Category Archives: What I’m Reading

07/26/14

Maria Montessori: A Biography, by Rita Kramer

What a long slog. However, lots of interesting details about her life that I didn’t know! Montessori was a super rad liberal feminist! Who knew?

The details about the conditions for children at the asylum were really hard to read.

Maria strikes me as a bit cagey, as Kramer describes her. She appears unprone to trusting others with her precious model. While she has the utmost confidence in the capabilities of children, she tends to regard adults with suspicion.

03/27/14

Attachment in the Classroom

Bergin, C., & Bergin, D. (2009). Attachment in the classroom. Educational Psychology Review, 21, 141-170.

The authors take attachment theory and apply it to the classroom in terms of the effects of various kinds of attachment on student learning, as well as ways that teachers can help to support students through their relationships with them. We are told that strong attachment to both parents and teachers is associated with lower rates of ADHD, higher grades and greater social competence. As well, to create strong attachment in children it is best to use supportive comments, communicate openly and directly, and to not be too controlling or overbearing.

03/27/14

Choice is good, but relevance is excellent: Autonomy-enhancing and suppressing teacher behaviours predicting students’ engagement in schoolwork.

Assor, A., Kaplan, H., & Roth, G. (2002). Choice is good, but relevance is excellent: Autonomy‐enhancing and suppressing teacher behaviours predicting students’ engagement in schoolwork. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 72(2), 261-27

Exactly as the title suggests, this article explores teacher behaviours that promote engagement in the classroom. It discusses the contributions and evolution of Self-Determination Theory’s overarching categorizations of behaviour. The article establishes that students understanding the relevance of their learning is crucial to their engagement.

03/25/14

Autonomy (Anderman and Anderman, 2010)

Anderman, E. M. & Anderman, L. H. (2010). Classroom motivation. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson (see Chapters 7 (promoting autonomy, pp. 111-129) and 11 (motivational classrooms for all learners, pp. 186-205)). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Merrill.

This chapter is a great overview of autonomy in the classroom: how to support it, and why we should bother. It also focuses quite a bit on the provisions of choice as a way of accomplishing that. One of the great things about this article is how it lays out the different kinds of choice that we should consider when planning our time and activities in class. Included are: within-task choices, between-task choices and the choice of where  to work. As well, it talks about using choice and autonomy to build a better classroom environment, such as by making choice a private matter so that students are not swayed in their choices by peer pressure, or by allowing students to build their own classroom charter.

03/19/14

Self-Regulation Empowerment Program

Cleary, T. J., & Zimmerman, B. J. (2004). Self-regulation empowerment program: A school-based program to enhance selfregulated and self-motivated cycles of student learning. Psychology in the Schools, 41(5), 537-550.

This article discusses the implementation of an SRL empowerment program in which students were provided with strategies to help with self-regulation. The program tries to focus on supporting autonomy and SRL through support of self-efficacy. Examples are given of using evidence to prove to students that they are capable, with the right strategies, of success. In this way students come to believe themselves capable, and in turn become more successful.

02/3/14

Do You Let Kids Fail?

This is one case from a book of case studies on co-operative learning. A chemistry teacher split her students into groups and had each group be responsible for one section of a unit in chemistry. When students were stuck or needed help she would not directly answer questions for them, but rather guided them with more questions. All but one of the groups succeeded in the task. The teacher did not step in to teach their section but rather had a class discussion about what could be done when a group didn’t get along. She let the students fail not only the project, but fail their colleagues who were still responsible for learning the material that they were supposed to teach.

Lotan, R. A., Shulman, J., & Whitcomb, J. A. (1998). Chapter One-Case Four: Do you let kids fail? In Groupwork in diverse
classrooms: A casebook for educators (pp. 24-29). New York: Teachers College Press.

01/20/14

Motivation: What Teachers Need to Know

Some main points from Ames’ article, Motivation: What Teachers Need to Know

Motivation plays a BIG part in our classrooms and in student learning.

Motivation and self-efficacy are linked. Fear of failure can paralyze students and prevent them from trying. Young children often have better self-efficacy than older ones (optimism!) and are more resilient after failure. Some students will choose to not try at all on a task, as trying and failing can be worse than simply not trying.

Effectiveness of strategies for helping students succeed depend on two things:1. Whether the student owns and understands how to apply the strategy. 2. Whether the student is willing to apply the necessary effort to try it out.

Teacher Ed programs don’t delve into motivation enough and thus don’t prepare teachers to make the theory-to-practice leap.

Over-praise or praise on easy tasks can give the child a sense that they lack ability and can undermine motivation.

Extrinsic rewards may have the unintended consequence of conditioning students to becoming more extrinsically controlled. See: Hidden Curriculum, Jackson.

Ames, C. A. (1990). Motivation: What Teachers Need to Know. Teachers College Record.  91:3, 409-421.

01/20/14

A Case Against Grades (Kohn, 2012)

“A student asked his Zen master how long it would take to reach enlightenment. ‘Ten years, ‘ the master said. But, the student persisted, what if he studied very hard? ‘Then 20 years,’ the master responded. Surprised, the student asked how long it would take if he worked very, very hard. ‘In that case, 30 years,’ the master replied. His explanation: ‘If you have one eye on how close you are to achieving your goal, that leaves only one eye for your task.'”

 

Are grades a demotivater? What is the role of grades in the elementary  or middle school classroom? This article argues that grades are a deterrent for students to take risks in their learning, encouraging them instead to do just what is needed for the marks rather than learning for its own sake. Kohn presents the question of whether it is fair to be preparing students to be good at following other people’s instructions and criteria while leaving little space for students themselves to decide what matters and how to assess their own learning. Is it time to move from “measuring” to more meaningful assessment in schools? The Surrey School District seems to think so. De-grading will likely change the very underpinnings of what we assume about learning and academic success. As the BC school board moves away from the knitty-gritty PLO’s to much more overarching ideas and concepts, will the factory modeled school system be no more?

CBC Article on Surrey No-grade Pilot Program: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/surrey-school-district-extends-its-no-letter-grades-program-1.2485832

Kohn, A. (2012). The case against grades. Educational Leadership, 69(3), 28-33.