anti-intellectual irony that teachers are so willing to dismiss the act of acquiring knowledge.
Also completely agree with Dan and Diana. I saw it over and over in graduate school. Many of the “professors” had never spent a minute as a public school teacher. They went directly from undergraduate school into a doctoral program and from there into a teaching position at an ed school or teachers college. Suddenly they thought they had all the answers. They not only didn’t have all the answers, most of them had none of the answers. What a laugh. Then they actually wondered why teachers never fell all over themselves attempting to practice the findings from their research. Their latest research was simply their attempt to have a paper or book published. The publish or perish mantra has clearly exacerbated this situation.
I agree with Diana and Dan’s comments, and would add…
Why do we always say, “Look at the research”, instead of, “Look at other countries’ school systems that work?” Any given technique might show some effectivness in a controled experiement, but it seems unlikely that we could build a coherent whole by shopping for such “research-based” techniques a la carte. Who knows if all the parts would work when placed together? Modelling ourselves on a functional whole system, like Finland’s or Japan’s, makes much more sense to me. Am I missing something? It just seems so logical to me. Wny must we reinvent the wheel? (And, to anticipate some standard rebuttals, I don’t buy that the cultural homogeneity of Finland and Japan are a huge factor. Humans are humans. E.D. Hirsch does a good job of countering the “but we’re more diverse!” argument in The Knowledge Deficit.)
We need a systemic fix, not piecemeal adoptions of research-supported teaching methods. We need a nationwide commitment to imparting a large core of organized knowledge into our kids’ brains, as they do abroad. Until we do that, our system will languish, regardless of what kind of new methods take hold.
I would go even more basically: I have had “research says!” thrown in my face several times over when no research has even been conducted. Some folks use that as some kind of trump card now… obnoxious…
Ben F: “Why do we always say, “Look at the research”, instead of, “Look at other countries’ school systems that work?” …it seems unlikely that we could build a coherent whole by shopping for such “research-based” techniques a la carte. Modeling ourselves on a functional whole system, like Finland’s or Japan’s, makes much more sense to me. Am I missing something?”
Nancy: I agree, Ben. Piecemeal reforms seldom yield sustained benefits. Perhaps we should begin with the high-scoring Japanese system, adding 5 weeks to the school year, stripping expensive competitive athletics out of schools and substituting parent-funded private tutoring and lessons in after-school programs, and cram schools on Saturday. We should also remove competitive games and contests from elementary classrooms, focusing on building cooperation, self-effacement and community during those years. Japanese teachers favor collaborative, in-house professional development based on teacher-determined student learning needs. And we’ll need to strengthen teacher unions, and commit to nationally funded health care to eliminate wasteful legacy retirement/health costs–because systemic reforms will mean re-ordering school funding, as well. (Teaching and Learning in Japan. Rohlan & LeTendre.)
I’m not sure America is ready for initiating reading instruction at age 7, like the Finnish system–or reducing the number of computers in elementary schools, where they’re seen as unnecessary. But there are lots of things to like in the Finnish system as well, especially the very rigorous selection and training of their (well-paid) teachers. Only the very best students are allowed into Finnish teacher training programs, which are longer and more pedagogy-focused than American programs.
I do like the idea of a broadly defined national curriculum, with a handful of well-chosen curricular benchmarks for each grade.
Ben:
I frequently bring examples of success from other highly performing countries. I don’t observe that they are any more welcome than any specifics that have been researched. I think that when we get down to it, the issue is change. People will hang on to what they are comfortable with long after it has ceased to be effective, meet a need or be counted as a “best practice.”
On top of it all, many folks use phrases like “research says” as conversation stoppers. Personally I get a lot of mileage from asking what specific research, and bringing in my own (knowledge of) research. This seems to me to be a reasonable way to hash through decisions. Folks who are just interested in killing the discussion just throw out some truism about how you can always find research to prove anything and walk away. The other big conversation killer is: the state says, or the district says, or NCLB requires that we. I cannot tell you how much really bad legal knowledge is perpetrated by teachers who just don’t want their decisions to be questioned.
Let’s not forget that so many professional development options are discrete products designed to be dropped whole and unmolested into any schedule. Aspects of teacher professional development cited by Ben and Nancy require broad changes to structures and schedules and investments in more than just off-the-shelf professional development programs. They also require cultural changes.
Time and guidance for effective teacher collaboration come to mind….
Can you imagine your doctor refusing to change your medication after a warning was issued by the FDA because “I’ve always used this medication and I like it”?
One of the differences is that, in the case of medication, the doctor isn’t actively involved after the medication is prescribed, whereas most professional development is focused on what teachers themselves do in the classroom. My guess is that doctors are similarly hidebound when told to change how the examine a patient or perform a procedure. For example, I haven’t found the recent complaints about the use of electronic charts by terribly convincing…
Hope I’m not repeating myself too much, but what i miss most from academics is routine introductory paragraphs that articulate what the paper is and isn’t arguing. I think it was the second space shuttle disaster that was offically attributed, in part, to our “Power Point culture.” In my experience, bad decisions often are the result of stressed out overworked administrators who barely bother to think through the Power Point much less the evidence.
What if we’d invest more resources in academic institutions with established norms of debate, as opposed to consultants?
The “research” like that of the Ed Trust reminds me of the first generation of econometrics, for instance using data to determine whether slavery was profitable. The most famous was the Harvard’s who misjudged because they did not understand that momma mules and daddy mules do not produce baby mules and they had hypothesiszed that mule reproduction would have boosted profitablity by X%
Another earlier study showed that building the railroads did NOT stimulate economic growth because society would have built more canals. One of the authors also proved through that short distance trade over canals and local roads was responsible for the economic take-off. BUT those canals and roads weren’t built until later. The author later earned a Nobel Prize.
So, I just recommended academics over politicized research?
Yeah, I still think that universities, despite their flaws, would be a far better venue for science, especially compared to the consultant-driven approach of today. (And I don’t think anyone challenged the later scholarship for which the author won the Nobel, so perhaps higher ed is good about sorting things out)
One of the educational fads that I was forced to adopt as a California middle school teacher was “Reader-Writer Workshop.” This is an approach to reading and writing instruction that was developed for elementary school students in small schools in New England, I believe. It involves collaboratively reading and discussing individual short texts, often sitting in a circle on the floor. For some reason, California expanded this (as a requirement) to junior high schools as well.
In one school, I taught classes of low-income, diverse 8th graders in a pretty rough neighborhood. Believe me, trying to get my students to “sit in a circle on the floor” on a regular basis (with 14 year old girls in micro-minis and heels) was not an easy task. No matter. If I didn’t make the kids all do this every day, I would be labeled “insubordinate.” Examples like these make teachers very wary of educational fads and hightly-touted PD techniques.
Attorney DC,
You are describing Balanced Literacy, which is mandated in NYC and elsewhere in the U.S. It is not only impractical but aggressively anti-intellectual.
Balanced Literacy avoids both phonics and literature. Students are supposed to learn to read through “whole-language” methods. Once they can nominally read, they are not supposed to read specific works of literature together as a class (except through limited “read-alouds” or “shared reading”). Rather, the lesson focuses on a “reading strategy.” The teacher gives a short minilesson (remember: the teacher is not really supposed to teach, because that is bad) and then puts the kids in groups (or lets them read independently at their “reading level,” defined by the absurd Fountas and Pinnell system). She then circulates to “miniconference” with them or record their “reading behaviors” on checklists.
Balanced Literacy is highly prescriptive. The arrangement of the room, the items on the walls, the precise manner of speaking, all of this is part of the program and reinforced through endless PDs. Administrators conduct regular “walkthroughs” to ensure that all required items are on the walls and everyone is speaking just right.
And so the PDs are almost entirely devoted to process. One learns over and over again about the terrible days of the past when the teacher used to talk and talk and students weren’t allowed to think or question. Now, of course, we have the enlightened days when students must begin their comments with convoluted starter phrases such as “I would like to elaborate on what Briana just said by saying that I think that….” That, strictly speaking, is part of the “Accountable Talk” product–but Accountable Talk, Balanced Literacy, and the Workshop Model are often twirled together.
PDs are set up to mirror what the students are supposed to do. There is heavy emphasis on “talk” activities. Instead of letting children listen to a story and think about it, teachers are supposed to pause at points during the story and ask them to “make predictions” and “turn and talk.” Little room for the imagination to roam. Likewise, at PDs, teachers have to “turn and talk” at various moments while the presenter “circulates” to make sure they are all staying “on task.”
The emptiness of Balanced Literacy is mitigated somewhat if the school has its own curriculum. Without a curriculum, BL is empty. Even with a curriculum, BL opposes both the rigor of phonics and the richness of literature. Teachers must meet appearances–they must have everything in the room set up just so, kids talking just so, paperwork all in order.
I am not opposed to groupwork when it makes sense. I am not opposed to the teaching of certain strategies in the context of specific works of literature. I am not opposed to decorating the walls, if the teachers may exercise judgment and taste. I object strongly to this institutionalized model with its jargon, seating arrangements, graphic organizers, “turn and talk” activities, disregard for subject matter, and intolerance of variation and questioning.