Education 1

Theory of Mind

(ToM) The ability to understand that other people have mental states, beliefs, and desires that might be different than your own, might be incorrect, and impact their behavior. It is critical for successful social interactions and typically develops (through social interaction) at 3-5 year, as measured by the Sally-Anne task. fMRI studies show it correlates with activity in the STS (superior temporal sulcus) and medial PFC (prefrontal cortex). However, the level of increased activity in medial PFC when thinking of others' mental states decreases from middle childhood to adulthood, likely due to either cognitive strategy changes or neural development changes.

Zone of Proximal Development

(Vygotsky) The difference between what student can do with and without support. Teachers need to teach within ZPD and then gradually, incrementally remove support.

Perry Preschool Project

A 1962 longitudinal study that took a 'high risk' sample (3-4 year old African American children of low SES, low IQ (70-85)) and randomly assigned them to the Perry Program or to no program (control group). They controlled for age, SES, and gender, father absence, parental education, family size, household density, and birth order and then did annual follow ups. The Perry Program group met from M-F for 2.5 hours a day for 2 years, had home visit for 1.5 hours a week, and got the parents to participate in monthly small group program. By age nine, Perry kids showed very small gains. However, by age 14 the kids had higher test scores, less special education, more motivation, more homework done, and less delinquent behavior. And by 27, there were achievement and behavioral gains (less arrests, less public assistance, less births out of wedlock, more home ownership, more income, more education) and cost-benefit gains (less money spent on welfare, schooling, justice system and more money gained through taxes). This experiment proved that early intervention makes a very significant long term difference.

Choices in Education Act

A bill introduced in January 2017 that repeals the ESEA of 1965. It limits the federal authority to only awarding block grants, and to get block grant states must establish a voucher program. Per pupil funding is given to "child" rather than the school, and the "child" can bring it to whatever school he/she wants. Parents can use it in any way: private school in the state, home-school, public school. If passed, this bill will be the end of public education as we know it. However, evidence of smaller scale voucher programs show unclear outcomes for users. No data on non-users or what will happen when scaled up.

Ball Toss Paradigm

A common lab based study that demonstrates how even short term rejection from strangers can have powerful effects. People chosen at random to receive messages of social exclusion become more aggressive, willing to cheat, likely to pursue short-term over long-term goals, and less willing to help others. In a computerized version of this done with an fMRI there were three groups, control (observed 2 others playing cyberball), inclusion (played with 2 others), and exclusion (played with 2 others and excluded after 7 throws). The anterior cingulate cortex (which is associated with regulating physical pain) was shown more active during exclusion than inclusion conditions

Anxiety

A factor influencing attributions, caused by too much motivation (wanting something too much). It's a feeling of uneasiness and apprehension about a situation, typically one with an uncertain outcome. Different from fear in that fear is a response to a specific threat, whereas anxiety is vague and unfocused. It may be at the root of stereotype threat.

Gender Differences

A factor influencing attributions. Males are more likely to attribute successes to ability and failures to a lack of effort. Females are more likely to attribute successes to effort and failures to ability.

Direct Messages and Actions

A factor influencing attributions. May be internal, unstable praise ("you worked hard") increases praise, whereas internal, stable praise ("you're smart") decreases motivation. Study where kindergarteners were given simple tasks to succeed at (puzzle, blocks, legos). Half of the kids were told person praise (internal, stable) like "You are really good at this," whereas the other half were told process praise (internal, unstable) like "You tried really hard." Then the kids were given two more tasks and experienced failure (told mistakes had been made). Then they were all asked a bunch of questions. It turned out that the kids who received the process praise evaluated themselves more favorable (smarter, better at task) and felt more positive about their successes. When asked what type of task they would like to do again in the future, process kids had stronger tendency to choose to work again at a task they had failed, a way to measure persistency.

Indirect Messages and Actions

A factor influencing attributions. When teachers assume child failure is due to internal, stable reasons they tend to respond with sympathy and avoid giving punishment. This leads the student to thinking that their failure is due to internal, stable ways and won't change. When teacher assumes a child's failure is due to internal, unstable reasons they tend to respond with anger/disappointment, giving punishment.

Pygmalion Effect

A famous study done by Ellison in 2015 where students were randomly selected to be labeled 'poised to bloom,' and then they did. This is because teachers gave them more challenging work (both materials and questions), useful feedback, supportive relationships, and time and attention. This demonstrates how we act, often unconsciously, according to expectations.

Textbook Selection

A large (and often overlooked) driving force in education. Publishers want to sell books to as many states as possible, so they attempt to integrate across state curriculums. However, TX and CA wield enormous influence over textbook content and publication because they have the largest school systems. Also, there tends to be a mismatch of reading level and content.

Mood

A low intensity emotion that is either positive or negative. Extreme negative and positive moods are associated with mood-congruent recall, as when angry people remember negative things better, and when happy people remember positive things better. However, in general, overall recall during extreme moods is worse than non-extreme moods. Moods are also associated with different types of thinking, as slight positive mood benefits holistic, intuitive, creative problem solving, whereas slight negative mood benefits focused, detail oriented, analytic problem solving.

Peer Status

A measure of a person's likability in the eyes of their peers, most often measured using 'sociometrics' (student filled out questionnaires, teacher scores). It is different than friendship. The four peer status categories are popular (liked by many, disliked by few), rejected (disliked by many, liked by few), neglected (few nominations as liked or disliked), and controversial (liked by many, disliked by many). About 2/3 of children fall into one of these 4 categories, which the other 1/3 are considered "average." Popular, neglected, and average are all moderately stable (tend to retain these statuses) but controversial, though not that well studies, is much less stable.

Products Can Enhance Cognitive Function

A neuromyth designed to make money. Brain Gym is an example, as it is a product that prescribes a series of body movements "to integrate all areas of the brain to enhance learning," as it enables students to access areas of the brain previously unavailable to them. These products use spinning research on hemispheric lateralization, extreme hydration, and benefits of exercise, but twist it for profit. In truth, extreme hydration following extreme heat does show decreases in immediate cognitive function, and aerobic exercise improves selective aspects of brain function by improving blood flow to frontal parietal areas, but the Brain Gym does not help with either of this. Also various learning difficulties are related to inefficient integration of visual, auditory, and motor skills and neural activity, but Brain Gym in no way integrates these processes.

We Only Use 10% of Our Brain

A neuromyth perpetuated by a man named Lashley in the 1900s who electrically stimulated parts of the brain and, in some regions, found no cognitive delays. He concluded these parts must not be used, but that is inaccurate, as other parts temporarily take over function. The brain does contain many more supporting cells (glia) than it does neurons, and glia cells are not "electrically" active (no action potentials), but they do have uses. They clean up brain debris & "eat" dead neurons, bring nutrients to neurons, hold neurons in place, and digest parts of dead neurons. If you only used 10% of your brain you would be in a vegetative state, as no inactive areas have been observed in the brain, even during sleep.

Left and Right Hemispheres

A neuromyth that perpetuates the idea that each hemisphere is responsible for different types of thinking and therefore different personalities. The general belief is that the left brain detailed, analytic, and best suited for tasks of language, reading, math, logic, and therefore left brainers are rational, detail oriented, logical and analytical. The right brain, by contrast, is intuitive, emotional, holistic, synthesizing, non-verbal, and spatial, best suited for tasks that are creative or inductive. Therefore, right brainers are artistic, intuitive, emotional, imaginative and visually oriented. However, none of this is true, and result from misinterpretation of laterality studies. In these studies, split brain patients (patients who had corpus callosum surgically severed in an attempt to reduce epilepsy) had hemispheres that processed different types of information, but people ignored the fact that these were atypical brains. In typically developing brains, many processes associated with additional brain activity predominately in one hemisphere or the other (language is 'left lateralized' for right handed people) due to hemispheric specialization or lateralization. However, there are differences among individuals as to where these modules are located. A recent survey of teacher education texts showed that the majority encouraged teachers to determine whether a child is left or right brained before they attempt to teach them, which could have some negative consequences

Children Should be Exposed to Rich and Diverse Stimuli

A neuromyth which plays on the belief that if children aren't exposed to a complex environment at a young age they will not recuperate later. This myth exists because of a study were rats reared in enriched environments exhibited better capability to solve complex maze problems that those reared in deprived environments. This is because the enriched rats had formed more neural connections. However, enriched meant some stimulation in cage as opposed to bare cage, and even the research team admits that the enriched condition did not mimic natural environments and was enriched only in comparison to the life in bare cage. The results say more about the effects of deprived conditions than enriched ones. Neglect (i.e., limited caregiver responsiveness) is associated with cognitive delays, stunting of physical growth, impairments in higher level thinking and self-regulation, and disruptions of the body's stress response.

Brain is Only Plastic During 'Critical Periods'

A neuromyth, which implies that early childhood (first three years) is decisive for later development.. The concept originated in animal work, such as Lorenz's examination of imprinting in birds. He saw that baby birds irreversibly imprint to prominent moving object in their environment (normally their mother) and that it can only occur during a critical period hours after hatching. Additional, in the 1960s Wiesel & Hubel at Harvard did a study where they covered one eye of newborn cats. After 3 months the eye was uncovered and they discovered severe deterioration of neuronal connections in the visual areas (occipital lobe) of the covered eye. This is because the brain received no stimulation from covered eye so it learned to receive information only from other eye. Even after months of being uncovered, cats remained blind in that eye. In comparison, adult cats not impacted. Despite these studies, plasticity in humans is life long, though the degree of plasticity changes with age, and different parts of the brain exhibit different levels of plasticity. Critical periods not sharply delineated and are influenced by many factors, so researchers now use the softer term "sensitive period." We now know in humans, pruning in frontal regions doesn't start until puberty. Additionally, different modalities exhibit different levels of plasticity, as phonology (sounds of a language, including accent) is much harder to learn after adolescence, whereas semantics (meaning of words) can be learned forever.

Delay of Gratification

A person's ability to put a future reward over immediate desires. Associated with more mature forms of self regulation and often measured with the marshmallow task. Longitudinal follow up studies show that kids that can "delay gratification" are perceived (by parents) as more competent 10 years later, and also have higher SAT scores, make more money as adults, and less likely to use drugs when compared to kids that cannot delay gratification.

The Shelves Task

A study done by Blakemore to prove that ToM may continue to develop after ages 3-5. It tested 7 -27 year olds by having them view a set of shelves containing objects of which a "Director" could see some, but not all of. The Director told them to move some of the objects, and the participants had to take into account which of the objects he couldn't see. Their accuracy was recorded, and it was found that adolescents make more errors and take longer than adults, suggesting ToM continues to develop with age.

Fernandes and Fontana (1996)

A study that demonstrated that self regulation relates to self regulation of learning, which can be taught. Twenty-five elementary school teachers were randomly assigned to students, with an experimental group being trained to implement strategies of self assessing and monitoring for 8 months, and a control group teaching as normal. The results showed that the experimental group did better academically (especially in math) and were better able to identify the causes of their academic performance (such as learning, effort, and studying).

Backwards Planning

A teacher method of starting with the end in mind. The teachers ask themselves what should students know, understand, and be able to do by the end of the year, how will we know if they know, understand, and are able to do it, and how we will support leaners in coming to know, understand, and be able to do these things.

Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment

An experiment where kids watched a model beat up on bobo doll and be either rewarded, punished, or receive no consequences. There was a performance test to see what behavior kids engaged in on their own, followed by a learning test, to see what behavior kids engaged in when offered prizes to display everything they say. Demonstrated that we learn from just observing social situations (even if we don't exhibit the behavior).

AYP

Annual Yearly Progress. There were no consequence for non-Title 1 schools for not meeting their AYP goals, but Title 1 schools had clear consequences. After 2 consecutive years of not meeting goals they were identified as Needing Improvement, and school officials had to develop a two year plan to turn around school. Students were also offered the option of transferring to another school in district not identified as needing improvement. After 3 years, schools were still considered Needing Improvement but must also provide some supplemental educational services. After 4 years, corrective actions had to be implemented, such as replacing certain staff, fully implementing a new curriculum, or extending the school day or year. After 5 years, schools must initiate plans to restructure by either replacing all or most of the staff, reopening the school as a charter school, extending the school day or year, or closing the school entirely. Currently 80% of Title I schools do not meet AYP, and more than 4,000 schools are in the restructuring phase

Mizuno et al (2008)

Asked: what is the neural basis for the motivation to learn? Gave 14 college students a motivation scale and then a challenging cognitive task (n-back). The students were given two types of rewards, academic and monetary. The academic experimental was set to induce sense of competence and achievement by turning more and more pixels blue. The academic control had pixels turn blue but not stay blue. The monetary experimental added 200 points for every correct answer, where monetary control added no money but changed color of 000 from red to blue. Mizuro found that, in academic conditions, there were no cortical differences between exp. and control, whereas in monetary conditions there were more bi-lateral frontal activation in exp. than control. In academic condition, level of motivation to learn positively correlated with bi-lateral putamen activity. The more motivated a person is, the more neural change they see when doing challenging academic task in areas associated with dopamine. In monetary condition, there was also bilateral putamen activity, but there was no correlation between level of motivation and activation. The take home point was that response to academic motivation is different than monetary motivation, and the more motivated a person, the more neural change with academic motivation. However, there are limits to this study, as monetary condition was 'extrinsic' and academic was 'intrinsic,' which has internal validity issues.

Attributions

Before school age, children are unrealistic optimists. They have internal, stable attributions for success and external, unstable attributions for failures. And then school kicks in, and different kids exhibit different patterns.

NCLB

Bush's reauthorization of ESEA in 2002 as a standards based education reform. The goal was to set high standards, establish measurable goals, and improve outcomes, and to do so students were given assessments aligned with state content standards. Reading, math, science were assessed in Grades 3-8 and once in high school, with students scoring as either basic, proficient, or advanced and schools scoring based on what % of students were at each of these levels. Data was publically recorded overall and by groups (low-income, disability, minority, gifted, all others). This was a major change, as previously tests only measured average student performance, allowing schools to be highly rated even if there were large gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged. After testing, each state had to set 2 year attainment goals to eventually get ALL students proficient in reading and math by 2012.

Success Attributions

Can be characterized by locus (cause is internal or external to a person) and stability (cause of outcome is or is not the same across time and in different situations, stable or unstable). This leads to four possible outcomes: ability (in/st), difficulty (ex/st), effort (in/un), and luck (ex/un).

Kuhl and Colleagues (2003)

Conducted language acquisition research. Conducted an experiment to teach American infants phonetic discrimination b/w Chinese Mandarin sounds. For 12 sessions the babies were either read to by a real, live Chinese Mandarin speaker, viewed videos of the same speaker reading, or listened to the same speaker reading. Content and time exposure were identical across all conditions, with a control group of babies listening to English instead. To test if kids could discriminate, they used a head turn test (infants trained to turn head when hearing a change from a repeating background sound) and found that the live condition led to significantly improved ability to distinguish sounds, whereas the TV and audio condition led to no learning. Kuhl concluded that social interaction is a critical factor for sound discrimination learning, and additional studies (students learning a second language with either real conversations or video recordings) support these findings.

NCLB Criticisms

Critics argued that NCLB limited gifted and talented "creative" programs in order to increase their overall scores. Also, it conflicted with IDEA, as well IDEA focused on individual student attention, NCLB focused on groups of students. Also, whereas IEPs called for varied assessments, NCLB relied exclusively on one, and many accommodations were not met for that one test. Additionally, NCLB had a strict focus on reading and math, which led to teaching to the test. This benefited these skills, but hurt others, such as history, science, art, music, PE, lunch, and recess. Finally, it led to many restructuring fails, as school couldn't get new teachers, had to spend all summer hiring instead of planning, had no additional money to open school longer, couldn't fire anybody due to union interference, destroyed morale, and didn't provide details in their reporting (didn't restructure at all).

Curriculum

Determined by many choices made by the school and approved by the state district, though the must meet standards (CCSS). However, lessons, units, and methods are often selected by teacher, as well as activities, assessments, and materials. The role of technology is also causing a shift of teacher role from "sage on stage" to "guide on the side."

Blackwell et at (2007)

Developed a random control study with low achieving math students. One half spent 8 weeks getting lessons about incremental view of intelligence during study hall, whereas the other half (control group) got lessons about study strategies and improving memory. The dependent variable was math performance. Whereas the control group's grade continued to drop the experimental group's grades began to increase.

Duckworth and Seligman (2005)

Did a longitudinal study of 8th graders where their self regulation, which was measured in the fall (parents, homeroom teachers, self-report), predicted their academic performance. Self regulation proved to account for more than twice as much variance as IQ in final grades, high school selection, school attendance, hours spent doing homework, hours spent watching television (inversely), and time of day students began homework. This suggests that the major reason students fall short of intellectual potential is their failure to exercise self-discipline.

Policy Summary

ESEA (which included IDEA) reauthorized as NCLB. Grant program Race to the Top added on. ESSA replaced NCLB as another reauthorization of ESEA. At same time, Race to the Top went away. Recently, Choices in Education Act introduced, which may replace ESEA.

EEG

Electroencephalography. The recording of electrical activity along scalp caused by neurons firing. We analyze the ERPs (event related potentials) as they tell us about timing , though not the location of electrical change. It averages the electrical changes together in order to determine the nature of electrical activity across a population of neurons as related to an event.

ESEA

Established in 1965 as part of Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. It expanded the federal role in education significantly, mainly through funding. Title I of ESEA grants about $15 billion to schools serving low-income students (at least 40% of students must be low-income to be eligible). Title III of ESEA is dedicated funding for ELLs, which is about 5 million students (10%). The government has reauthorized the act every 5 years since, but now it is in jeopardy.

ESSA

Every Student Succeeds Act. The 2015 reauthorization of ESEA, which overturned NCLB but preserved its spirit. It addresses the "one size fits all" approach, shifts from negative consequences, and swings some control of consequences from federal to state. The differences between ESSA and NCLB is testing (same schedule and subgroup reporting, but must be with CCSS or other national test (SAT/ACT)), the measurement of growth using other factors (such as proficiency in math and reading not only based on test scores but on progress for ELLs, graduation rates, or 'another' indicator of choice), the elimination of the requirement that student test scores can be used to evaluate teacher performance, and allowing states to make 'evidence based' decisions about consequences after the federal government notes which schools have not met their goals. Effectiveness TBD.

Emotional Display Rules

How to suppress inappropriate feelings and behave appropriately, as learned by children 3-5 years old. Girls tend to follow these rules more closely, though this could be due to socialization. Ex: get terrible gift, but smile and say thank you.

Gershenson

In 2016 took nationally representative survey data (NELS) on 10th grade math & reading teachers, with two teachers reporting expectations for students and ultimate educational attainment, collecting race data in the process. They found that non-black teachers of black students have significantly lower academic expectations than do black teachers, being 12 % less likely to expect black students to complete a four-year college degree. The effects were even larger for male teachers and math teachers. This is concerning considering the Pygmalion effect.

Goals

In general, mastery oriented thought to be optimal and performance oriented detrimental. However, performance orientation can serve you well at times, and we can engage in mastery and performance orientations at the same time. In fact, research shows doing so is associated with strong study skills. Biggest danger is performance avoidance goals. If students are not successful in looking smart, performance approach goals likely turn into performance avoidance.

Alternative Teacher Programs

Includes Teach for America and other Residency Programs. Research suggests that retention rates are far lower for TFA. After 2 years 60% still teach, but after 5 years this goes down to 28% (as compared to 50% in other groups). Also, only 14% are teaching in the same school. Retention matters because of the revolving door effect. Schools incur substantial costs, novices fill vacancies (so students taught by streamline of less effective new teachers), schools lose their investments in formal and informal professional development, the ability to coordinate curriculum and track as students move from grade to grade is impeded, and its harder for teachers to build relationships with parents and community.

IDEA

Individuals with Disabilities Education (Improvement) Act, established in 1975. It provides partial funding to states so "all children with disabilities (~6 million) can receive free, appropriate education." It provide individual education plans (IEP) and tries to place students in their least restrictive environment (LRE), whatever most appropriate (mainstream or not). IDEA has widespread support, but there is growing concern as costs grow rapidly.

Mastery Oriented Goal

Intention to improve abilities and learn. A mastery approach goal wants to master material/task, whereas a mastery avoidance goal doesn't want to NOT be able to understand or master task (perfectionists fall here).

Performance Oriented Goal

Intention to seem competent to others. A performance approach goal wants to look good and receive favorable judgment, whereas a performance avoidance goal does not want to look bad and receive unfavorable judgment.

Decety and colleagues (2004)

Investigated the neural basis of cooperation and competition in the same individuals by using an fMRI on them while they played a computer game, either with another player (cooperation), against another player (competition), or alone. Found that both cooperation and competition are associated with set of neural regions distinct from independent playing, called anterior insula (autonomic arousal). They then compared cooperation and competition neural systems, finding that cooperation had more right orbitofrontal involvement (a reward system), whereas competition had more mPFC (medial prefrontal cortex) involvement which may reflect additional ToM resources. They discovered that while cooperation and competition both rely on social processing and increase arousal, cooperation seems to be a more socially rewarding process at the neural level. Competitive and cooperative learning are both more effective than individual learning, but cooperative learning is associated with best long-term retention of information.

KIPP

Knowledge is Power Program, with the motto: Work hard, be nice. It is made up of charter schools in under-resourced communities (currently 183 schools) with a 95% African American or Latino student body. The focus is put on college preparation. KIPP schools have long days (7:30-5:00 M-F and 8:30-1:30 every other Sat) and 2-3 weeks of summer school, leading to kids spending 60% more in-class time than peers. Students also receive a KIPP paycheck at the end of the week for a good behavior, and parents and students must sign a KIPP promise. KIPP has led to increases in math and even greater increases in reading in K. In 8th grade, it's led to huge increases in math and reading. In high school, increases in all but social studies. Far more graduate college than average.

Motivation

May be intrinsic (activities are their own reward) or extrinsic (created by external factors, such as rewards or punishments), but not a dichotomy. Two ways to think of it: 1) as a continuum from fully self determined (intrinsic) to fully determined by others (extrinsic), or 2) as two independent possibilities but at any given time we can be motivated by some of each. Teaching should aim to foster intrinsic motivation, but must accept it won't work all the time.

fMRI

Measures changes in blood flow using an MRI machine, a powerful magnet 30,000 times stronger than Earth's magnetic field. It only measures changes in magnetic properties of things inside the magnet (i.e., your head) and can detect changes in blood flow, both increases and decreases. This is because when neurons in an area are active they need oxygen, so extra oxygen-containing blood gets pumped to that area, and oxygenated blood has different magnetic properties than de-oxygenated blood. An MRI machine records these changes in magnetic properties. The end result is that when neurons fire, MRI signal increases. Known as BOLD imaging (blood oxygenation level dependent).

Acute Stress

Moderate short term stress, which can promote learning and engagement by enhancing memory formation for emotional material and information that is related to the stressful context. However, it also may impair the encoding of stresser unrelated material (Vogel & Schwabe, 2016). It occurs quickly in the autonomic nervous system (ANS) and slowly in the Hypothalaumus-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA), both of which release hormones and neurotransmitters that benefit human learning and memory processes. For learning, it is best felt right before and after studying and before sleep.

Rejected Students

Most stable of all the categories, and gets more and more stable over time. This is because peers tend to attribute rejected peers antisocial conduct to stable traits and prosocial conduct to unstable causes. In school, rejected kids show highest rates of aggression, social anxiety, and inattentive, immature, or impulsive behavior. They also show the lowest rates of prosocial behavior (helping, sharing, taking turns) and self esteem. Almost all rejected children show lower academic achievement than non-rejected age-mates

Cooperative Learning

Most successful form of learning due to distributed cognition, meaning learning tasks are spread across many minds and draw on multiple knowledge bases and ideas. Benefits learning because it encourages students to clarify/organize thoughts sufficiently to explain them, exposes them to more sophisticated understandings, allows for comprehension monitoring, and promotes persuasion & argumentation skills. There are also social benefits in that it is more fun and students are more willing to explore material possibilities without teacher oversight. The disadvantages, however, is that the group may have insufficient expertise to tackle problem, the kids may be anxious about peer impressions, remaining on task may be difficult (once stray, difficult to refocus), peer social status may dominate, and kids may pass along misconceptions. Therefore, it is thought to be most effective with some teacher guidance and structure.

Common Core

Nationwide standards to make students "college and career ready." For math there are fewer topics, but more depth, and for literacy there are more evidence support. Smarter Balanced or PARCC assessments align with the CCCS.

Teacher Certification

Normally, teachers go to state training programs at colleges with course and practicum requirements. Courses focus on both subject knowledge and pedagogy, as research shows both are important. Teachers with this training more confident and successful, and five year programs are associated with most effectiveness. There are also standardized assessments that vary from state to state, such as Pearson's Foundations of Reading Tests, Praxis (phasing out) and edTPA assessment (phasing in). EdTPA is performance based and subject specific, with standards based used by teacher prep programs and scored by Stanford/ Pearson. Teachers have the same type of career-entry assessment requirement as those for aspiring lawyers, doctors, and professionals in many fields. The portfolio even includes unedited videos of teachers teaching. However, the Hechinger Report (2016) demonstrated how this new test costs more, takes more time, and requires teacher aspirants to do more work, which all deter low-income and minority teacher candidates. The number of white teacher candidates is triple that of all other racial and ethnic groups combined. Meanwhile, students from minority groups has eclipsed number of white students in US. Demographic mismatch.

Race to the Top

Obama grant program (not law) established in 2009, with $4 billion spent to spur local and state K-12 reforms. It was a reward as opposed to a punishment based system (NCLB), with states getting points by satisfying 3 policies: Common Core Standards, highly effective teacher measures (Value Added Model, mandatory), and building data systems to measure success (standardized tests or other ways). The states with the most points get money. In 2015, 43 states participated, but effectiveness has not been studied and $0 has since been allocated to it. It's a good example of how the turn over of U.S. political offices hurts education.

Schultz (2007)

Observed phasic responses of dopamine neurons when an unexpected reward was presented. Eventually, dopamine neurons acts as a signal that a reward is coming, signaling a shift of dopamine. However, dopamine neurons also encode a prediction error, as individuals get depressed when expected reward is omitted, called 'reward prediction error.'

Self Esteem

One's evaluation of one's worth as a person based on an assessment of qualities: scholastic, social, athletic, physical, behavioral. 4-7 year olds have inflated self esteem, rating themselves positively in all domains, because they can't distinguish between reality and their desire to be good at certain things. From 8 years to adolescence, self evaluations become fairly accurate (match outsiders evaluations, sociometrics) because, at this age, self appraisals depend on the way other people perceive and react to your behavior ("looking glass self") and the values you place on each competency. From adolescence on, people start to see "relational" self worth, and feelings of self worth are different in different relational contexts, i.e. with parents, teachers, peers. This is related to a host of favorable developmental outcomes, as people who exhibit it are less likely to be depressed/have other mental health disorders and less likely to engage in substance abuse as adults (not experimentation). High self esteem is correlated with higher rates of self reported happiness and life satisfaction, and is likely causal due to shared variance. There is also modest positive correlations with school performance, though its hard to know which causes the other. Efforts to boost self-esteem in students has not shown to improve academic performance.

Federal Role in Schools

Only 9% of total school funding comes from the federal government, though they do attempt to even out distribution across districts in a state. This helps some, but there is still an inequity in money spent on a child in any given district, and usually the towns just above the line are the ones with the least money spent per-student. The federal government also has established a number of important policies, including ESEA, IDEA, NCLB, RTT, and ESSA.

Evidence-based Education

Operates at two levels. The first is that is uses existing evidence from research and literature across many disciplines, which means that teachers must know how to find it, interpret it, and determine its relevance. The second is that it establishes sound research where existing evidence is lacking. The research to practice gap is a consequence of the aforementioned not being met. Neuromyths are also a result of the aforementioned not being met, or strong research not being well used and established.

Magnet Schools

Public schools launched in 1970's as an effort to remedy racial segregation. They encourage students to attend schools outside neighborhood, though student diversity is still an explicit goal of most. They are funded through the federal, state, and local government but are also highly selective, with a rigorous application process. They are known for their special programs and facilitates (must find funding for) and their high academic standards, though they can still kick students out.

US Income Achievement Gap

Overall gap between children from high- and low-income families is roughly 40% larger now than it was 25 years ago. It has grown partly because of an increase in the association between family income and children's academic achievement for families above the median income level. The gap is present before K, and at K entry the gap in reading & math is already 1 SD (3 months of development). It remains present throughout high school.

Failure Attributions

Particularly impactful. Can be tied to lack of effort (internal, unstable), making students try harder in the future, or lack of ability (internal/stable), making students more likely to give up easily in the future. This leads to learned helplessness, as success is thought to be external and unstable (due to luck) and failure due to abilities.

Brain Development

Physically, brains are built over time. At birth, its about ¼ size of adulthood, but in the first year more than 1 million new neural connections form every second in a rapid proliferation called synaptogenesis. By 3, the brain is about ¾ size of adulthood, and once synaptogenesis is done connections are reduced through pruning, allowing brain circuits to be more efficient. Early years are the most active period of synaptogenesis, but new connections can form throughout life and unused connections pruned throughout life. As a result, it's impossible to determine what % of the brain develops by a certain age, but more importantly the connections that form early provide either a strong or weak foundation for later connections. Generally, the brain develops from back to front. Time lapse images of brain development between ages 5 and 20 show growth and then gradual loss of gray matter starting around puberty and corresponding to increasing cognitive abilities. This probably reflects improved neural organization. Experience determines which connections will be strengthened or pruned, as although genes provide a blueprint for the formation of brain circuits, the circuits are reinforced by repeated use.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Physiological (sleep, food, water), safety, love/belonging, esteem, self-actualization (morality, creativity, problem solving).

PISA

Programme for International Student Assessment, given to 9th graders every 3 years. Hong Kong, Korea, and Japan are top performers in reading, math, and science. Typically economically robust nations are at the top, and economically stifled nations at the bottom, but US always falls at or below the international average. The US has never been #1, so our place is not reflective of recent policy, but rather long historical approaches to education.

Charter School

Public schools that students choose to attend (lottery if oversubscribed) and which have no clear definition but are 'alternative' in some way, such as an all girls/boys school, a looping K-12 program, or a specialization in a specific area. Do not exist in all states, and laws differ state by state, but they tend to challenge standard educational practices. They receive local and state funding, as well as money from sponsoring groups, and they must adhere to testing regulations but not any other regulations. They may kick students out, may or may not comply with teacher standards, but are shut down if they don't show student gains. Studies show they show advanced learning gains in reading when compared to public schools, but only comparable gains in math, and there is an uneven quality across schools that makes this difficult to accurately assess.

Mainstreaming

Putting kids with special needs into classes with the other students. It's advantages are that it leads special needs students to have higher academic achievement, better self-esteem, and improved social skills, while at the same time increases the tolerance of students without disabilities (contact theory). It's disadvantages is that it cost on average twice as more to educate a special needs student, time and attention may be taken away from other students to meet the needs of the special student, and special needs students mainstreamed for only certain classes may feel socially rejected by classmates.

Emotional Responses

Rapid and instinctive displays of our 5 core emotions (joy, sadness, disgust, fear, anger) that are easy to read because underlying emotions and mental states are clearly expressed in gestures and faces.

Correlational

Relationships between characteristics. Usually measured on a scale of -1 to +1. The absolute value is the strength of the relationship, which can be either + or -. In a + relationship, as one value increases, the other increases. In a -, as one value decreases, the other increases. The problems with correlational studies is that they may not demonstrate causality and may be altered by confounding variables. However, these tests make up much of developmental and educational research, because researchers cannot assign kids to grow up in poor families or make teachers teach well or poorly.

Dopamine Neurons

Release dopamine in the brain, which is a neurotransmitter responsible for feelings of pleasure. Though there is no 'reward center' in the brain, these neurons originate in putamen and project axons throughout the brain through various pathways. There are 2 ways to respond to rewards: an increase in the number of neurons firing, and each neuron releasing more dopamine.

Reliability and Validity

Reliability is the consistency and repeatability of an experiment, whereas validity must accurately measure the characteristics that the research claims to measure. Internal validity is the degree to which conditions internal to design of study permit an accurate test of hypothesis, whereas external validity is the degree to which findings generalize to settings and participants outside the original study.

Preschool

Schools before Kindergarten that have some sort of educational curriculum. There are no mandatory public pre-K in U.S, but a growing number of states offer state or federally funded pre-K. Ex: federally funded Head Start for lower-income communities.

Native American Reservation Schools

Schools funded at the federal level by Bureau of Indian Education funds. They focus on modern skills and knowledge, but the traditions and culture of Native Americans are preserved as part of the curriculum.

Standard Public School

Schools funded by local, state, and federal taxes and that must admit all students within district. There are about 3.1 million public school teachers, who must be certified, and the schools are required to adhere to testing regulations. There are about 50.4 million students enrolled in Public schools, in comparison to 5.2 in private and 1.77 being homeschooled.

Parochial Schools

Schools owned and operated by religious group (Catholic, Hebrew, etc). Teachers do not need certification and may be clergy. These schools tend to be less expensive than private because they can take money from religious organization.

Role of Teachers

Teachers have two big categories of responsibility. First is content, as they are the designers and deliverers of curriculum. Second is context, as they are the creators of learning communities.

Local Role in Schools

Schools receives the bulk of funding from local property taxes. Public education constitutes the single largest expenditure of every town in U.S, which all have a Local Board of Education and elected community members who evaluate school metrics (test scores, finances) and oversee superintendents, principals, and teachers.

Independent Private Schools

Schools that receive no money from local, state, federal taxes. They are funded instead via tuition, charitable contributions, and endowment. They are usually regulated by a Board of Trustees and may be affiliated with religious group, but can't take money or governance from that group. Teachers do not need to be certified, and cost for students varies drastically.

Recess

Several studies have demonstrated that recess (indoors or outdoors) improves attention and productivity in the classroom, even if students spent much of their recess socializing. Also, through recess, children learn communication skills, including negotiation, cooperation, sharing, and problem solving as well as coping skills, such as perseverance and self-control.

Social Learning

Social interaction benefits at least some types of early learning (i.e., language). Meta-analyses have concluded that educational programs that 'emphasize social interaction' result in greater long-term improvements in academic achievement, social adjustment, and economic success as compared to non-social programs.

Head Start

Started in 1965 and has grown extensively since, today serving 1 million children (40% of eligible) with a budget close to $8 billion. To be eligible, the child's family must earn less than 130% federal poverty line. The program provides education, health services, and social services, and in 2005 there was an impact study comparing 3-4 year olds that attend Head Start with a control group. Entering Kindergarten, Head Start kids were better prepared on every measure: language, literacy, and math show largest benefits. However, by first grade these gains were lost (the "fadeout" effect), with the only remaining gain being improved parent-relationships. Researchers say this may be due to poor Kindergarten, or Head Start kids getting less attention in class. However, smaller studies show that despite score fadeout Head Start children complete more years of school, earn more, and are healthier in general.

State Role in Schools

State, "Secretary of Education," or "Board of Ed Superintendent" oversees districts by setting content standards, setting teacher qualification standards, and approving curriculum and materials (textbook selection). Most states provide substantial aid to schools to supplement local tax revenue, which helps but doesn't solve the problem, as some towns are much wealthier than others. Also, local business taxes are a major contribution.

SEL

Strong Social and Emotional Learning. (Weissberg, 2006) Programs focus on self awareness, self management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision making. Strong SEL Programs are shown to improve achievement by an average of 11 percentile points, increase prosocial behavior (kindness, sharing, empathy), improve student attitude towards school, and reduce depression. However, CCSS don't include explicit SEL objectives, though may be indirectly connected. Title I schools less likely to have SEL.

Quasi-Experimental

Studies based on pre-existing groups that are matched as closely as possible on other factors that may be confounding variables (age, gender, SES, etc).

Robbins et al. (2002)

Study based on 300,000 people, tracking their self-esteem at different phases of their life. In general, it starts high in childhood, drops in adolescence, rises in the twenties and through adulthood until it drops again in the elder years, due to a drop in cognition. Overall, boys fare better than girls, especially in adolescence.

Cahan & Cohen

Tested this question: does schooling account for gains in cognition or do we just naturally improve cognitive skills with age? They tested the effect of age by looking at the differences between oldest and youngest student in that grade, and tested the effect of school by looking at the differences between youngest child in a grade and oldest child in lower adjacent grade. To measure, they gave children 12 tests covering wide range of skills administered from the Cognitive Ability Test (CAT). The participants were 11,000+ 4th, 5th, 6th graders at 61 of Jerusalem's Hebrew state schools, and the results showed that school has a considerable effect on cognitive skills. For 9 out of the 12 tests, the effect of 1 year of schooling is larger than that of 1 year of age, and in each case the effect of schooling is about twice that of age. However, schooling has a larger effect on verbal compared to non-verbal factors.

Brain Structure

The brain is split into five lobes: frontal (reasoning, decision making, planning, self-regulation), temporal (auditory information, long term memory), parietal (somatosensory information such as temperature, pressure, texture, pain), occipital (vision), and cerebellum (balance). It has two hemispheres held together by the corpus callosum, enables constant communication between them. Both hemispheres work on most tasks.

Stereotype Threat

The concern that one may be judged to have traits associated with negative social stereotypes about a group to which they belong. Leads to lower performance on tasks. In a study, a difficult verbal task was given to African Americans and Caucasian students, with half being told the testing problems were for researchers (no threat). These students all did the same regardless of race. The other half were told that the researchers were interested in seeing how different racial groups perform (threat), and in this group the caucasians did much better than the African Americans. This same pattern exists even when stereotype is not explicitly brought up (check a box of what race). It holds true for girls (negative) and Asians (positive) in math.

Classroom Culture

The elements of teacher interactions that promote positive development, such as emotional support, classroom organization, instructional support, and responsiveness (Hamre, 2014). There are also 'teachable moments' where kids get off track and teachers use it to teach new lessons (Tomilson, 2012).

Academic Language

The formal language of schooling. It includes vocabulary used almost entirely in academic contexts.

Randomized Control Study

The ideal study, where individuals are randomly assign to different groups and then compared. They often involve pre-tests and post-tests and allow for cause and effect assumptions. Include independent variables (what researchers expect to cause change), dependent variables (what researchers expect to be influenced), and confounding variables (variables so closely associated that their effects cannot be determined).

Statistical Significance

The probability that a pattern in a study occurred by chance. Low probability means that the pattern of findings will generalize to the broader population of interest. There is a threshold of p<.05, meaning that there is only a 5% chance that these results would have occurred if the effect was not real. However, p<.05 is not magic. The r=.62 correlation in Matthews was accompanied by a p value of 0.008, meaning a 1 in 125 chance of having found these results without the effect.

Emotional Self Regulation

The process of adjusting one's emotions by managing feelings, associated physiological reactions, cognition, and behavior to appropriate levels of intensity in order to accomplish goal(s). Newborns have none, but by age 1 there has been basic development (turn away, suck thumb), more so in girls than boys and depending on culture (American babies display intense positive but not negative emotions, Central African babies restrain both). By 1-2 years, babies have learned to rock themselves, chew on objects, and move away from people/events that upset them, but still have trouble regulating fear, reacting in a way that will get soothing attention from caregivers. Family conversations about emotions are associated with rate of self regulatory development. By 3-5 years, children learn emotional display rules and can accurately tell whether a person is happy, angry, or sad from facial expression and expressive body movements (before can visually discriminate, but not clearly interpret as expressions of emotion). In elementary school kids become much more adept, and by adolescence (14 to 19, Bandura et al) self-perception of emotion regulation impacts social life, as those who believe they are relatively good at managing emotional expression in public are more prosocial, able to resist peer pressure, and empathetic with peers. Emotional self regulation is associated with activity in the prefrontal cortex, and thus dependent on its development, and is associated with school performance, or regulation of learning, which can be further broken down into self assessment (can I do it?) and self monitoring (am I doing it?).

Effect Size

The size of the difference between groups, on a standardized scale. In terms of practical significance, the question 'Does it work?' is answered by statistical significance, and the question 'How well does it work?' is answered by effect size.

Transfer

The ultimate goal of teaching, even over learning content and excelling in each class. Acquisition of content is a means to an end but the goal is to use learning in other settings, which is what transferring is. Sometimes, especially in college learning, future application is not predictable a priori. There is near transfer (essay writing skills in English used in Social Studies, driving rental truck for first time) as well as far transfer (chess player applying same strategies in a political campaign).

Brain Function

There are about 80 billion neurons in the brain that transmit electrical impulses to each other. Neurons are made of a cell body, dendrites, and an axon and often undergo voltage changes called action potential. Dendrites extend from cell body to receive neurotransmitters over synapses and the axon extends from cell body to send electrical impulses to other neurons over synapses. Action potentials trigger the release of neurotransmitters, which travel across synapses to the next neuron. Each dendrite receptor has specifically shaped region that selectively recognizes particular neurotransmitters, generating a response (could be action potential or just contraction of a muscle).

Decentralization

Unlike many nations, the US does not have a national education system. American schools are overwhelmingly a local and state responsibility.

Chronic Stress

Unrelenting stress caused by poverty, neglect, and abuse. It is a strong, unrelieved activation of stress response that causes the ANS and HPA to become deregulated, though an emotionally caring adult will buffer this. EEGs show overall differences in resting brain activity of the left frontal hypoactivity in low-income adolescents. Also MRIs and fMRIs (location and structure) show that the left frontal in low-income kindergarteners is smaller in volume. Increase in chronic stress causes decreases in working memory over time, meaning poverty negatively impacts cognition.

Entity View of Ability

Views ability as stable and uncontrollable, and thus something that cannot change. Middle schoolers and on tend to develop an entity view. Students with this view of ability tend to set performance avoidance goals to avoid looking bad. Teachers with this view tend to be quicker to form judgments about students, as well as slower to modify their opinions when confronted with contradictory evidence.

Incremental View of Ability

Views ability as unstable and controllable, meaning by hard work knowledge can be increased and, thus, ability improvement. It's a growth mind set, as it means ability can change, and tends to be held by elementary aged students. One study took 6th graders with same math achievement test scores, half with an incremental view and half with entity view, and found that incremental students earn higher math grades in 7th grade than entity, and their grades only continue to improve. Teachers with this view set mastery goals for students. For them failure is not devastating, it just means more work needs to be done.

Buhs and Ladd (2001)

Wanted to determine what mediates peer rejection and academic achievement. They did a short term longitudinal study during Kindergarten and found that there was a pre-established relationship between peer rejection and poor academic achievement. Found that rejection led to higher reports of loneliness, express desire to avoid school, and negative peer treatment, which itself led to less classroom participation and lower grades.

International Educational Values

What high performing countries do that is different in the US is 1) they value of academic achievement and pay teachers higher salaries, as teaching is among one of the most respected professions. Also, 2) they emphasize effort. Asian parents are more likely to believe children can master school if they work hard, while US parents are more likely to believe academic achievement level is a native skill. This belief seems to contribute to the fact that Asian youths spend approx. twice as much time on homework. Additional, 3) they have similar education for all, including a national curriculum and no tracking, and 4) their students spend more time in school, with Asian countries attending school 50 more days than US each year (180 vs. 230). Teachers actually spend less time per day teaching, but more time over the course of a year. Most importantly, however, is 5) they have fewer kids living in relative poverty.