An Irish perspective on education for all who value teaching
Episodes
18 minutes ago
18 minutes ago
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's podcast I speak to Professor Sonia Cabell who is an associate professor of Reading Education in the School of Teacher Education and the Florida Center for Reading Research at Florida State University. She was a keynote speaker at the Literacy Association of Ireland conference on 9 November 2024. Among the topics we discussed are the following:
- How Marcia Invernizzi, co-author of Words their Way introduced her to the idea of doing a doctorate.
- Laura Justice was her dissertation adviser.
- She became interested in preventing reading difficulties through interventions in the pre-school to second grade years.
- More teachers today are consulting original research on literacy than twenty or twenty-five years ago. “If you know better, then you do better.”
- Teacher education programmes frequently don’t teach student teachers how to consume research.
- An important trait for teachers to develop is to be curious about what the evidence says about “this” practice and being open to what the evidence says as reported in trusted journals that translate the research well.
- She recommends The Reading Teacher and The Reading League Journal as sources of accessible reliable information for teachers.
- She likes Scholastic’s The Science of Reading in Practice series.
- Don’t make one person a guru. Listen to different voices and compare them.
- Jeanne Chall refers to the transition of “learning to read to reading to learn” as a stage of development and not as a way to intervene (in the teaching of reading).
- A good eight-year-old reader would be decoding fluently (their grasp of the alphabetic code continues to increase) so they can focus their attention on what the text means and they should be continuing to develop fluency in their oral reading.
- Scarborough’s Reading Rope.
- Strands of language comprehension: Background knowledge, perceptive and expressive vocabulary, verbal reasoning (inferential thinking and abstract thinking), language structures (syntax), and literacy knowledge (understanding different kinds of genres).
- John Guthrie’s work on Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction.
- James S. Kim of Harvard University and his (Model of Reading Engagement) MORE assessment.
- The inextricable link between knowledge and oral language skills and can be built together in young children.
- In the interactive read-aloud context you are exposing children to the formal language of books, which is critical because of the formal language structure of books (syntax and vocabulary).
- How to Teach Your Baby to Read By Glenn Doman.
- Self productivity by Cunha and Heckman.
- It’s not just where you start in pre-school that counts but the rate of skill growth in oral language and decoding and subsequent writing; skills beget skills in early literacy.
- “Our ability to read becomes really stable, really early.”
- “There is power in setting the stage and setting the stage early.”
- She would like to see all teachers, including early years teachers, getting the respect and professionalism they deserve
- Her realisation of the importance of oral language.
- The “strive for five” framework, developed with Tricia Zucker. How do we help teachers have conversations with students that are meaningful and that expand students’ language in ways.
- Teacher asks an open-ended question (turn 1)
- Student responds
- Teacher can scaffold upwards and provide more challenge through another question or scaffolds downwards, and use an either/or question or similar. This third step is the most critical turn in the sequence.
- Student responds
- Teacher wraps it up
- Revoicing
- Phrase “Strive for Five” was coined by David Dickinson
- When implementing the CHAT programme (Children and Teachers together led by Laura Justice) When teachers tried to become conversationally responsive partners, teachers could change some aspects of their language use but the things that were more difficult to change were some of the most important aspects that needed to change.
- The Learning Language and Loving It program from The Hanen Center.
- Pre-K on My Way from Scholastic.
- When you give children and teachers something to talk about, you can build their language more easily.
- Science lends itself to disciplinary language and to meaningful ideas.
- Promotion of comprehension is all in children’s oral language skills.
- Both knowledge and comprehension strategies are important. Monitoring comprehension is also important.
- It is important for parents to read to children and to talk about what they’re reading and viewing things together.
- We learn language through warm and responsive relationship. This applies in the home and in school (especially in the early grades). Dr. Bob Pianta has studied this area. He created the classroom assessment scoring system. The interactions must be combined with explicit literacy teaching.
- How mothers’ impact on literacy has been studied more than the impact of fathers.
- Criteria she uses when selecting texts to read aloud in school: Begin with your purpose (e.g. building knowledge and language).
- Why she likes The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.
- How she carries out her (mostly quantitative) research: randomised control trials (Core knowledge language arts programme Tricia Zucker from the University of Texas), observational studies, and survey research. How she organises a randomised control trial in education.
- Her research is funded by the Institute of Education Sciences. Other sources of funding in the United States include the National Institutes of Health and the National Science foundation.
- Who educational research is for and how it helps.
- Research in early years literacy today needs to go beyond what works to why it works and who it works for.
- A researcher shouldn’t be trying to prove themselves right but to prove themselves wrong.
- Shayne Piasta, Ohio State University suggests having a journal of null effects.
- Writing is central to what she does. She feels like she has not worked for a day until she has pushed forward a manuscript for publication. If it’s about finding time to write, it will never happen! She is a writer as part of what she does and she builds around that. She stacks meetings and schedules no meetings before noon.
- She was influenced by the work of Linnea Ehri and Susan Neuman.
- This article about the impact of a content rich literacy curriculum is now available freely online.
Tuesday Oct 01, 2024
Tuesday Oct 01, 2024
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
This week on the podcast I speak again to Dr. Siobhán Keenan Fitzgerald whose book Listen: How Child and Student Voice Can Change the World has just been published by Routledge. Among the topics we discussed are:
Among the topics were discussed were:
- Connecting to a network of Changemaker schools
- Getting interested in outdoor education inspired by a colleague who did Forest school training.
- Travelling as part of the Erasmus+ programme.
- Learning about peer mediation and the Student Council in Donabate Educate Together National School.
- The process of becoming recognised as a changemaker school.
- Studying for a doctorate on public speaking in primary school (focusing on self-efficacy and vocabulary development). She used the work of Albert Bandura.
- The paucity of research on public speaking in primary schools.
- The connection between children expressing their voices and public speaking
- Children have opportunities to practise public speaking in team sports settings, in church and in school-related events (e.g. science fair).
- How teachers already recognise student voice in their classrooms (e.g. taking children’s interests and likes into account, in discussions, circle-time activities, rotating class-captain roles, and in choosing pedagogies to promote learning).
- How Siobhán’s school developed the role of play leader, that rotates weekly. Play leaders keep an eye out for younger children, to bring out equipment at break times and ensure it is distributed fairly, push younger children on the swings, and helping children sort out issues themselves without involving adults.
- That which is most personal is most universal – why storytelling is a form of public speaking.
- Matthew Dicks and his ideas of “homework for life” and how this might help children find their personal voice.
- Limits on children expressing their voice.
- Creating a safe space for children speaking in public and involving students in co-creating the rules around it.
- Who the book Listen: How child and student voice can change the world is written for.
- How those who get to speak publicly tend to be the privileged in society
- Shy or reluctant speakers may need additional scaffolding to be encouraged to speak in public. This may include children with speech and language delays or difficulties, children with other additional needs and children for whom English is not their first language.
- What she learned from writing the book: finding two extra hours in each day between 6 and 8 a.m.
- Teachers who want to write a book: If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Reach out!
- The Comfort Crisis, a book by Michael Easter was mentioned.
- She mentioned podcasts she likes including The Rethinking Education podcast by James Mannion; The Teach Middle East podcast with Christina Morris; and the Lead the Way podcast with Ann Byrne was mentioned.
- School 21 in London
- Her YouTube Channel.
Sunday Sep 22, 2024
Sunday Sep 22, 2024
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's programme I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Patrick Burke from Dublin City University's School of Language, Literacy and Early Childhood Education.
Among the topics discussed were:
- Differences between the primary school he attended and the school where he began his teaching career.
- How he became interested in the teaching of literacy.
- Being awarded a fellowship to study at Frostburg State University in 2013-2014.
- Working in the Children’s Literature Centre at Frostburg
- State-wide bans on children’s books in the United States.
- Choosing literature for children (Quirkiness, visuals of picture books, morals (not moralising) and thoughts on the importance of writing quality in children’s literature.
- Science of reading about how you research reading and the components and guidance that come from that. Why the science of reading can inform some, not all, of our decisions about teaching reading.
- The influence of the science of reading on initial teacher education. The importance of basing decision on research evidence (where it is available).
- How teachers develop their professional knowledge: the difference between mandated webinars and those chosen by teachers; allowing for diversity and pluralism in the professional development in-service teachers engage in; social media and professional development; individual versus collaborative approaches to professional development.
- Ways to accredit continuous professional development for teachers.
- Curriculum integration is influenced by factors such as the subject you’re integrating, whether you start with the subject or with a question. The pre-cursor question concerns what we want children to learn and whether some form of integration will benefit that. Depending on the answer to that question, curriculum integration may or may not be a good thing. Publications: https://ncca.ie/media/6370/conceptualising-curriculum-integration.pdf (Report) and the annexes summarising studies are here: https://ncca.ie/media/6368/annex-1-conceptualising-curriculum-integration.pdf and https://ncca.ie/media/6369/annex-2-weaving-the-literature-on-integration-pedagogy-and-assessment.pdf.
- Find out more about the negotiated curriculum in this article and about Beane’s work in the NCCA report.
- Balancing a disciplinary approach with a curriculum approach.
- Patrick’s doctoral dissertation about disciplinary writing. The overall message of the dissertation is “Literacy integration is important but not easily achieved…if you want to do it well.”
- He mentions the work of Sam Wineburg and the credibility of online content.
- The importance of partnerships between schools, teachers and teacher educators in conducting and implementing education research. This raises questions around where research is done and who it’s done for and how teachers are involved in it
- The importance of conducting and sharing small-scale action research done by teachers in their classrooms.
- Student teachers need to be introduced to diverse forms of educational research in their undergraduate education.
- A (rare) randomised controlled trial conducted in primary education in Ireland on the topic of Minecraft and spatial awareness.
- Being a DCU Co-Principal Investigator (with Dr Eithne Kennedy) for the exploratory Erasmus+ funded Artificial Intelligence in Literacy (AILIT) project.
- Scholarly engagement with social media and traditional media.
- Gert Biesta’s purposes of education: Qualification, socialisation, subjectification.
- Learning about kindness in teacher-student relationships from Dr. William Bingman
- Nell Duke is his go-to expert on literacy education.
- His profile page in DCU: https://www.dcu.ie/languageliteracyandearlychildhoodeducation/people/dr-patrick-burke.
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Tuesday Jun 04, 2024
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this week's podcast my guest is Perry Share, who is Head of Student Success at Atlantic Technological University. Among the topics we discuss are:
- The impact of taking a module with Hilary Tovey on rural sociology and a module with Brian Torode and Barbara Bradby on language, discourse and French theory.
- Perry’s belief that artificial intelligence is a catalyst that helps us better understand and question contemporary practices around teaching, learning and assessment.
- Artificial intelligence forces us to ask questions like "What does it mean to assess students?" "How can we teach in ways that are engaging and productive for students?"
- In education, the arts and the humanities, we take text as a representation of what is in students’ heads and tend to make assumptions about the knowledge, understanding or learning held by the student. The foundation is taken out of this when we don’t know where the text comes from.
- Problems are outlined with the take-home assignment, oral assessments and standard written exams but the “unsolvable” problems may constitute a productive space for educators.
- The likes of ChatGPT can be used effectively in fields where you have knowledge. An area of concern in higher education is in relation to fields where people are just beginning to acquire knowledge and understanding. In addition, artificial intelligence threatens opportunities to learn on internships in professional placements.
- Perhaps the role of “learned” knowledge becomes increasingly important for novices in a field whereas in recent years the importance of critical thinking has been lauded.
- It is likely that resources will need to shift from activities we currently value to new – yet-to-be-determined – resources at secondary and higher education levels.
- What prompt engineering is.
- Ethan Mollick’s book Co-Intelligence.
- Examples of good and not-so-good prompts.
- How Perry is using ChatGPT in his own work: summarising large documents; combining documents; Brainstorming; Outlining a proposed structure of a document or presentation. It has been used for computer programming and other tasks.
- Data protection implications may need to be considered in relation to some uses.
- In the future it may be used to grade and provide feedback for public exams.
- Various kinds of data on the results would be available almost immediately.
- Decline in language learning in many countries due to the dominance of English and due to the availability of translation tools.
- The days of the academic essay may be numbered.
- Simulations may be a future direction of assessment in professional settings but these too are not without complications.
- Can we avoid interacting with artificial intelligence?
- Impact on equity in education.
- If students can teach themselves, where does that leave the teacher? There is a job of imagination for teachers to start thinking about how they will work alongside artificial intelligence.
- The impact of artificial intelligence on what (and who) we can trust.
- People Perry respects on the topic of artificial intelligence: Anna Mills, a lecturer in academic writing in the United States; Charles Knight who works for Advance HE; Maha Bali at the America University of Cairo on critical artificial intelligence (environmental, commercial and ethical impacts).
- The purpose of school.
- Daryl Nation
- Raewyn Connell’s book The Good University.
Perry's own expanding list of resources on artificial intelligence is available here.
Saturday May 04, 2024
Saturday May 04, 2024
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
The format of this podcast differs a bit from the usual one in that I am joined by my colleague in Marino Institute of Education, Dr. Gene Mehigan to discuss a book that influenced him on his journey as a teacher and teacher educator. The Book is The Master by Bryan MacMahon, published by Poolbeg Press in 1992. Among the topics we discuss are the following:
- How a book about teaching in Rural Ireland from the 1930s to the 1970s could speak to a teacher in a DEIS band 1 school in Darndale in the 1980s and 1990s.
- The consequences of poverty on children in schools.
- The “stain” of large classes (and their impact on children with language difficulties in particular).
- The importance of reading
- How Bryan MacMahon encouraged children to collect words (red notebook) and Gene Mehigan’s variation of it (jar on teacher’s desk).
- Stages in a reading lesson as outlined by Bryan MacMahon (who noted that they are not rigid and may need modern modification):
- Arousal of interest (day before)
- Introduction (before lesson begins to heighten interest in the text)
- Examination of matter expressed in the text (Comprehension)
- Examination of matter implied in the text (Comprehension)
- Write difficult words on blackboard (Tier 1, 2 and 3 words today)
- Teacher models reading
- Children read aloud or silently
- Isolate phrases for composition usage
- Informed organic chat (in style of everyday conversation)
- Dramatisation of the text (Reader’s theatre today)
- Committal to rote “not to be scorned on special occasions”
- Why a teacher needs to back down in a confrontational situation with a pupil
- Characteristics of a good teacher;
- Dedication
- Sense of humour
- Clear penetration in the timbre of the teacher’s speaking voice
- A love of learning
- Versatility of approach to a lesson
- A congenial monotony (that can be departed from)
- Occasional informal language
- Good blackboard use and being able to sketch
- Act in harmony with the traditions and culture of the school area
- Bringing the extraordinary into your teaching.
- The teacher’s job is to help each child find their special gift.
- Bryan MacMahon: “I realised that each child had a gift, and that the ‘leading out’ of that gift was the proper goal of teaching. To me a great teacher was simply a great person teaching.”
- Thoughts on a school library, access to books and encouraging children to read.
- Trying to entice children to read by tidying books. Buddy reading – to help beginning or reluctant readers but also helping older children consolidate their interest it reading. Helping a teacher narrow down who in a class might have dyslexia
- How Brian MacMahon practised an early version of “home-school liaison”
- Contemporary resonances – children from Germany fostered by local families during World War II.
- How Bryan MacMahon recruited children to look after other children who were vulnerable in some way
- Resonances with Johathan Haidt’s book The Coddling of the American Mind (preparing the child for the road and not the road for the child).
- How learning tables enthusiastically helped a pupil later excel as an emigrant
- “A school is nothing if it is not a place of laughter and song.”
- Sources of creativity in education
- The importance of a teacher being a philomath.
Thursday Apr 25, 2024
Thursday Apr 25, 2024
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
In this episode I interview Hugh Catts from the Florida State University about reading comprehension, dyslexia and more. People interviewed on previous Inside Education podcasts are mentioned in this episode: Jerome Kagan, Daniel T. Willingham and Tim Shanahan.
Among the topics raised on the podcast are:
- How his interest in educational research grew from problems members of his family, including himself, had in learning to read.
- The benefits of having knowledge of phonetics and linguistics in studying reading difficulties
- His thoughts on whether someone with reading difficulties can teach reading well
- How he became interested in comprehension
- Why thinking about comprehension as a skill is unhelpful in teaching reading
- Comprehension is a complex set of behaviours or cognitive processes that is more like listening. It is the interaction between the reader and the text they’re reading to construct meaning between what is written in the text and what the reader already knows about the topic.
- Comprehension needs to be taught within the context of the subject matter we want the reader to understand.
- Quote from Daniel Willingham: “Memory is the residue of thought.”
- “Comprehension is essentially changing your understanding of the topic based upon the text.”
- “The more you learn about a topic, the more interested you are in learning more about the topic because you feel comfortable with it.”
- The “simple view of reading” claims that reading comprehension is a two-stage process where you decode/recognise the word and thereby turn print into language; this is followed by turning the meaning of words into the larger meaning of the text. Decoding can be learned over a number of years whereas the language comprehension part is learned over a lifetime. The view has advantages and disadvantages.
- We’re missing a good curriculum “in some cases by focusing in early reading on reading rather than focusing on subject matters to where you can gain the knowledge at the same time as you’re gaining knowledge about reading.”
- Questions teachers can ask to help develop children’s comprehension. (E.g. what are you thinking about? How does this relate to what you already know? What experiences have you had that are related to this?
- Assessing comprehension. It’s not easy to measure!
- “You cannot reduce comprehension down to a single score because it’s not a single thing.”
- Comprehension should be tested within texts on the subject matter upon which children have been provided with instruction.
- Benefits and shortcomings of cloze procedure to test comprehension
- Evaluating psychologist Jerome Kagan’s stance on dyslexia.
- Comparing the neurological basis of dyslexia with someone who has little musical ability.
- There is no consistent brain-based marker for dyslexia.
- The difference between someone who has dyslexia and who does not have dyslexia is evident in how much you struggle to read when provided with quality instruction.
- How dyslexia and comprehension difficulties could co-occur or could occur independently
- Consequences of having dyslexia
- The causes of dyslexia are multi-factorial, some relate to risk and some to resilience
- The probability that a child might have reading problems can be determined before a child has reading problems.
- Dyslexia cannot be diagnosed until the end of first class/beginning of second class.
- Intensive, systematic, supportive and scaffolded instruction from an early stage can help students who are at risk of having dyslexia.
- Having dyslexia is not a categorical phenomenon – it exists on a continuum.
- How he finds time to write.
- He likes the work of Daniel T. Willingham, Tim Shanahan, and Natalie Wexler
Tuesday Apr 02, 2024
Tuesday Apr 02, 2024
On this week's podcast I speak to Professor Etta Hollins from the University of Missouri-Kansas City about teacher education and the role of the teacher. Among the topics we discussed are:
- Why observation is key to good teaching practice and learning to teach
- The need to be observing, documenting and analysing classroom practice from early in a student teacher’s course
- How the influence of theorists like Jerome Bruner and John Dewey can be seen in classroom practice
- Directed observation – how the subject you're studying narrows your focus of observation
- She gives an example of how a student teacher might learn to teach with reference to learning to teach aspects of early literacy. She illustrates her point with reference to the book Brown Bear Brown Bear by Bill Martin and Eric Carle.
- As the teacher educator, she engages in epistemic practices (practices related to knowledge) with student teachers including focused inquiry (studying something specific that you’re going to be able to observe or apply).
- Knowing when it’s time to redesign a teacher education programme.
- How to solicit feedback on a teacher education programme’s impact and outcomes. (Do peers trust graduates’ knowledge? How do school leaders evaluate performance of our graduates?)
- Using generic versus subject-specific instruments to evaluate student teachers’ teaching.
- A student is ready to graduate from their teacher education programme when they can consistently apply academic knowledge to practice and make adjustments as needed for differences among children and get the learning outcomes that are expected for the child’s age, grade and subject matter. How students can progressively demonstrate their development of teacher knowledge throughout their programme.
- Why she believes assessing students in particular contexts does not mean that their competence is confined to those contexts: responding to students is a habit of mind that can be transferred to wherever you are teaching.
- She draws a parallel between how teachers respond to children in classrooms and how she responds to teacher educators when reviewing teacher education programmes.
- Why teachers need not just academic knowledge but to be aware of why they’re teaching. Teachers need a bigger purpose for their work.
- How children responded to her as a middle-school history teacher
- “Every teacher, whether they do it intentionally or not, influences children’s perception, their relationships, their values and who they become.”
- How extreme events such as school shootings can be traced to children being isolated, excluded by their peers in school.
- A teacher’s role is to help every child find a place of comfort in the school, learn to build relationships with peers, and help peers become more accepting of difference.
- Bank Street in New York is an example of how teachers can help transform schools and communities serving students from socially and economically backgrounds.
- Schools founded by John Dewey. At the centre of such schools was the study of children. He conceptualised how learning takes place and he had a conception of diversity. The spirit has been maintained because of a sense of clarity and commitment to John Dewey’s principles.
- The Lab school in Chicago was founded by John Dewey and takes children from low-income environments.
- Culture influences cognition, values and practices.
- She compares how children learn to think with how they learn a language from caregivers.
- She gives an example of how student teachers trusted their own experience over theory. She gave them an experience to help them understand difference.
- She is inspired by the awesome responsibility of being a professional educator.
Monday Dec 12, 2022
Monday Dec 12, 2022
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney
On this podcast I spoke to Professor Mark Windschitl from the University of Washington about teaching science and especially the science of climate change. As usual with these podcasts we covered a wide range of topics, including the following:
- What core practices are in teacher education (e.g. teachers need to elicit ideas students already have about the topic being taught).
- Why, although important, there is much more to teaching than core practices, such as developing respectful and trusting relationships with students.
- As teachers gain experience, they add nuance and flexibility to the core practices.
- What ambitious science teaching is: willingness to constantly improve one’s practice, to take risks to improve their practice and to base changes on students’ response to their teaching.
- The need for a teacher pursuing ambitious science teaching to understand topics (e.g. the greenhouse effect) in great depth, with flexibility, and connected to children’s everyday lives.
- The biggest ideas in biology that can be taught in a second-level school setting (e.g. how ecosystems function in the world).
- Trees extend their roots out to other trees and can cause chemical changes in other trees.
- Selecting candidates for teaching science and engaging in ambitious science teaching
- How the impact of testing in schools shapes the curriculum.
- The importance of academically productive discourse in the classroom about science ideas. Productive talk in a classroom is a process of sense-making and meaning making.
- The need for teachers to have models of ambitious science teaching that is relevant to the setting in which they teach.
- How to teach children the science of climate change without elevating eco-anxiety.
- Why solutions need to be threaded into the teaching of climate change
- The importance of understanding the greenhouse effect and why understanding that is not enough (the need to know about ecosystems, the oceans, the cryosphere – the frozen parts of the earth, and tipping points)
- The scale of climate change phenomena
- The idea of “carbon footprint” was introduced by a petroleum company (BP)
- What schools can do to mitigate the effects of climate change (e.g. making Prom night – the Debs – greener)
- Plastics pollution is different to climate change but both are connected in many students’ minds
- Students being exposed to sceptical points of view in some areas. Although such perspectives need to be managed carefully, sceptical views might not be as big a problem as we would expect. It may help to focus on the science of the greenhouse effect.
- The challenge of beef production as part of the climate change discussion
- The difficulty of conveying the scale of climate change
- Finding and evaluating climate change data – the challenge of media literacy. Among the known reputable outlets he identifies are: NASA, NOAA, WHO, and the UN.
- The importance of having a reason when sharing data about climate change.
- Assessing students’ knowledge of climate change
- How he became interested in education research
- How he conducts his research to find out how novice teachers become “well-started beginners”
- Helping novice teachers use agency to move beyond reproducing someone else’s teaching
- How he finds time to write – bringing a notebook with him when going out for a stroll and doing 14 versions of an article before it’s ready for publication
- Who research in education is for and how does it influence practice in education? Is it through instructional coaches? School leaders?
- Having children do well-structured work in small groups (that is equitable and rigorous) in class, at least part of the time, is hugely beneficial for their learning.
- Productive academic discourse in science is difficult to find in classrooms in the Unites States.
- Another research question is why technology failed to deliver for education during COVID
- Why schools and the communities around them should have porous boundaries
- The value of a teacher sharing (a) the kind of science they’re interested in (b) something about their family and (c) a hobby they have with their class in order to decrease the psychological difference between the teacher and their students.
- He refers to the book Teaching and its predicaments by David Cohen.
Sunday Jun 05, 2022
Sunday Jun 05, 2022
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
On this podcast I discussed social and emotional learning with Professor Sara Rimm-Kaufman from the University of Virginia School of Education and Human Development.
Among the topics discussed were:
- What social and emotional learning is
- The implicit and explicit process of learning social and emotional skills
- How children can learn empathy
- Her book for teachers: SEL from the Start
- From listening to respectful communication to respecting others’ perspectives
- Where social emotional learning fits in the regular school curriculum
- What service learning is and examples of it in practice
- Three possible categories of service learning solutions: Educate others, change a policy or take direct action.
- The relationship between service learning and project-based learning
- How Sara Rimm-Kaufman and her colleagues (including Tracy Harkins and Eileen Merritt) developed Connect Science, a scheme that uses the service learning approach to combine social emotional learning and academic content
- Applying service learning in different curriculum subject areas
- The notion of “fidelity of implementation” in education research (and an “intent to treat” analysis)
- The theme that characterises her research interests: the centrality of social emotional learning (e.g. for racial equity) and the widespread practices in school that have never been studied but would benefit from research into their effectiveness or lack of effectiveness
- The source of her research interests
- Her early research on primates and working with Professor Jerry Kagan to subsequently working in schools with children in first grade.
- Why she likes conducting research in schools, despite the challenges such research brings
- Relational trust – what it is and why it is important among the adults in a school
- Who has responsibility for building relational trust among the adult community in a school?
- Building relational trust with and among children in a school
- The relation between a teacher’s beliefs and their practice – a bidirectional process.
- She loves the work of Dan Willingham, a former guest on this podcast.
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
Wednesday Mar 16, 2022
Presented and produced by Seán Delaney.
In this episode I speak to Professor Art Baroody from the College of Education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign about matters related to counting and early mathematical development. Professor Baroody shares insights from his extensive research in children's early mathematical learning with anecdotes from his life and work. Among the topics we discuss are:
- The word “count” is ambiguous; he prefers the terms verbal counting and object counting. Along with subitising, these are foundational for children’s sense of number.
- The rote portion of numbers (up to 12 in English) and the rule-governed portion of numbers (13 onwards in English)
- Being able to meaningfully count objects means understanding the cardinality principle
- How a teacher can assess a child’s competence in object counting. The “hidden stars” game.
- The importance of subitising (easily recognising, without counting, the number in a set). If a child can subitise small sets of objects and connect it to their verbal counting knowledge, the child can get insights into the structure of the count sequence and into our number system.
- The importance of children understanding the “increasing magnitude” principle of numbers.
- Subitising and learning addition and subtraction concepts
- The value of playing dice games.
- The successor principle: Each step in the counting sequence means you added one more.
- A child who starts out behind in kindergarten, typically gets further behind as school goes on, indicating the importance of informal mathematical knowledge for school readiness.
- Three components of a hypothetical learning trajectory: a goal, a learning progression, instructional activities that help children move from one level to the next.
- The relevance of a hypothetical learning trajectory for a teacher’s work: questions and instruction need to be developmentally appropriate for children.
- What number comes after 9? Whether you need to start at 1 or can answer this directly depends on your current level of understanding numbers.
- How schools typically target instruction at a level that is too low or too high for students.
- There are many published learning progressions and hypothetical learning trajectories available to teachers now, especially in number, arithmetic and counting development.
- A child’s mathematical power, routine expertise (learning something by rote – hard to apply it to a new problem and easy to forget) and adaptive expertise (learning something with understanding)
- Mathematical power comes from understanding, engaging in mathematical inquiry, to reason mathematically, to solve problems, having an interest in mathematics and using it. In short, conceptual understanding, mathematical thinking skills, and a positive disposition towards mathematics
- Example of applying knowledge to finding the area of a parallelogram
- Why memorising mathematics by rote is crazy.
- All children, even those with learning disabilities, can develop mathematical power up to lower secondary school level, if properly taught.
- Teaching mathematics by rote is cheating children.
- Things that can be discovered are the additive commutativity principle (3+5 = 5+3)
- Children are capable of much more than we give them credit for.
- Why getting children to learn off tables of number facts is cheating children. The importance of seeing patterns and relationships in the number tables – make it a thinking exercise and make mathematics learning fun.
- Working with his mentor Herb Ginsburg
- The use of manipulatives in teaching mathematics, even to college-level students.
- The value of children inventing procedures themselves.
- To understand fraction multiplication, the analogy of multiplication as repeated addition does not suffice. You need a more powerful analogy. A “groups of” analogy is more helpful. And it helps you understand why multiplication doesn’t always make something bigger.
- How to make sense of fraction division.
- How he conducts his research (Case study; random controlled trials)
- Substitution errors in reading
- John Holt’s books
- John Dewey’s book, Experience and Education
- Why parents and teachers need to be patient
- The power of examples and non-examples when teaching mathematics.