From the Principal's Desk
At the Jackman Institute of Child Study Laboratory School, we are involved and engaged in current issues in education in many ways. Every month, I review an article or book for a professional e-journal at Teachers College, Columbia University. Below are some recent reviews.
Elizabeth Morley, Laboratory School Principal
Attention Digital Disorder
Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn, by Cathy Davidson
Cathy Davidson, Professor at Duke University, has polarized public opinion on more than one occasion and her most recent book is likely to do the same. Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn focuses on her expertise and strong opinions on cognition and the science of attention in the digital age. She made news in 2003 when, as Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University, she gave every freshman student an iPod. She invited and expected innovative learning and collaboration strategies to follow. Although some derided this untested digital largesse, public opinion began to shift toward her bold experiment as the results became evident. Her newest book outlines why she is optimistic about the digital age in education but also why she believes we are in peril if we do not become aware of how our attention actually functions and how multi-tasking in the internet age works for learners. Davidson is co-founder of the virtual organization HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory), an international organization open to everyone and dedicated to rethinking the future of digital learning. To read her work may help us to stop being afraid that digital life erodes attention and begin to effectively reconcile the potential of digital learning with changing educational paradigms.
Viking Press, Winter 2012
Pedagogy of the Re-engaged
The Seduction, by Paula Marantz Cohen
Paula Marantz Cohen is frank in her assessment that for nearly three decades her method of teaching could have been called the "endurance test" approach. Distinguished professor of English at Drexel University, Cohen used to subscribe to the ways that she had been taught. Her recent article is a narrative account of what led to her shift in practice and pedagogy. She details the reasons for her current belief that without a different measurement of student engagement, her long reading lists, her assignments, her rubrics and her notion that good students would keep up with her comprehensive coverage were false indicators of student buy-in. She began the change process with a determination to see the material to be taught through the eyes of her students. This led to abandoning a prescribed syllabus for one that emerged in response to student discussion, interest, capacity and commitment. As she engaged in listening to her students, Cohen found that after a term of rich discussion and short papers on a regular basis, much had changed including an unexpected outcome: no one asked for a higher final grade. She posits that "students focus on grades when they believe that this is all they can get out of a course. When they feel they have learned something, the grade becomes less important." There is a convincing honesty to this writer's account of lessons learned in the process of exploring what students think about what we teach.
The American Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa Magazine, Winter 2011
Scientific Research and the "Empirical Hiccup"
The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?, by Jonah Lehrer
The New Yorker's Annals of Science writer Jonah Lehrer explores the human side of science in his article on the troubling phenomenon called the decline effect, which is the tendency of exciting scientific results to become less accurate and more illusory over time. This "empirical hiccup", seen in fields of research as diverse as social psychology, physics, biology and medicine, defies simple explanation but may be linked to how subjective bias, conjuring significance, or confirming a preferred hypothesis distort original conclusions . Although the article does not tackle educational research specifically, the seductive nature of empiricism is a theme relevant to the teaching of any discipline that involves proof and experiment. Ideas that make ostensible sense and that we can't bear to let go of may be held at a cost. We, the humble readers or teachers, may have to recognize that "when all the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe." Sobering thoughts for those seeking firm ground in the disciplines.
New Yorker Magazine, December 2010
Engineering Kindness
Fighting Bullying with Babies, by David Bornstein
David Bornstein, author of How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas (Oxford University Press), is now pondering whether there is a cure for meanness. In his New York Times article, Fighting Bullying with Babies, Bornstein examines the research on a unique social innovation curriculum in schools that is offering an unexpected answer. Roots of Empathy is an evidence-based classroom program that has shown dramatic effect in reducing levels of aggression among schoolchildren by raising social/emotional competence and increasing empathy. A baby in a parent's arms comes to the classroom once a month throughout a school year and the students gather around to watch, ask questions, comfort, sing and make a tiny human being comfortable. Around babies, tough kids smile, disruptive kids focus, and shy kids open up. The baby, lying on a green blanket, invites a simple caring and a complex perspective taking combination that is effecting change in behavior and seeing outcomes maintained three years after the program ends. That change is more kindness and less bullying. All in a day's work for the youngest of teachers.
The New York Times, November 2010
Are We Doing What We Say We Do?
The Disadvantages of an Elite Education, by William Deresiewicz
Doing a double take at the title is just the beginning of asking yourself to think deeply and differently while reading this opinion piece by William Deresiewicz for The American Scholar, the magazine of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. The author takes up an argument that looks at both advantages and disadvantages of schooling in an elite environment. And he should know... his own Ivy League education is one of the many warrants he carefully delineates in defense of his hypothesis: that an elite education limits, narrows, deceives, and misguides those who are inside the gates at exclusive institutions. Examined in light of its impact on society, economics, humanistic understanding, inclusion, and thinking, the place of privilege comes up short for Deresiewicz. The article compels us to take a look at the student who is packing in AP courses, filling a resume, and becoming "the kid whom everyone wants at their college but no one wants in their classroom." The author asks if we are helping students ask the big questions and reach beyond analytic thinking skills to work hard at what they believe in and to love learning in its broadest and most humane definition.
The American Scholar, 2008
Race Still Matters
Doing Race: 21 Essays for the 21st Century, by Helen Markus and Paula Moya
In this landmark collection of essays on race and ethnicity, co-editors Hazel Markus, a professor of psychology at Stanford University and Paula Moya, a professor of English, also at Stanford, have focused their science and scholarship on what race and ethnicity are, how they work, and why they matter. Everyday experiences and commonplace interactions like watching television, voting, shopping, going to the doctor or listening to music, are used to expose persistent misunderstandings, identifying some of the foundations for assumptions and misinformation in our public discourse. The book debunks and challenges, exposes and provides evidence that we are not at all in a "post-race" world, but rather one in which race and ethnicity are powerful organizers of modern society. Though it is not targeted only at educators, Doing Race is highly relevant to an understanding of how our schools display their values, and how we teach in intentional or unintentional ways about what we care about, whom we trust, who counts, and whom we include. A strong asset of the book is its interdisciplinary range, using perspectives from psychology, history, anthropology and sociology to broaden and ground the message.
Norton, 2010
Review by Laboratory Principal Elizabeth Morley, from Klingbrief, an electronic publication of recommended articles, websites, and books selected by and for independent school educators. To access the most recent full issue of Klingbrief, please visit the website here.