Middle-School Students Discuss a Hot Topic

 Middle-School Students Discuss a Hot Topic

In this Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy article, Shireen Al-Adeimi and Jennie Baumann (Michigan State University) say the IRE pattern of classroom discussions – initiate, respond, evaluate – is ubiquitous in K-12 classrooms:

• The teacher initiates by asking a question.

• A student responds.

• The teacher evaluates the response.

This dynamic, say Al-Adeimi and Baumann, tends to elicit factual knowledge and “leaves little room for elaborated discussion or student input.” 

The authors studied videos of several seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms in which the teachers stepped back from the traditional role and facilitated “dialogic” talk (a.k.a. accountable or academically productive), where the teacher-student power dynamic was more equal and students engaged in critical thinking, perspective-taking, text comprehension, and argumentative reasoning, built on each other’s ideas, and engaged in collective thinking and understanding.

The classes were discussing whether a D.C.-area football team, then called the Washington Redskins, should change its name because of what many considered its derogatory connotations. (A few years after these discussions, the team changed its name to the Washington Commanders.) Al-Adeimi and Baumann analyzed transcripts of the classroom dialogues and considered whether the class time spent was academically productive. Here’s what they found.

The classes were using the interdisciplinary Word Generation curriculum, and discussions spanned social studies, science, math, and language arts lessons over several school days, culminating in students arguing their positions supported by evidence and reasoning. The academic focus words for the unit were derogatory, stereotype, connotation, slur, and stigmatize. 

During discussions, students’ participation fell into four categories as the floor was held by successive speakers, facilitated by the teacher (who took up about half of the air time):

• Primary – often initiated and sustained discussions, talked frequently, with or without evidence to support their claims – 12 percent of class time;

• Secondary – their contributions aligned with, elaborated on, and supported those of the primary participants – 12.5 percent of the time;

• Tertiary – engaged in playful quips, surface-level contributions, or sarcasm, sometimes eliciting laughter – 7 percent of the time; 

• Peripheral – few claims, little substantiation, not well reasoned – 10 percent of time.

Students took on different roles depending on their personalities, engagement with the topic, and personal investment and knowledge on the topic. Some students shifted from one role to another and power and control of the discussion were very much in play as students expressed their views, debated points, and sometimes interrupted.

Al-Adeimi and Bauman say students were eager to engage and the discussions were lively, with broad student participation and listening to other perspectives. But the classes didn’t arrive at consensus, and it appears that few students changed their initial positions. This was not a failure because the object was for students to “think for themselves with others,” explore a high-interest topic, express and hear different viewpoints, and develop thinking, speaking, and listening skills. 

“Roles of Engagement: Analyzing Adolescent Students’ Talk During Controversial Discussions” by Shireen Al-Adeimi and Jennie Baumann in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, September/October 2023 (Vol. 67, #2, pp. 42-52); the authors can be reached at aladeimi@msu.edu and povenmir@msu.edu.

 

Are Trigger Warnings Effective?

In this article in Clinical Psychological Science, Victoria Bridgland, Payton Jones, and Benjamin Bellet (Flinders University, Australia) report on their meta-analysis of recent studies of trigger warnings. The idea of such warnings is to alert students to upcoming content that may be distressing because of memories of negative experiences, helping them to emotionally prepare for (or completely avoid) the content. 

Trigger warnings first showed up on feminist message forums in the early days of the Internet to help women prepare for or sidestep content that was likely to remind them of past trauma. Over time, content warnings spread to university and other classrooms, museums, news media, and social media, and expanded to include a variety of potentially unsettling content, including microaggressions. An example: This article contains details that some readers may find distressing.

Trigger warnings have sparked a lively debate in universities. Some argue that content warnings are necessary to show sensitivity to historically marginalized groups and those who are psychologically vulnerable. Others have challenged trigger warnings as a hindrance to academic inquiry and questioned their efficacy, even arguing that warnings may make things worse for sensitive people. Bridgland, Jones, and Bellet explored these and other arguments by doing a meta-analysis of studies of university students and adults, all from WEIRD societies (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic). 

What did the analysis reveal? Here’s what Bridgland, Jones, and Bellet found in four key areas:

• Emotional reactions – The studies in the meta-analysis almost unanimously showed that trigger warnings did not mitigate students’ and adults’ distress about the identified material. Why would trigger warnings have so little impact? The authors suggest that most people are not skilled at emotional preparation – that is, “reappraising emotional content or using coping strategies.” Trigger warnings alert people to what’s coming but don’t give them ways to deal with their reactions when they hit. 

• Avoidance – The meta-analysis shows that trigger warnings did not lead most people to avoid the warned-about material. One study found that only 6 percent of people actually took the option of not viewing what had been flagged as potentially upsetting. It appears, say Bridgland, Jones, and Bellet, “that trigger warnings foster a forbidden-fruit effect in which warnings actually increase rather than decrease attraction to potentially negative material.” This has also been called the Pandora or teasing effect, and studies have shown that these effects are stronger among those who are most vulnerable. 

• Anxiety – Trigger warnings “reliably increased anticipatory anxiety about upcoming content,” say the researchers. “In theory, this anticipatory period could indicate that forewarned individuals are bracing themselves for a negative emotional experience. However… whatever bracing might occur during this anticipatory period is apparently completely ineffective. In other words, according to the current literature, this small increase in negative emotions induced by trigger warnings serves no productive purpose.” 

• Educational impact – The analysis found that trigger warnings had little or no effect on students’ and adults’ comprehension of the warned-about material. “Advocates claim that warnings in the classroom help to foster a safe environment for trauma survivors,” say the authors, “allowing them to prepare for distressing material and therefore enhancing their learning outcomes. However, we found that, at best, warnings have no effect on comprehension of material. At worst… trigger warnings have the potential to increase apprehension and anxiousness about attending class.” 

The bottom line, say Bridgland, Jones, and Bellet, is that trigger warnings are “fruitless,” have the added disadvantage of inducing “a period of uncomfortable anticipation,” and “should not be used as a mental health tool.” 

“A Meta-analysis of the Efficacy of Trigger Warnings, Content Warnings, and Content Notes” by Victoria Bridgland, Payton Jones, and Benjamin Bellet in Clinical Psychological Science, August 18, 2023 (Vol. 11, #5); Bridgland can be reached at victoria.bridgland@flinders.edu.au.

Benefits of Curriculum Alignment and PLCs-

 

• A curriculum revision starting in 2015 phased in Common Core-aligned expectations to all schools, including higher expectations and more emphasis on non-fiction reading.

• The curriculum reforms were phased in one subject at a time over a six-year period, accompanied by teacher training.

• Students in DoD schools are using similar curriculum materials at each grade level across all the schools.

• Collaboration among teachers is required, with team meetings built into the schedule.

• DoD schools are philosophically committed to raising the floor of teaching effectiveness for all classrooms, compared to a “pockets of excellence” approach implicitly embraced by many other schools. 

Good Schools in the Department of Defense

 The article goes on to list some positive characteristics of Defense Department schools that might point the way for policymakers:

• All military families have access to housing and health care.

• In all families, at least one parent has a job.

• Students are racially integrated – 42 percent white, 24 percent Latin, 10 percent African-American, 9 percent Asian-American, and 15 percent multi-racial. 

• Students are economically diverse, with the children of lower-rank and lower-paid parents in classrooms with children of high-ranking officers.

• The schools are well funded, spending about $25,000 per student, with a predictable budget each year.

• Schools are well supplied so teachers have less need to spend their own money on basics.

• Teachers are well paid and generally have a decade or more of experience.

• All Defense Department schools are run by a headquarters in the Pentagon.

• A curriculum revision starting in 2015 phased in Common Core-aligned expectations to all schools, including higher expectations and more emphasis on non-fiction reading.

• The curriculum reforms were phased in one subject at a time over a six-year period, accompanied by teacher training.

• Students in DoD schools are using similar curriculum materials at each grade level across all the schools.

• Collaboration among teachers is required, with team meetings built into the schedule.

• Teachers receive detailed feedback from instructional coaches and administrators.

• DoD schools are philosophically committed to raising the floor of teaching effectiveness for all classrooms, compared to a “pockets of excellence” approach implicitly embraced by many other schools. 

“Who Runs the Best U.S. Schools? It May Be the Defense Department” by Sarah Mervosh in The New York Times, October 12, 2023

Setting Expectations as a Project Manager

 from Harvard Business Review - 10/24/2023

How to Set Expectations When Managing a Project

Managing the expectations of a wide range of stakeholders is one of the biggest challenges you can face as a project manager. But it’s a critical skill to develop—directly addressing misalignment of expectations can have tangible benefits, including reducing safety incidents and increasing productivity. Here are some strategies you can use to close the expectations gap. Consider the root of everyone’s expectations. To prevent conflict and confusion, collectively set goals at the outset, and understand what it will take to meet key performance indicators (KPIs). Equally important is continually reevaluating these goals as the project moves along. Don’t take sides. As the project manager, your job is to find the common ground of all your stakeholders. Foster relationships with your team. Project management requires a significant level of emotional intelligence. The more people trust you and feel psychologically safe, the more comfortable they’ll feel to speak up when issues inevitably arise. Build a project structure that’s sturdy but flexible. Even the most well-organized projects can go awry. A project’s structure needs to be sturdy enough to move forward, but nimble enough to adapt when timelines and expectations shift. The easiest way to do this is to break projects down into small, functional steps. Keep the team grounded in an overall vision. Collective purpose is one of the strongest human motivators. Establish it early and keep it top of mind—especially if competing stakeholders lose sight of that overall mission as the project progresses.

PLC-learning about students' understanding

 [possible communication to level leaders for tmrw?  PLCs in Action

How can we learn more about students’ understanding of sentences?

We wanted to find out more about students’ understanding of sentence structure. So we designed a set of 20 simple multiple-choice questions to try and shed some light on why students make these kinds of errors. Here are two questions from the set.

These two questions are examples of the way that two questions targeting the same concept can still have very different challenges - something we have written about before. Both questions are structurally quite similar, in that they are testing student understanding of sentence fragments. But despite this structural similarity, the surface features make a big difference. Students find one question very easy, and one much harder. In our first trial of these two questions, with a couple of thousand Year 5 students in England, 91% got the first question right but only 13% got the second one right.

Why is there such a big discrepancy? We think that students don’t understand what makes a sentence, and instead focus on surface features - in this case, sentence length. The correct answer to option 5 looks like it is about the right length, and all the other options are very short. But in question 6, sentence length leads students astray. The correct answer is very short, and students therefore don’t think it can be a sentence.

A Collection of Discussion Strategies

 Cult of Pedagogy - link