Yet another reason for instructional grouping

Abstract

Two studies tested the effect of humor, embedded in learning materials, on task interest. College student participants (NStudy 1 = 359, NStudy 2 = 172) learned a new math technique with the presence or absence of humor in the learning program and/or test instructions. Individual interest in math was measured initially and also tested as a factor. The results showed that the effect of humor in the learning program depended on individual interest in math. Humor raised task interest for those with low individual interest in math but slightly lowered task interest for those with high individual interest in math....

The effect of humorous instructional materials on interest in a math task
Kristina L. Matarazzo • Amanda M. Durik • Molly L. Delaney | Motiv Emot (2010) 34:293–305

all about motivation

For years, I've been wanting to know who is doing the major research on motivation and what I should read.

I think I've found the answer:

Gabrielle Oettingen's homepage

"Mental contrasting" is key: mental contrasting and "implementation intentions."

If you're trying to persuade your kids to study for high-stakes exams, both are probably good to know about.

reading workshop

Headline and subhead in the March 31, 2010 issue of Education Week:

Added H.S. Science Courses Said To Yield Mixed Effect in Chicago
Policy did not boost college-going or grades, study finds

Critical thinking challenge: In the two lines above, which word seems out of place?^*


department of silver linings

Apparently, the term 'mixed' refers to the fact that after Chicago public schools required all students to take 3 science courses in order to graduate, many more students did indeed take 3 science courses prior to graduation.

Many students passed their classes with C’s and D’s, both before and after the policy was implemented, the researchers found. That suggests a low level of learning and engagement in the courses, they said.

Only 15 percent of students, the study says, completed three years of science with a B average or higher in those courses after the policy change. That was a modest 4-percentage-point increase compared with the period before the policy took effect.

Prior research, Mr. Montgomery said, shows that students who are truly gaining knowledge in courses earn grades of A or B.

“Before the policy, most students received C’s and D’s in their classes,” he said. “If they weren’t being successful with one or two years of science, why would we think they would be successful with three years of science, if we don’t pay attention to getting the students engaged?”

[snip]

In addition, the study found that students affected by the coursetaking policy were less likely on the whole to attend a four-year college, compared with their counterparts before the policy change. They were also less likely to remain in college.

“It seems clear to us that this was a first step. They now have students enrolled in these classes,” Mr. Montgomery said, noting the required science courses are the kinds that colleges look for on transcripts.

Effect of Chicago's Tougher Science Policy Mixed
By Dakarai I. Aarons
Education Week
Published in Print: March 31, 2010, as Added H.S. Science Courses Said to Yield Mixed Effect in Chicago

I'm sure college-going and grades will soar once they get students engaged.


^* answer: mixed

help desk: how to chart progress

Years ago the director of the charter school for autistic kids Jimmy & Andrew were attending told me that the only way to turn 'data' into positive reinforcement was to chart it.

That was a revelation. I already knew about the importance of "taking data," as behavior analysts call it. Taking data seems to be a pivotal behavior in behavioral treatment; just keeping track of what you're doing -- or what your goofy kids are doing -- helps. Knowing what you're doing changes what you're doing.

This is true even for children with severe autism, by the way. I've seen it. The minute you start counting & recording a child's behaviors to get a baseline, the behavior changes. It's uncanny.

In any event, the director's friend was working on his dissertation and had been recording his word count every day. But he'd stalled out & was stuck. Blocked.

She told him he needed to chart his data. It isn't good enough just to write down numbers day in and day out, you have to see a line going up-up-up (or, in the case of weight loss, down-down-down) if your daily numbers are going to serve as a force for good.

Practically the instant the words were out of her mouth, I knew she was right, and I've been trying to chart stuff ever since. Problem is, I've never been able to figure out how to chart the things I need to chart. Weight loss is easy; it's weight against date. Page counts are easy. Pages against date & keep a running total.

But I've never worked out how to chart the other phases of writing (or anything else): planning, organizing, reading, interviewing, etc.

Just this week, I'm trying to figure out how to chart C's studies for the summer. He has a bunch of reading to do for Hogwarts, which is easy. Last summer I made a simple chart for both of us that worked like a charm. It's a good thing, too, because he had to read 2500 pages in 8 weeks. He may have been one of the few kids in the school who actually did it, and we have the schedule and the chart to thank for it.

This summer I want him to do a bunch of other things, too. On the advice of friends, I've decided to pay him to do some but not all of them, and I have no idea how to record these activities in a manner that will be a) clear and b) motivating.

Here's the scheme:



I don't know what to do with this, chart-wise.

Plus I'm befuddled on the question of positive reinforcement and intrinsic motivation, but that's another story.

Are there books to read on this subject?

And: has anyone used Chartdog?

Explanation of standard celeration chart
50 Google chart tricks for your next classroom presentation
free behavior modification charts

Anonymous on competition & "positive compulsions"

Competition used to be a regular part of school: posting the perfect scores on weekly spelling tests, who can get the most math problems done correctly in a given amount of time etc. Then someone decided that was bad, because if there are winners, there are losers. Of course, I'm sure that mainstreaming and heterogeneous grouping were heavily involved in that decision.

BTW, as the parent of several full-time elite athletes, I have observed that when kids get to a certain level they provide their own motivation; the coach's role is to help them increase their fitness, skills and tactics. I have frequently seen this in kids under 12; once instructed by the coach, the kids do significant conditioning and skills work outside of practices. However, athletes are given status and recognition not offered to outstanding students. Unfortunately.

I'm intrigued by this observation.

It relates to something I've been kicking around in my mind: how did I come to be a highly motivated student?

I often wonder whether I would have survived the constructivist schools we have now, and I tend to think the answer is 'no.'

I think the answer is 'no' because a constructivist project-based school wouldn't have given me the steady supply of positive reinforcement my traditional school did. I was a straight-A student & all assignments were what today we called "short timeline." I was positively reinforced so often that studying and all forms of school work became what Eric Hollander calls a "positive compulsion."

more anon


update 3:28 pm

[T]hey don't NECESSARILY have the motivation from the beginning; some do, some don't. If they don't have/acquire it, they don't last long at the elite level. If they don't work on their own, they drop in relation to the kids who do and they get cut from the team. That bothers some people, but not everyone has the same interests. There's a finite amount of time and kids have different priorities. Someone who drops from an elite team to a less-competitive one, so he can spend more time on band/orchestra (or anything else) is making a perfectly rational decision to spend most of his extracurricular time on the activity he likes most. I don't see that as a problem, although some do.

BTW, I have never seen a situation where parents were pushing the kid into a sport he didn't want to do, or to do on at a full-commitment level, that lasted more than short term. You can't make kids get up at 4:00 am two or three days a week for swim practice for very long. Or make a young soccer player work on skills for at least half an hour a day, even if there is practice.

When I taught for Johns Hopkins CTY, we were told that this kind of intrinsic motivation is the hallmark of gifted children. Parents don't force gifted children to practice for hours; the children want to do it.

Gilbert Highet on competition

Amy P pointed me to Gilbert Highet's The Art of Teaching, which has a number of passages on Jesuit education:

The Jesuits, who worked out in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries one of the most successful educational techniques the Western world has seen, used the spirit of competition very strongly and variously. They treated it not as a method of making the boys learn, but as a way of helping them to learn by bringing out their own hidden energies. As well as pitting the best individual pupils against each other, they used the technique familiar to modern leaders of mass meetings, and balanced groups against groups, half the class against the other half, teams of six against each other, and finally the whole class against another class slightly more or less advanced. They got the best boys to challenge each other to feats of brainwork which would astonish us nowadays. A top-notch pupil would volunteer to repeat a page of poetry after reading it only once; another would offer to repeat two pages. (The Jesuit teachers paid the greatest attention to the development of memory. Even their punishments were often designed to strengthen the memorizing powers, making a late or lazy pupil learn a hundred lines of poetry by heart, and the like.) A group of specially gifted boys would challenge another—always under the smiling, flexible, encouraging, but canny Jesuit supervision—to meet them in debate on a series of important problems, and would spend weeks preparing the logic, the phrases, and the delivery of their speeches. Perhaps the fathers overdid it, although we do not seem to hear of nervous breakdowns among their pupils. Certainly they made more of the spirit of competition than we could possibly do nowadays. Yet that was part of the technique which produced Corneille and Moliere, Descartes and Voltaire, Bourdaloue and Tasso. No bad educational system ever produced geniuses.

It is, then, the teacher’s duty to use the competitive spirit as variously as possible to bring out the energies of his pupils. The simple carrot-and-stick principle does not work, except for donkeys. Really interesting challenges are required to elicit the hidden strengths of really complex mind. They are sometimes difficult to devise. But when established, they are invaluable. It is sad, sometimes, to see a potentially brilliant pupil slouching through his work, sulky and willful, wasting his time and thought on trifles, because he has no real equals in his own class; and it is heartening to see how quickly, when a rival is transferred from another section or enters from another school, the first boy will find a fierce joy in learning and a real purpose in life. In this situation—and in all situations involving keen emulation—the teacher must watch carefully for the time when competition becomes obsessive and the legitimate wish to excel turns into self-torture and hatred. Long before that, the competition must be resolved into a kindlier co-operation.

The Art of Teaching by Gilbert Highet
p. 131-132

This reminds me of something I once read about race horses.

aim high

The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.

Michelangelo

Girl Scouts hate group projects

As part of earning their career badges, my daughter’s troop participated in a discussion about how to prepare for the workplace. One of the topics the troop leader brought up was how doing school group projects can teach them how to work effectively in groups.

Wowee! These girls had nothing good to say about group projects.

“Since I’m the smart one, the other kids take advantage and let me do the work.”

“Johnny kept telling us he didn't have time to get together because he had ‘soccer practice’ or ‘family events’ on the weekend.” (She kept making the “air quotes” gestures with her hands.)

“Since the other kids wouldn't do the work, I had to do most of it. Well, I mean my mom had to do most of it.”

“I told the teacher about Sarah not doing her part, but it didn't help.”

“I didn't want to tell the teacher about the problems, because that would be snitching.”

“I kept telling her that she had to do her part, but she wouldn't listen.” (This after receiving advice to gently confront her recalcitrant classmate.)

I listened quietly to the animated comments of these fourth and fifth graders, and bit my tongue.

It has been argued that there are lessons about succeeding in the workplace to be learned from school group projects. However, as I grow older my focus increasingly becomes how best to use our limited time most efficiently. From that perspective, I would say spare my child the group projects in favor of more time spent on direct instruction of fundamental skills and content.

Additionally, these group projects often impart damaging lessons. Such as, don’t work so hard because you’ll not receive credit anyway. Or, let others (including mom) do your work. Or, the teacher doesn't care that the other kids are taking advantage of me. Or, these school assignments are a lot of BS so why should I care about them.

"the secret to raising smart kids"

I can't even keep up with all the links and book recommendations palisdesk & Liz Ditz have left! (Am currently searching for their posts on motivation. How is it that I have distinct memories of having recorded the URLs in my Scrivener program -- not only of recording the URLs, but of checking repeatedly to make sure I had recorded the URLs? If there's the faintest chance that my Scrivener program has gone buggy on me, that could be a very bad thing.)

When he was not quite into his teens, John Mighton Vic 7T8 read his older sister’s psychology textbook on gifted children and came to a crushing conclusion: his chances of being a genius were slim to none. He just didn’t have the spontaneous brilliance and long list of natural abilities apparently required of whiz kids. He was a child who read widely, voraciously and beyond his age range. He had believed that one day he would travel in time and write great literature. Yet this harsh encounter with the prevailing authorities on intelligence changed him, and it was years before he fully regained his confidence as a student. Fortunately, in the last two decades the playwright, mathematician, educator, social activist and philosopher has more than made up for any lost time.

Mighton says he was an “erratic student” right into his early undergraduate years at Vic. “I think I was subconsciously afraid of meeting my limitations, so sometimes I wouldn’t work very hard or would give up on things. I thought if you ever had to struggle at something you just didn’t have it in you.” His intellectual interests always ran deep and wide, however, covering everything from drama to science fiction. Studying philosophy at Vic seemed like the best choice, he says, because it allowed him to explore fundamental questions that sprung up in all his pursuits. Even so, he only began to get serious about his studies towards the end of his degree, thanks to what he calls “phenomenal professors” who engaged and challenged him.

While completing an MA in philosophy at McMaster University, Mighton read another book that changed his life – this time for the better. It was the collected letters of Sylvia Plath to her mother. “After reading her letters I realized that she taught herself to be a writer by sheer determination,” he says. “Nobody had ever told me that you could actually learn a craft, so it came as a real revelation.”

[snip]

But it wasn’t until after he had succeeded in playwriting that he felt ready to pursue his lifelong fascination with mathematics. His first step into the discipline was answering an ad seeking math tutors. He landed the job and was soon teaching himself long-forgotten math concepts the night before he had to teach them to his students. Many of the kids he tutored were far behind grade level and barely understood basic concepts when they arrived, but his careful instruction and consistent encouragement produced dramatic changes in their performance. He saw it as further proof that, instead of being innate and unchangeable, intelligence and ability are quite plastic.

The excitement of this discovery led Mighton to establish a not-for-profit organization called JUMP (Junior Undiscovered Math Prodigies) in 1998.

[snip]

At its core, JUMP is about demystifying math and rebuilding confidence in kids. Mighton says the majority of JUMP students have been told, explicitly or implicitly, that they will never be good at math, and they have come to believe it. This, he says, is the dangerous power of the Myth of Ability. “JUMP starts by breaking down very basic concepts and giving kids lots of praise for the simplest accomplishments, because many of them have had their spirits broken by the system and need a sustained period of success. Children are naturally passionate about learning if you don’t make them feel awful and if they think they are meeting challenges.” Many JUMP students move up into academic streams at school and several have gone on to graduate studies. One even did a doctoral degree in math.

I have his book, but haven't read it (may have to move it up to the top of the heap). What I loved about Mighton, back when I first heard about him on the old site, is that he starts with fractions.

I like a math tutor with chops (homage to Carolyn).

and.... an aside: reading your big sister's psych textbook and concluding you're not a genius and can't be a writer strikes me as just the kind of boneheaded thing a gifted kid would do.

I say that with affection.


Carole Dweck on raising smart kids

I first began to investigate the underpinnings of human motivation—and how people persevere after setbacks—as a psychology graduate student at Yale University in the 1960s. Animal experiments by psychologists Martin Seligman, Steven Maier and Richard Solomon of the University of Pennsylvania had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience, the researchers found, an animal often remains passive even when it can affect change—a state they called learned helplessness.

People can learn to be helpless, too, but not everyone reacts to setbacks this way. I wondered: Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, I soon discovered, lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed.

In particular, attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame. In 1972, when I taught a group of elementary and middle school children who displayed helpless behavior in school that a lack of effort (rather than lack of ability) led to their mistakes on math problems, the kids learned to keep trying when the problems got tough. They also solved many of the problems even in the face of difficulty. Another group of helpless children who were simply rewarded for their success on easy problems did not improve their ability to solve hard math problems. These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success.

[snip]

Several years later I developed a broader theory of what separates the two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented. I realized that these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that. I call this a “fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so. Like Jonathan, such children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb.

The mastery-oriented children, on the other hand, think intelligence is malleable and can be developed through education and hard work. They want to learn above all else. After all, if you believe that you can expand your intellectual skills, you want to do just that. Because slipups stem from a lack of effort, not ability, they can be remedied by more effort. Challenges are energizing rather than intimidating; they offer opportunities to learn. Students with such a growth mind-set, we predicted, were destined for greater academic success and were quite likely to outperform their counterparts.

[snip]

How do we transmit a growth mind-set to our children? One way is by telling stories about achievements that result from hard work. For instance, talking about math geniuses who were more or less born that way puts students in a fixed mind-set, but descriptions of great mathematicians who fell in love with math and developed amazing skills engenders a growth mind-set, our studies have shown. People also communicate mind-sets through praise. Although many, if not most, parents believe that they should build up a child by telling him or her how brilliant and talented he or she is, our research suggests that this is misguided.

In studies involving several hundred fifth graders published in 1998, for example, Columbia psychologist Claudia M. Mueller and I gave children questions from a nonverbal IQ test. After the first 10 problems, on which most children did fairly well, we praised them. We praised some of them for their intelligence: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must be smart at this.” We commended others for their effort: “Wow … that’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.”

We found that intelligence praise encouraged a fixed mind-set more often than did pats on the back for effort. Those congratulated for their intelligence, for example, shied away from a challenging assignment—they wanted an easy one instead—far more often than the kids applauded for their effort. (Most of those lauded for their hard work wanted the difficult problem set from which they would learn.) When we gave everyone hard problems anyway, those praised for being smart became discouraged, doubting their ability. And their scores, even on an easier problem set we gave them afterward, declined as compared with their previous results on equivalent problems. In contrast, students praised for their effort did not lose confidence when faced with the harder questions, and their performance improved markedly on the easier problems that followed.

My neighbor says psychologists used to believe that the most functional worldview was for a person to blame his failures on factors outside his control while taking credit for success. I'd forgotten that, but now that she's reminded me I believe I do recall Martin Seligman making this argument.

Given that context, Dweck's research is quite radical. She's saying it's just as bad to attribute your successes to innate ability as it is to blame your failures to lack of innate ability. You don't want to go around thinking you're smarter than everyone else.

I believe this absolutely. I was raised on a Midwest farmer ethic of hard work and no bragging; it was so out of bounds to be special in any way that we kids were directly told we weren't special on more than one occasion. We were expected to be hardworking, fun-loving, and uncomplaining.

That upbringing has stood me in good stead for lo these many years.


bonus points

homework and intelligence at 11D (thank you to Amy Pruss)

and

Practice Makes Perfect on the Blackboard (pdf file)

on motivation

If you don't subscribe to the Direct Instruction listserv, you should.

Besides learning a lot of good stuff about good teaching techniques and other education issues, you get to witness an epic battle betwixt good and evil. In this case, evil is personified by Gerald Bracey who fancies himself as the gadfly of the board after joining a few months back. Problem is that Jerry is out of his league on the DI board as was demonstrated by this recent exchange on motivation.

Bracey:

Of course, no one mentions anything as soft and squishy as intrinsic motivation.

...

My comment on intrinsic motivation had to do with learning. Skinner could not account for his own behavior without it, although he tried.

Martin Kozloff (aka Professor Plum):

Intrinsic motivation is semantic nonsense.

Motivation. Motive force. Alleged to be "behind" or prior to action.

How do you know if a person "is" motivated?

They DO something.

WHY did they do something?

They were motivated.

Uh huh. Not too circular.

Extrinsic motivation. That is, the event towards which one is moving is external. Like what? A meal. She is cooking so that she can eat. He is training so that he will finish a race.

Yes, the event is outside, but why would anyone prepare a meal unless eating it felt good? Why would anyone run a race unless they anticipated a pleasing outcome.

In other words, the external event is NOT what motivates. It is merely the means to an end---which is feeling. Which is INTERNAL.

Therefore, so-called extrinsic motivation is really intrinsic. {Score one for me.]

If you say that intrinsic motivation might be wanting to do well, I'd like to know where you got the definition of "well." Was that intrinsic? Or was it gotten from the social environment?

And why would anyone want to do well? Because that is considered important in the culture. And where is this culture? It is OUTSIDE the person. So, intrinsic motivation is really extrinsic. [Score two for me.]

In summary, the words are kakos.


Finally, you don't need the concept of motivation to account for behavior---if by account you mean answering the question Why is she doing that.

The answer (if you include the concept of motivation) is that she is motivated to do so, which means nothing more than she wants to. Which is as helpful as explaining avoidance behavior by saying a person is afraid.

How do you know they are afraid?

They avoid the situation.

How come?

They are afraid.

How do you know?

They avoid the situation.

How come?

Afraid.

World without end, Amen.

[Score three for me. A hat trick.]

James MacDonald:

I, and possibly other members of the list, would like you to write complete
thoughts, including the evidence or rationale behind your comments. You
made a comment about Ohio State football, but did not say what the problems
were. You mention that Skinner could not account for his own behavior, but
do not give examples of this. Essentially, I am requesting a scholarly
discourse - not the out of the blue, non sequiturs you write.

Bracey:

I don't do pablum.

Kozloff:

Mais non, mon ami, I must disagree.

Pablum is what you do best!

[Come on, young Bracey. That was funny, and you know it.]

To Be Continued?