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Class
size alone not enough to close academic achievement gap
A Northwestern University study
investigating the effects of class size on the achievement gap between high
and low academic achievers suggests that high achievers benefit more from
small classes than low achievers, especially at the kindergarten and first
grade levels.
“While decreasing class size may
increase achievement on average for all types of students, it does not appear
to reduce the achievement gap within a class,” said Spyros Konstantopoulos,
assistant professor at Northwestern’s School of Education and Social Policy. Konstantopoulos’ study, which
appears in the March issue of Elementary School Journal, questions commonly
held assumptions about class size and the academic achievement gap -- one of
the most debated and perplexing issues in education today.
Konstantopoulos worked with data on
mathematics and reading achievement provided by Tennessee’s Project STAR
(Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio), an unprecedented four-year longitudinal
class-size study encompassing over 11,000 K-3 students in 79 schools. The project found, not
surprisingly, that smaller class size is a better situation for the children
at all achievement levels, and previous analyses saw rising achievement on
average. For most advocates, parents, and policy makers, this was enough. But when Konstantopoulos dug
deeper, he found that the children who are already high achievers benefited
the most from the extra attention afforded by smaller classes. Low achievers
also benefited from being in small classes (compared to low achievers in
regular size classes), but they did not benefit as much as high achievers.
Unfortunately, he also found that the smaller classes produced higher
variability in achievement, which indicates that the achievement gap between
low and high achievers is larger in small classes than in regular size
classes, especially in kindergarten and first grade.
Do smaller classes help
students" Yes...and no. Konstantopoulos finds that “although all types
of students benefited from being in small classes, reductions in class size
did not reduce the achievement gap between low and high achievers” He
concludes by calling for more observational studies of classrooms themselves,
as we still do not know how to address one of the most vexing problems—the
achievement gap between students—facing educators and policy-makers, today. “It is likely that high achievers
are more engaged in learning opportunities and take advantage of the teaching
practices that take place in smaller classes, or that they create
opportunities for their own learning in smaller classes,” said
Konstantoupoulos. “Given that class size reduction is
an intervention that benefits all students, it’s tempting to expect that it
also will reduce the achievement gap,” he added. Previous research, however,
has provided weak or no evidence that class reduction benefited
lower-achieving students more than others. The Northwestern study underscores
that research. The Northwestern study findings
suggest that small classes produce significantly higher variability in
achievement than regular classes in kindergarten mathematics and in first
grade reading. Overall the results indicate that class size reduction
increases not only achievement for all students on average, but the
variability in student achievement as well. “It is unfortunate that data about
classroom practices that could be useful in identifying ways of improving
academic success for lower achieving students were not available in Project
STAR,” Konstantopoulos said. “A new randomized experiment with the objective
of collecting high-quality observational data in the classrooms would provide
invaluable information about the effects of small classes.” Children’s under-achievement could be down to
poor working memory Children who under-achieve at
school may just have poor working memory rather than low intelligence
according to researchers. The researchers from Durham
University, who surveyed over three thousand children, have produced the
world's first tool to assess memory capacity in the classroom. They found that ten per cent of
school children across all age ranges suffer from poor working memory
seriously affecting their learning. Nationally, this equates to almost half a
million children in primary education alone being affected. However, the researchers identified
that poor working memory is rarely identified by teachers, who often describe
children with this problem as inattentive or as having lower levels of
intelligence. The new tool, a combination of a
checklist and computer programme informed by several years of concentrated
research into poor working memory in children, will for the first time enable
teachers to identify and assess children’s memory capacity in the classroom
from as early as four years old. The researchers believe this early
assessment of children will enable teachers to adopt new approaches to
teaching, thus helping to address the problem of under-achievement in
schools. Without appropriate intervention,
poor working memory in children, which is thought to be genetic, can affect
long-term academic success into adulthood and prevent children from achieving
their potential, say the academics. Although the tools have already
been piloted successfully in 35 schools across the UK and have now been
translated into ten foreign languages, this is the first time they are widely
available. Working memory is the ability to
hold information in your head and manipulate it mentally. You use this mental
workspace when adding up two numbers spoken to you by someone else without
being able to use pen and paper or a calculator. Children at school need this
memory on a daily basis for a variety of tasks such as following teachers’
instructions or remembering sentences they have been asked to write down. Lead researcher Dr Tracy Alloway
from Durham University’s School of Education, who, with colleagues, has
published widely on the subject, explains further: “Working memory is a bit
like a mental jotting pad and how good this is in someone will either ease
their path to learning or seriously prevent them from learning. “From the various large-scale
studies we have done, we believe the only way children with poor working
memory can go onto achieving academic success is by teaching them how to
learn despite their smaller capacity to store information mentally. “Currently, children are not
identified and assessed for working memory within a classroom setting. Early
identification of these children will be a major step towards addressing
under-achievement. It will mean teachers can adapt their methods to help the
children’s learning before they fall too far behind their peers.” The checklist, called the Working
Memory Rating Scale (WMRS), will enable teachers to identify children who
they think may have a problem with working memory without immediately
subjecting them to a test. A high score on this checklist shows that a child
is likely to have working memory problems that will affect their academic
progress. If the teacher feels significantly
concerned about a child’s performance in class, he or she can then get the
child to do the computerised Automated Working Memory Assessment (AWMA). The
tools also suggest ways for teachers to manage the children’s working memory
loads which will minimise the chances of children failing to complete tasks.
Recommendations include repetition of instructions, talking in simple short
sentences and breaking down tasks into smaller chunks of information. Both tools are published by Pearson
Assessment. The research that provided the foundation for the AWMA was funded
by the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy. Case study – Head teacher from
Lakes Primary School in Redcar, Cleveland Lakes Primary School has been
working with Dr Alloway in learning how to identify poor working memory using
the new tools. A number of teachers have been trained to screen the children
for working memory. Head teacher Chris Evans said: “Dr
Alloway’s research into working memory really caught my interest as I could
readily recognise how some children at Lakes School may well suffer from poor
working memory. With some of the staff now trained to identify problems, we
have the knowledge and tools to carry out a proper assessment and have the
skills to help these children be more successful in school.
“We are already beginning to see
children in a different light knowing more about the difficulties faced by
children with impaired working memory. We realise that they are not
daydreamers, inattentive or underachieving, but children who simply need a different
approach. We think these new ways of learning can help both the teacher and
the children to successfully complete their work.”
When do we use working memory in
everyday life? ·
Remembering a new
telephone number, PIN number, web address or vehicle registration number. ·
Following spoken
directions such as go straight over at the roundabout, take the second left
and the building is on the right opposite the church. ·
Remembering the
unfamiliar foreign name of a person who has just been introduced to you for
long enough to enable you to introduce them to someone else. Measuring and combining the correct
amounts of ingredients (rub in 50g of margarine and 100g of flour, and then
add 75g of sugar) when you have just read the recipe but are no longer
looking at the page. Why Do We Have a Knowledge Deficit? The idea that reading skill is
largely a set of general-purpose maneuvers that can be applied to any and all
texts is one of the main barriers to our children's overall low achievement
in reading, argues Policy Perspectives author E. D. Hirsch, Jr. It leads to
activities that are deadening for agile and eager minds, and it carries huge
opportunity costs. These activities take up time that could be devoted to
gaining general knowledge, which, according to Hirsch, is the central
requisite for high reading skill. Writes Hirsch: "We need to help create a
public demand for the kind of knowledge-oriented reading program that is
needed. If that demand arises, then the rest can safely be left to the
cunning of the market, for most of us in the United States desire the same
democratic goal — to give all children an opportunity to succeed that depends
mainly on their own talents and character and not on who their parents happen
to be. We also need to encourage an early curriculum that is oriented to
knowledge rather than the will-o’-the-wisps of general, formal skills." Full paper: http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/pp-07-02.pdf The Enhanced Reading Opportunities Study: Early
Impact and Implementation Findings This report presents early findings from the
Enhanced Reading Opportunities (ERO) study — a demonstration and rigorous
evaluation of two supplemental literacy programs that aim to improve the
reading comprehension skills and school performance of struggling ninth grade
readers. The present report — the first of three — focuses
on the first of two cohorts of ninth grade students who will participate in
the study and discusses the impact that the two interventions had on these
students’ reading comprehension skills through the end of their ninth-grade
year. The report also describes the implementation of the programs during the
first year of the study and provides an assessment of the overall fidelity
with which the participating schools adhered to the program design specified
by the developers. The
Supplemental Literacy Interventions The ERO study is a test of supplemental literacy
interventions that are designed as fully ear courses and targeted to students
whose reading skills are two or more years below grade level as they enter
high school. Two programs — Reading Apprenticeship Academic Literacy,
designed by WestEd, and Xtreme Reading, designed by the University of Kansas
Center for Research on Learning — were selected for the study from a pool of
17 applicants by a national panel of experts on adolescent literacy. To
qualify for the project, the programs were required to focus instruction in
the following areas: (1) student motivation and engagement; (2) reading
fluency, or the ability to read quickly, accurately, and with appropriate
expression; (3) vocabulary, or word knowledge; (4) comprehension, or making
meaning from text; (5) phonics and phonemic awareness (for students who could
still benefit from instruction in these areas); and (6) writing. The overarching goals of both programs are to help
ninth-grade students adopt the strategies and routines used by proficient
readers, improve their comprehension skills, and be motivated to read more
and to enjoy reading. Both programs are supplemental in that they consist of
a year-long course that replaces a ninth-grade elective class, rather than a
core academic class, and in that they are offered in addition to students’
regular English language arts classes. The primary differences between the two literacy
interventions selected for the ERO study lie in their approach to
implementation. Implementation of Reading Apprenticeship Academic
Literacy is guided by the concept of “flexible fidelity” — that is, while the
program includes a detailed curriculum, the teachers are trained to adapt
their lessons to meet the needs of their students and to supplement program
materials with readings that are motivating to their classes. Teachers have
flexibility in how they include various aspects of the Reading Apprenticeship
curriculum in their day-to-day teaching activities, but have been trained to
do so such that they maintain the overarching spirit, themes, and goals of
the program in their instruction. Implementation of Xtreme Reading is guided by the
philosophy that the presentation of instructional material — particularly the
order and timing with which the lessons are presented — is of critical import
to students’ understanding of the strategies and skills being taught. As
such, teachers are trained to deliver course content and materials in a
precise, organized, and systematic fashion designed by the developers. Xtreme
Reading teachers follow a prescribed implementation plan, following specific
day-by-day lesson plans in which activities have allotted segments of time
within each class period. Teachers also use responsive instructional
practices to adapt and adjust to student needs that arise as they move
through the highly structured curriculum. The key findings discussed in the report include
the following: • On average, across the 34 participating high
schools, the supplemental literacy programs improved student reading
comprehension test scores. This impact estimate is statistically significant. Despite the
improvement in reading comprehension, 76 percent of the students who enrolled
in the ERO classes were still reading at two or more years below grade level
at the end of ninth grade. • Although they are not statistically
significant, the magnitudes of the impact estimates for each literacy
intervention are the same as those for the full study sample. • Impacts on reading comprehension are larger
for the 15 schools where (1) the ERO programs began within six weeks of the
start of the school year and (2) implementation was classified as moderately
or well aligned with the program model, compared with impacts for the 19
schools where at least one of these conditions was not met. The difference in impacts on reading comprehension
between these two groups of schools is statistically significant. It is
important to note, however, that these two factors did not necessarily cause
the differences in impacts and that other factors may be also associated with
differences in estimated impacts across schools. Full report: http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/pdf/20084015.pdf The System-wide Change for All
Learners and Educators Project – Math and Science SCALE is a national network of more
than 50 working groups of educators and researchers focused on improving
mathematics and science teaching and learning at all levels. Funded in the 2002
Math and Science Partnership (MSP) competition, this 5-year comprehensive MSP
project currently includes four major urban school districts (Denver Public
Schools, Los Angeles Unified School District, Madison Metropolitan School
District, and Providence (RI) Public Schools), and three universities
(University of Wisconsin-Madison, California State University, Dominguez
Hills and Northridge). The vision of the SCALE partnership
is to make it the rule, instead of the exception, for every student, every year,
to experience high-quality teaching of core mathematics and science concepts.
The partnership brings together mathematicians, scientists, engineers and
education practitioners to build a new approach to reforming K-12 mathematics
and science education. The partnership seeks to improve
the mathematics and science achievement of all students at all grade levels
in the four partner school districts by engaging them in deep and authentic
science and mathematics instructional experiences. Simultaneously, the
partnership seeks to improve pre-service and in-service mathematics and
science professional learning. Finally, the partnership seeks to improve
models of collaboration among K-12 and post-secondary institutions in ways
that more fully integrate engineering, mathematics and science faculty. The
goal is to provide a seamless K-through-Infinity education system in the
service of mathematics and science education for all. Students' performance on annual
math and science assessments improved in almost every age group when their
schools were involved in a program that partners K-12 teachers with their
colleagues in higher education. While an earlier study tracked schools that
began work in the first year of the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Math
and Science Partnership program (MSP), the most recent study followed more
than 300 schools participating in partnerships that began to be funded during
the program's second year. Read more: http://www.scalemsp.org/index.php?q=Student_Results_Show_Benefits More reports: http://www.scalemsp.org/index.php?q=taxonomy_menu/13/121 As Schools Spend More Time on Reading and Math, Curriculum-Narrowing Effect is Revealed Last summer, a groundbreaking report verified what
many in the education and policy communities had long suspected: that a
majority of the nation’s school districts were increasing time spent on
reading and math in elementary schools since the No Child Left Behind Act
became law in 2002, while most of these districts cut back on time spent on
other subjects. A follow-up report issued by the Washington, D.C.-based
Center on Education Policy provides an unprecedented look at the magnitude of
those changes. In its earlier report, CEP found that a majority of
school districts—62 percent— had increased time for English language arts
(ELA) and/or math in elementary schools since school year 2001-02. Meanwhile,
44 percent had increased time for ELA and/or math at the elementary level,
while simultaneously cutting time from one or more areas including science,
social studies, art and music, physical education, recess, and lunch. CEP’s new report, Instructional Time in
Elementary Schools: A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects, examines the size of the shifts in those
districts, in order to determine just how extensive the changes were. According to the report, districts increasing time
for ELA and math had done so by an average of 43 percent, or about three
hours each week. To make room for the added time for ELA and math, districts
reducing time in other areas averaged cuts of about 32 percent across those
subjects, nearly 2.5 hours each week. Some of the districts reduced their
time in one subject, while other districts decreased instructional time in
several areas. “We knew that many school districts had made shifts in the
time spent teaching different subjects since the No Child Left Behind was
enacted, but we had little evidence of the magnitude of these changes within
those districts,” said Jack Jennings, president and CEO of CEP. “Digging
deeper into the data, we now know that the amount of time spent teaching
reading, math and other subjects has changed substantially. In other words,
changes in curriculum are not only widespread but also deep.” According to the report, eight out of 10 of the
districts that increased time for ELA did so by at least 75 minutes per week,
and more than half (54 percent) increased by 150 minutes or more per week, or
at least 30 minutes per day. Of the districts adding time for math, 63
percent increased by at least 75 minutes per week, with 19 percent adding 150
minutes or more per week. Of the districts that both increased time for ELA
or math and reduced time in other subjects, a large majority—72 percent—cut
time by at least 75 minutes per week for one or more of the other subjects.
For example, more than half (53 percent) of these districts cut instructional
time by at least 75 minutes per week in social studies, and the same
percentage (53 percent) cut time by at least 75 minutes per week in science.
Both of CEP’s reports on curriculum, including Instructional Time in
Elementary Schools: A Closer Look at Changes for Specific Subjects, and Choices, Changes, and Challenges:
Curriculum and Instruction in the NCLB Era (July 2007) are based on CEP’s nationally representative
survey of 349 school districts conducted between November 2006 and February
2007. Both reports are part of CEP’s multiyear effort to track the impact of
the No Child Left Behind Act since it became law in 2002, and are available
online at www.cepdc. org. Full report: http://www.cep-dc.org/_data/n_0001/resources/live/InstructionalTimeFeb2008.pdf A Report Card on Comprehensive
Equity Racial Gaps in the Nation's
Youth Outcomes The "achievement gap"
usually refers to the difference between black and white students' basic
skills test scores. But education and youth development consists of more than
basic skills -- it also includes critical thinking, social skills and a work
ethic, citizenship and community responsibility, physical health, emotional
health, appreciation of the arts and literature, and preparation for skilled
work. Greater equity in outcomes requires narrowing the achievement gap in
each of these areas. In this "Report Card on
Comprehensive Equity," the authors estimate the black-white achievement gaps
in each of these aspects of education and youth development, and illustrate
the types of data gathering which should be undertaken for ongoing
measurement of these gaps. Full report: http://www.epi.org/studies/study-report_card.pdf Voucher study finds parity The first full-force examination
since 1995 of Milwaukee's groundbreaking school voucher program has found
that students attending private schools through the program aren't doing much
better or worse than students in Milwaukee Public Schools. The study is the first from a
five-year project aimed at providing a comprehensive evaluation of the
voucher program, which this year is allowing more than 18,000 Milwaukee
children from low-income families to attend private schools, 80% of them
religious schools. The authors caution repeatedly that
stronger conclusions will come only when trends over several years can be
examined, and not much should be read into this year's results. But the early findings, based on
examining standardized test results for voucher students and comparing them
to those of a matched set of MPS students, are unlikely to be seen as good
news by advocates of the program that was launched in 1990 with hopes of being
a powerful step to increase educational success among the city's children. The Milwaukee program is the
largest, oldest and arguably most significant school voucher effort in the
United States. As Patrick J. Wolf, the lead researcher in the project, wrote,
"When one thinks of school choice, one thinks of Milwaukee." "We have displayed a rough and
limited snapshot of the average performance of Choice (Milwaukee Parental
Choice Program) students in certain grades that suggests they tend to perform
below national averages but at levels roughly comparable to similarly
income-disadvantaged students in MPS," Wolf, a professor at the
University of Arkansas, concluded… Full article: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=721737 Full report: http://www.uark.edu/ua/der/SCDP/Research.html Why Do We Have a Knowledge Deficit?
A new
WestEd Policy Perspectives paper authored by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., argues that
U.S. students are failing at math, science, and reading partly because
reading experts have overlooked the most important aspect of literacy -- that
reading comprehension depends on learning factual background knowledge in a
broad array of subjects. Hirsch
asserts that educators often mistakenly understand reading comprehension to
be a skill, like typing, that can be transferred from one text to another
regardless of topic. That approach, which assumes that students can apply
all-purpose cognitive skills and critical thinking strategies to unfamiliar
texts on any subject, deprives students of the substance and intellectual
structure they need to succeed in reading comprehension. It also
can negatively impact student achievement in all subject areas (not just
reading). The resulting comprehension deficit is apparent in fourth-grade
achievement scores nationwide, and it becomes more acute as students advance
through each successive grade. "The
only thing that transforms reading skill and critical thinking skill into
general, all-purpose abilities is a student's possession of general,
all-purpose knowledge," says Hirsch. "Cognitive science shows that
domain-specific background knowledge is the key to comprehension." According
to Hirsch, American educators have uncritically adopted notions about
learning inherited from romanticism, an anti-intellectual 19th century
movement, and therefore believe that reading is a natural stage of child
development; in other words, children will naturally develop "reading
readiness" and learn to read as readily as they learned to talk.
American educators also mistakenly believe that kids need only learn formal
reading skills disembodied from content, such as prediction, summarizing,
questioning, and clarifying. When student achievement remains low, despite
teachers' good-faith efforts to teach such formal skills and create
naturalistic learning environments, educators too often blame other factors
-- such as poverty and social inequities -- rather than faulty reading
comprehension methods. Full paper: http://www.wested.org/online_pubs/pp-07-02.pdf Improving Teacher Quality The process of improving teacher
quality requires interpreting research and understanding the practical
realities of schools. To help administrators and policymakers improve the
quality of teachers and instruction, the new resource Teacher Quality
Research (TQR) provides research evidence on the characteristics and education
of effective teachers. The site addresses questions including, What is the
best way to measure each teacher’s contribution to student achievement—their
“value-added?" What teacher characteristics are associated with higher
teacher value-added? Are teachers with high value-added also considered
effective according to other measures? TQR research focuses on the
distinction between centralized and decentralized approaches to improving
teacher quality and on the different ways that teacher quality measures can
be used. TQR is a partnership between Florida State University and the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is funded by the U.S. Department of
Education and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS).
More information is available here: http://www.teacherqualityresearch.org/ Parental intervention boosts
education of kids at high risk of failure University of Oregon
neuroscientists are using basic research findings to address real world
problems An eight-week-long intervention
program aimed at parents from low socioeconomic backgrounds reaped
significant educational benefits in their preschool-aged children. Courtney Stevens, a postdoctoral
research fellow in the Brain Development Lab of UO neuroscientist Helen J.
Neville, described preliminary results of a parent-intervention portion of a
larger study that also includes other approaches aimed at the children in a
federal Head Start program in Oregon. The parent training program was
developed by UO doctoral student Jessica Fanning, who recently completed her
dissertation. At the end of the intervention
effort, participating parents reported dramatic reductions in family stress,
including reduced behavioral problems, compared to parents in the control
group. The UO researchers also documented, through testing and brain-wave
scans, improvements in the children's language-acquisition skills, memory and
cognitive abilities. The experimental group included 14
children between 3 and 5 years old and their parents. The children underwent
brain scans before and after the research period. The parents attended weekly
2.5-hour sessions in which they were coached on improved communication skills
and strategies to use with their children to help control their behavior. At
the end of testing, they were compared with results from a control group of
14 children who were tested and had brain scans at the beginning and end of
the study period, but whose parents did not receive an intervention protocol. "Our findings are important
because they suggest that kids who are at high risk for school failure can be
helped through these interventions," said Stevens, who earned master's
and doctoral degrees at the UO and is currently a visiting faculty member at
New York's Sarah Lawrence College. "Even with these small numbers of
children, the parent training appears very promising. "We are continuing to assess
the parent training program," she added. "We are looking at the
effects of the training on children's brain organization, using event-related
brain potentials. We are following these children for the next few years to
see whether the improvements we see after training persist and generalize to
the school environment." The intervention strategies, being
tested with funding from the Institute of Education Science, were created
after 30 years of basic research by Neville on the changeability of the human
brain, supported primarily by the National Institutes of Health. Neville has
studied children and adults with a variety of experiences, including deafness
and blindness, to see impacts in the brain. She had found that the auditory
cortex and areas of the brain associated with visual abilities -- for years
thought to be genetically determined at birth -- rewire and adapt for other
helpful uses. Neville, who initially was
scheduled to present the new findings, did not attend the AAAS meeting. She
described her early work in an interview at the UO. "We've identified different
neuroplasticity profiles," Neville said. "Within vision, within
hearing, within attention and within language some systems in the brain don't
seem to change very much when experiences are very different, and others
change remarkably. As we looked more into basic development and developmental
disorders, these same systems that were enhanced in the deaf and blind were
the same ones that appear to be most vulnerable and deficient in disorders
such as dyslexia and specific language impairments. "We've learned that plasticity
is a double-edged sword," she said. "A system that is changeable
can be enhanced, but it can also be very vulnerable to deficits if it doesn’t
get the appropriate help at the right time." Catching children while they are
young is the right time, Neville said. Targeting children from families with
low socioeconomic status makes sense, she said, because research in the
United States, United Kingdom and several other countries has repeatedly
shown a correlation between children's educational achievement and their
parents' education and income levels. "Knowing the plasticity
profiles and learning which are most changeable provides us with an
opportunity to help in the real world," she said. A societal payoff for
such interventions is economic, she added. "The research is not just
good for the children; it is good for the economy. "Economists say that
investment in early education returns $18 for every dollar spent." Children with autism may learn
from 'virtual peers' Using “virtual peers” -- animated
life-sized children that simulate the behaviors and conversation of typically
developing children -- Northwestern University researchers are developing
interventions designed to prepare children with autism for interactions with
real-life children. Justine Cassell, professor of
communication studies and electrical engineering and computer science,
recently presented a preliminary study on the work at a meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science. “Children with high-functioning
autism may be able to give you a lecture on a topic of great interest to them
but they can’t carry on a ‘contingent’ -- or two-way -- conversation,” said
Cassell, director of Northwestern’s Center for Technology and Social
Behavior. Cassell and researcher Andrea
Tartaro collected data from six children with high-functioning autism aged 7
to 11 as they engaged in play during an hour-long session with a real-life
child, and with a virtual peer named Sam. In an analysis of those
interactions, they found that children with autism produced more and more
“contingent” sentences when they spoke with the virtual peer, while their
sentences did not become increasingly contingent when they were paired with
the real-life children. “Certainly we’re not saying that
virtual peers make the best playmates for children with autism,” said
Tartaro. “The overall goal is for the children with autism to generalize the
skills they learn in practice sessions with virtual peers to meaningful
interactions with real-world children.” Nor are Northwestern researchers
saying they can teach “contingency” -- appropriate back and forth
conversation -- in a single session. But their findings hold promise that
virtual peers can be useful in helping children with autism develop
communication and social skills. And virtual peers have some
distinct advantages over real-life children when it comes to practicing
social skills. For starters, children with autism often like technology. “It
interacts to us,” said one child with autism upon first meeting a virtual
peer. What’s more, said Cassell, virtual
peers don’t get tired or impatient. “We can program their conversation to
elicit socially-skilled behavior, and we can vary the way that they look and
behave so children with autism are exposed to different kinds of behavior.” Cassell and Tartaro’s study is part
of larger efforts taking place in the Articulab, the Northwestern University
laboratory where Cassell and colleagues explore how people communicate with
and through technology. In the Articulab, Cassell, who was
trained as a psychologist and linguist, and Tartaro are teaming up with
psychologist Miri Arie to develop assessment and intervention procedures that
they hope will give them a better understanding of peer behaviors of children
with autism. A major challenge for children with
autism is learning the rules of social behavior that typically developing
children seem to learn intuitively. “Although children’s play appears
spontaneous and wild, it follows certain basic social rules,” said Arie. “We
hope virtual peers like Sam will allow children with autism to practice the
rules behind joining a game, holding a conversation and maintaining social
interaction. Then they can apply their newly acquired skills to real-life
situations.” For further information about
Cassell’s work at the Articulab, visit http://articulab.northwestern.edu/. Bullying Victimization Study A University of Denver study shows
a curriculum-based bullying prevention program reduced incidents of bullying
by 20 percent, twice as much as in the study control group. Jeffrey M. Jenson and William A.
Dieterich of the University of Denver’s Graduate School of Social Work
studied more than 1,100 students in 28 elementary schools in Denver public
schools. One group was exposed to a bullying prevention program called “Youth
Matters” (YM). A second “control” group of students was not. Self-reported bully victimization
among students taking the “Youth Matters” curriculum decreased at 20 percent
compared to a 10 percent drop from students in the control group. “By the end of the study bully
victimization was significantly lower in the YM group relative to the control
group,” Jenson reports. “This outcome is encouraging because the curriculum
modules tested in the study focused on teaching the social and emotional
skills necessary to avoid becoming a bully victim.” The results are detailed in a
paper, “Effects of a Skills-based Prevention Program on Bullying and Bully
Victimization among Elementary School Children,” published in the December
2007 issue of Prevention Science by the Society for Prevention Research. Previous research has shown that
about 25 percent of elementary students either bully or are victims of
bullying. Studies also suggest that both bullies and victims are at risk for
later mental health problems and involvement in anti-social activities.
Educators have focused attention on bullying in the wake of school shootings
over the last decade. In some of those cases there were indications that the
shooters had themselves been bullied as young children. Students in the Jenson-Dieterich
study who participated in the “Youth Matters” curriculum received training in
four 10-week modules over the course of two academic years. The curriculum
focused on two themes: issues and skills related to bullying and other forms
of early aggression. In skills instruction, students
learned how to use social and interpersonal skills to decrease the likelihood
of being bullied by classmates. They also were taught ways to stand up for
themselves and others, and instruction in asking for help when confronted by
a bully. The goal of the training was to teach students how to use these
skills to stay out of trouble, build positive relationships, make good decisions,
and avoid anti-social behavior. “Understanding the consequences of
bullying from both a bully and a victim perspective is emphasized in training
sessions,” Jenson reports. “Our findings point to the importance of social
and emotional skills in reducing bullying.” Stock Investing Program Improves
Academic Performance Middle school students
participating in a stock investing program that teaches them strategies for
earning, saving and investing money outperformed other students in several
key academic areas, according to researchers at the Center for the Social
Organization of Schools at The Johns Hopkins University. The seventh-graders who took part
in the Stocks in the Future program scored 31 percent higher in reading,
vocabulary and math than did students in a control group, and sixth-grade
participants’ scores were 18 percent higher in reading comprehension and
math. These results reflect the positive
impact of the supplemental program, which was offered to 400 students in
Baltimore and Washington who were identified as needing incentives to improve
school performance. The study included students at Barclay School, Francis
Scott Key Elementary/Middle School and Oakland Mills Middle School in
Baltimore City; Deep Creek Middle School and Dundalk Middle School in
Baltimore County; and Washington Jesuit Academy in Washington, D.C. The scripted Stocks in the Future curriculum was developed at the Center for Social Organization of Schools. Under the terms of the program, students who attend school regularly and improve their grades earn “SIF D |
