A Model of Student Engagement

(Cross-posted at Technopaideia)


I have been reading* a book recently in preparation of a book review for the Journal of Philosophy of Education. The book, by my good friend David Granger, is John Dewey, Robert Pirsig, and the Art of Living. While some of the book gets mired in somewhat arcane issues of interest primarily to scholars, it is an exceptionally well-written book, with some keen insights into the nature of nature, the arts, and education that might have broader appeal.

I've been paying particular attention to what the book has to say about the dispositions or attitudes of students who are "wholly" engaged in learning. John Dewey describes "aesthetic experience" as experiences with a special quality that marks them off as aesthetic; this special quality often involves some kind of "consummation" in which the various parts and aspects of a situation come together in a satisfying or at least memorable way. People involved in aesthetic experiences often exhibit certain attitudes or dispositions with regard to the experience. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig illustrates these attitudes and dispositions in his description of a "high quality" mechanic at work on motorcycle maintenance. As I was reading Granger's summary of Pirsig's descriptions, I was struck by the similarities between the attitudes and dispositions of high quality mechanics and the Technology in Education students I have worked with who seem particularly engaged in and committed to the quality of what they are working on.

In our TIE program, we often assign our students with projects that require creation of some product such as a web site or hypermedia project. Our projects invariably involve a rubric spelling out the minimal requirements but also require the students to create something that can be used within their particular professional setting, such as their second grade classroom, high school English classes, or school- and district-wide professional development needs. These projects exemplify the kind of authentic tasks and situated inquiry that epitomize the best forms of engaged learning based on constructivist learning theories.

The projects also involve a situation often found in the process of creating art objects: an iterative interaction between a medium or media (the "material") and the plans or ideal ends (the "vision") of the artist. Motorcycle mechanics must pay particular attention to the machine sitting in front of them, and of the qualities and affordances of the materials with which parts and systems are constructed. TIE students must come to see the possibilities and limitations afforded by a particular piece of software or digital medium, and work creatively to figure out how to make their plans come to fruition. The back-and-forth between material and vision, or between medium and ideal, is intrinsic to any creative endeavor, and it requires at a minimum that the creator pay attention to the medium and how it responds to attempts to shape it (or make it run better, in the case of the mechanic).

Such attention requires certain attitudes and dispositions on the part of the creator, mechanic, or student. First and foremost, is a willingness to care about the quality of the product. Such a willingness implies also a a willingness or make mistakes, and to learn from those mistakes and push forward rather than being discouraged or dissuaded from the ideal end or ends being pursued. This implies an attitude toward the "self" of the creator/mechanic/student--an openness to personal or professional growth in which the present self doesn't "get in the way" of the emergence of a newer, more competent and creative new self.

What I'm saying is that even the most mundane creative endeavor requires a certain kind of "learning attitude" or set of character traits that involves openness to transformation or at least change in the person, as well as in the medium. Thus, even a "technology in education" student, to be successful in learning not only technical skills but curriculum design and development means a kind of moral or spiritual stance with regard to one's self. Students who come to the class expecting to maintain their old selves while "creating" technology projects will either produce mediocre work or will find themselves challenged in the course of their program. Such challenges are intrinsic to learning of all kinds, whether learning to care for someone, learning to maintain a motorcycle, or learning how to build curriculum webs.

GAPS

In response to Dr. Horn's post...

Reducing the �achievement gap� to what goes on inside of schools has proven to be an effective way for policy makers to ignore all of the other �gaps� outside of America�s classrooms.

While researcher after researcher has shown that outside influences contribute to student performance and achievement, proponents of high-stakes, standardized reforms continue to press for more �rigor,� as if harder work alone will mitigate every outside factor influencing children�s lives.

Rather than focusing exclusively on the �achievement gap,� policy makers and educational reformers might consider policies that help reduce other �gaps� that exist within our country. Gaps that could be narrowed in order to improve the lives and schooling of all students include but are not limited to:

� The incarceration gap, where six times as many African Americans are behind bars compared to their white counterparts;

� The homeowner gap, where 72.7% of white Americans own their homes compared to 48.2% of African Americans;

� The healthcare gap, where 71.4% of white Americans are insured compared to 53.9% of African Americans;

� The earnings gap, where white Americans average over $20,000 more a year than African Americans;

� The poverty rate gap, where 8.7% of white Americans live at or below the poverty line while 24.7% of African Americans do so;

� The unemployment gap, where 5.7% of white Americans are unemployed while 13.2% of African Americans are without work;

� The happiness gap, where 72% of white youths say they are happy with life in general compared to 56% of their African American counterparts;

� The murder gap, where 49% of murder victims in the United States are African Americans, who make up 13% of the population.

Close one of these and I warrant the "achievement gap" shrinks.

Or, if I may be snarky for a moment...privatize public schools and hold our breath until the market closes these gaps for us...

Faculty Scholar Productivity

For those interested in keeping up with the Jones, or at least wanting to know what they are doing, along comes another ranking system. This one, interesting enough, measures faculty scholar productivity.

Developed by Academic Analytics, it purportedly measures faculty productivity. As stated on their website:

The Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index� (FSP Index) is a method for evaluating
doctoral programs at Research Universities (across all Carnegie research
classifications), based on a set of statistical algorithms developed by Lawrence
Martin, Ph.D. and Anthony Olejniczak, Ph.D.. The FSP Index measures the annual
productivity of faculty on several factors including:
Publications (books and journal articles)
Citations
of journal publications
Federal Research
Funding
Awards and Honors

The Chronicle has a searchable database. Here�s the listing for foundations of education from the company�s website.

Foundations of Education
� U. Michigan - Ann Arbor (Educational Foundations)
� NYU (Sociology of Education)
� Teachers College - Columbia U. (Cognitive Studies in Education)
� Syracuse U. (Cultural Foundations of Education)
� U. Oklahoma (History, Philosophy and Social foundations)
� SUNY Buffalo (Social and Philosophical Foundations)
� Auburn U. (Educational Foundations)
� U. Iowa (Social Foundations of Education)
� Indiana U. - Bloomington (History, Philosophy and Comparative Education)
� U. Utah (Education, Culture and Society)

Check out the specifics on the Chronicle website to see book publications, articles, citations, etc. across lots of disciplines and subfields. Be careful, though, with your data analysis. The numbers represent the �z-score� (�a statistical measure (in standard deviation units) that reveals how far and in what direction a value is from the mean�), and NOT the actual number of books, publications, etc.

Work Hard, Be Nice, and Other Lies My KIPP Teacher Told Me

For white philanthropists, the major appeal of the KIPP charter chain gang schools is the non-stop behavioral control system aimed at producing compliant worker bees who learn to internalize any real or potential shortcomings as evidence of individual weakness or failure. If things don't work out, then, as the KIPP brainwashers promise, then who is to blame? This is not a new pedagogical approach--it was used successfully at Hampton Institute in the late 19th Century to train a generation of black teachers like Booker T. Washington, who would become complicit in their own subjugation and that of their brothers and sisters.

For black parents, the KIPP appeal is the promise that for those who "work hard, be nice," there is a new world of opportunity waiting to embrace their efforts. Hope, however groundless, remains the only alternative to despair.

New studies by Pew and reported in WaPo show some disturbing realities that are troubling at least, even though they are likely to be ignored in the keep-on-the-sunny-side world of those who have been KIPP-notized.

A couple of clips here:

Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study -- a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

Forty-five percent of black children whose parents were solidly middle class in 1968 -- a stratum with a median income of $55,600 in inflation-adjusted dollars -- grew up to be among the lowest fifth of the nation's earners, with a median family income of $23,100. Only 16 percent of whites experienced similar downward mobility. At the same time, 48 percent of black children whose parents were in an economic bracket with a median family income of $41,700 sank into the lowest income group.

. . . .

Overall, family income of blacks in their 30s was $35,000, 58 percent that of comparable whites, a gap that did not surprise researchers. Startling them, however, was that so many blacks fell out of the middle class to the bottom of the income distribution in one generation.

Ronald B. Mincy, a Columbia University sociologist who has focused on the growing economic peril confronted by black men and who served as an adviser on the Pew project, said skeptical researchers repeatedly reviewed the findings before concluding they were statistically accurate.

"There is a lot of downward mobility among African Americans," Mincy said. "We don't have an explanation."

Pew hopes to develop some answers in future reports in its series on economic mobility. Reports scheduled to be released early next year will probe, among other things, the role of wealth and education in income mobility.

Mincy and others speculated that the increase in the number of single-parent black households, continued educational gaps between blacks and whites and even racial isolation that remains common for many middle-income African Americans could be factors.

"That's a stunner," said Orlando Patterson, a Harvard University sociologist, when told about the Pew finding. "These kids were middle class, but apparently their parents did not have the cultural capital and connections to pass along to them."

Another reason so many middle-class blacks appear to be downwardly mobile is likely the huge wealth gap separating white and black families of similar incomes. For every $10 of wealth a white person has, blacks have $1, studies have found.

"We already knew that downward mobility was much more likely for blacks," said Mary Pattillo, a Northwestern University sociologist who studies the black middle class. "But this is an even bigger percentage drop than I have seen elsewhere. That's very steep."

New Worries About Prejudice�And Old Worries About Poor Understanding of Race

This is in response to a front-page Sunday NY Times article which I found maddeningly imprecise. The journalist confuses the notion of race so many times through the different perspectives that the average reader can only continue to assume that there is such a thing as a fixed and genetic race.

Let me, just because I can�t stand imprecision about this, make a few points. While I am not a geneticist or a physical anthropologist, there are enough fallacies to sink this article. At the heart of the confusion is that she uses two different notions of race seemingly interchangeably, when only one of them is accurate: the first (and correct) notion is that certain groups of people have certain geographic origins, what she correctly referred to as �continental groups.� Such groupings, over tens of thousands of years fostered, amongst other things, divergence of characteristics due to random mutations in isolated populations (if isolated can be used in the sense of continental isolation) and to the fact that these isolated populations most likely had slightly different genetic patterning already based on their divergent wanderings out of Africa. The second (incorrect) notion is that such groupings constitute a coherent, monolithic, and stable �race� such as Caucasians, Asians, etc. Thus when Amy Harmon begins the article by suggesting that DNA can explain the differences of distinct groups of human beings � e.g., the fact that some populations have lighter or darker skin; the fact that Asians sweat less; the fact that West Africans have different resistance to certain diseases � she is conflating the two ideas to suggest that genetic markers equals race. As she states, �genetic information is slipping out of the laboratory and into everyday life, carrying with it the inescapable message that people of different races have different DNA.� The rest of the article is then an attempt to deal with the (completely false problem) of how scientists and non-scientists have to then deal with explaining away what seems to lay-people as scientific proof for the genetic difference of races. The most volatile aspect of this is the tired issue of so-called linkages between race and IQ. See the Bell Curve Wars among the thousands of books, articles, web sites, etc for a refutation of this fallacious claim.

But if the journalist had not made the initial conflation, and had just stuck with the facts that different genes in peoples of different geographic origins had different outcomes (disease resistance, darker skin, etc.) all of this hand-wringing would have been moot. All genes are independent of each other. The only reason that we falsely believe that some genes are aligned (e.g., African-Americans have darker skin, fuller lips, curlier hair, etc.) is due to the long-term continental isolation of populations tens of thousand of years ago.

Harmon even quotes several scholars who point out the overwhelming influence of environment and the socially constructed nature of our racial classifications, but these ideas slide off of her just like they do for the student (cited at the end of the article) who now embraces her African-American heritage and goes to a Kwanzaa festival after finding 9% of her DNA is of that West African ancestry.

Let me be clear: of course people make judgments on racial features; of course there is still covert and overt racism even if no such thing as race exists (in a genetic sense); of course racial issues are still volatile and difficult to discuss. But the basic point is that race is not genetic. Certain characteristics are of course genetically based. But these are two very, very different points. And such sloppy reporting only perpetuates our inability as a society to address these complex matters.

More Ed Links: Suffering Children: The Effects of Trauma on Learning, or, Another Reason to Question the Field of Education�s Narrow Focus on Pedagogy

Note: the point is not that traumatized children can't learn. But the effects of trauma create yet another barrier and challenge (on top of other basics like HUNGER) that too many inner-city children, in particular, have to overcome.

How can we expect teachers to respond to the deep needs of these suffering children in overcrowded classrooms? How can we hope to solve the "education" problem if we don't address the effects of trauma?

What is Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)?

�An anxiety disorder associated with serious traumatic events and characterized by such symptoms as survivor guilt, reliving the trauma in dreams, numbness and lack of involvement with reality, or recurrent thoughts and images.�

How Many �At-Risk� Children Develop PTSD?

Rates of PTSD are much higher in children and adolescents recruited from at-risk samples. The rates of PTSD in these at-risk children and adolescents vary from 3 to 100%. For example, studies have shown that as many as 100% of children who witness a parental homicide or sexual assault develop PTSD. Similarly, 90% of sexually abused children, 77% of children exposed to a school shooting, and 35% of urban youth exposed to community violence develop PTSD.

How Does PTSD Affect These Children?

In one study of children in foster care, 64% who had experienced sexual abuse had PTSD, and 42% who had experienced physical abuse fulfilled the PTSD criteria. Moreover, 18% of the children who were not abused also met PTSD criteria, presumably because they had witnessed violence. . . . .

In addition to the symptoms of numbing, hyperarousal, and recollections of the event that adults experience, children often become unable to participate in the normal developmental experiences of childhood, such as visiting friends and participating in after-school activities. In addition, the quality of schoolwork is likely to be significantly compromised. The compromised ability to participate in the normal developmental experiences of childhood has far-ranging impact, even when and if the initial underlying symptoms that are the basis for diagnosing PTSD are resolved.

Furthermore, a host of emotional and behavioral problems frequently arise as a result of PTSD and are not part of the criteria for categorical diagnosis. These include disruptive behavior disorders, eating disorders, sexual acting out, other risk-taking activities, depression, the full range of anxiety disorders, dissociation, mood lability, violence, and difficulty concentrating.

More Effects on Achievement and Young Brains:

This new understanding of the way childhood trauma affects memory and the brain has important implications for public health policy. One example would be the case of inner-city children who have witnessed violent crimes in their neighborhoods and families. If this kind of stress can cause damage to brain areas involved in learning and memory, it would put these children at a serious academic disadvantage in ways and for reasons that programs such as Head Start may be unable to address. Studies confirm this: in war-torn Beirut, traumatized adolescents with PTSD, as compared to non-traumatized adolescents who were without PTSD, lagged behind in academic achievement.²⁸

Effects on Inner-city Adolescent Girls, in Particular:

Most inner-city adolescent girls have been exposed to some kind of trauma and most have experienced psychological distress as a result, according to a study by researchers at the National Center for PTSD and their colleagues. Many of these girls go on to develop full or partial post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a disorder that can result in poor quality of life for inner-city youth. . . .

• 85.5% witnessed community violence
• 55.5% witnessed shootings
• 38.9% witnessed stabbings
• 13.3% witnessed homicides
• 4.5% were shot or stabbed themselves
• 36% used weapons
• 24% had been arrested
• 20% had spent time in jail

• 67.7% heard about friend or family homicide
• 32% witnessed physical abuse at home
• 16% experienced physical abuse at home
• 11% experienced sexual abuse at home
• 30% experienced sexual abuse outside of home
• 10% had been raped

• 13% could be diagnosed with current PTSD
• 11% could be diagnosed with partial PTSD

Study of 113 Inner-City Children:

The author of the Philadelphia study, Hallam Hurt, M.D., Chair of the Neonatology Division at Albert Einstein Medical Center (Philadelphia), followed 113 inner-city children from birth until they were seven years old. . . .

By age seven, 74 percent of the children in the study had heard gunfire and 13 percent had witnessed a shooting or stabbing in their own home. 60 percent reported that they worry some or much of the time that they may get killed or die; 20 percent sometimes wished that they were dead; 19 percent had seen a dead body outside their homes.

Even more alarming, children exposed to violence suffered from a variety of personal problems and performed poorly in school.

"This fits," according to Dr. Bremner, "into the context of a range of studies -- both in animals and humans -- showing that stress can have a deleterious effect on brain systems involved in memory. This kind of damage may well underlie difficulties with new learning and cognition that cause poor academic performance in these children." It may also mean that helping these children lead better lives may not be as simple as removing them from the stressful environment.

Effects on the Brain More Broadly: An Explanation of Why PTSD is So Difficult to Treat

Findings show how trauma disables normal brain functioning and highlight deficits in basic mechanisms of learning and memory. Recent findings also show that a common neurological basis explains altered emotional responses in veterans with PTSD, and that fear learning caused by trauma is different from other types and may explain why it is more difficult to treat.

Ed Links

The Science Education Myth

Forget the conventional wisdom. U.S. schools are turning out more capable science and engineering grads than the job market can support. [AS: Like I said, education doesn�t create jobs.]

An Ounce of Prevention

A social program that works. Where's the funding?

Gangland USA

Map of gangs across America.

Policy brief links education to public safety

According to the Institute, the states that invest more in education have lower rates of violent crime and incarceration. Other briefs deal with the intersection of policy with housing, employment, and drug treatment with safety and crime rates.

From Bookforum.com: Rethinking commonsense psychology

I feel your pain: New proof of "mirror neurons" explains why we experience the grief and joy of others, and maybe why humans are altruistic � but don't call us Gandhi yet. Vilayanur Ramachandran explores how brain damage can reveal the connection between the internal structures of the brain and the corresponding functions of the mind. : New research shows how the prefrontal cortex handles the work of associating numerals with matching quantities. More and more on Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought. A review of Rethinking Commonsense Psychology: A Critique of Folk Psychology, Theory of Mind and Simulation by Matthew Ratcliffe. A review of A History of Social Psychology: From the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment to the Second World War by Gustav Jahoda.

Your Office? Undeserving Bosses Prefer Incompetent Employees

Executives who think they do not deserve their position tend to work among incompetent employees to justify themselves, according to new research. Qualified people prefer to work with competent and sociable partners in jobs that imply responsibility. However, persons who think they are unable to hold a specific job try to work with less competent and sociable partners. Researchers warn that people who have power do not always exercise it properly.

Why Poor Kids May Make Sicker Adults

Scientists have known for years that people living in poverty have poorer health and shorter lifespans than the more affluent. Now researchers have identified several key mechanisms in 13-year-olds that may help explain how low socioeconomic status takes its toll on health.

Why Teens Are Such Impulsive Risk-takers

Teenagers and adults often don't see eye to eye, and new brain research is now shedding light on some of the reasons why. Although adolescence is often characterized by increased independence and a desire for knowledge and exploration, it also is a time when brain changes can result in high-risk behaviors, addiction vulnerability, and mental illness, as different parts of the brain mature at different rates. Recent imaging studies in humans show that brain development and connectivity are not complete until the late teens or early twenties.

Benefits Of Online Interaction For Teens Outweigh Danger, Professor Says

Media reports warn of online predators, hate groups and other 'digital dangers' lurking in online social spaces, and those dangers are not to be taken lightly, says one educational psychology professor. "But we may do adolescents a disservice when we curtail their participation in these spaces, because the educational and psychosocial benefits of this type of communication can far outweigh the potential dangers," according to new research.

Program Reduces Weight Gain In Young African-American Girls

A community-based weight control program has succeeded in reducing the prevalence of overweight children for two years. Changes in dietary intake, particularly in the reduction of consumption of sweetened beverages (e.g., soda) made the biggest difference. The girls did not appear to significantly increase their physical activity, which suggests that even without increased exercise, a proper diet can control weight gain in high-risk young girls.

Mirror, Mirror In The Brain: Mirror Neurons, Self-understanding And Autism Research

A new class of brain cells -- mirror neurons -- are active both when people perform an action and when they watch it being performed. Some scientists speculate that a mirror system in people forms the basis for social behavior, for our ability to imitate, acquire language, and show empathy and understanding. It also may have played a role in the evolution of speech. Mirror neurons were so named because, by firing both when an animal acts and when it simply watches the same action, they were thought to "mirror" movement, as though the observer itself were acting.

Non-maternal Care Linked To Reduced Physical Aggression In Children Of Mothers With Less Education

Among children of mothers with low education levels, those who receive regular care from other adults during preschool years may be less likely to have problems with physical aggression, according to a new article.

Brain Chemical Underpins Social Interaction, And Why People Make Irrational Decisions

New research from the burgeoning field of neuroeconomics examining how people place value on money and other items is helping scientists to decipher how and why people make the decisions they do. Imaging studies of people experiencing real financial losses show activity in brain areas related to processing emotions, a finding that may account for the irrational behavior of financial professionals in high-risk settings. Additional imaging work shows that the same neural network responsible for rationally evaluating risky opportunities is also responsible for the irrational behavior of decision-makers when they face ambiguous situations.

Asthma Linked To Depressive Disorders, Study Suggests

Young people with asthma are about twice as likely to suffer from depressive and anxiety disorders than are children without asthma, according to a new study. Previous research had suggested a possible link in young people between asthma and some mental health problems, but this study is the first showing such a strong connection.

Teens Who Smoke Marijuana But Not Tobacco Are Different From Other Teen Groups

A Swiss study suggests that teens who use only cannabis appear to function better than those who also use tobacco, and are more socially driven and have no more psychosocial problems than those who abstain from both substances, according to a new report.

Equation can spot a failing neighbourhood [AS: behind pay wall]

If you worry that your neighbourhood is going downhill, there could be a way to spot the signs before it happens. You might unwittingly be living in an area designed to foster crime, deprivation and ghettoisation, according to two mathematicians who have developed a method to spot hidden areas of geographical isolation in the urban landscape.