Ingfei Chen is a freelance writer in Northern California whose work has appeared in Scientific American, the New York Times and Smithsonian.
By Ingfei Chen
Playing With Math: How Math Circles Bring Learners Together For Fun
Can Project-Based Learning Close Gaps in Science Education?
Measuring Students' Self-Control: A 'Marshmallow Test' for the Digital Age
How Does the Brain Learn Best? Smart Studying Strategies
How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn
New Research: Students Benefit from Learning That Intelligence Is Not Fixed
A School Built Entirely Around the Love of Math
For Frustrated Gifted Kids, A World of Online Opportunities
By Not Challenging Gifted Kids, What Do We Risk Losing?
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_38286\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\" style=\"max-width: 1280px\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/10/Golden-Ratio-Math.gif\" alt=\"iStock\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" class=\"size-full wp-image-38286\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">iStock\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">One day more than a year ago, an 8-year-old named Andrew told his parents he wanted to learn to do long division. His dad, Tim Sylvester, looked up a YouTube video explaining the basic steps and began working with him through simple problems on a whiteboard in their house. A half-hour later, the child was dividing two-digit numbers into 20-digit numbers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He was ecstatic, running around,” said Sylvester, describing the moment as a “math high.” Several months later, when Andrew’s third-grade class at a public school in Santa Cruz, California, began tackling long division, the boy had it down cold and read a book on his own during the lessons.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sylvester and his wife, Barbara Meister, wanted to keep Andrew, who is profoundly gifted with numbers, engaged and learning. So last fall, the father launched the \u003ca href=\"http://xacademy.org/\">Santa Cruz Math Circle\u003c/a>: a six-week enrichment program that brought in mathematicians for two hours on Sunday afternoons to explore and discuss fascinating numerical puzzles and concepts with fourth- through eighth-graders. \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org\">Math circles\u003c/a> are an Eastern European and Russian tradition that spread across the U.S. in the last two decades. The goal wasn’t to plod through the standard formulas in preparation for a test, but to provide a stimulating and interactive environment in which Andrew and other kids with a knack for numbers could experience “math that was challenging and fun at the same time,” said Sylvester, a software engineer who works in Silicon Valley.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new course in Santa Cruz has been “a huge success,” said Evelyn Strauss, whose 10-year-old son was an avid participant. “There's a wide range of kids who are really enjoying the program.” Most students go through elementary school thinking that mathematics is only about adding and subtracting and arithmetic, “but there's this whole world of math that's not typically covered in school and that's really interesting,” she said. Math circle reveals that world to kids.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\nIn the U.S., “most of the kids come to the math circle because they don’t like what they see in school and they’re looking for something else.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Creating a math circle takes a lot of energy and planning -- from finding dynamic instructors to booking classroom space -- but it can be well worth the effort if no similar enrichment opportunities are available nearby. Parents might consider forming a circle when their children come home from school saying they’re bored with the level of mathematics that’s being taught, Sylvester said. “If your kid comes back and wants more challenging math, or if they love math or they love puzzles, then start one.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One Sunday last November, the fledgling program was underway at a community center, with around 19 boys and seven girls mulling over a game called Conway’s checkers. The visiting instructor that day was Zvezdelina Stankova, a Mills College professor and director of the \u003ca href=\"http://mathcircle.berkeley.edu/\">Berkeley Math Circle\u003c/a>. Each student was given a sheet of paper with a grid of squares -- divided in half by a thick line -- and a pile of pennies to serve as checkers. Beginning at one end of the board, and given particular rules for checker-jumping and a theoretically endless supply of coins, Stankova asked: How far could the coins be advanced?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students experimented with jumping the checkers to the third row on the other side of the line, and then the fourth, and Stankova demonstrated the winning solutions. What about the fifth row? Many kids became so engrossed, chattering among themselves, they didn’t want to stop to hear the next part of the lesson. “No touching the coins!” Stankova finally admonished. “It’s impossible to reach the fifth row,” she said, briefly explaining that the reason had to do with the quadratic equation and the Golden Ratio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stankova grew up in Bulgaria, where it was common for children to attend circles in math, physics, chemistry and poetry. “Kids went to the math circle because they loved what was happening in class and they wanted more of it,” she said. By contrast, in the U.S., “most of the kids come to the math circle because they don't like what they see in school and they're looking for something else.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A COMFORTABLE PLACE FOR MATH GEEKS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About three years ago, Sylvester wanted to take Andrew to a math circle after hearing of the programs at Berkeley as well as Stanford, but those courses are popular and hard to get into. He and his wife have fostered their son’s passion for numbers in various ways, including online courses and a summer camp in mathematics, as well as math competitions. Although UC Santa Cruz was offering a monthly math circle at one point, that course was put on hold when the professor who ran it went on sabbatical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"ajVWdKoGTSzNaY9PHn6Av0sySOm2F3Hg\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last summer, Sylvester decided to start a circle through the X Academy, a nonprofit that he founded to offer enrichment activities, and he reached out to math professor Paul Zeitz, co-founder of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfmathcircle.org/\">San Francisco Math Circle\u003c/a>. Zeitz promptly volunteered to give an introductory math circle session in Santa Cruz and connected him with Stankova and other willing expert instructors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought I’d be lucky to get five kids in a room on a Sunday afternoon,” Sylvester said. To his surprise, 50 students and their parents signed up to attend the free kickoff session by Zeitz. Through an application process, the Santa Cruz Math Circle ended up with around 25 regular attendees for the rest of the fall course; registration cost $75, but scholarships were available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sylvester ran the course with help from X Academy board members (including Meister) and other parent volunteers, who assisted with promotion and setup. Meeting the needs of students from fourth through eighth grades in a single class proved too wide of a spread in ability and maturity to manage, so the software engineer brought in an extra instructor and split the students into two tracks; but younger kids such as Andrew who were ready for the math of the upper-level group could move up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many attendees, being in a place where they could dive into math and interact with other number-loving geeks was a welcome shift from the standard school environment, where the subject isn’t exactly popular. The circle “creates this community where it's safe to come and talk about math,” said teacher Nicholas Bugayong of Rolling Hills Middle School in Watsonville, who volunteered to drive four eighth-grade math students, all from Latino families, to the Sunday sessions. Some of these pupils were otherwise unable to make the 17-mile trek -- their parents couldn’t bring them -- or to afford the course without X Academy scholarships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Other people don’t like math and they say it’s a waste of time, but I think it’s interesting to learn things that you don’t learn in school,” said Rolling Hills student Monica Alvarez, 13. Listening to the other students as they volunteered different ideas and strategies for tackling challenging problems “helps you to learn other ways to solve a puzzle,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Andrew Sylvester, now age 10, the program prompted some more “math highs,” such as when he got into thinking about the Conway’s checkers conundrum. And the lessons spurred lively discussions. During one pizza break, he stayed behind in the classroom with two other boys who are also profoundly gifted at math. “They were bent over a piece of paper scribbling, in animated conversation,” recalled Strauss, whose son was part of the confab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just like learning the math and arguing with my friends about math stuff -- for example, stuff like if one over infinity equals zero,” said 10-year-old Olin Ottemann-Strauss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MATH CIRCLE STARTUP LESSONS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Santa Cruz Math Circle resumes this spring. A major challenge will be continuing to arrange for high-quality instructors, Tim Sylvester said. While ideal teachers include math professors or scientists or engineers with doctorates in math, not all such experts have the experience or classroom management skills to instruct young pupils in a dynamic way. But Sylvester hopes to eventually join forces with UC Santa Cruz’s math circle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if there is no nearby college to collaborate with, anyone interested in launching a math circle program can find helpful, step-by-step resources on the National Association of Math Circles website, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org/content/getting-started-new-organizers\">lesson plans\u003c/a> from the book, \u003cem>Circle in a Box\u003c/em>. Teachers at some Bay Area schools have created their own programs, Sylvester noted, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.nuevaschool.org/outreach/math-circles\">Nueva School\u003c/a> in Hillsborough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sustaining a circle does require adequate financing, which can be an ongoing challenge if registration fees are to remain affordable. The Santa Cruz program recently got a donation from Cisco Systems, where Sylvester used to work, and parents can make contributions to X Academy through its website. The academy has also applied for \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org/content/math-circle-grants\">a seed grant\u003c/a> from the Berkeley-based nonprofit Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, which has funded many math circles over the years. But the institute is currently reviewing that grant program and has ended its support of the San Francisco Math Circle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many students often question why they need to learn algebra or calculus that they might not use later in life, Sylvester sees the ability to figure out tough math problems as being an essential life skill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the reasons you learn math is for the thought process and the problem-solving process,” he said. “That's why you do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Barbara Meister as Barbara Sylvester. It also stated that Andrew Sylvester's third grade lessons in long division were at a private school, which is incorrect. He was attending a public school. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One Sunday last November, the fledgling program was underway at a community center, with around 19 boys and seven girls mulling over a game called Conway’s checkers. The visiting instructor that day was Zvezdelina Stankova, a Mills College professor and director of the \u003ca href=\"http://mathcircle.berkeley.edu/\">Berkeley Math Circle\u003c/a>. Each student was given a sheet of paper with a grid of squares -- divided in half by a thick line -- and a pile of pennies to serve as checkers. Beginning at one end of the board, and given particular rules for checker-jumping and a theoretically endless supply of coins, Stankova asked: How far could the coins be advanced?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students experimented with jumping the checkers to the third row on the other side of the line, and then the fourth, and Stankova demonstrated the winning solutions. What about the fifth row? Many kids became so engrossed, chattering among themselves, they didn’t want to stop to hear the next part of the lesson. “No touching the coins!” Stankova finally admonished. “It’s impossible to reach the fifth row,” she said, briefly explaining that the reason had to do with the quadratic equation and the Golden Ratio.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Stankova grew up in Bulgaria, where it was common for children to attend circles in math, physics, chemistry and poetry. “Kids went to the math circle because they loved what was happening in class and they wanted more of it,” she said. By contrast, in the U.S., “most of the kids come to the math circle because they don't like what they see in school and they're looking for something else.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A COMFORTABLE PLACE FOR MATH GEEKS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About three years ago, Sylvester wanted to take Andrew to a math circle after hearing of the programs at Berkeley as well as Stanford, but those courses are popular and hard to get into. He and his wife have fostered their son’s passion for numbers in various ways, including online courses and a summer camp in mathematics, as well as math competitions. Although UC Santa Cruz was offering a monthly math circle at one point, that course was put on hold when the professor who ran it went on sabbatical.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last summer, Sylvester decided to start a circle through the X Academy, a nonprofit that he founded to offer enrichment activities, and he reached out to math professor Paul Zeitz, co-founder of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.sfmathcircle.org/\">San Francisco Math Circle\u003c/a>. Zeitz promptly volunteered to give an introductory math circle session in Santa Cruz and connected him with Stankova and other willing expert instructors.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I thought I’d be lucky to get five kids in a room on a Sunday afternoon,” Sylvester said. To his surprise, 50 students and their parents signed up to attend the free kickoff session by Zeitz. Through an application process, the Santa Cruz Math Circle ended up with around 25 regular attendees for the rest of the fall course; registration cost $75, but scholarships were available.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sylvester ran the course with help from X Academy board members (including Meister) and other parent volunteers, who assisted with promotion and setup. Meeting the needs of students from fourth through eighth grades in a single class proved too wide of a spread in ability and maturity to manage, so the software engineer brought in an extra instructor and split the students into two tracks; but younger kids such as Andrew who were ready for the math of the upper-level group could move up.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For many attendees, being in a place where they could dive into math and interact with other number-loving geeks was a welcome shift from the standard school environment, where the subject isn’t exactly popular. The circle “creates this community where it's safe to come and talk about math,” said teacher Nicholas Bugayong of Rolling Hills Middle School in Watsonville, who volunteered to drive four eighth-grade math students, all from Latino families, to the Sunday sessions. Some of these pupils were otherwise unable to make the 17-mile trek -- their parents couldn’t bring them -- or to afford the course without X Academy scholarships.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“Other people don’t like math and they say it’s a waste of time, but I think it’s interesting to learn things that you don’t learn in school,” said Rolling Hills student Monica Alvarez, 13. Listening to the other students as they volunteered different ideas and strategies for tackling challenging problems “helps you to learn other ways to solve a puzzle,” she added.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As for Andrew Sylvester, now age 10, the program prompted some more “math highs,” such as when he got into thinking about the Conway’s checkers conundrum. And the lessons spurred lively discussions. During one pizza break, he stayed behind in the classroom with two other boys who are also profoundly gifted at math. “They were bent over a piece of paper scribbling, in animated conversation,” recalled Strauss, whose son was part of the confab.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“I just like learning the math and arguing with my friends about math stuff -- for example, stuff like if one over infinity equals zero,” said 10-year-old Olin Ottemann-Strauss.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>MATH CIRCLE STARTUP LESSONS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The Santa Cruz Math Circle resumes this spring. A major challenge will be continuing to arrange for high-quality instructors, Tim Sylvester said. While ideal teachers include math professors or scientists or engineers with doctorates in math, not all such experts have the experience or classroom management skills to instruct young pupils in a dynamic way. But Sylvester hopes to eventually join forces with UC Santa Cruz’s math circle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Even if there is no nearby college to collaborate with, anyone interested in launching a math circle program can find helpful, step-by-step resources on the National Association of Math Circles website, including \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org/content/getting-started-new-organizers\">lesson plans\u003c/a> from the book, \u003cem>Circle in a Box\u003c/em>. Teachers at some Bay Area schools have created their own programs, Sylvester noted, such as \u003ca href=\"http://www.nuevaschool.org/outreach/math-circles\">Nueva School\u003c/a> in Hillsborough.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sustaining a circle does require adequate financing, which can be an ongoing challenge if registration fees are to remain affordable. The Santa Cruz program recently got a donation from Cisco Systems, where Sylvester used to work, and parents can make contributions to X Academy through its website. The academy has also applied for \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org/content/math-circle-grants\">a seed grant\u003c/a> from the Berkeley-based nonprofit Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, which has funded many math circles over the years. But the institute is currently reviewing that grant program and has ended its support of the San Francisco Math Circle.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While many students often question why they need to learn algebra or calculus that they might not use later in life, Sylvester sees the ability to figure out tough math problems as being an essential life skill.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“One of the reasons you learn math is for the thought process and the problem-solving process,” he said. “That's why you do it.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>Correction: An earlier version of this story misidentified Barbara Meister as Barbara Sylvester. It also stated that Andrew Sylvester's third grade lessons in long division were at a private school, which is incorrect. He was attending a public school. \u003c/em>\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Can Project-Based Learning Close Gaps in Science Education? ",
"title": "Can Project-Based Learning Close Gaps in Science Education? ",
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"content": "\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte.png\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte-640x360.png\" alt=\"Stockbyte\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-37926\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Putting kids to work on meaningful projects can transform classrooms into beehives of inquiry and discovery, but relatively few rigorous studies have examined how well this teaching method actually works. An \u003ca href=\"http://www.sri.com/blog/how-curriculum-materials-make-difference-next-generation-science-learning\">encouraging new report \u003c/a>describes preliminary, first-year outcomes from a study of 3,000 middle school students that shows kids can, in fact, learn more in science classrooms that adopt a well-designed, project-focused curriculum. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Students participate in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When researchers analyzed test scores from those classrooms by students’ gender and ethnicity, there were no differences in learning performance. That’s a preliminary indication that high-quality project-based curricula might be able to help narrow the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/dismal-science-scores-in-u-s-public-schools/\">science education achievement gap\u003c/a> in children from low-income backgrounds or other groups that are underrepresented in STEM fields. The project-based science lessons “seem to work for all kinds of kids,” said report co-author Christopher Harris, a senior researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. “Girls and boys learned at similar rates in this study.” He believes that the personal engagement in meaningful classroom activities that teachers can create through such curriculum materials “makes a difference.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How well the benefits hold up or grow in the second year of implementation remains to be seen. But the researchers see \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/moving-towards-inquiry-how-to-reinvent-project-based-learning/\">project-based inquiry learning\u003c/a> as a promising strategy for helping school systems move toward \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/new-science-standards-aim-to-relate-concepts-to-students-lives/\" target=\"_blank\">new U.S. science education standards\u003c/a> that were released last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Access to good science curriculum materials is a “vexing issue,” Harris said. In urban public schools, science textbooks are often 10 years old and the standard curricula “provide very few opportunities for students to really engage in the science, beyond emphasizing the scientific canon or the knowledge that's been developed over time,” he said. “They typically don't have a hands-on approach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To move beyond the rote memorization of disconnected science facts that traditional instruction tends to emphasize, in 2011 the U.S. National Research Council laid out a \u003ca href=\"http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bose/framework_k12_science/index.htm\">new framework for revamping K-12 science education\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a> embody that framework and aim to teach kids some of the core thought processes and practices that scientists and engineers use to investigate natural phenomena and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meeting those new standards will likely require a considerable shift in how schools teach science. Project-based inquiry learning programs seem well suited to be part of the solution: They get students to participate in educational projects in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids, Harris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Putting Project-Based Science Classes to the Test\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One such curriculum for grades 6-8 is Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS). Originally developed in the ‘90s at several universities with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), it incorporated the latest research knowledge on how students learn and how teachers can best teach them. An education publishing company named It's About Time brought \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/courses/middle-school-science/project-based-inquiry-science/?type=introduction\">the curriculum\u003c/a> to the commercial market. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, PBIS is one of the few curricula available that are fully aligned with the new science standards, and its structured activities emphasize core practices such as carrying out investigations, constructing science explanations and developing and using models. For instance, one physics project poses the driving question, “Why should I wear a helmet when I ride my bike?” – an inquiry that’s compelling because it connects directly to kids’ everyday lives, Harris said. To answer it, students work on a series of activities leading them to explore related questions that build their knowledge of the principles of force, motion, acceleration and gravity, so that they can grasp how a helmet would protect their heads from the impact of a potential collision. With guidance from their teacher, “they're conducting investigations, but there's also supports for kids to collect data, organize it, analyze it, share it, debate it, argue about it”—similar to how real-life scientists work, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an SRI research effort funded with a $5 million NSF grant, Harris recently conducted a randomized controlled trial of whether the PBIS materials are effective. Project collaborators included William Penuel of the University of Colorado and Joseph Krajcik, a Michigan State University professor who helped develop the new U.S. science standards as well as the original PBIS curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"2MxgnbzA3Fn23YAcONABzumhuxn6n168\"]\u003cbr>\nThe experiment took place in sixth-grade science classes at 42 middle schools in a large, ethnically diverse urban public school district during the 2012-2014 academic years. About 55 percent of the pupils were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Half of those schools adopted PBIS curriculum units for physical science and earth science, with their teachers going through professional development training (provided by It’s About Time) in project-based teaching and the next-generation science standards. The rest of the schools taught science the traditional way, but their instructors also received training in the new standards. Almost 100 teachers and more than 3,000 students participated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On average, kids in the project-based physical science classes performed roughly 8 percent better on an end-of-unit learning assessment than the kids in traditional classes. (Because the course content was new, the researchers also had to create entirely new assessment tests, which required a lot more demonstration of critical thinking skills than standard multiple-choice science tests.) That’s an improvement that would lift a student who scored in the 50th percentile on the test to the 58th percentile – a gain that “is actually really good for an education intervention,” Harris said. Pupils in the PBIS earth science classes showed a similar trend toward stronger scores, but that increase wasn’t statistically significant. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes at least two years for teachers to become comfortable with new curriculum materials,” Harris noted. Nonetheless, instructors in year one of the trial were able to use the project-based materials “relatively effectively to support the kind of science learning called for in the new standards. We are very interested to see what the analysis will show for year two.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barriers Ahead – and the Potential Payoff \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team is now analyzing data from year two and will evaluate how well teachers implemented the project-based curriculum. While the approach clearly \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/testimonials/30/\">engages students \u003c/a>more, potential barriers to its wide adoption include the fact that it is resource intensive, Harris said. School districts have to buy not just the book and teacher’s guide but also the materials for classroom activities. Each PBIS unit costs roughly $23 per student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And teachers need substantial training, including support throughout the school year, to learn how to coordinate kids to collaborate well on projects, and to ensure that important scientific concepts bubble up and get discussed. So project-based learning is generally a huge investment for school districts and more work for the teachers, but many of them “find that the hard work pays off,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris hopes to see more project-based science curricula coming out that are keyed to the new standards and grounded in research on learning. Such materials are badly needed in elementary schools, because too many children don’t get exposed to good science instruction on a consistent basis until middle school, he said. Catching kids earlier to help them see the big picture of what science is about could spark their excitement – and perhaps inspire new generations of young scientists from diverse backgrounds that STEM disciplines are greatly in want of.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte.png\">\u003cimg src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/Stockbyte-640x360.png\" alt=\"Stockbyte\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-37926\">\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Putting kids to work on meaningful projects can transform classrooms into beehives of inquiry and discovery, but relatively few rigorous studies have examined how well this teaching method actually works. An \u003ca href=\"http://www.sri.com/blog/how-curriculum-materials-make-difference-next-generation-science-learning\">encouraging new report \u003c/a>describes preliminary, first-year outcomes from a study of 3,000 middle school students that shows kids can, in fact, learn more in science classrooms that adopt a well-designed, project-focused curriculum. \u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Students participate in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>When researchers analyzed test scores from those classrooms by students’ gender and ethnicity, there were no differences in learning performance. That’s a preliminary indication that high-quality project-based curricula might be able to help narrow the \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/01/dismal-science-scores-in-u-s-public-schools/\">science education achievement gap\u003c/a> in children from low-income backgrounds or other groups that are underrepresented in STEM fields. The project-based science lessons “seem to work for all kinds of kids,” said report co-author Christopher Harris, a senior researcher at SRI International in Menlo Park, California. “Girls and boys learned at similar rates in this study.” He believes that the personal engagement in meaningful classroom activities that teachers can create through such curriculum materials “makes a difference.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>How well the benefits hold up or grow in the second year of implementation remains to be seen. But the researchers see \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/moving-towards-inquiry-how-to-reinvent-project-based-learning/\">project-based inquiry learning\u003c/a> as a promising strategy for helping school systems move toward \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/04/new-science-standards-aim-to-relate-concepts-to-students-lives/\" target=\"_blank\">new U.S. science education standards\u003c/a> that were released last year.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Access to good science curriculum materials is a “vexing issue,” Harris said. In urban public schools, science textbooks are often 10 years old and the standard curricula “provide very few opportunities for students to really engage in the science, beyond emphasizing the scientific canon or the knowledge that's been developed over time,” he said. “They typically don't have a hands-on approach.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To move beyond the rote memorization of disconnected science facts that traditional instruction tends to emphasize, in 2011 the U.S. National Research Council laid out a \u003ca href=\"http://sites.nationalacademies.org/dbasse/bose/framework_k12_science/index.htm\">new framework for revamping K-12 science education\u003c/a>. The \u003ca href=\"http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards\">Next Generation Science Standards\u003c/a> embody that framework and aim to teach kids some of the core thought processes and practices that scientists and engineers use to investigate natural phenomena and solve problems.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meeting those new standards will likely require a considerable shift in how schools teach science. Project-based inquiry learning programs seem well suited to be part of the solution: They get students to participate in educational projects in the same basic ways that scientists would, with activities organized by important “driving questions” that are relevant in science but also meaningful for kids, Harris said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Putting Project-Based Science Classes to the Test\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>One such curriculum for grades 6-8 is Project-Based Inquiry Science (PBIS). Originally developed in the ‘90s at several universities with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), it incorporated the latest research knowledge on how students learn and how teachers can best teach them. An education publishing company named It's About Time brought \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/courses/middle-school-science/project-based-inquiry-science/?type=introduction\">the curriculum\u003c/a> to the commercial market. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Currently, PBIS is one of the few curricula available that are fully aligned with the new science standards, and its structured activities emphasize core practices such as carrying out investigations, constructing science explanations and developing and using models. For instance, one physics project poses the driving question, “Why should I wear a helmet when I ride my bike?” – an inquiry that’s compelling because it connects directly to kids’ everyday lives, Harris said. To answer it, students work on a series of activities leading them to explore related questions that build their knowledge of the principles of force, motion, acceleration and gravity, so that they can grasp how a helmet would protect their heads from the impact of a potential collision. With guidance from their teacher, “they're conducting investigations, but there's also supports for kids to collect data, organize it, analyze it, share it, debate it, argue about it”—similar to how real-life scientists work, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an SRI research effort funded with a $5 million NSF grant, Harris recently conducted a randomized controlled trial of whether the PBIS materials are effective. Project collaborators included William Penuel of the University of Colorado and Joseph Krajcik, a Michigan State University professor who helped develop the new U.S. science standards as well as the original PBIS curriculum.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_auto_sidebar id=\"2MxgnbzA3Fn23YAcONABzumhuxn6n168\"]\u003cbr>\nThe experiment took place in sixth-grade science classes at 42 middle schools in a large, ethnically diverse urban public school district during the 2012-2014 academic years. About 55 percent of the pupils were eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Half of those schools adopted PBIS curriculum units for physical science and earth science, with their teachers going through professional development training (provided by It’s About Time) in project-based teaching and the next-generation science standards. The rest of the schools taught science the traditional way, but their instructors also received training in the new standards. Almost 100 teachers and more than 3,000 students participated.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>On average, kids in the project-based physical science classes performed roughly 8 percent better on an end-of-unit learning assessment than the kids in traditional classes. (Because the course content was new, the researchers also had to create entirely new assessment tests, which required a lot more demonstration of critical thinking skills than standard multiple-choice science tests.) That’s an improvement that would lift a student who scored in the 50th percentile on the test to the 58th percentile – a gain that “is actually really good for an education intervention,” Harris said. Pupils in the PBIS earth science classes showed a similar trend toward stronger scores, but that increase wasn’t statistically significant. \u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“It takes at least two years for teachers to become comfortable with new curriculum materials,” Harris noted. Nonetheless, instructors in year one of the trial were able to use the project-based materials “relatively effectively to support the kind of science learning called for in the new standards. We are very interested to see what the analysis will show for year two.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Barriers Ahead – and the Potential Payoff \u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team is now analyzing data from year two and will evaluate how well teachers implemented the project-based curriculum. While the approach clearly \u003ca href=\"http://www.iat.com/testimonials/30/\">engages students \u003c/a>more, potential barriers to its wide adoption include the fact that it is resource intensive, Harris said. School districts have to buy not just the book and teacher’s guide but also the materials for classroom activities. Each PBIS unit costs roughly $23 per student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>And teachers need substantial training, including support throughout the school year, to learn how to coordinate kids to collaborate well on projects, and to ensure that important scientific concepts bubble up and get discussed. So project-based learning is generally a huge investment for school districts and more work for the teachers, but many of them “find that the hard work pays off,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Harris hopes to see more project-based science curricula coming out that are keyed to the new standards and grounded in research on learning. Such materials are badly needed in elementary schools, because too many children don’t get exposed to good science instruction on a consistent basis until middle school, he said. Catching kids earlier to help them see the big picture of what science is about could spark their excitement – and perhaps inspire new generations of young scientists from diverse backgrounds that STEM disciplines are greatly in want of.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "Measuring Students' Self-Control: A 'Marshmallow Test' for the Digital Age",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37747\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37747\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow.jpg\" alt=\"Credit: Dana Nelson\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Credit: Dana Nelson\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">The \"marshmallow test\" invented by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel and colleagues in the 1960s is \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/magazine/we-didnt-eat-the-marshmallow-the-marshmallow-ate-us.html\">famously known\u003c/a> as a measure of willpower. The experiment gave preschoolers the option of either eating one mini-marshmallow right away or waiting 15 minutes to get two mini-marshmallows. \u003ca href=\"http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/2/252.full\">Decades later\u003c/a>, those who were better at delaying gratification, and resisted immediately snarfing the treat, ended up with stronger SAT scores, higher educational achievement and greater self-esteem and capacity to cope with stress in adulthood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now other psychology researchers have come up with a test that challenges the willpower of schoolkids to resist the brain-candy of today’s \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/12/age-of-distraction-why-its-crucial-for-students-to-learn-to-focus/\">digital distractions\u003c/a> -- the YouTube videos, Instagram and mobile gaming apps like Angry Birds. Some people are calling it a \"digital marshmallow test,\" although it's tailored for an educational context and doesn't involve any sweets or near-term rewards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officially known as the \"academic diligence task,\" the new computer-based test offers students a choice between doing math or watching videos or playing a video game. The test was created by postdoctoral research fellow Brian Galla and associate psychology professor Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, with Sidney D’Mello of the University of Notre Dame, as a better (and free) research tool for measuring self-control. The researchers hope this new tool will advance their studies of ways to improve academic perseverance in students.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Some students would turn it into a game for themselves.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X14000502\">A report\u003c/a> recently published online by the team documents the test's reliability and validity and shows that performance on the task predicts academic achievement -- including whether high school seniors graduate on time and enroll in college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a really creative and interesting approach to measuring an aspect of self-control,\" said Smith College psychologist Philip Peake, who has worked with Mischel on the longitudinal follow-up of participants in the Stanford \"delay of gratification\" studies. The new diligence task is quite different from the marshmallow experiment, so they can't be equated, he said, but both are research tools that can contribute to our understanding of the processes that underlie self-control. And both have the advantage of measuring how people actually behave, not just what they say or think they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's not just people filling out a questionnaire that says, 'Oh, I tend to persist in things' or 'I work hard at things,' \" Peake said. It's assessing real behavior. \"And you can see that that behavior has some consequential relations to real-life outcomes.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Studying Self-Control in the Face of Digital Distractions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The recent work by the Penn and Notre Dame psychologists is part of their ongoing national study of the role that non-cognitive factors such as \"grit\" and self-control play in students' persistence in school. That endeavor, which is funded by the Gates Foundation, is following about 1,800 high school seniors over six years to track who enrolls in and finishes college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Duckworth is known for \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/10/how-important-is-grit-in-student-achievement/\">her work on grit\u003c/a>, which she defines as a tendency to pursue long-term challenging goals with passion and perseverance. Self-control or \"self-regulation,\" on the other hand, is more about the short-term exercising of self-discipline in the face of momentary diversions, an ability that also feeds into perseverance. The research team needed a standardized way to assess self-control, but most of the existing measurement tools were self-report questionnaires, which can give biased results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"Mo3P7onQPy6KNMOC9QoKybmiR1UrdWKB\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So they devised a task that uses behavioral responses to measure academic diligence, which they define as \"working assiduously on academic tasks which are beneficial in the long run but tedious in the moment, especially in comparison to more enjoyable, less effortful diversions.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rationale behind the test is that with many subject areas or skills, such as mathematics, the basic process of building fluency and mastery involves a lot of practice. It requires \"hard work that is perceived as tedious, even though people know it's immensely important,\" D’Mello said. \"But that's just the reality.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With math, for instance, that means \"studying your multiplication tables, solving equations, again and again and again,\" which is essential for building more complex numerical knowledge. However, \"in the digital age, it's so hard to focus,\" D'Mello said. In psychology-speak, students are faced with having to \"regulate\" their emotions and impulses to overcome boredom and concentrate on homework instead of something more fun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To measure this skill in a scenario simulating real life, D'Mello, who is an assistant professor of computer science and psychology, designed the diligence task with a split computer-screen interface (click here for \u003ca href=\"http://174.129.19.201/~sdmello/DiligenceTaskDemo/DiligenceTaskDemo.html\">a demo\u003c/a>). On the left side, students can choose to do a series of boring skill-building math problems -- simple, single-digit subtraction. On the right side, they can play Tetris or watch short, entertaining YouTube video clips of movie trailers or sports highlights. The test is delivered online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Road-Testing the Test\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Galla, Duckworth and their colleagues took the diligence task into two large, ethnically diverse public high schools in Philadelphia, where they enlisted 921 seniors in early 2013. The students were instructed to answer as many math problems as they wanted, as fast as they could, in five consecutive four-minute sessions. They could take a break at any time to watch videos or play the game. The instructions informed them that practicing basic math skills could improve their problem-solving abilities for the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In total, the teens spent about half the time on math skill-building, answering an average of 244 problems, D'Mello said. Overall performance on the task consistently correlated with individual differences in conscientiousness, self-control and grit (which were also assessed in the students through questionnaires), just as the psychologists had theorized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kids who solved more math problems tended to have higher senior-year GPAs, better scores on standardized math and reading tests, and were more likely to graduate on time; they were also more likely to be enrolled in college at the end of the following fall semester, almost a year later. About 98 percent of the pupils who spent more than 17 minutes doing the math problems successfully graduated, compared with 95 percent of students who spent four minutes or less on math. While that's a small difference, it was interesting to see it even after the researchers adjusted for other factors, including intelligence, gender, ethnicity, interest in math and whether the kids were in the free lunch program, Galla said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37741\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/the-test.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-37741\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/the-test-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Demo of the "academic diligence task" created by Sidney D'Mello.\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demo of the \"academic diligence task\" created by Sidney D'Mello.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The diligence test \"was able to pick up a signal in college enrollment, and this was above and beyond things like cognitive ability, socioeconomic status -- things that we know tend to correlate with or predict later college success,\" he said. So it isn't just IQ or braininess that matters for academic achievement, but self-control as well. Yet, unlike IQ, the researchers believe self-control in schoolwork is a skill that can be taught and developed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The correlation between performance on the diligence task and academic achievement is modest, but it is significant and important, commented Peake of Smith College. Whether the task predicts long-term consequences, and whether those are limited just to academics or apply more broadly to other aspects of self-control, are interesting questions to further explore, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Staying on Task\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results held some surprises. \"I was really shocked that some people actually stayed entirely on the math problems the whole time,\" D'Mello said. \"It's a really difficult task. I can't do it myself, frankly.\" One super-diligent student did 966 math problems; a few kids did none at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teens used a range of tactics to resist the distractions. \"Some students would turn it into a game for themselves,\" Galla said. “So they want to just see how many problems that they can solve in the four-minute task blocks.\" Others did math until they needed a break, then switched to the fun stuff, which is \"very healthy behavior,\" D'Mello said. \"We all know there's advantages to taking a break. ... It's just that if you do that too much, then you get into trouble.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team will track the students through the six-year national college persistence study, and is updating their diligence task to include verbal and spatial reasoning problems. \"The hope is that by giving a good measure, you could really inspire a lot of science,\" said D'Mello. At this point, the researchers say they don't envision the test as something teachers would routinely use to assess students in the classroom; it isn't designed or validated for that purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Different Takes on Willpower and Grit\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone believes the growing focus on individual students' responsibility to demonstrate self-control or grit is the best way to support academic achievement. Some progressive education experts worry low-income or minority kids who are struggling in school might be blamed for lacking grit as the primary reason for underperformance. Those critics point out that in many schools, poverty and an inequitable lack of resources are much bigger roadblocks to teaching and learning that need to be addressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"It sort of plays into the mythology of the American dream. It sounds good, but it may be more relevant to some folks than to others.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This viewpoint identifies an economic, social and racial overtone to the notion that if students \"would just put their nose to the grindstone harder and work harder, and be more diligent and more resilient, that they will do better,\" said Grant Lichtman, education consultant and author of \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.grantlichtman.com/edjourney-a-roadmap-to-the-future-of-education/\">#EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, who moderated an \u003ca href=\"http://learningpond.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/does-grit-need-deeper-discussion/\">impromptu heated discussion\u003c/a> on this issue on his blog. \"It sort of plays into the mythology of the American dream. It sounds good, but it may be more relevant to some folks than to others,\" Lichtman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's absolutely necessary to structurally address the income inequalities in society, said psychologist David Yeager of the University of Texas in Austin. \"Increasing diligence is no replacement for that.\" But he believes cultivating skills like diligence and grit in students can still be valuable. Yeager points to high-performing urban charter high schools in the poorest areas that boosted their graduation and college enrollment rates with substantial financial investment, yet still find that 60 to 70 percent of their graduates drop out of college. At several such schools where Yeager worked with Duckworth in studying low-income students in their senior year, kids’ performance on the academic diligence task predicted their likelihood of dropping out of college a year later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Diligence still matters when [students] make transitions to the next setting,\" Yeager said. And the unfortunate and unfair reality is that it matters more for pupils who are disadvantaged than for those with ample resources, he added. When rich students fail at self-control and make poor choices, they can fall back on family support or finances to keep them pushing through school. In contrast, \"disadvantaged kids simply have fewer opportunities to make up for poor decisions,\" Yeager said. But a \"\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/how-a-bigger-purpose-can-motivate-students-to-learn/\">sense-of-purpose\" mindset intervention\u003c/a> and other strategies that boost self-control and academic perseverance might help to narrow the inequality gap in education, he said. And, he points out, teachers and schools could start these interventions tomorrow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Debate Over Drudgery\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the research on self-control and the diligence task also raise broader questions about drudgery and the definition of success in education. \"If you had done this study with the metaphorical Bill Gates in his senior year in high school,\" Lichtman said of the diligence task, \"he would have gone to the other side of the screen\" -- skipping the math problems -- \"or he would have tried to start hacking into the computer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37739\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-37739\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/marshmallow-test-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot of Marshmallow Test video. (FloodSanDiego/YouTube)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot of Marshmallow Test video. (FloodSanDiego/YouTube)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lichtman is one of many progressive educators who think schools need to teach content in ways that are more engaging and relevant to students' lives, rather than just drilling them with monotonous math practice sets. More and more teachers, parents and students believe that academic success should be measured not by repetitive regurgitation of facts, high test scores or even a college degree, he said, but rather by whether kids learn skills like collaboration, creativity, communication, empathy, and, yes, persistence and resilience, too. Instead of trying to make the assembly-line education system work better by turning up kids' self-control, Lichtman says it's time to focus on alternatives such as the deep, project-based learning experiences offered at \u003ca href=\"http://elschools.org/\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/a> schools, among others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We all support a forward-looking view of education and are excited to see the future of learning,\" said D’Mello in response. The research on the diligence task is an attempt \"to study how learning occurs today for better or for worse,\" he said. Not everything taught in schools can be fun and easy, he said -- that's why he and his colleagues are focusing on \"boring but important\" skill-building tasks -- and a lot of research has demonstrated the merits of impasse-driven learning, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/whats-the-sweet-spot-of-difficulty-for-learning/\">desirable difficulties\u003c/a> and productive failure in promoting deep learning. \"I'm in favor of doing what it takes to make learning more engaging and intrinsically motivating when appropriate, and fortifying kids with the appropriate mindsets, emotion regulation strategies and cognitive strategies when things get difficult and tedious,\" D'Mello said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless of one’s educational philosophy, there’s no question that diligence is universally necessary for anyone to accomplish something important in life that they really want to do. Any job, career or project, no matter how inspiring, will at times require the self-discipline to resist distractions and plod through some drudgery -- whether it's proofreading a book chapter for the umpteenth time or hand-pipetting hundreds of samples of reagents for a molecular biology experiment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While diligence may be an independent factor that contributes to academic success, \"it's really important to know it's just one contributor,\" Peake said. \"And it's not going to determine by itself whether or not kids do well in college -- there are so many other factors that are playing into this.\" The relationships between self-control and positive outcomes are correlations, \"not determinative kinds of things.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was certainly true for the pre-schoolers who couldn't wait to gobble the marshmallow in the Stanford experiments, Peake said: \"There are many, many kids who didn't wait, who by all the standards that you put out there do perfectly well in life.\"\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Researchers hope that being able to accurately measure how well students resist digital temptations will help them learn about how \"academic diligence\" features in later life success.",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37747\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37747\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow.jpg\" alt=\"Credit: Dana Nelson\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/googly-marshmallow-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Credit: Dana Nelson\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">The \"marshmallow test\" invented by Stanford psychologist Walter Mischel and colleagues in the 1960s is \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/12/magazine/we-didnt-eat-the-marshmallow-the-marshmallow-ate-us.html\">famously known\u003c/a> as a measure of willpower. The experiment gave preschoolers the option of either eating one mini-marshmallow right away or waiting 15 minutes to get two mini-marshmallows. \u003ca href=\"http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/6/2/252.full\">Decades later\u003c/a>, those who were better at delaying gratification, and resisted immediately snarfing the treat, ended up with stronger SAT scores, higher educational achievement and greater self-esteem and capacity to cope with stress in adulthood.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Now other psychology researchers have come up with a test that challenges the willpower of schoolkids to resist the brain-candy of today’s \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/12/age-of-distraction-why-its-crucial-for-students-to-learn-to-focus/\">digital distractions\u003c/a> -- the YouTube videos, Instagram and mobile gaming apps like Angry Birds. Some people are calling it a \"digital marshmallow test,\" although it's tailored for an educational context and doesn't involve any sweets or near-term rewards.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Officially known as the \"academic diligence task,\" the new computer-based test offers students a choice between doing math or watching videos or playing a video game. The test was created by postdoctoral research fellow Brian Galla and associate psychology professor Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, with Sidney D’Mello of the University of Notre Dame, as a better (and free) research tool for measuring self-control. The researchers hope this new tool will advance their studies of ways to improve academic perseverance in students.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Some students would turn it into a game for themselves.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X14000502\">A report\u003c/a> recently published online by the team documents the test's reliability and validity and shows that performance on the task predicts academic achievement -- including whether high school seniors graduate on time and enroll in college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's a really creative and interesting approach to measuring an aspect of self-control,\" said Smith College psychologist Philip Peake, who has worked with Mischel on the longitudinal follow-up of participants in the Stanford \"delay of gratification\" studies. The new diligence task is quite different from the marshmallow experiment, so they can't be equated, he said, but both are research tools that can contribute to our understanding of the processes that underlie self-control. And both have the advantage of measuring how people actually behave, not just what they say or think they do.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"It's not just people filling out a questionnaire that says, 'Oh, I tend to persist in things' or 'I work hard at things,' \" Peake said. It's assessing real behavior. \"And you can see that that behavior has some consequential relations to real-life outcomes.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Studying Self-Control in the Face of Digital Distractions\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The recent work by the Penn and Notre Dame psychologists is part of their ongoing national study of the role that non-cognitive factors such as \"grit\" and self-control play in students' persistence in school. That endeavor, which is funded by the Gates Foundation, is following about 1,800 high school seniors over six years to track who enrolls in and finishes college.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Duckworth is known for \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/10/how-important-is-grit-in-student-achievement/\">her work on grit\u003c/a>, which she defines as a tendency to pursue long-term challenging goals with passion and perseverance. Self-control or \"self-regulation,\" on the other hand, is more about the short-term exercising of self-discipline in the face of momentary diversions, an ability that also feeds into perseverance. The research team needed a standardized way to assess self-control, but most of the existing measurement tools were self-report questionnaires, which can give biased results.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>So they devised a task that uses behavioral responses to measure academic diligence, which they define as \"working assiduously on academic tasks which are beneficial in the long run but tedious in the moment, especially in comparison to more enjoyable, less effortful diversions.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The rationale behind the test is that with many subject areas or skills, such as mathematics, the basic process of building fluency and mastery involves a lot of practice. It requires \"hard work that is perceived as tedious, even though people know it's immensely important,\" D’Mello said. \"But that's just the reality.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With math, for instance, that means \"studying your multiplication tables, solving equations, again and again and again,\" which is essential for building more complex numerical knowledge. However, \"in the digital age, it's so hard to focus,\" D'Mello said. In psychology-speak, students are faced with having to \"regulate\" their emotions and impulses to overcome boredom and concentrate on homework instead of something more fun.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To measure this skill in a scenario simulating real life, D'Mello, who is an assistant professor of computer science and psychology, designed the diligence task with a split computer-screen interface (click here for \u003ca href=\"http://174.129.19.201/~sdmello/DiligenceTaskDemo/DiligenceTaskDemo.html\">a demo\u003c/a>). On the left side, students can choose to do a series of boring skill-building math problems -- simple, single-digit subtraction. On the right side, they can play Tetris or watch short, entertaining YouTube video clips of movie trailers or sports highlights. The test is delivered online.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Road-Testing the Test\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Galla, Duckworth and their colleagues took the diligence task into two large, ethnically diverse public high schools in Philadelphia, where they enlisted 921 seniors in early 2013. The students were instructed to answer as many math problems as they wanted, as fast as they could, in five consecutive four-minute sessions. They could take a break at any time to watch videos or play the game. The instructions informed them that practicing basic math skills could improve their problem-solving abilities for the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In total, the teens spent about half the time on math skill-building, answering an average of 244 problems, D'Mello said. Overall performance on the task consistently correlated with individual differences in conscientiousness, self-control and grit (which were also assessed in the students through questionnaires), just as the psychologists had theorized.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The kids who solved more math problems tended to have higher senior-year GPAs, better scores on standardized math and reading tests, and were more likely to graduate on time; they were also more likely to be enrolled in college at the end of the following fall semester, almost a year later. About 98 percent of the pupils who spent more than 17 minutes doing the math problems successfully graduated, compared with 95 percent of students who spent four minutes or less on math. While that's a small difference, it was interesting to see it even after the researchers adjusted for other factors, including intelligence, gender, ethnicity, interest in math and whether the kids were in the free lunch program, Galla said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37741\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/the-test.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-37741\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/the-test-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Demo of the "academic diligence task" created by Sidney D'Mello.\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Demo of the \"academic diligence task\" created by Sidney D'Mello.\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>The diligence test \"was able to pick up a signal in college enrollment, and this was above and beyond things like cognitive ability, socioeconomic status -- things that we know tend to correlate with or predict later college success,\" he said. So it isn't just IQ or braininess that matters for academic achievement, but self-control as well. Yet, unlike IQ, the researchers believe self-control in schoolwork is a skill that can be taught and developed.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The correlation between performance on the diligence task and academic achievement is modest, but it is significant and important, commented Peake of Smith College. Whether the task predicts long-term consequences, and whether those are limited just to academics or apply more broadly to other aspects of self-control, are interesting questions to further explore, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Staying on Task\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The results held some surprises. \"I was really shocked that some people actually stayed entirely on the math problems the whole time,\" D'Mello said. \"It's a really difficult task. I can't do it myself, frankly.\" One super-diligent student did 966 math problems; a few kids did none at all.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The teens used a range of tactics to resist the distractions. \"Some students would turn it into a game for themselves,\" Galla said. “So they want to just see how many problems that they can solve in the four-minute task blocks.\" Others did math until they needed a break, then switched to the fun stuff, which is \"very healthy behavior,\" D'Mello said. \"We all know there's advantages to taking a break. ... It's just that if you do that too much, then you get into trouble.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The research team will track the students through the six-year national college persistence study, and is updating their diligence task to include verbal and spatial reasoning problems. \"The hope is that by giving a good measure, you could really inspire a lot of science,\" said D'Mello. At this point, the researchers say they don't envision the test as something teachers would routinely use to assess students in the classroom; it isn't designed or validated for that purpose.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Different Takes on Willpower and Grit\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not everyone believes the growing focus on individual students' responsibility to demonstrate self-control or grit is the best way to support academic achievement. Some progressive education experts worry low-income or minority kids who are struggling in school might be blamed for lacking grit as the primary reason for underperformance. Those critics point out that in many schools, poverty and an inequitable lack of resources are much bigger roadblocks to teaching and learning that need to be addressed.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"It sort of plays into the mythology of the American dream. It sounds good, but it may be more relevant to some folks than to others.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>This viewpoint identifies an economic, social and racial overtone to the notion that if students \"would just put their nose to the grindstone harder and work harder, and be more diligent and more resilient, that they will do better,\" said Grant Lichtman, education consultant and author of \u003cem>\u003ca href=\"http://www.grantlichtman.com/edjourney-a-roadmap-to-the-future-of-education/\">#EdJourney: A Roadmap to the Future of Education\u003c/a>\u003c/em>, who moderated an \u003ca href=\"http://learningpond.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/does-grit-need-deeper-discussion/\">impromptu heated discussion\u003c/a> on this issue on his blog. \"It sort of plays into the mythology of the American dream. It sounds good, but it may be more relevant to some folks than to others,\" Lichtman said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It's absolutely necessary to structurally address the income inequalities in society, said psychologist David Yeager of the University of Texas in Austin. \"Increasing diligence is no replacement for that.\" But he believes cultivating skills like diligence and grit in students can still be valuable. Yeager points to high-performing urban charter high schools in the poorest areas that boosted their graduation and college enrollment rates with substantial financial investment, yet still find that 60 to 70 percent of their graduates drop out of college. At several such schools where Yeager worked with Duckworth in studying low-income students in their senior year, kids’ performance on the academic diligence task predicted their likelihood of dropping out of college a year later.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"Diligence still matters when [students] make transitions to the next setting,\" Yeager said. And the unfortunate and unfair reality is that it matters more for pupils who are disadvantaged than for those with ample resources, he added. When rich students fail at self-control and make poor choices, they can fall back on family support or finances to keep them pushing through school. In contrast, \"disadvantaged kids simply have fewer opportunities to make up for poor decisions,\" Yeager said. But a \"\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/how-a-bigger-purpose-can-motivate-students-to-learn/\">sense-of-purpose\" mindset intervention\u003c/a> and other strategies that boost self-control and academic perseverance might help to narrow the inequality gap in education, he said. And, he points out, teachers and schools could start these interventions tomorrow.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A Debate Over Drudgery\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Meanwhile, the research on self-control and the diligence task also raise broader questions about drudgery and the definition of success in education. \"If you had done this study with the metaphorical Bill Gates in his senior year in high school,\" Lichtman said of the diligence task, \"he would have gone to the other side of the screen\" -- skipping the math problems -- \"or he would have tried to start hacking into the computer.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37739\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\" style=\"max-width: 300px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-medium wp-image-37739\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/09/marshmallow-test-300x168.jpg\" alt=\"Screenshot of Marshmallow Test video. (FloodSanDiego/YouTube)\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Screenshot of Marshmallow Test video. (FloodSanDiego/YouTube)\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp>Lichtman is one of many progressive educators who think schools need to teach content in ways that are more engaging and relevant to students' lives, rather than just drilling them with monotonous math practice sets. More and more teachers, parents and students believe that academic success should be measured not by repetitive regurgitation of facts, high test scores or even a college degree, he said, but rather by whether kids learn skills like collaboration, creativity, communication, empathy, and, yes, persistence and resilience, too. Instead of trying to make the assembly-line education system work better by turning up kids' self-control, Lichtman says it's time to focus on alternatives such as the deep, project-based learning experiences offered at \u003ca href=\"http://elschools.org/\">Expeditionary Learning\u003c/a> schools, among others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We all support a forward-looking view of education and are excited to see the future of learning,\" said D’Mello in response. The research on the diligence task is an attempt \"to study how learning occurs today for better or for worse,\" he said. Not everything taught in schools can be fun and easy, he said -- that's why he and his colleagues are focusing on \"boring but important\" skill-building tasks -- and a lot of research has demonstrated the merits of impasse-driven learning, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/whats-the-sweet-spot-of-difficulty-for-learning/\">desirable difficulties\u003c/a> and productive failure in promoting deep learning. \"I'm in favor of doing what it takes to make learning more engaging and intrinsically motivating when appropriate, and fortifying kids with the appropriate mindsets, emotion regulation strategies and cognitive strategies when things get difficult and tedious,\" D'Mello said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Regardless of one’s educational philosophy, there’s no question that diligence is universally necessary for anyone to accomplish something important in life that they really want to do. Any job, career or project, no matter how inspiring, will at times require the self-discipline to resist distractions and plod through some drudgery -- whether it's proofreading a book chapter for the umpteenth time or hand-pipetting hundreds of samples of reagents for a molecular biology experiment.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While diligence may be an independent factor that contributes to academic success, \"it's really important to know it's just one contributor,\" Peake said. \"And it's not going to determine by itself whether or not kids do well in college -- there are so many other factors that are playing into this.\" The relationships between self-control and positive outcomes are correlations, \"not determinative kinds of things.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That was certainly true for the pre-schoolers who couldn't wait to gobble the marshmallow in the Stanford experiments, Peake said: \"There are many, many kids who didn't wait, who by all the standards that you put out there do perfectly well in life.\"\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37468\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37468\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies.jpg\" alt=\"Getty\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In his new book, \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/books/titles/342219114/how-we-learn-the-surprising-truth-about-when-where-and-why-it-happens?tab=excerpt#excerpt\">How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens\u003c/a>,\" author Benedict Carey informs us that “most of our instincts about learning are misplaced, incomplete, or flat wrong” and “rooted more in superstition than in science.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a disconcerting message, and hard to believe at first. But it's also unexpectedly liberating, because Carey further explains that many things we think of as detractors from learning -- like forgetting, distractions, interruptions or sleeping rather than hitting the books -- aren’t necessarily bad after all. They can actually work in your favor, according to a body of research that offers surprising insights and simple, doable strategies for learning more effectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Society has ingrained in us “a monkish conception of what learning is, of you sitting with your books in your cell,” Carey told MindShift. It’s a ritual of self-discipline, isolation and blocks of repetitive practice, whether in math, vocabulary, piano or tennis. But that traditional ideal has psychological downsides. Often, “you feel like you haven't done it right or you haven't done enough of it,” he said. “It causes a lot of anxiety because of what we think we should be doing.” For many students, learning has become a high-stress burden.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Being self-aware about what's effective learning and how it happens, I think, gives you a real edge in making those choices.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\"How We Learn\" presents a new view that takes some of the pressure off. As a veteran science reporter for the New York Times and previously the Los Angeles Times, Carey has covered cognitive science, psychology and psychiatry for 20 years. (Disclosure: I’ve known Carey since we both worked at Time Inc. Health in the '90s.) Combing through decades of cognitive science investigations of memory and learning, he has pulled together its best lessons into a practical and engaging guide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He lays out a variety of counterintuitive techniques that can aid and deepen learning, sprinkles in some illustrative memory exercises and puzzles, and weaves in his own painful experiences as a restless and anxious -- yet dutiful and hardworking -- student who initially failed to get into college. All in all, Carey vividly shows readers how learning can be less of a chore and more a way of living that lets new information and skills “seep under our skin.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Getting to Know Your Brain's Memory Processes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"LG2IUqQuWWO02sSA2LQB2niLoph4grUp\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview, he highlighted three take-home messages from his book:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Forgetting isn't always bad\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em> Most of the time, it’s natural and essential to remembering and learning. According to \u003ca href=\"http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research.html#ntd\">a theory\u003c/a> championed by Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork at UCLA, forgetting serves as a powerful spam filter: Whenever you're trying to recall a word or fact, your brain has to actively suppress, or forget, competing information. What’s more, the way memories tend to fade over time actually aids subsequent learning. Under a principle the Bjorks call \u003ca href=\"http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/RBjork_inpress.pdf\">desirable difficulty\u003c/a>, when the brain has to work hard to retrieve a half-forgotten memory (such as when reviewing new vocabulary words you learned the day before), it re-doubles the strength of that memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you sit down to study a load of material, “of course you're not going to remember most of it the next day,” Carey said. You do have to go back and build your knowledge. “But it's not that you don't remember well, or you're not a good learner. It's that forgetting is a critical part of learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The brain is a foraging learner\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em> For our ancient hominid ancestors, remembering how and where to hunt prey or find shelter was crucial to survival. The human brain evolved to pick up valuable pieces of information here and there, on the fly, all the time, and put it all together, he said. It still does that -- absorbing cues from daily life, overheard conversations, its own internal musings. It keeps things in mind that are important to you (an unfinished project, for instance) and adds to your thoughts about them by subconsciously tuning in to any relevant information you see or hear around you. By foraging in this way, the brain is “building knowledge continually, and it's not only during study or practice,” Carey said. And we’re not even completely aware of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>We can be tactical in our schooling\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em> The traditional advice on learning has been to “study hard,” in a quiet place and with the same routine, yet that doesn’t say much about what to specifically \u003cem>do\u003c/em>. But pupils today can change the way they study to exploit the brain’s quirky learning processes, using the strategies revealed by memory and learning research. While that science is still maturing, “it's at a place now where it can give you a specific tactical plan,” Carey said. Students can tailor their preparation with techniques targeting different kinds of content or skills, and manage their schedule to optimize their time. “That's a powerful thing, because we go through our whole lives never knowing that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/how-we-learn.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-37471\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/how-we-learn-300x416.jpg\" alt=\"how-we-learn\" width=\"300\" height=\"416\">\u003c/a>For example:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- Breaking up and \u003ca href=\"http://www.pashler.com/Articles/Cepeda%20et%20al%202008_psychsci.pdf\">spacing out study time\u003c/a> over days or weeks can substantially boost how much of the material students retain, and for longer, compared to lumping everything into a single, nose-to-the-grindstone session.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- Varying the studying environment -- by hitting the books in, say, a cafe or garden rather than only hunkering down in the library, or even by listening to different background music -- can help reinforce and sharpen the memory of what you learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- A 15-minute break to go for a walk or trawl on social media isn’t necessarily wasteful procrastination. Distractions and interruptions can allow for mental “incubation” and flashes of insight -- but only if you’ve been working at a problem for a while and get stuck, according to a 2009 research \u003ca href=\"http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~unsio/Sio_Ormerod_meta_analysis_incubation_PB.pdf\">meta-analysis\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- Quizzing oneself on new material, such as by reciting it aloud from memory or trying to tell a friend about it, is a far more powerful way to master information than just re-reading it, according to work by researchers including Henry Roediger III and Jeffrey Karpicke. (Roediger has co-authored his own book, \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674729018\">Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning\u003c/a>.\")\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Experimenting With Learning Tactics\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anybody can try these methods to see what works best, Carey said. For instance, to prepare for a Spanish test that’s one week away, students could plan to study an hour today, an hour tomorrow -- and then self-test themselves next week right before the exam, he said. The book also explores the benefits of sleep (which \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/why-sleeping-may-be-more-important-than-studying/\">improves retention and comprehension\u003c/a> of what you learn), \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/health/07learn.html\">perceptual learning modules\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~drohrer/pdfs/Rohrer2012EPR.pdf\">mixing up different kinds of related problems\u003c/a> or skills in practice sessions instead of repetitively rehearsing just one skill at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"gJ1Dn1ghHCh76qqgOqzmqX15nPVUFgqF\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carey thinks the science-based learning strategies should explicitly be taught to all students early on, as part of the school curriculum. But kids shouldn't use them “as an excuse to do nothing,” he added. The message isn’t that they can spend every second glued to their cellphones and still be learning. “You have to be motivated and pay attention and so on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, most people, educators included, are unaware of the lessons from the science of learning, Carey said. Education and cognitive science are largely separate worlds that have begun communicating only in the last decade, partly because “teachers see all sorts of reforms come and go, and they’re skeptical -- and rightly so -- of anyone who comes in and says, \"Well, I'm going to tell you how to make the kids learn better,” he said. But some individual teachers who have followed the research may be applying certain strategies in the classroom, he said, such as assigning \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/cognitive-science-meets-pre-algebra.html\">mixed-up math problem sets\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowing the basics of how the brain actually learns can offer breathing room from societal expectations about “good” academic habits. A fidgety teenager who has trouble concentrating and forgets her physics formulas might think, “I’m no good at this” or “I’m not so smart, and maybe it’s not worthwhile for me to pursue this,” Carey said. But that’s not necessarily true, according to the cognitive research. Students need to understand that learning happens not only during reading and studying, but in all sorts of ways, so that they can examine their own habits to know which ones may be helping or not, and make adjustments, he said. Only then can they evaluate whether they’re good at something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Surviving the Modern Jungle\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the value of these learning strategies isn’t just about earning better grades, Carey said. In the modern jungle of society, learning is still about surviving: For young people, it’s about sussing out what they’re good at, what rings their bell, and what they want to do with their lives. “It's informing you of: Who am I? Where do I place my bets? Do I major in physics or do I major in architecture or design, or do I major in English? Do I belong here at all?” Carey said. Those are important decisions. “Being self-aware about what’s effective learning and how it happens, I think, gives you a real edge in making those choices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carey has fully incorporated the learning techniques into his own life -- whether in practicing guitar or getting up to speed on the latest neuroscience research to write a newspaper story. For example, when reading a difficult scientific journal article, “I realize I'm not going to understand a bunch of the stuff right away, no matter how hard I try or concentrate. I don't let that slow me down.” He runs through it a few times, puts it aside and, spacing out his learning, tries again later, when the material almost always begins to gel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deadline pressure often forces him to start writing his article before he even has all the pieces, which is an “extremely valuable way to efficiently pick up the knowledge,” he said. “In effect, you’re testing yourself on how much you know... \u003cem>and\u003c/em> you're trying to write it clearly so you're sort of teaching it, too. Those are two very effective study techniques.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wishes he’d known these learning secrets years ago, when he was in school. “I know for sure it would've taken so much of the anxiety and dread out of preparation and study and learning,” Carey said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37468\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37468\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies.jpg\" alt=\"Getty\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/smart-strategies-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003c/a>\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">In his new book, \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.npr.org/books/titles/342219114/how-we-learn-the-surprising-truth-about-when-where-and-why-it-happens?tab=excerpt#excerpt\">How We Learn: The Surprising Truth about When, Where, and Why It Happens\u003c/a>,\" author Benedict Carey informs us that “most of our instincts about learning are misplaced, incomplete, or flat wrong” and “rooted more in superstition than in science.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That's a disconcerting message, and hard to believe at first. But it's also unexpectedly liberating, because Carey further explains that many things we think of as detractors from learning -- like forgetting, distractions, interruptions or sleeping rather than hitting the books -- aren’t necessarily bad after all. They can actually work in your favor, according to a body of research that offers surprising insights and simple, doable strategies for learning more effectively.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Society has ingrained in us “a monkish conception of what learning is, of you sitting with your books in your cell,” Carey told MindShift. It’s a ritual of self-discipline, isolation and blocks of repetitive practice, whether in math, vocabulary, piano or tennis. But that traditional ideal has psychological downsides. Often, “you feel like you haven't done it right or you haven't done enough of it,” he said. “It causes a lot of anxiety because of what we think we should be doing.” For many students, learning has become a high-stress burden.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"Being self-aware about what's effective learning and how it happens, I think, gives you a real edge in making those choices.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>\"How We Learn\" presents a new view that takes some of the pressure off. As a veteran science reporter for the New York Times and previously the Los Angeles Times, Carey has covered cognitive science, psychology and psychiatry for 20 years. (Disclosure: I’ve known Carey since we both worked at Time Inc. Health in the '90s.) Combing through decades of cognitive science investigations of memory and learning, he has pulled together its best lessons into a practical and engaging guide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He lays out a variety of counterintuitive techniques that can aid and deepen learning, sprinkles in some illustrative memory exercises and puzzles, and weaves in his own painful experiences as a restless and anxious -- yet dutiful and hardworking -- student who initially failed to get into college. All in all, Carey vividly shows readers how learning can be less of a chore and more a way of living that lets new information and skills “seep under our skin.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Getting to Know Your Brain's Memory Processes\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In an interview, he highlighted three take-home messages from his book:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>Forgetting isn't always bad\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em> Most of the time, it’s natural and essential to remembering and learning. According to \u003ca href=\"http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/research.html#ntd\">a theory\u003c/a> championed by Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork at UCLA, forgetting serves as a powerful spam filter: Whenever you're trying to recall a word or fact, your brain has to actively suppress, or forget, competing information. What’s more, the way memories tend to fade over time actually aids subsequent learning. Under a principle the Bjorks call \u003ca href=\"http://bjorklab.psych.ucla.edu/pubs/RBjork_inpress.pdf\">desirable difficulty\u003c/a>, when the brain has to work hard to retrieve a half-forgotten memory (such as when reviewing new vocabulary words you learned the day before), it re-doubles the strength of that memory.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>If you sit down to study a load of material, “of course you're not going to remember most of it the next day,” Carey said. You do have to go back and build your knowledge. “But it's not that you don't remember well, or you're not a good learner. It's that forgetting is a critical part of learning.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>The brain is a foraging learner\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em> For our ancient hominid ancestors, remembering how and where to hunt prey or find shelter was crucial to survival. The human brain evolved to pick up valuable pieces of information here and there, on the fly, all the time, and put it all together, he said. It still does that -- absorbing cues from daily life, overheard conversations, its own internal musings. It keeps things in mind that are important to you (an unfinished project, for instance) and adds to your thoughts about them by subconsciously tuning in to any relevant information you see or hear around you. By foraging in this way, the brain is “building knowledge continually, and it's not only during study or practice,” Carey said. And we’re not even completely aware of that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cem>\u003cstrong>We can be tactical in our schooling\u003c/strong>.\u003c/em> The traditional advice on learning has been to “study hard,” in a quiet place and with the same routine, yet that doesn’t say much about what to specifically \u003cem>do\u003c/em>. But pupils today can change the way they study to exploit the brain’s quirky learning processes, using the strategies revealed by memory and learning research. While that science is still maturing, “it's at a place now where it can give you a specific tactical plan,” Carey said. Students can tailor their preparation with techniques targeting different kinds of content or skills, and manage their schedule to optimize their time. “That's a powerful thing, because we go through our whole lives never knowing that,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/how-we-learn.jpg\">\u003cimg class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-37471\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/how-we-learn-300x416.jpg\" alt=\"how-we-learn\" width=\"300\" height=\"416\">\u003c/a>For example:\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- Breaking up and \u003ca href=\"http://www.pashler.com/Articles/Cepeda%20et%20al%202008_psychsci.pdf\">spacing out study time\u003c/a> over days or weeks can substantially boost how much of the material students retain, and for longer, compared to lumping everything into a single, nose-to-the-grindstone session.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- Varying the studying environment -- by hitting the books in, say, a cafe or garden rather than only hunkering down in the library, or even by listening to different background music -- can help reinforce and sharpen the memory of what you learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- A 15-minute break to go for a walk or trawl on social media isn’t necessarily wasteful procrastination. Distractions and interruptions can allow for mental “incubation” and flashes of insight -- but only if you’ve been working at a problem for a while and get stuck, according to a 2009 research \u003ca href=\"http://www.psy.cmu.edu/~unsio/Sio_Ormerod_meta_analysis_incubation_PB.pdf\">meta-analysis\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>-- Quizzing oneself on new material, such as by reciting it aloud from memory or trying to tell a friend about it, is a far more powerful way to master information than just re-reading it, according to work by researchers including Henry Roediger III and Jeffrey Karpicke. (Roediger has co-authored his own book, \"\u003ca href=\"http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674729018\">Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning\u003c/a>.\")\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Experimenting With Learning Tactics\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Anybody can try these methods to see what works best, Carey said. For instance, to prepare for a Spanish test that’s one week away, students could plan to study an hour today, an hour tomorrow -- and then self-test themselves next week right before the exam, he said. The book also explores the benefits of sleep (which \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/why-sleeping-may-be-more-important-than-studying/\">improves retention and comprehension\u003c/a> of what you learn), \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/07/health/07learn.html\">perceptual learning modules\u003c/a> and \u003ca href=\"http://uweb.cas.usf.edu/~drohrer/pdfs/Rohrer2012EPR.pdf\">mixing up different kinds of related problems\u003c/a> or skills in practice sessions instead of repetitively rehearsing just one skill at a time.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carey thinks the science-based learning strategies should explicitly be taught to all students early on, as part of the school curriculum. But kids shouldn't use them “as an excuse to do nothing,” he added. The message isn’t that they can spend every second glued to their cellphones and still be learning. “You have to be motivated and pay attention and so on.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Unfortunately, most people, educators included, are unaware of the lessons from the science of learning, Carey said. Education and cognitive science are largely separate worlds that have begun communicating only in the last decade, partly because “teachers see all sorts of reforms come and go, and they’re skeptical -- and rightly so -- of anyone who comes in and says, \"Well, I'm going to tell you how to make the kids learn better,” he said. But some individual teachers who have followed the research may be applying certain strategies in the classroom, he said, such as assigning \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/cognitive-science-meets-pre-algebra.html\">mixed-up math problem sets\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Knowing the basics of how the brain actually learns can offer breathing room from societal expectations about “good” academic habits. A fidgety teenager who has trouble concentrating and forgets her physics formulas might think, “I’m no good at this” or “I’m not so smart, and maybe it’s not worthwhile for me to pursue this,” Carey said. But that’s not necessarily true, according to the cognitive research. Students need to understand that learning happens not only during reading and studying, but in all sorts of ways, so that they can examine their own habits to know which ones may be helping or not, and make adjustments, he said. Only then can they evaluate whether they’re good at something.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>Surviving the Modern Jungle\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Ultimately, the value of these learning strategies isn’t just about earning better grades, Carey said. In the modern jungle of society, learning is still about surviving: For young people, it’s about sussing out what they’re good at, what rings their bell, and what they want to do with their lives. “It's informing you of: Who am I? Where do I place my bets? Do I major in physics or do I major in architecture or design, or do I major in English? Do I belong here at all?” Carey said. Those are important decisions. “Being self-aware about what’s effective learning and how it happens, I think, gives you a real edge in making those choices.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Carey has fully incorporated the learning techniques into his own life -- whether in practicing guitar or getting up to speed on the latest neuroscience research to write a newspaper story. For example, when reading a difficult scientific journal article, “I realize I'm not going to understand a bunch of the stuff right away, no matter how hard I try or concentrate. I don't let that slow me down.” He runs through it a few times, puts it aside and, spacing out his learning, tries again later, when the material almost always begins to gel.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Deadline pressure often forces him to start writing his article before he even has all the pieces, which is an “extremely valuable way to efficiently pick up the knowledge,” he said. “In effect, you’re testing yourself on how much you know... \u003cem>and\u003c/em> you're trying to write it clearly so you're sort of teaching it, too. Those are two very effective study techniques.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>He wishes he’d known these learning secrets years ago, when he was in school. “I know for sure it would've taken so much of the anxiety and dread out of preparation and study and learning,” Carey said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn ",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37072\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37072\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg\" alt=\"Jane Mount/MindShift\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jane Mount/MindShift\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">A few years ago, psychologist David Yeager and his colleagues noticed something interesting while \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X12000112\">interviewing high school students \u003c/a>in the San Francisco Bay Area about their hopes, dreams and life goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was no surprise that students often said that making money, attaining fame or pursuing a career that they enjoyed were important to them. But many of them also spoke of additionally wanting to make a positive impact on their community or society -- such as by becoming a doctor to take care of people, or a pastor who “makes a difference.” What’s more, the teens with these “pro-social” types of goals tended to rate their schoolwork as more personally meaningful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given this information, Yeager and his colleagues wanted to know: could such a bigger sense of purpose that looks beyond one’s own self-interests be a real and significant inspiration for learning? They believe the answer is yes. And they’ve devised a new social psychology intervention to foster a “purposeful learning” mindset as another way to motivate pupils to persevere in their studies. Yeager, now based at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, conducted the work in collaboration with UT colleague Marlone Henderson, David Paunesku and Greg Walton of Stanford, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-focus-on-grit-work-in-school-cultures-that-reward-grades/\">“grit”\u003c/a> guru Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They recently explored purposeful learning in a \u003ca href=\"https://labs.la.utexas.edu/adrg/files/2013/12/Purpose.pdf\">series of four studies\u003c/a> and put their intervention to the test against one of the banes of learning: boredom. Initial promising results suggest the psychology strategy could encourage pupils to plug away at homework or learning tasks that are challenging or tedious, yet necessary to getting an education that’ll help them reach their greater life goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Can Drudgery Be Eliminated from Learning?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The idea of drudgery in schoolwork is anathema to many progressive educators these days. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/at-this-school-its-all-about-play-game-based-learning/\">Game-based approaches to learning \u003c/a>are far favored over “drill-and-kill” exercises. And while an emphasis on fortifying students’ academic “grit” and self-discipline in their study habits has been explored in depth, it’s controversial. Along with \u003ca href=\"http://learningpond.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/does-grit-need-deeper-discussion/\">criticisms about deeper implications \u003c/a>relating to race and poverty, some observers say the buzz over grit neglects the need to make dull classroom lessons more compelling to today’s learners. As education author \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sometimes-its-better-to-quit-than-to-prove-your-grit/2014/04/04/24075a84-b8f8-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html\">Alfie Kohn has written\u003c/a>, “not everything is worth doing, let alone doing for extended periods, and not everyone who works hard is pursuing something worthwhile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“If you think about it the right way, you can actually be motivated and you can find it interesting, even if on the surface it’s not fun.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>It's complicated, though. At Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"http://perts.net\">Project for Education Research that Scales\u003c/a>, Paunesku believes that teachers and educators should make learning more engaging wherever possible. “However, the reality is that schoolwork is often neither interesting nor meaningful,” he said -- at least, not in a way that students immediately get. “It’s hard for students to understand why doing algebra, for example, really matters or why it’ll help them or why it will make a difference in their life.” Yet, he noted, such work is often key in building basic skills and knowledge they’ll need for a successful future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With that in mind, Yeager and Paunesku designed an intervention that subtly guides students to connect their academic efforts with pro-social long-term goals, to see whether it might help inspire them to plow through assignments that are “boring but important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a baseline, the research team first investigated a mindset of “self-transcendent” purposeful learning by surveying 1,364 low-income high-school seniors at 10 urban public schools in California, Texas, Arkansas and New York. The teenagers sat down at a computer and took an “academic diligence task” devised by Duckworth and Sidney D’Mello of the University of Notre Dame. For a few minutes, the participants had the choice of either doing lots of simple, tedious math subtraction problems, or watching YouTube video clips or playing Tetris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students with a purposeful-learning attitude (who agreed with socially oriented statements like “I want to become an educated citizen that can contribute to society”) scored higher on measures of grit and self-control than classmates who only reported self-oriented motives for learning such as wanting to get a good job or earn more money. The purposeful learners were also less likely to succumb to the digital distractions, answering more math problems on the diligence task -- and they were more likely to be enrolled in college the following fall, the researchers found.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Potential of a Purposeful Mindset\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Next, a pilot experiment tested the sense-of-purpose intervention to see if it would improve grades in math and science (two subjects often seen as uninteresting): The researchers asked 338 ninth graders at a middle-class Bay Area high school to log online for a 20- to 30-minute reading and writing exercise. The teenagers read a brief article and specific quotes from other students, all conveying the message that many adolescents work hard in school not just to gain knowledge for, say, pursuing a career they like -- but also because they want to achieve “something that matters for the world.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"fWNL0AYd5rTOGJ6r6XtvAeGyJoLeoDB6\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Study participants then wrote short testimonials to other, future students describing how high school would help them become the kind of person they want to be or make an impact on society. As one teen explained, “I believe learning in school will give me the rudimentary skills to survive in the world. Science will give me a good base for my career in environmental engineering. I want to be able to solve our energy problems.” Another ninth grader wrote that having an education “allows me to form well-supported, well-thought opinions about the world. I will not be able to help anyone without first going to school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few months later, at the end of the grading quarter, the researchers observed positive effects from the intervention, most notably in the weakest students: Underachieving pupils saw their low GPAs go up by 0.2 points. That’s a helpful improvement, said UT Austin’s Henderson, because many pivotal educational decisions hang in the balance based on a GPA cutoff. A few tenths of a point can make or break a student’s acceptance into a program or a school, which could in turn affect what type of job she ends up getting and ultimately, the salary she earns, Henderson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“GPA is really a better long-term predictor of not just educational outcomes but all kinds of positive life outcomes,” commented education researcher Camille Farrington of the University of Chicago. A 0.2 point gain in GPA could bump a B to a B+ or a B+ to an A-, she noted, which is an important impact given how brief and relatively inexpensive the sense-of-purpose treatment was. Many other education interventions take a lot more time, energy and money, yet “don’t give any more of a bump than that,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>How Does It Work?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As with other kinds of \u003ca href=\"http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Noncognitive%20Report.pdf\">academic mindset strategies\u003c/a>, the benefit from the sense-of-purpose intervention “almost seems like magic,” Henderson said. But it’s not, (as Yeager and Walton have \u003ca href=\"https://labs.la.utexas.edu/adrg/files/2013/12/REVIEW-OF-EDUCATIONAL-RESEARCH-2011-Yeager-267-301.pdf\">previously elaborated\u003c/a>). The research team ran two other experiments (with college undergrads) that helped unpack how the intervention might work: by motivating students to engage in deeper learning, and by bolstering self-control in resisting tempting distractions from schoolwork (as measured again by Duckworth and D’Mello’s diligence test).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a purposeful mindset does for students is that “when they encounter challenges, difficulty or things that could potentially be roadblocks to learning, it motivates them to persist and barrel through,” Henderson said. The psychology researchers don’t know how long the positive effects last, but they speculate that just a small shift in students’ attitudes could spark a chain reaction of stronger academic performance and confidence that builds upon itself and endures over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"People are motivated by, they care about having meaning in their life.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Such a payoff can be hard to believe. After all, grownups have forever been telling children any number of reasons why a good education is important for their future. But here’s the thing: The technique for nurturing a sense-of-purpose mentality is designed so that “the student owns that and kind of puts those pieces together in their own heads, for themselves,” Farrington noted. “And that is a different thing than your mom or your teacher telling you, it’s important to do this because blah, blah, blah, blah.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other, self-oriented goals such as making money or getting out of their parents' house didn't seem to inspire students as much as the self-transcendent goals did in the studies. That’s worth noting, Farrington said, especially considering that youths from low-income backgrounds are often exhorted to study hard so that they can get out of their disadvantaged neighborhoods and go to college or find a good job. If the research results are right, these kids may get more motivational mileage out of the goal of making a meaningful contribution to the world. “That’s consistent with what we know in social psychology: that people are motivated by, they care about having meaning in their life,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sense-of-purpose work is just in its beginning stages, Henderson said, with the psychologists still tinkering to improve the intervention. They want to explore whether the technique can reduce student cheating, and whether teachers can “activate” the purposeful-learning mindset by writing simple, subtle and carefully tailored messages of feedback on classwork, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Finding Meaning in Schoolwork\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The experiments with the new strategy beg the question of whether the researchers are implicitly endorsing drill-and-kill-style learning. They aren’t, Paunesku is quick to say. He’s all for \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\">project-based learning\u003c/a> and other efforts to make school more relevant and alluring for students. Yet, he added, it isn’t practical or possible to render every lesson or assignment in K-12 “super fun and game-y” for kids -- and even if it were, doing so could be a disservice to them later. What would they do when they get to law school and are faced with having to memorize long lists of laws? Or when they land a job that calls for mastering information that no one has “gamefied” to make it exciting to learn?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students go to school not just to learn specific facts, he pointed out. They're learning how to learn, how to practice self-discipline and motivate themselves through frustrating roadblocks, and thus are preparing for adulthood. That's important even if it isn't always fascinating, he said. But having that bigger sense of purpose, that personal mission of making a positive difference in the broader world, might help students to find meaning in difficult or mundane schoolwork. “If you think about it the right way, you can actually be motivated and you can find it interesting, even if on the surface it’s not fun,\" Paunesku said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"headline": "How a Bigger Purpose Can Motivate Students to Learn ",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_37072\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-37072\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg\" alt=\"Jane Mount/MindShift\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/08/Mindshift1_illo2_72-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jane Mount/MindShift\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">A few years ago, psychologist David Yeager and his colleagues noticed something interesting while \u003ca href=\"http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361476X12000112\">interviewing high school students \u003c/a>in the San Francisco Bay Area about their hopes, dreams and life goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>It was no surprise that students often said that making money, attaining fame or pursuing a career that they enjoyed were important to them. But many of them also spoke of additionally wanting to make a positive impact on their community or society -- such as by becoming a doctor to take care of people, or a pastor who “makes a difference.” What’s more, the teens with these “pro-social” types of goals tended to rate their schoolwork as more personally meaningful.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Given this information, Yeager and his colleagues wanted to know: could such a bigger sense of purpose that looks beyond one’s own self-interests be a real and significant inspiration for learning? They believe the answer is yes. And they’ve devised a new social psychology intervention to foster a “purposeful learning” mindset as another way to motivate pupils to persevere in their studies. Yeager, now based at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin, conducted the work in collaboration with UT colleague Marlone Henderson, David Paunesku and Greg Walton of Stanford, \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/can-focus-on-grit-work-in-school-cultures-that-reward-grades/\">“grit”\u003c/a> guru Angela Duckworth of the University of Pennsylvania, and others.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>They recently explored purposeful learning in a \u003ca href=\"https://labs.la.utexas.edu/adrg/files/2013/12/Purpose.pdf\">series of four studies\u003c/a> and put their intervention to the test against one of the banes of learning: boredom. Initial promising results suggest the psychology strategy could encourage pupils to plug away at homework or learning tasks that are challenging or tedious, yet necessary to getting an education that’ll help them reach their greater life goals.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Can Drudgery Be Eliminated from Learning?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The idea of drudgery in schoolwork is anathema to many progressive educators these days. \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/07/at-this-school-its-all-about-play-game-based-learning/\">Game-based approaches to learning \u003c/a>are far favored over “drill-and-kill” exercises. And while an emphasis on fortifying students’ academic “grit” and self-discipline in their study habits has been explored in depth, it’s controversial. Along with \u003ca href=\"http://learningpond.wordpress.com/2014/01/24/does-grit-need-deeper-discussion/\">criticisms about deeper implications \u003c/a>relating to race and poverty, some observers say the buzz over grit neglects the need to make dull classroom lessons more compelling to today’s learners. As education author \u003ca href=\"http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/sometimes-its-better-to-quit-than-to-prove-your-grit/2014/04/04/24075a84-b8f8-11e3-96ae-f2c36d2b1245_story.html\">Alfie Kohn has written\u003c/a>, “not everything is worth doing, let alone doing for extended periods, and not everyone who works hard is pursuing something worthwhile.”\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“If you think about it the right way, you can actually be motivated and you can find it interesting, even if on the surface it’s not fun.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>It's complicated, though. At Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"http://perts.net\">Project for Education Research that Scales\u003c/a>, Paunesku believes that teachers and educators should make learning more engaging wherever possible. “However, the reality is that schoolwork is often neither interesting nor meaningful,” he said -- at least, not in a way that students immediately get. “It’s hard for students to understand why doing algebra, for example, really matters or why it’ll help them or why it will make a difference in their life.” Yet, he noted, such work is often key in building basic skills and knowledge they’ll need for a successful future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>With that in mind, Yeager and Paunesku designed an intervention that subtly guides students to connect their academic efforts with pro-social long-term goals, to see whether it might help inspire them to plow through assignments that are “boring but important.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a baseline, the research team first investigated a mindset of “self-transcendent” purposeful learning by surveying 1,364 low-income high-school seniors at 10 urban public schools in California, Texas, Arkansas and New York. The teenagers sat down at a computer and took an “academic diligence task” devised by Duckworth and Sidney D’Mello of the University of Notre Dame. For a few minutes, the participants had the choice of either doing lots of simple, tedious math subtraction problems, or watching YouTube video clips or playing Tetris.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The students with a purposeful-learning attitude (who agreed with socially oriented statements like “I want to become an educated citizen that can contribute to society”) scored higher on measures of grit and self-control than classmates who only reported self-oriented motives for learning such as wanting to get a good job or earn more money. The purposeful learners were also less likely to succumb to the digital distractions, answering more math problems on the diligence task -- and they were more likely to be enrolled in college the following fall, the researchers found.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>The Potential of a Purposeful Mindset\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Next, a pilot experiment tested the sense-of-purpose intervention to see if it would improve grades in math and science (two subjects often seen as uninteresting): The researchers asked 338 ninth graders at a middle-class Bay Area high school to log online for a 20- to 30-minute reading and writing exercise. The teenagers read a brief article and specific quotes from other students, all conveying the message that many adolescents work hard in school not just to gain knowledge for, say, pursuing a career they like -- but also because they want to achieve “something that matters for the world.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Study participants then wrote short testimonials to other, future students describing how high school would help them become the kind of person they want to be or make an impact on society. As one teen explained, “I believe learning in school will give me the rudimentary skills to survive in the world. Science will give me a good base for my career in environmental engineering. I want to be able to solve our energy problems.” Another ninth grader wrote that having an education “allows me to form well-supported, well-thought opinions about the world. I will not be able to help anyone without first going to school.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A few months later, at the end of the grading quarter, the researchers observed positive effects from the intervention, most notably in the weakest students: Underachieving pupils saw their low GPAs go up by 0.2 points. That’s a helpful improvement, said UT Austin’s Henderson, because many pivotal educational decisions hang in the balance based on a GPA cutoff. A few tenths of a point can make or break a student’s acceptance into a program or a school, which could in turn affect what type of job she ends up getting and ultimately, the salary she earns, Henderson said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“GPA is really a better long-term predictor of not just educational outcomes but all kinds of positive life outcomes,” commented education researcher Camille Farrington of the University of Chicago. A 0.2 point gain in GPA could bump a B to a B+ or a B+ to an A-, she noted, which is an important impact given how brief and relatively inexpensive the sense-of-purpose treatment was. Many other education interventions take a lot more time, energy and money, yet “don’t give any more of a bump than that,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>How Does It Work?\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>As with other kinds of \u003ca href=\"http://ccsr.uchicago.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Noncognitive%20Report.pdf\">academic mindset strategies\u003c/a>, the benefit from the sense-of-purpose intervention “almost seems like magic,” Henderson said. But it’s not, (as Yeager and Walton have \u003ca href=\"https://labs.la.utexas.edu/adrg/files/2013/12/REVIEW-OF-EDUCATIONAL-RESEARCH-2011-Yeager-267-301.pdf\">previously elaborated\u003c/a>). The research team ran two other experiments (with college undergrads) that helped unpack how the intervention might work: by motivating students to engage in deeper learning, and by bolstering self-control in resisting tempting distractions from schoolwork (as measured again by Duckworth and D’Mello’s diligence test).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>What a purposeful mindset does for students is that “when they encounter challenges, difficulty or things that could potentially be roadblocks to learning, it motivates them to persist and barrel through,” Henderson said. The psychology researchers don’t know how long the positive effects last, but they speculate that just a small shift in students’ attitudes could spark a chain reaction of stronger academic performance and confidence that builds upon itself and endures over time.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"People are motivated by, they care about having meaning in their life.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Such a payoff can be hard to believe. After all, grownups have forever been telling children any number of reasons why a good education is important for their future. But here’s the thing: The technique for nurturing a sense-of-purpose mentality is designed so that “the student owns that and kind of puts those pieces together in their own heads, for themselves,” Farrington noted. “And that is a different thing than your mom or your teacher telling you, it’s important to do this because blah, blah, blah, blah.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other, self-oriented goals such as making money or getting out of their parents' house didn't seem to inspire students as much as the self-transcendent goals did in the studies. That’s worth noting, Farrington said, especially considering that youths from low-income backgrounds are often exhorted to study hard so that they can get out of their disadvantaged neighborhoods and go to college or find a good job. If the research results are right, these kids may get more motivational mileage out of the goal of making a meaningful contribution to the world. “That’s consistent with what we know in social psychology: that people are motivated by, they care about having meaning in their life,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The sense-of-purpose work is just in its beginning stages, Henderson said, with the psychologists still tinkering to improve the intervention. They want to explore whether the technique can reduce student cheating, and whether teachers can “activate” the purposeful-learning mindset by writing simple, subtle and carefully tailored messages of feedback on classwork, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Finding Meaning in Schoolwork\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The experiments with the new strategy beg the question of whether the researchers are implicitly endorsing drill-and-kill-style learning. They aren’t, Paunesku is quick to say. He’s all for \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/01/what-project-based-learning-is-and-isnt/\">project-based learning\u003c/a> and other efforts to make school more relevant and alluring for students. Yet, he added, it isn’t practical or possible to render every lesson or assignment in K-12 “super fun and game-y” for kids -- and even if it were, doing so could be a disservice to them later. What would they do when they get to law school and are faced with having to memorize long lists of laws? Or when they land a job that calls for mastering information that no one has “gamefied” to make it exciting to learn?\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Students go to school not just to learn specific facts, he pointed out. They're learning how to learn, how to practice self-discipline and motivate themselves through frustrating roadblocks, and thus are preparing for adulthood. That's important even if it isn't always fascinating, he said. But having that bigger sense of purpose, that personal mission of making a positive difference in the broader world, might help students to find meaning in difficult or mundane schoolwork. “If you think about it the right way, you can actually be motivated and you can find it interesting, even if on the surface it’s not fun,\" Paunesku said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "New Research: Students Benefit from Learning That Intelligence Is Not Fixed",
"title": "New Research: Students Benefit from Learning That Intelligence Is Not Fixed",
"headTitle": "GROWTH MINDSET | MindShift | KQED News",
"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36768\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36768\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408.jpg\" alt=\"Arten Popov\" width=\"640\" height=\"369\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408-400x231.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408-320x185.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Arten Popov\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Teaching students that intelligence can grow and blossom with effort – rather than being a fixed trait they’re just born with – is gaining traction in progressive education circles. And new research from Stanford is helping to build the case that nurturing a “\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/growth-mindset/\" target=\"_blank\">growth mindset\u003c/a>” can help many kids understand their true potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new research involves larger, more rigorous field trials that provide some of the first evidence that the social psychology strategy can be effective when implemented in schools on a wide scale. Even a one-time, 30-minute online intervention can spur academic gains for many students, particularly those with poor grades. The premise is that these positive effects can stick over years, leading for example to higher graduation rates; but long-term data is still needed to confirm that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier, well-designed tests of simple and relatively inexpensive growth-mindset interventions had surprisingly shown improvements in students’ grades over weeks or months. For instance, promising results from one famous experiment – an eight-session workshop in 91 seventh graders in a New York City school – led psychology researchers \u003ca href=\"https://chronicle.com/article/Carol-Dwecks-Attitude/65405\">Carol Dweck\u003c/a> and Lisa Blackwell to start up Mindset Works, a company that offers a computer-based program called Brainology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, all the original intervention studies were small and left some educators and policymakers unconvinced. “Some folks, I think, are skeptical just because the effects are big and because they come from something that’s so small,” said Stanford behavioral scientist David Paunesku. “And I think it’s fair that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” There were doubts, too, whether the classroom-based growth-mindset techniques would work if broadly put into practice without intensive training or supervision from the experts who developed them.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“There’s so much more good that could come if we could effectively communicate to teachers and train teachers how to do this in day-to-day classroom practices.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>To address those issues, Dweck, Paunesku and associates started the Stanford \u003ca href=\"https://p3.perts.net/about\">Project for Education Research That Scales\u003c/a> (PERTS) with the goal of conducting large-scale randomized, controlled trials of distilled mindset interventions that were briefer and could be easily delivered by internet. The program, which is directed by Paunesku, collaborates with schools in testing various experimental psychology strategies for \u003ca href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/Welcome_files/Yeager%20Walton%20Cohen%202013.pdf\">shifting the ways students think\u003c/a> about their education, so as to motivate them to work hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Light Touch Leads to Meaningful Change\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In one intervention trial that was part of his Ph.D. dissertation, Paunesku worked with colleagues to enlist 1,594 students at 13 U.S. high schools, including 519 under-performing teens with the lowest GPAs. In spring semester 2012, the kids all logged online for a 30-minute, no-frills slideshow presentation (which they were only told was part of a general study of how and why students learn).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Half the group watched a lesson explaining the basic anatomy of the brain, but the other half received a growth-mindset “treatment”: They read an article that described scientific research findings about the brain’s malleability and explained that, just as people can get stronger by working out their muscles, anyone who works out their brain through learning can get smarter. The presentation also noted it could be helpful to try different studying strategies. Then, the teens were asked to summarize what they’d learned by composing a note of advice to a hypothetical struggling student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, as one student wrote, “The more you practice or study the more you learn. Your brain has neurons inside that grow whenever you learn something new. Even though you may struggle in a certain subject the neurons in your brain are making new connections and your brain is getting stronger and smarter. … Struggling in school is absolutely normal and we may feel and call ourselves ‘dumb’ during these times. If you practice using better ways to study and learn you will get smarter and might struggle less.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of spring term, encouraging changes were afoot, particularly in the students struggling with low GPAs: the proportion who earned satisfactory grades rose to 49 percent from 43 percent the previous semester, a relative gain of 14 percent. Students in the control condition, however, showed a slight downward slide. A 14 percent improvement might not sound like much, but it represents that many more kids who lifted themselves above poor or failing grades, Paunesku said. “Hopefully, that will put these kids on a different trajectory where they would be more likely to actually graduate high school,” he said. Students who don’t perform well early in the school year usually end up doing worse and worse and are at risk for dropping out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fostering \u003ca href=\"http://www.hewlett.org/library/grantee-publication/academic-mindsets-critical-component-deeper-learning\">other kinds of academic mindsets\u003c/a> may help as well. The same study also tested a “sense-of-purpose” psychology intervention (in a separate 30-minute online session) designed to get the teens to link their schoolwork to a meaningful broader purpose – such as preparing for future goals that “make a positive impact on the world.” That motivational strategy was roughly as effective as the growth-mindset training, Paunesku said. (Combining the two didn’t add up to a bigger benefit.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The hypothesis would then be that later on, when the students take the AP classes or when they just encounter a more challenging concept or when they go off to college, that having these more adaptive academic mindsets will serve them well,” he said. To determine whether that’s true, the PERTS researchers would have to track the high schoolers’ performance over longer time-frames; for instance, they’ll be doing two-year follow-ups in some other growth-mindset studies targeting community college students. But such longitudinal work is difficult and costly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other not-yet-published, large-scale trials from PERTS and affiliated researchers such as University of Texas (UT) psychologist David Yeager are likewise finding modest boosts in achievement from growth-mindset messages tailored to other learners – ranging from \u003ca href=\"https://p3.perts.net/about#results\">students doing Khan Academy math problems online\u003c/a> (who were exposed to single sentences such as, “If you make a mistake, it’s an opportunity to get smarter!”) to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html\">incoming UT Austin freshmen\u003c/a> who log into a 30-minute online intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Bringing Growth Mindsets into Schools\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Designing online interventions that are quick is critical for wide-scale testing and uptake, Paunesku said, because schools might be hesitant to relinquish class time for them. The PERTS growth-mindset session is much shorter than Mindset Works’ Brainology curriculum for middle students, which entails weekly lessons over five to 16 weeks and costs $20 per student for a group of 20 or more. Paunesku and his colleagues are now updating their no-frills interventions with a higher production quality and more engaging content. If further research confirms effectiveness and enough funding support is available, they’d like to make the materials freely accessible to schools, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Paunesku cautions that “academic mindset interventions are not magic bullets.” There may be many reasons why half of the low-performing kids who received the growth-mindset lesson still failed to earn satisfactory grades. Some may not have found the online presentation persuasive enough, he said, if they grew up repeatedly hearing “fixed”-mindset attitudes – such as, “some people are just bad at math” – from parents and peers. And even if students adopt a more adaptive mindset, other obstacles may still loom: A child might have trouble focusing in class because he’s hungry or anxious about being bullied, or he may not get enough support from his parents with homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"f991a001e9ccb1723614205bb370e700\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paunesku’s high school study is valuable in showing how small changes can have a surprising impact, similar to effects seen in other \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9686450\">previous studies of brief growth-mindset messages\u003c/a>, said Blackwell, vice president at Mindset Works (which also collaborates with PERTS). However, not only is it not yet known how well the positive impacts of growth-mindset interventions are sustained in the longer term as students encounter more significant challenges and failures in the real world, she notes, but none of the methods work for everybody or do anything to change the classroom contexts in which kids learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is why, Blackwell said, rather than approaching mindsets “solely as an isolated belief within an individual’s psychology,” Mindset Works has broadened its focus to “changing school and classroom cultures and providing individuals with the tools and strategies to sustain a growth mindset over time.” The company rolled out an \u003ca href=\"http://www.mindsetworks.com/professional-development-and-tools/\">educator toolkit\u003c/a> in 2012 to guide teachers and administrators in cultivating a growth mindset throughout a school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paunesku agrees that \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/whats-your-learning-disposition-how-to-foster-students-mindsets/\">changing school culture\u003c/a> is likely to be fruitful. To complement its half-hour online student interventions, PERTS plans to release an open set of growth-mindset professional development materials, starting with math teachers next year. “There’s so much more good that could come if we could effectively communicate to teachers and train teachers how to do this in day-to-day classroom practices,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Experimenting in the Trenches\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For many teachers, the growth-mindset philosophy is appealing because it makes intuitive sense. At Cobleskill-Richmondville High School in rural upstate New York, assistant principal Casey Bardin has informally experimented with various academic mindset strategies inspired by work at Stanford, including tactics to \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/01/health/enayati-importance-of-belonging/index.html\">bolster a sense of social belonging\u003c/a> in disadvantaged students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, he held one-on-one “goals meetings” with 70 pupils who were flunking three or more classes. Most lacked a support system at school, with no one to relate to there, he said. Bardin offered encouragement by explaining that intelligence grows with hard effort, and then suggested trying different studying tactics. One kid – an African-American in a predominantly white school – was failing math and four other subjects. After Bardin connected him with a senior who could help him with math, the two teens worked together in study hall every day. By spring, the African-American student was passing all his classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, 29 other under-performing students improved their grades after four weeks, with more than half of them no longer failing any courses. By May, 40 of the 70 had pulled up their academic standing. “I was very excited,” Bardin said of the experiment. He now hopes to get buy-in from teachers and other administrators at the high school to expand that work and, down the road, possibly adopt Mindset Works programming, tough budget constraints permitting. Cobleskill-Richmondville High plans to participate in a PERTS research trial next academic year.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36768\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36768\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408.jpg\" alt=\"Arten Popov\" width=\"640\" height=\"369\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408-400x231.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/07/8092977876_eb69f90b3f_k-e1404868580408-320x185.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Arten Popov\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Teaching students that intelligence can grow and blossom with effort – rather than being a fixed trait they’re just born with – is gaining traction in progressive education circles. And new research from Stanford is helping to build the case that nurturing a “\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/tag/growth-mindset/\" target=\"_blank\">growth mindset\u003c/a>” can help many kids understand their true potential.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The new research involves larger, more rigorous field trials that provide some of the first evidence that the social psychology strategy can be effective when implemented in schools on a wide scale. Even a one-time, 30-minute online intervention can spur academic gains for many students, particularly those with poor grades. The premise is that these positive effects can stick over years, leading for example to higher graduation rates; but long-term data is still needed to confirm that.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Earlier, well-designed tests of simple and relatively inexpensive growth-mindset interventions had surprisingly shown improvements in students’ grades over weeks or months. For instance, promising results from one famous experiment – an eight-session workshop in 91 seventh graders in a New York City school – led psychology researchers \u003ca href=\"https://chronicle.com/article/Carol-Dwecks-Attitude/65405\">Carol Dweck\u003c/a> and Lisa Blackwell to start up Mindset Works, a company that offers a computer-based program called Brainology.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>However, all the original intervention studies were small and left some educators and policymakers unconvinced. “Some folks, I think, are skeptical just because the effects are big and because they come from something that’s so small,” said Stanford behavioral scientist David Paunesku. “And I think it’s fair that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” There were doubts, too, whether the classroom-based growth-mindset techniques would work if broadly put into practice without intensive training or supervision from the experts who developed them.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“There’s so much more good that could come if we could effectively communicate to teachers and train teachers how to do this in day-to-day classroom practices.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>To address those issues, Dweck, Paunesku and associates started the Stanford \u003ca href=\"https://p3.perts.net/about\">Project for Education Research That Scales\u003c/a> (PERTS) with the goal of conducting large-scale randomized, controlled trials of distilled mindset interventions that were briefer and could be easily delivered by internet. The program, which is directed by Paunesku, collaborates with schools in testing various experimental psychology strategies for \u003ca href=\"http://web.stanford.edu/~gwalton/home/Welcome_files/Yeager%20Walton%20Cohen%202013.pdf\">shifting the ways students think\u003c/a> about their education, so as to motivate them to work hard.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>A Light Touch Leads to Meaningful Change\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>In one intervention trial that was part of his Ph.D. dissertation, Paunesku worked with colleagues to enlist 1,594 students at 13 U.S. high schools, including 519 under-performing teens with the lowest GPAs. In spring semester 2012, the kids all logged online for a 30-minute, no-frills slideshow presentation (which they were only told was part of a general study of how and why students learn).\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Half the group watched a lesson explaining the basic anatomy of the brain, but the other half received a growth-mindset “treatment”: They read an article that described scientific research findings about the brain’s malleability and explained that, just as people can get stronger by working out their muscles, anyone who works out their brain through learning can get smarter. The presentation also noted it could be helpful to try different studying strategies. Then, the teens were asked to summarize what they’d learned by composing a note of advice to a hypothetical struggling student.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For example, as one student wrote, “The more you practice or study the more you learn. Your brain has neurons inside that grow whenever you learn something new. Even though you may struggle in a certain subject the neurons in your brain are making new connections and your brain is getting stronger and smarter. … Struggling in school is absolutely normal and we may feel and call ourselves ‘dumb’ during these times. If you practice using better ways to study and learn you will get smarter and might struggle less.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>By the end of spring term, encouraging changes were afoot, particularly in the students struggling with low GPAs: the proportion who earned satisfactory grades rose to 49 percent from 43 percent the previous semester, a relative gain of 14 percent. Students in the control condition, however, showed a slight downward slide. A 14 percent improvement might not sound like much, but it represents that many more kids who lifted themselves above poor or failing grades, Paunesku said. “Hopefully, that will put these kids on a different trajectory where they would be more likely to actually graduate high school,” he said. Students who don’t perform well early in the school year usually end up doing worse and worse and are at risk for dropping out.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Fostering \u003ca href=\"http://www.hewlett.org/library/grantee-publication/academic-mindsets-critical-component-deeper-learning\">other kinds of academic mindsets\u003c/a> may help as well. The same study also tested a “sense-of-purpose” psychology intervention (in a separate 30-minute online session) designed to get the teens to link their schoolwork to a meaningful broader purpose – such as preparing for future goals that “make a positive impact on the world.” That motivational strategy was roughly as effective as the growth-mindset training, Paunesku said. (Combining the two didn’t add up to a bigger benefit.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The hypothesis would then be that later on, when the students take the AP classes or when they just encounter a more challenging concept or when they go off to college, that having these more adaptive academic mindsets will serve them well,” he said. To determine whether that’s true, the PERTS researchers would have to track the high schoolers’ performance over longer time-frames; for instance, they’ll be doing two-year follow-ups in some other growth-mindset studies targeting community college students. But such longitudinal work is difficult and costly.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other not-yet-published, large-scale trials from PERTS and affiliated researchers such as University of Texas (UT) psychologist David Yeager are likewise finding modest boosts in achievement from growth-mindset messages tailored to other learners – ranging from \u003ca href=\"https://p3.perts.net/about#results\">students doing Khan Academy math problems online\u003c/a> (who were exposed to single sentences such as, “If you make a mistake, it’s an opportunity to get smarter!”) to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/magazine/who-gets-to-graduate.html\">incoming UT Austin freshmen\u003c/a> who log into a 30-minute online intervention.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Bringing Growth Mindsets into Schools\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Designing online interventions that are quick is critical for wide-scale testing and uptake, Paunesku said, because schools might be hesitant to relinquish class time for them. The PERTS growth-mindset session is much shorter than Mindset Works’ Brainology curriculum for middle students, which entails weekly lessons over five to 16 weeks and costs $20 per student for a group of 20 or more. Paunesku and his colleagues are now updating their no-frills interventions with a higher production quality and more engaging content. If further research confirms effectiveness and enough funding support is available, they’d like to make the materials freely accessible to schools, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But Paunesku cautions that “academic mindset interventions are not magic bullets.” There may be many reasons why half of the low-performing kids who received the growth-mindset lesson still failed to earn satisfactory grades. Some may not have found the online presentation persuasive enough, he said, if they grew up repeatedly hearing “fixed”-mindset attitudes – such as, “some people are just bad at math” – from parents and peers. And even if students adopt a more adaptive mindset, other obstacles may still loom: A child might have trouble focusing in class because he’s hungry or anxious about being bullied, or he may not get enough support from his parents with homework.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paunesku’s high school study is valuable in showing how small changes can have a surprising impact, similar to effects seen in other \u003ca href=\"http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9686450\">previous studies of brief growth-mindset messages\u003c/a>, said Blackwell, vice president at Mindset Works (which also collaborates with PERTS). However, not only is it not yet known how well the positive impacts of growth-mindset interventions are sustained in the longer term as students encounter more significant challenges and failures in the real world, she notes, but none of the methods work for everybody or do anything to change the classroom contexts in which kids learn.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>That is why, Blackwell said, rather than approaching mindsets “solely as an isolated belief within an individual’s psychology,” Mindset Works has broadened its focus to “changing school and classroom cultures and providing individuals with the tools and strategies to sustain a growth mindset over time.” The company rolled out an \u003ca href=\"http://www.mindsetworks.com/professional-development-and-tools/\">educator toolkit\u003c/a> in 2012 to guide teachers and administrators in cultivating a growth mindset throughout a school.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Paunesku agrees that \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/whats-your-learning-disposition-how-to-foster-students-mindsets/\">changing school culture\u003c/a> is likely to be fruitful. To complement its half-hour online student interventions, PERTS plans to release an open set of growth-mindset professional development materials, starting with math teachers next year. “There’s so much more good that could come if we could effectively communicate to teachers and train teachers how to do this in day-to-day classroom practices,” he says.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Experimenting in the Trenches\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>For many teachers, the growth-mindset philosophy is appealing because it makes intuitive sense. At Cobleskill-Richmondville High School in rural upstate New York, assistant principal Casey Bardin has informally experimented with various academic mindset strategies inspired by work at Stanford, including tactics to \u003ca href=\"http://edition.cnn.com/2012/06/01/health/enayati-importance-of-belonging/index.html\">bolster a sense of social belonging\u003c/a> in disadvantaged students.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Last fall, he held one-on-one “goals meetings” with 70 pupils who were flunking three or more classes. Most lacked a support system at school, with no one to relate to there, he said. Bardin offered encouragement by explaining that intelligence grows with hard effort, and then suggested trying different studying tactics. One kid – an African-American in a predominantly white school – was failing math and four other subjects. After Bardin connected him with a senior who could help him with math, the two teens worked together in study hall every day. By spring, the African-American student was passing all his classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Similarly, 29 other under-performing students improved their grades after four weeks, with more than half of them no longer failing any courses. By May, 40 of the 70 had pulled up their academic standing. “I was very excited,” Bardin said of the experiment. He now hopes to get buy-in from teachers and other administrators at the high school to expand that work and, down the road, possibly adopt Mindset Works programming, tough budget constraints permitting. Cobleskill-Richmondville High plans to participate in a PERTS research trial next academic year.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "A School Built Entirely Around the Love of Math",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36562\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36562\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744.jpg\" alt=\"Getty\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Prodigies in piano or dance can study at schools like Juilliard to develop their musical or performing arts talent. By contrast, nothing like Juilliard exists for children who show great promise at math. But an ambitious experiment will soon change that: In fall 2015, a small, independent school that's exclusively tailored for math whizzes will open in downtown San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designers of the new, non-profit \u003ca href=\"http://proofschool.org/2013/12/01/welcome-to-proof-school/\">Proof School\u003c/a> intend to provide mathematically gifted youth an intensive and complete education in grades 6-12 that typical schools can't muster. The pupils will learn advanced areas of math, such as number theory topics that a university math major or graduate student might tackle. They'll work on math research projects, and engage in community service through math tutoring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They're going to be involved in math in a really different way, a really exciting and dynamic way,\" said Sam Vandervelde, who is leaving his math professorship at St. Lawrence University in New York to become the new school's dean of mathematical sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proof School will initially open with roughly 45 children in three grades, with plans to grow to around 250 students in a decade. Getting in \u003ca href=\"http://proofschool.org/about/admissions/\">won't be easy\u003c/a>, but the school's mission is to serve the needs of \u003ca href=\"http://proofschool.org/faq/do-you-have-a-math-kid/\">\"math kids\"\u003c/a> in the Bay Area -- ranging from high-IQ wunderkind types to students who participate in math competitions or math circles, to children who love to play with numbers. \"What we want is kids who are passionate about math,\" said Paul Zeitz, school co-founder and chair of mathematics at the University of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Roots in Math Circle Culture\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The new school takes its inspiration from \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org/Wiki_WhatIsAMathCircle_HistoryOfMathCircles\">math circles\u003c/a>, an Eastern European and Russian tradition that spread to the U.S. \u003ca href=\"http://www.themathcircle.org/history.php\">starting in the 1990s\u003c/a>. These weekly extracurricular clubs bring youngsters together with a mathematician who guides them in exploring numerical ideas and concepts in depth. It's often a highly interactive conversation, with the kids avidly chiming in with questions and thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"We want to develop and nurture every one of those kids and bring them along as far as they are capable of going.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>For kids who live and breathe for numbers, the experience can be transformative, as Ian Brown of Marin County, Calif., can attest. In 2011, he began taking his 10-year-old son, Nico, to \u003ca href=\"http://www.themonthly.com/feature1404.html\">local math circles\u003c/a>. Nico hadn't been happy or thriving in his public elementary school, because \"he wasn't finding kids in his classes who understood what he was going on about when he was talking about higher mathematics,\" Brown said. But math circle changed everything. \"Not only did the lights go on, but the heart went on,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About a year later, Nico joined an advanced, invitation-only math circle for a half dozen students that was led by Zeitz. \"Here they all are, for two hours once a week, joyful, joyful, joyful,\" Brown recalled. One day in January 2013, as he watched the group animatedly discussing how many ways there are to color a cube with two colors, he turned to another student's father, Dennis Leary, and marveled: \"Look at these guys, they're thrilled to be working together. Why don't we do this all day long -- and every day?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown wanted to build a school for kids like his son \"that they feel is really meant for them.\" One conversation led to another and to the birth of Proof School, with him, Leary, and Zeitz as co-founders. To jumpstart it, Brown left his job as a language-arts teacher and dean at a private school for gifted and talented youth where his son, now 13, currently attends seventh grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While San Francisco has several high-caliber schools, including Lowell High School, it lacks specialized science schools such as Stuyvesant High School in New York City or the\u003ca href=\"http://www.ncssm.edu/\"> North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics\u003c/a> in Durham. But Proof School won't be like any school out there, anywhere, Zeitz said. Not only will its student body be different -- they'll all have exceptional math ability -- but so will its teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a traditional school, a teacher in a top-notch math classroom might take students on the intellectual equivalent of a strenuous hike that brings them to top of the hill. But as Zeitz put it, \"what they don't realize is that they're in this incredible mountain range, which they can't see because their teacher doesn't know how to get them to put on a hang glider and jump off the cliff and see the entire topography at once.\" Proof School teachers will ideally have math Ph.D.s and the deep expertise to do that, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As in math-circle style, the curriculum will emphasize working on and communicating about interesting math problems. Because one of Proof School's guiding principles or \"axioms\" is not to waste their pupils' time, the kids will be spared the unchallenging busy work or mind-numbing exercises that are common in standard schools, Zeitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Afternoons Dedicated to Numbers\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Every afternoon, students will spend two-and-a-half to three hours learning mathematical sciences, including computer science. Following an unconventional block curriculum structure, the academic year will be broken into six blocks of math instruction that each immerse the entire school in a single topic (such as problem solving or algebra) for five weeks straight. For each topic, kids will be placed into 10 to 12 different tiers by their skill level, Vandervelde said, which allows a lot of flexibility in meeting their individual needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We'll sort kids into groups based on what they're ready for,\" he said, not by age or grade. Some off-the-charts precocious students will be able to take on very advanced problems at the level of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.maa.org/news/usa-mathematical-olympiad\">U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad\u003c/a>, and \"we're going to be ready for them too,\" said Vandervelde, who, like Zeitz, competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad as a teenager. \"We want to develop and nurture every one of those kids and bring them along as far as they are capable of going.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recruiting girls to the school is a high priority, Zeitz said, noting that many young girls are enthusiastic about math but often drop out in their interest between sixth and ninth grades. \"We would like to fight that trend as much as possible,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"1da5b991e20a8c0bff3dbd091fd87aad\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond numbers, the school will offer a full education, with non-math courses in English, history, languages, and science all scheduled in the mornings in a traditional grade-level manner. Proof School's teaching style will also draw upon \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/08/four-essential-principles-of-blended-learning/\">blended learning\u003c/a> methods that make use of technology in the classroom, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/the-challenges-and-realities-of-inquiry-based-learning/\">inquiry-based learning\u003c/a> practices. Because classroom facility space will initially be limited, the founders plan to tap nearby educational resources: Students might go to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science-jan-june13-science_05-07/\">Exploratorium\u003c/a> for hands-on science learning, to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.moadsf.org/\">Museum of the African Diaspora\u003c/a> for history, and to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11ping.html?dbk\">TechShop\u003c/a> for 21st century shop class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since some math kids are not exactly social butterflies when it comes to people skills, the school's guiding axioms also make a point of teaching students how to engage with and navigate the world around them. \"We will work as hard on social-emotional intelligence and communication skills -- writing and public speaking -- as we will on anything else,\" Zeitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Turning a Math Dream into Reality\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Zeitz and his colleagues have much work ahead to make all the prime factors of their creative ideas, logistical plans, and hiring goals -- which includes finding a charismatic humanities dean who \"is able to stand up to math nerds,\" he said -- add up to an equation for success. They're getting ready to launch an early admissions program and give \"a day in the life\" school preview this summer. Currently in fundraising mode, the founders hope to secure at least $1 million in order to keep the private tuition as low as possible and provide ample scholarships and financial aid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make the school accessible to math kids around the Bay Area, the campus will be located near public transit, most likely in San Francisco's South Financial District area. The founders also plan to share their math curriculum and resources with the world in an open-source way, which will include hosting math talks and events for the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many families in Silicon Valley have expressed strong interest in Proof School, but other reactions have ranged from \u003ca href=\"http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/proof-school-its-not-just-for-math-kids-anymore/\">initial skepticism\u003c/a> to some concerns that the school will be elitist. \"We're not going to be elitist but we will be elite,\" Brown said. \"We're not going to be snobby. We're simply taking kids who operate at this [intellectual] level and putting them together with their peers, which they haven't had in the past. And many have suffered for it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His own son, for example, is leaving his private middle school after this academic year because he has no math peers there, Brown said. If all goes well, after a gap year of homeschooling, the plan is to start Nico in ninth grade at Proof School in September 2015. \"Oh, he can't wait!\" Brown said.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_36562\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-36562\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744.jpg\" alt=\"Getty\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744-400x225.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/06/4521936771-e1403927077744-320x180.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">Prodigies in piano or dance can study at schools like Juilliard to develop their musical or performing arts talent. By contrast, nothing like Juilliard exists for children who show great promise at math. But an ambitious experiment will soon change that: In fall 2015, a small, independent school that's exclusively tailored for math whizzes will open in downtown San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Designers of the new, non-profit \u003ca href=\"http://proofschool.org/2013/12/01/welcome-to-proof-school/\">Proof School\u003c/a> intend to provide mathematically gifted youth an intensive and complete education in grades 6-12 that typical schools can't muster. The pupils will learn advanced areas of math, such as number theory topics that a university math major or graduate student might tackle. They'll work on math research projects, and engage in community service through math tutoring.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"They're going to be involved in math in a really different way, a really exciting and dynamic way,\" said Sam Vandervelde, who is leaving his math professorship at St. Lawrence University in New York to become the new school's dean of mathematical sciences.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Proof School will initially open with roughly 45 children in three grades, with plans to grow to around 250 students in a decade. Getting in \u003ca href=\"http://proofschool.org/about/admissions/\">won't be easy\u003c/a>, but the school's mission is to serve the needs of \u003ca href=\"http://proofschool.org/faq/do-you-have-a-math-kid/\">\"math kids\"\u003c/a> in the Bay Area -- ranging from high-IQ wunderkind types to students who participate in math competitions or math circles, to children who love to play with numbers. \"What we want is kids who are passionate about math,\" said Paul Zeitz, school co-founder and chair of mathematics at the University of San Francisco.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Roots in Math Circle Culture\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>The new school takes its inspiration from \u003ca href=\"http://www.mathcircles.org/Wiki_WhatIsAMathCircle_HistoryOfMathCircles\">math circles\u003c/a>, an Eastern European and Russian tradition that spread to the U.S. \u003ca href=\"http://www.themathcircle.org/history.php\">starting in the 1990s\u003c/a>. These weekly extracurricular clubs bring youngsters together with a mathematician who guides them in exploring numerical ideas and concepts in depth. It's often a highly interactive conversation, with the kids avidly chiming in with questions and thoughts.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">\"We want to develop and nurture every one of those kids and bring them along as far as they are capable of going.\"\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>For kids who live and breathe for numbers, the experience can be transformative, as Ian Brown of Marin County, Calif., can attest. In 2011, he began taking his 10-year-old son, Nico, to \u003ca href=\"http://www.themonthly.com/feature1404.html\">local math circles\u003c/a>. Nico hadn't been happy or thriving in his public elementary school, because \"he wasn't finding kids in his classes who understood what he was going on about when he was talking about higher mathematics,\" Brown said. But math circle changed everything. \"Not only did the lights go on, but the heart went on,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>About a year later, Nico joined an advanced, invitation-only math circle for a half dozen students that was led by Zeitz. \"Here they all are, for two hours once a week, joyful, joyful, joyful,\" Brown recalled. One day in January 2013, as he watched the group animatedly discussing how many ways there are to color a cube with two colors, he turned to another student's father, Dennis Leary, and marveled: \"Look at these guys, they're thrilled to be working together. Why don't we do this all day long -- and every day?\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Brown wanted to build a school for kids like his son \"that they feel is really meant for them.\" One conversation led to another and to the birth of Proof School, with him, Leary, and Zeitz as co-founders. To jumpstart it, Brown left his job as a language-arts teacher and dean at a private school for gifted and talented youth where his son, now 13, currently attends seventh grade.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While San Francisco has several high-caliber schools, including Lowell High School, it lacks specialized science schools such as Stuyvesant High School in New York City or the\u003ca href=\"http://www.ncssm.edu/\"> North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics\u003c/a> in Durham. But Proof School won't be like any school out there, anywhere, Zeitz said. Not only will its student body be different -- they'll all have exceptional math ability -- but so will its teachers.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At a traditional school, a teacher in a top-notch math classroom might take students on the intellectual equivalent of a strenuous hike that brings them to top of the hill. But as Zeitz put it, \"what they don't realize is that they're in this incredible mountain range, which they can't see because their teacher doesn't know how to get them to put on a hang glider and jump off the cliff and see the entire topography at once.\" Proof School teachers will ideally have math Ph.D.s and the deep expertise to do that, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As in math-circle style, the curriculum will emphasize working on and communicating about interesting math problems. Because one of Proof School's guiding principles or \"axioms\" is not to waste their pupils' time, the kids will be spared the unchallenging busy work or mind-numbing exercises that are common in standard schools, Zeitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Afternoons Dedicated to Numbers\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Every afternoon, students will spend two-and-a-half to three hours learning mathematical sciences, including computer science. Following an unconventional block curriculum structure, the academic year will be broken into six blocks of math instruction that each immerse the entire school in a single topic (such as problem solving or algebra) for five weeks straight. For each topic, kids will be placed into 10 to 12 different tiers by their skill level, Vandervelde said, which allows a lot of flexibility in meeting their individual needs.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\"We'll sort kids into groups based on what they're ready for,\" he said, not by age or grade. Some off-the-charts precocious students will be able to take on very advanced problems at the level of the \u003ca href=\"http://www.maa.org/news/usa-mathematical-olympiad\">U.S.A. Mathematical Olympiad\u003c/a>, and \"we're going to be ready for them too,\" said Vandervelde, who, like Zeitz, competed in the International Mathematical Olympiad as a teenager. \"We want to develop and nurture every one of those kids and bring them along as far as they are capable of going.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Recruiting girls to the school is a high priority, Zeitz said, noting that many young girls are enthusiastic about math but often drop out in their interest between sixth and ninth grades. \"We would like to fight that trend as much as possible,\" he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Beyond numbers, the school will offer a full education, with non-math courses in English, history, languages, and science all scheduled in the mornings in a traditional grade-level manner. Proof School's teaching style will also draw upon \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/08/four-essential-principles-of-blended-learning/\">blended learning\u003c/a> methods that make use of technology in the classroom, as well as \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2013/07/the-challenges-and-realities-of-inquiry-based-learning/\">inquiry-based learning\u003c/a> practices. Because classroom facility space will initially be limited, the founders plan to tap nearby educational resources: Students might go to the \u003ca href=\"http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/science-jan-june13-science_05-07/\">Exploratorium\u003c/a> for hands-on science learning, to the \u003ca href=\"https://www.moadsf.org/\">Museum of the African Diaspora\u003c/a> for history, and to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/business/11ping.html?dbk\">TechShop\u003c/a> for 21st century shop class.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Since some math kids are not exactly social butterflies when it comes to people skills, the school's guiding axioms also make a point of teaching students how to engage with and navigate the world around them. \"We will work as hard on social-emotional intelligence and communication skills -- writing and public speaking -- as we will on anything else,\" Zeitz said.\u003c/p>\n\u003ch3>Turning a Math Dream into Reality\u003c/h3>\n\u003cp>Zeitz and his colleagues have much work ahead to make all the prime factors of their creative ideas, logistical plans, and hiring goals -- which includes finding a charismatic humanities dean who \"is able to stand up to math nerds,\" he said -- add up to an equation for success. They're getting ready to launch an early admissions program and give \"a day in the life\" school preview this summer. Currently in fundraising mode, the founders hope to secure at least $1 million in order to keep the private tuition as low as possible and provide ample scholarships and financial aid.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>To make the school accessible to math kids around the Bay Area, the campus will be located near public transit, most likely in San Francisco's South Financial District area. The founders also plan to share their math curriculum and resources with the world in an open-source way, which will include hosting math talks and events for the public.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Many families in Silicon Valley have expressed strong interest in Proof School, but other reactions have ranged from \u003ca href=\"http://quomodocumque.wordpress.com/2013/12/19/proof-school-its-not-just-for-math-kids-anymore/\">initial skepticism\u003c/a> to some concerns that the school will be elitist. \"We're not going to be elitist but we will be elite,\" Brown said. \"We're not going to be snobby. We're simply taking kids who operate at this [intellectual] level and putting them together with their peers, which they haven't had in the past. And many have suffered for it.\"\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>His own son, for example, is leaving his private middle school after this academic year because he has no math peers there, Brown said. If all goes well, after a gap year of homeschooling, the plan is to start Nico in ninth grade at Proof School in September 2015. \"Oh, he can't wait!\" Brown said.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "For Frustrated Gifted Kids, A World of Online Opportunities",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35793\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35793\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332.jpg\" alt=\"Getty\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332-400x250.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332-320x200.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">When parents find they have a two-year-old who can read, or a five-year-old who wakes up talking about square roots, the task of ensuring that these exceptionally bright children get the educational nourishment they need is unchartered territory. The path can be frustrating for the kids, and worry-inducing for the parents. But the ongoing boom in online learning opportunities has been a great benefit for many gifted youth because the offerings can cater to a student’s ability rather than age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sating the voracious curiosity of gifted students can be challenging. They may get bored and cranky when they easily grasp lessons ahead of the group in a standard classroom. Take, for example, the case of a seven-year-old who attends a Berkeley, Calif., public elementary school. When he found the pace of his math class unbearably slow, he protested by gluing together two months’ worth of his math worksheets. Given a new packet of them, he “filled out all the answers, and then folded each sheet into paper airplanes,” his mother said. (The mother asked that they not be identified in this story.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The educational infrastructure in the U.S. for supporting high-achieving students is an underfunded patchwork quilt of services and programs across the states, according to \u003ca href=\"http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111109005205/en/Nations-Infrastructure-Support-Gifted-Students-Crumbling-Survey\" target=\"_blank\">a survey by the National Association for Gifted Children\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do not have a systematic way of addressing the needs of the gifted,” said Joyce VanTassel-Baska, education professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. “You could go to one school system and they might be doing a great job. And you would go to another school system and you would see nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, gifted students and their parents often must cobble together their \u003ca href=\"http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_ic_10680.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">own individual education plan\u003c/a> from various sources to obtain a deeper, more advanced intellectual dive than what standard school systems can provide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of the young Berkeley protester, who was reading at a fifth-grade level by age four, “we spend \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of time at the library trying to keep up with his interests and voracious reading habit,” his mother said. At home, “we make books, build airplanes and robots out of found objects, research stuff online, fix our bikes, and create elaborate LEGO machines. He is endlessly curious and astonishingly creative.” The parents have signed him up for extracurricular classes in science as well as art, music, and sports, including classes for gifted students at the Lawrence Hall of Science. This family has not tried online options yet, and if they do look into private school options, they’ll have to apply for scholarships or financial aid, or would not be able to afford it.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“It’s very difficult to find a high school that would be willing to have a 10-year-old take an AP course.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Across the bay in San Francisco, Debbie Saret has been similarly engaged in an evolving process of discovery in finding the right resources for her exceptionally gifted son -- a 13-year-old who is now doing math coursework at the college-sophomore level. Six years ago, when she and her husband decided to homeschool him starting in the second grade, it was like stepping off “into the unknown” – a journey that had the parents constantly worrying whether they were making good choices and often “really feeling quite alone, because nobody else around us had ever done anything like that,” she said. Her son’s education has been an eclectic meld of private tutoring, online courses, after-school and summer camps, \u003ca href=\"https://www.mathcircles.org\" target=\"_blank\">math circle\u003c/a>, and community college classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ONLINE SOURCES BRING ACCESS TO THE WORLD\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared to three decades ago, many more out-of-school academic resources are now available for gifted learners, which makes it easier than ever to access advanced learning opportunities, ranging from \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/08/24/01edtech-gifted.h31.html\" target=\"_blank\">video courses\u003c/a> to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/education/stanfords-online-high-school-raises-the-bar.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">diploma-granting online high schools.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The online component was extremely important for us,” Saret said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Math and English courses from Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"http://epgy.stanford.edu\" target=\"_blank\">Education Program for Gifted Youth\u003c/a> (EPGY) initially formed the backbone of the Saret son’s homeschooling. Founded in 1990, EPGY has long offered self-paced, computer-based instruction through brief, pre-recorded multimedia lectures on CD-ROMs or, as technology has evolved, via web browser. Students can also sign up for tutorial guidance from an instructor by phone, email, or the web. (Under a recent licensing deal with Stanford, an education company named Redbird Advanced Learning has taken over the EPGY program and is in a transition of updating and enhancing its technology components.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At age eight, Saret’s son began taking classes part-time at \u003ca href=\"https://ohs.stanford.edu/\" target=\"_blank\">Stanford Online High School\u003c/a> (OHS), a fully accredited, diploma-granting school for academically talented students in grades 7 through 12. OHS, which opened in 2006, provides real-time, interactive virtual seminars through web-based video conferencing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact that much of it happens online, Saret says there’s an emphasis on developing personal connections, too. “They really have a sense of community,” Saret noted. “Class meetings, clubs -- it’s a very interactive online experience with video, text chat, whiteboard. Very much like a normal class, but online in terms of interaction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saret is grateful that these sorts of learning resources exist for her son. “Online opportunities are really a big benefit for this group of students, because your age doesn’t matter as much as your interests and your ability … Because it’s very difficult to, say, find a high school that would be willing to have a 10-year-old take an AP course,” she said. At that age, her son was able to study AP physics at OHS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TEACHING THE GIFTED\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other digital learning options for the gifted include independent-study courses from \u003ca href=\"http://cty.jhu.edu/ctyonline\" target=\"_blank\">Johns Hopkins University\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://tip.duke.edu/node/141\" target=\"_blank\">Duke University\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/gll/\" target=\"_blank\">Northwestern University\u003c/a>. Another resource popular among young math prodigies around the world is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/index.php?page=howclassroomworks\" target=\"_blank\">Art of Problem Solving\u003c/a> (AoPS) web community and school, which provides real-time instruction through a virtual classroom where pupils and teachers communicate via live text-chatting. Such online education programs offer bright kids a lot of flexibility and a variety of ways for taking their learning well beyond the usual school curricula. Even if standard schools offer advanced placement classes in calculus, those offerings aren’t rigorous enough for many of the mathematically precocious kids who come to AoPS, said Richard Rusczyk, company founder and a winner of the USA Mathematics Olympiad in 1989.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[contextly_sidebar id=\"5ebc7121ee85ea803ca3f199b734b393\"]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They get everything right away. The problems are just too easy,” he said. Typical AP classes don’t prepare the students for math courses at places like MIT, he said, where they may hit the wall of failure for the very first time – and get so discouraged that they just might quit math or science. That would be bad, not just for the student but also potentially for all of us, because as Rusczyk and others point out, these exceptionally bright individuals have a lot to give. “These students are going to produce an outsized portion of the major technological, medical, mathematical, scientific, economic advances of the next generation,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The philosophy at AoPS is to teach math at a deep and complex level and introduce high-performing students to difficult problems that stretch their capabilities early. In Rusczyk’s view, the ultimate goal of education should be “\u003ca href=\"http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10565.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">to teach students how to solve problems \u003c/a>they’ve never seen before. That’s the main focus of what we’re trying to do in our classes.” The ability to work through difficult conundrums applies to all kinds of life and career situations, such as, in his case, figuring out how to run a company, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A key part of challenging the smartest kid in a school, he added, is exposing him or her to peers who are just as sharp or even sharper. “I’ll tell kids, if you’re always the smartest person in the room, you need to find another room,” Rusczyk said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The internet now makes it a lot simpler to find and engage with a brainier crowd. For math lovers, AoPS is one of those “other rooms.” While children in the top 5 percent of intellectual talent largely look the same in a standard curriculum -- all acing their classes with 100s -- in the AoPS community, students look wildly different in their abilities, interests, and needs, Rusczyk said. Some want to be “taught to the test” and need to be trained out of that mentality, while others want to only think about tackling hard problems. Some turn in beautiful writing assignments, he said, while others “will write stuff that their English teachers would be horrified to look at -- no punctuation, no capital letters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When very bright children are ready for a more in-depth complexity of material at a young age but don’t get it at their schools, they’re badly served, said Stanford math professor Rafe Mazzeo, who served as EPGY’s faculty director. It’s not uncommon to see gifted kids who tap out all their high school’s math courses early and spend their entire senior year taking humanities classes. But if those students plan to go into any quantitative discipline, including engineering or natural sciences, allowing their math skills to get rusty for a year or more is “kind of a disaster,” Mazzeo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they have a couple of fallow years where they’re not being challenged, you can really do them intellectual damage.” With its extracurricular computer-based classes, EPGY’s mission has been to help students race ahead with more challenging, accelerated coursework while still staying in the social milieu of their regular grades at their local schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Stanford OHS, which grew out of EPGY’s success, students also can race ahead, but they generally do it with a cohort of other high-achievers who are doing the same thing. The school’s philosophy is to place students into courses by their ability, not age or grade level, said admissions director Claire Goldsmith. “There’s no way to max out. We can offer courses to kids at all levels.” With 530 students from 43 states and 18 nations currently enrolled, OHS focuses on fostering critical thinking and argumentation with its core curriculum. It also provides counseling support for social and emotional issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chloe Clougher of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, started at OHS as a junior last fall after two years at a nearby private college-preparatory high school, and prior to that, homeschooling since kindergarten. Though she liked her local school, she decided to apply to OHS because it offered some advanced classes in science and Mandarin that the brick-and-mortar school didn’t have. It would’ve been otherwise frustrating “to try to cobble a whole random schedule together from, like, three different schools or online courses like edX,” said the 16-year-old, who won a full scholarship covering OHS’s expensive $17,250 yearly tuition. (About 16 percent of OHS students receive financial aid.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the brick-and-mortar high school has AP courses, Clougher said, she noticed that they kept students busy with lots of assignments that didn’t seem like meaningful work. Now at OHS, she is currently jazzed about biology class and her instructor, who’s not only enthusiastic about teaching, but also about learning new areas of biological research – and hearing what the students have to say. “You don’t really see that in a whole lot of teachers,” Clougher said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have excellent teachers and really interesting classes,” said sophomore Eva Guevara, 15, who lives in Marfa, a town in far West Texas, and is also attending OHS on a full scholarship. She had gone to ninth grade at the local brick-and-mortar public high school, but found the pace slow and uninteresting. Biology class was especially disappointing, she said. “I ended up just being sent out of the room and just \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-are-teachers-and-students-using-khan-academy/\" target=\"_blank\">watching Khan Academy \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-are-teachers-and-students-using-khan-academy/\" target=\"_blank\">videos\u003c/a> and taking notes on those.” Today, she still goes to the local school building, but only to attend one robotics course and use the library, where she logs into her OHS seminars. Chemistry class, currently her favorite, is “challenging but also it’s really fun,” Guevara said. “And I feel like it’s going at a really great pace for me too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Stanford coursework is more rigorous and satisfying, both Clougher and Guevara said that social interactions with their classmates online, although quite good, naturally can’t fully match the social life of a real-life high school. But many OHS students do get to meet classmates face-to-face in occasional get-togethers in their region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For gifted students, building strong friendships is as important to their personal growth as academic achievement. In San Francisco, Saret said that finding communities for her son and their family, and keeping those social circles going, has been one of the biggest challenges. For him, attending \u003ca href=\"http://epsiloncamp.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Epsilon Camp\u003c/a>, a two-week summer program for 8- to 11-year-olds who are profoundly gifted at math, was life-changing: At the camp held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2011, he met kindred spirits sharing an intense passion for math, a community where he felt he truly belonged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He has said to me, ‘It was the first time that I felt that other kids understood what I was trying to say in the most truthful sense.’ He could just be himself, say whatever he wanted to say, without worrying about the other kids not getting him,” said Saret, who subsequently became Epsilon Camp’s admissions director. Her son still keeps in touch with the close friends he made there, including some who live in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "For parents, the task of ensuring that exceptionally bright children get the educational nourishment they need is unchartered territory. The path can be frustrating for the kids, and worry-inducing for the parents. But the ongoing boom in online learning opportunities has been a great benefit for many gifted youth because the offerings can cater to a student’s ability rather than age.\r\n",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35793\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35793\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332.jpg\" alt=\"Getty\" width=\"640\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332-400x250.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/05/153204599-e1400374634332-320x200.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">Getty\u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">When parents find they have a two-year-old who can read, or a five-year-old who wakes up talking about square roots, the task of ensuring that these exceptionally bright children get the educational nourishment they need is unchartered territory. The path can be frustrating for the kids, and worry-inducing for the parents. But the ongoing boom in online learning opportunities has been a great benefit for many gifted youth because the offerings can cater to a student’s ability rather than age.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Sating the voracious curiosity of gifted students can be challenging. They may get bored and cranky when they easily grasp lessons ahead of the group in a standard classroom. Take, for example, the case of a seven-year-old who attends a Berkeley, Calif., public elementary school. When he found the pace of his math class unbearably slow, he protested by gluing together two months’ worth of his math worksheets. Given a new packet of them, he “filled out all the answers, and then folded each sheet into paper airplanes,” his mother said. (The mother asked that they not be identified in this story.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The educational infrastructure in the U.S. for supporting high-achieving students is an underfunded patchwork quilt of services and programs across the states, according to \u003ca href=\"http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20111109005205/en/Nations-Infrastructure-Support-Gifted-Students-Crumbling-Survey\" target=\"_blank\">a survey by the National Association for Gifted Children\u003c/a>.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“We do not have a systematic way of addressing the needs of the gifted,” said Joyce VanTassel-Baska, education professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. “You could go to one school system and they might be doing a great job. And you would go to another school system and you would see nothing.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As a result, gifted students and their parents often must cobble together their \u003ca href=\"http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_ic_10680.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">own individual education plan\u003c/a> from various sources to obtain a deeper, more advanced intellectual dive than what standard school systems can provide.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>In the case of the young Berkeley protester, who was reading at a fifth-grade level by age four, “we spend \u003cem>a lot\u003c/em> of time at the library trying to keep up with his interests and voracious reading habit,” his mother said. At home, “we make books, build airplanes and robots out of found objects, research stuff online, fix our bikes, and create elaborate LEGO machines. He is endlessly curious and astonishingly creative.” The parents have signed him up for extracurricular classes in science as well as art, music, and sports, including classes for gifted students at the Lawrence Hall of Science. This family has not tried online options yet, and if they do look into private school options, they’ll have to apply for scholarships or financial aid, or would not be able to afford it.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">“It’s very difficult to find a high school that would be willing to have a 10-year-old take an AP course.”\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>Across the bay in San Francisco, Debbie Saret has been similarly engaged in an evolving process of discovery in finding the right resources for her exceptionally gifted son -- a 13-year-old who is now doing math coursework at the college-sophomore level. Six years ago, when she and her husband decided to homeschool him starting in the second grade, it was like stepping off “into the unknown” – a journey that had the parents constantly worrying whether they were making good choices and often “really feeling quite alone, because nobody else around us had ever done anything like that,” she said. Her son’s education has been an eclectic meld of private tutoring, online courses, after-school and summer camps, \u003ca href=\"https://www.mathcircles.org\" target=\"_blank\">math circle\u003c/a>, and community college classes.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>ONLINE SOURCES BRING ACCESS TO THE WORLD\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Compared to three decades ago, many more out-of-school academic resources are now available for gifted learners, which makes it easier than ever to access advanced learning opportunities, ranging from \u003ca href=\"http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/08/24/01edtech-gifted.h31.html\" target=\"_blank\">video courses\u003c/a> to \u003ca href=\"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/20/education/stanfords-online-high-school-raises-the-bar.html?_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">diploma-granting online high schools.\u003c/a>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“The online component was extremely important for us,” Saret said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Math and English courses from Stanford’s \u003ca href=\"http://epgy.stanford.edu\" target=\"_blank\">Education Program for Gifted Youth\u003c/a> (EPGY) initially formed the backbone of the Saret son’s homeschooling. Founded in 1990, EPGY has long offered self-paced, computer-based instruction through brief, pre-recorded multimedia lectures on CD-ROMs or, as technology has evolved, via web browser. Students can also sign up for tutorial guidance from an instructor by phone, email, or the web. (Under a recent licensing deal with Stanford, an education company named Redbird Advanced Learning has taken over the EPGY program and is in a transition of updating and enhancing its technology components.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At age eight, Saret’s son began taking classes part-time at \u003ca href=\"https://ohs.stanford.edu/\" target=\"_blank\">Stanford Online High School\u003c/a> (OHS), a fully accredited, diploma-granting school for academically talented students in grades 7 through 12. OHS, which opened in 2006, provides real-time, interactive virtual seminars through web-based video conferencing.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Despite the fact that much of it happens online, Saret says there’s an emphasis on developing personal connections, too. “They really have a sense of community,” Saret noted. “Class meetings, clubs -- it’s a very interactive online experience with video, text chat, whiteboard. Very much like a normal class, but online in terms of interaction.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Saret is grateful that these sorts of learning resources exist for her son. “Online opportunities are really a big benefit for this group of students, because your age doesn’t matter as much as your interests and your ability … Because it’s very difficult to, say, find a high school that would be willing to have a 10-year-old take an AP course,” she said. At that age, her son was able to study AP physics at OHS.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>TEACHING THE GIFTED\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Other digital learning options for the gifted include independent-study courses from \u003ca href=\"http://cty.jhu.edu/ctyonline\" target=\"_blank\">Johns Hopkins University\u003c/a>, \u003ca href=\"http://tip.duke.edu/node/141\" target=\"_blank\">Duke University\u003c/a>, and \u003ca href=\"http://www.ctd.northwestern.edu/gll/\" target=\"_blank\">Northwestern University\u003c/a>. Another resource popular among young math prodigies around the world is the \u003ca href=\"http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/School/index.php?page=howclassroomworks\" target=\"_blank\">Art of Problem Solving\u003c/a> (AoPS) web community and school, which provides real-time instruction through a virtual classroom where pupils and teachers communicate via live text-chatting. Such online education programs offer bright kids a lot of flexibility and a variety of ways for taking their learning well beyond the usual school curricula. Even if standard schools offer advanced placement classes in calculus, those offerings aren’t rigorous enough for many of the mathematically precocious kids who come to AoPS, said Richard Rusczyk, company founder and a winner of the USA Mathematics Olympiad in 1989.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They get everything right away. The problems are just too easy,” he said. Typical AP classes don’t prepare the students for math courses at places like MIT, he said, where they may hit the wall of failure for the very first time – and get so discouraged that they just might quit math or science. That would be bad, not just for the student but also potentially for all of us, because as Rusczyk and others point out, these exceptionally bright individuals have a lot to give. “These students are going to produce an outsized portion of the major technological, medical, mathematical, scientific, economic advances of the next generation,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The philosophy at AoPS is to teach math at a deep and complex level and introduce high-performing students to difficult problems that stretch their capabilities early. In Rusczyk’s view, the ultimate goal of education should be “\u003ca href=\"http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10565.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">to teach students how to solve problems \u003c/a>they’ve never seen before. That’s the main focus of what we’re trying to do in our classes.” The ability to work through difficult conundrums applies to all kinds of life and career situations, such as, in his case, figuring out how to run a company, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>A key part of challenging the smartest kid in a school, he added, is exposing him or her to peers who are just as sharp or even sharper. “I’ll tell kids, if you’re always the smartest person in the room, you need to find another room,” Rusczyk said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>The internet now makes it a lot simpler to find and engage with a brainier crowd. For math lovers, AoPS is one of those “other rooms.” While children in the top 5 percent of intellectual talent largely look the same in a standard curriculum -- all acing their classes with 100s -- in the AoPS community, students look wildly different in their abilities, interests, and needs, Rusczyk said. Some want to be “taught to the test” and need to be trained out of that mentality, while others want to only think about tackling hard problems. Some turn in beautiful writing assignments, he said, while others “will write stuff that their English teachers would be horrified to look at -- no punctuation, no capital letters.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>When very bright children are ready for a more in-depth complexity of material at a young age but don’t get it at their schools, they’re badly served, said Stanford math professor Rafe Mazzeo, who served as EPGY’s faculty director. It’s not uncommon to see gifted kids who tap out all their high school’s math courses early and spend their entire senior year taking humanities classes. But if those students plan to go into any quantitative discipline, including engineering or natural sciences, allowing their math skills to get rusty for a year or more is “kind of a disaster,” Mazzeo said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“If they have a couple of fallow years where they’re not being challenged, you can really do them intellectual damage.” With its extracurricular computer-based classes, EPGY’s mission has been to help students race ahead with more challenging, accelerated coursework while still staying in the social milieu of their regular grades at their local schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>At Stanford OHS, which grew out of EPGY’s success, students also can race ahead, but they generally do it with a cohort of other high-achievers who are doing the same thing. The school’s philosophy is to place students into courses by their ability, not age or grade level, said admissions director Claire Goldsmith. “There’s no way to max out. We can offer courses to kids at all levels.” With 530 students from 43 states and 18 nations currently enrolled, OHS focuses on fostering critical thinking and argumentation with its core curriculum. It also provides counseling support for social and emotional issues.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Chloe Clougher of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, started at OHS as a junior last fall after two years at a nearby private college-preparatory high school, and prior to that, homeschooling since kindergarten. Though she liked her local school, she decided to apply to OHS because it offered some advanced classes in science and Mandarin that the brick-and-mortar school didn’t have. It would’ve been otherwise frustrating “to try to cobble a whole random schedule together from, like, three different schools or online courses like edX,” said the 16-year-old, who won a full scholarship covering OHS’s expensive $17,250 yearly tuition. (About 16 percent of OHS students receive financial aid.)\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Although the brick-and-mortar high school has AP courses, Clougher said, she noticed that they kept students busy with lots of assignments that didn’t seem like meaningful work. Now at OHS, she is currently jazzed about biology class and her instructor, who’s not only enthusiastic about teaching, but also about learning new areas of biological research – and hearing what the students have to say. “You don’t really see that in a whole lot of teachers,” Clougher said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“They have excellent teachers and really interesting classes,” said sophomore Eva Guevara, 15, who lives in Marfa, a town in far West Texas, and is also attending OHS on a full scholarship. She had gone to ninth grade at the local brick-and-mortar public high school, but found the pace slow and uninteresting. Biology class was especially disappointing, she said. “I ended up just being sent out of the room and just \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-are-teachers-and-students-using-khan-academy/\" target=\"_blank\">watching Khan Academy \u003c/a>\u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/05/how-are-teachers-and-students-using-khan-academy/\" target=\"_blank\">videos\u003c/a> and taking notes on those.” Today, she still goes to the local school building, but only to attend one robotics course and use the library, where she logs into her OHS seminars. Chemistry class, currently her favorite, is “challenging but also it’s really fun,” Guevara said. “And I feel like it’s going at a really great pace for me too.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>While the Stanford coursework is more rigorous and satisfying, both Clougher and Guevara said that social interactions with their classmates online, although quite good, naturally can’t fully match the social life of a real-life high school. But many OHS students do get to meet classmates face-to-face in occasional get-togethers in their region.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For gifted students, building strong friendships is as important to their personal growth as academic achievement. In San Francisco, Saret said that finding communities for her son and their family, and keeping those social circles going, has been one of the biggest challenges. For him, attending \u003ca href=\"http://epsiloncamp.org/\" target=\"_blank\">Epsilon Camp\u003c/a>, a two-week summer program for 8- to 11-year-olds who are profoundly gifted at math, was life-changing: At the camp held in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 2011, he met kindred spirits sharing an intense passion for math, a community where he felt he truly belonged.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>“He has said to me, ‘It was the first time that I felt that other kids understood what I was trying to say in the most truthful sense.’ He could just be himself, say whatever he wanted to say, without worrying about the other kids not getting him,” said Saret, who subsequently became Epsilon Camp’s admissions director. Her son still keeps in touch with the close friends he made there, including some who live in the Bay Area.\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"disqusTitle": "By Not Challenging Gifted Kids, What Do We Risk Losing?",
"title": "By Not Challenging Gifted Kids, What Do We Risk Losing?",
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"content": "\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35062\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35062\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719.jpg\" alt=\"8489236114_39144761a5_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"443\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719-400x277.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719-320x222.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It’s easy to assume that for extremely bright young pupils, life in the classroom is a snap. But when conventional school curricula fail to stimulate their hungry young brains, leaving them bored and stymied, these kids may get lost in the system. Some end up with C averages and slip into truancy, and many may never blossom to their full potential. It's a big loss for lots of reasons, including the fact that these precocious kids represent a unique pool of talent for generating new ideas and innovations. And because of inadequate policies, we may be losing opportunities to nurture the Henry Fords and Marie Curies of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Intellectually talented kids “don’t get the attention of policymakers,” said psychology professor David Lubinski of Vanderbilt University. “But if you’re trying to solve problems in the world like climate change and terrorism and STEM innovation, and transportation and managing our healthcare, you want intellectually precocious youth who have had their intellectual needs met.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lubinski calls gifted kids -- the U.S. has an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nagc.org/index2.aspx?id=548\" target=\"_blank\">estimated 3 million academically gifted K-12 students\u003c/a> -- a “precious human-capital resource.” He and colleague Camilla Benbow co-direct the \u003ca href=\"https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/\" target=\"_blank\">Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth \u003c/a>(SMPY), a decades-long project tracking more than 5,000 gifted individuals, mostly identified through talent search programs that put them through SAT testing at age 12 or 13. Founded in 1971 at Johns Hopkins University by talent-search pioneer Julian Stanley, SMPY has yielded a trove of insights into who gifted children are and what they need from schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some recruits were rare “\u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/09/24/the-scary-smart-have-become-the-scary-rich-examining-techs-richest-on-the-forbes-400/\" target=\"_blank\">scary smart\u003c/a>” kids ranking in the top 1 in 10,000 in math or verbal reasoning skills. In \u003ca href=\"https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Kell-Lubinski-Benbow-20131.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a report last year\u003c/a>, Vanderbilt postdoctoral researcher Harrison Kell, Lubinski, and Benbow checked up on 320 of these profoundly gifted people at age 38. About 44 percent had earned an M.D., Ph.D., or law degree, in contrast to the 2 percent of the U.S. population that holds a doctoral degree. Many had high-powered careers, ranging from doctors and software engineers to artists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Gifted students who miss out on accelerated learning opportunities still do well above average, but don’t accomplish as much later in life, Lubinski said. That’s a “huge waste of talent,” he said.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“We were surprised at the magnitude of the accomplishments, even for the top 1 in 10,000,” Lubinski said. “We had no idea that over 7 percent would have tenure at a major research university. We had no idea that so many would be well supported by grants or be CEOs of major organizations, partners in major law firms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad fullwidth]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all was smooth sailing, though. Profoundly gifted students were able to rapidly master new information, but schools often couldn’t accommodate their pace, the researchers noted; teachers often focused on helping the slow learners in the classroom instead. That’s a potential recipe for frustration and underachievement. Other analyses from SMPY suggest that intellectually talented kids don’t live up to their full promise unless challenged with more difficult course material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, gifted students who got a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/one-size-does-not-fit-all-the-need-for-variety-in-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">high “dose” of advanced and enriched learning activities \u003c/a>in STEM areas (such as AP classes, taking college courses in high school, science fairs) were roughly twice as likely to earn a Ph.D. and tenure in a STEM field by their early 30s than those who got a low dose. Meanwhile, in \u003ca href=\"https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Park-Lubinski-Benbow-2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">another study published last year\u003c/a>, Lubinski’s team tracked 1,020 young students who were advanced in math and compared those who skipped a grade with those who had not. “In every comparison, in every cohort, a greater proportion of grade skippers earned doctoral degrees, STEM Ph.D.s, STEM publications, and patents” — and at an earlier age, the researchers write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gifted students who miss out on accelerated learning opportunities still do well above average, but don’t accomplish as much later in life, Lubinski said. That’s a “huge waste of talent,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A LESSON FOR ALL SCHOOLS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SMPY holds important lessons not just for the exceptionally bright, but for all students: Kids learn optimally from “a curriculum that moves at their pace and is at the appropriate depth for their rate of learning,” Lubinski said. “If it goes too fast, they’re going to be frustrated. If it goes too slow, they’re going to be bored…. One size does not fit all.” Individual students vary widely in how fast they learn, even among the top 1 percent of intellectual talent, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public school systems \u003ca href=\"http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/Default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">generally haven’t embraced accelerated learning strategies.\u003c/a> Grade skipping is not always ideal partly because of concerns that a budding young genius may not be socially or emotionally ready for an older classroom. Some \u003ca href=\"http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/against-accelerating-the-gifted-child/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">worry about the lasting harm\u003c/a> if a child gets picked on a lot or has trouble making friends. However, in a survey of SMPY participants at age 33, they reported having no regrets about skipping grades in high school or engaging in other activities to speed up their education, Lubinski said. Grade-skipping is good for certain bright kids who are gifted across all academic subjects and mature enough to handle it, he said; but if a child is super-smart at math and average in other areas, other options for acceleration are more ideal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Accelerated learning opportunities have been “a real salvation” for some gifted students who were so bored in school, they had nothing to look forward to, said Joyce VanTassel-Baska, education professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. For example, fast-paced residential summer programs for bright kids are often places where “for the first time they found friends, for the first time they had a challenge in terms of their academic diet,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But government support for gifted education programs has been \u003ca href=\"http://touch.baltimoresun.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79646096\" target=\"_blank\">scarce in the U.S. \u003c/a>Education funding understandably goes to kids with learning disabilities, and while special ed programs deserve every penny they get, VanTassel-Baska said, in many places “gifted students are being cheated out of an appropriate education.” By failing to identify and support these very high-potential students, “we are shooting ourselves in the foot.” Other countries, such as in East Asia, have a clear vision for providing programs for gifted children as part of their national mission, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>[ad floatright]\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Lubinski pointed out, in today’s competitive global economy, “we have to develop our exceptional human capital.” Even though SMPY shows it’s possible to find the young math and verbal whizzes who are most likely to achieve great works, he noted, the U.S. does poorly at identifying kids with a knack for visualizing objects in the mind’s eye — a skill important for inventors, architects, dentists, and orthopedic surgeons. Such “spatially talented” children gravitate to metal shop or home economics classes, but they aren’t getting the robotics or advanced lab courses they need to take off. As a result, Lubinski said, “We are missing modern-day Thomas Edisons and Henry Fords.”\u003c/p>\n\n",
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"excerpt": "Intellectually talented kids “don’t get the attention of policymakers,” said psychology professor David Lubinski of Vanderbilt University. “But if you’re trying to solve problems in the world like climate change and terrorism and STEM innovation, and transportation and managing our healthcare, you want intellectually precocious youth who have had their intellectual needs met.”",
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"description": "Intellectually talented kids “don’t get the attention of policymakers,” said psychology professor David Lubinski of Vanderbilt University. “But if you’re trying to solve problems in the world like climate change and terrorism and STEM innovation, and transportation and managing our healthcare, you want intellectually precocious youth who have had their intellectual needs met.”",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003cfigure id=\"attachment_35062\" class=\"wp-caption center\" style=\"max-width: 640px\">\u003cimg class=\"size-full wp-image-35062\" src=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/wp-content/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719.jpg\" alt=\"8489236114_39144761a5_z\" width=\"640\" height=\"443\" srcset=\"https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719.jpg 640w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719-400x277.jpg 400w, https://ww2.kqed.org/app/uploads/sites/23/2014/04/8489236114_39144761a5_z-e1397675436719-320x222.jpg 320w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\">\u003cfigcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\"> \u003c/figcaption>\u003c/figure>\n\u003cp class=\"dropcap-serif\">It’s easy to assume that for extremely bright young pupils, life in the classroom is a snap. But when conventional school curricula fail to stimulate their hungry young brains, leaving them bored and stymied, these kids may get lost in the system. Some end up with C averages and slip into truancy, and many may never blossom to their full potential. It's a big loss for lots of reasons, including the fact that these precocious kids represent a unique pool of talent for generating new ideas and innovations. And because of inadequate policies, we may be losing opportunities to nurture the Henry Fords and Marie Curies of the future.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Intellectually talented kids “don’t get the attention of policymakers,” said psychology professor David Lubinski of Vanderbilt University. “But if you’re trying to solve problems in the world like climate change and terrorism and STEM innovation, and transportation and managing our healthcare, you want intellectually precocious youth who have had their intellectual needs met.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Lubinski calls gifted kids -- the U.S. has an \u003ca href=\"http://www.nagc.org/index2.aspx?id=548\" target=\"_blank\">estimated 3 million academically gifted K-12 students\u003c/a> -- a “precious human-capital resource.” He and colleague Camilla Benbow co-direct the \u003ca href=\"https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/\" target=\"_blank\">Study of Mathematically Precocious Youth \u003c/a>(SMPY), a decades-long project tracking more than 5,000 gifted individuals, mostly identified through talent search programs that put them through SAT testing at age 12 or 13. Founded in 1971 at Johns Hopkins University by talent-search pioneer Julian Stanley, SMPY has yielded a trove of insights into who gifted children are and what they need from schools.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Some recruits were rare “\u003ca href=\"http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2012/09/24/the-scary-smart-have-become-the-scary-rich-examining-techs-richest-on-the-forbes-400/\" target=\"_blank\">scary smart\u003c/a>” kids ranking in the top 1 in 10,000 in math or verbal reasoning skills. In \u003ca href=\"https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Kell-Lubinski-Benbow-20131.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">a report last year\u003c/a>, Vanderbilt postdoctoral researcher Harrison Kell, Lubinski, and Benbow checked up on 320 of these profoundly gifted people at age 38. About 44 percent had earned an M.D., Ph.D., or law degree, in contrast to the 2 percent of the U.S. population that holds a doctoral degree. Many had high-powered careers, ranging from doctors and software engineers to artists and leaders of Fortune 500 companies.\u003c/p>\n\u003caside class=\"pullquote alignleft\">Gifted students who miss out on accelerated learning opportunities still do well above average, but don’t accomplish as much later in life, Lubinski said. That’s a “huge waste of talent,” he said.\u003c/aside>\n\u003cp>“We were surprised at the magnitude of the accomplishments, even for the top 1 in 10,000,” Lubinski said. “We had no idea that over 7 percent would have tenure at a major research university. We had no idea that so many would be well supported by grants or be CEOs of major organizations, partners in major law firms.”\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Not all was smooth sailing, though. Profoundly gifted students were able to rapidly master new information, but schools often couldn’t accommodate their pace, the researchers noted; teachers often focused on helping the slow learners in the classroom instead. That’s a potential recipe for frustration and underachievement. Other analyses from SMPY suggest that intellectually talented kids don’t live up to their full promise unless challenged with more difficult course material.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>For instance, gifted students who got a \u003ca href=\"http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/03/one-size-does-not-fit-all-the-need-for-variety-in-learning/\" target=\"_blank\">high “dose” of advanced and enriched learning activities \u003c/a>in STEM areas (such as AP classes, taking college courses in high school, science fairs) were roughly twice as likely to earn a Ph.D. and tenure in a STEM field by their early 30s than those who got a low dose. Meanwhile, in \u003ca href=\"https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/02/Park-Lubinski-Benbow-2013.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">another study published last year\u003c/a>, Lubinski’s team tracked 1,020 young students who were advanced in math and compared those who skipped a grade with those who had not. “In every comparison, in every cohort, a greater proportion of grade skippers earned doctoral degrees, STEM Ph.D.s, STEM publications, and patents” — and at an earlier age, the researchers write.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Gifted students who miss out on accelerated learning opportunities still do well above average, but don’t accomplish as much later in life, Lubinski said. That’s a “huge waste of talent,” he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003cstrong>A LESSON FOR ALL SCHOOLS\u003c/strong>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>SMPY holds important lessons not just for the exceptionally bright, but for all students: Kids learn optimally from “a curriculum that moves at their pace and is at the appropriate depth for their rate of learning,” Lubinski said. “If it goes too fast, they’re going to be frustrated. If it goes too slow, they’re going to be bored…. One size does not fit all.” Individual students vary widely in how fast they learn, even among the top 1 percent of intellectual talent, he said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Public school systems \u003ca href=\"http://www.accelerationinstitute.org/Nation_Deceived/Default.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">generally haven’t embraced accelerated learning strategies.\u003c/a> Grade skipping is not always ideal partly because of concerns that a budding young genius may not be socially or emotionally ready for an older classroom. Some \u003ca href=\"http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/against-accelerating-the-gifted-child/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0\" target=\"_blank\">worry about the lasting harm\u003c/a> if a child gets picked on a lot or has trouble making friends. However, in a survey of SMPY participants at age 33, they reported having no regrets about skipping grades in high school or engaging in other activities to speed up their education, Lubinski said. Grade-skipping is good for certain bright kids who are gifted across all academic subjects and mature enough to handle it, he said; but if a child is super-smart at math and average in other areas, other options for acceleration are more ideal.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>Accelerated learning opportunities have been “a real salvation” for some gifted students who were so bored in school, they had nothing to look forward to, said Joyce VanTassel-Baska, education professor emerita at the College of William and Mary. For example, fast-paced residential summer programs for bright kids are often places where “for the first time they found friends, for the first time they had a challenge in terms of their academic diet,” she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>But government support for gifted education programs has been \u003ca href=\"http://touch.baltimoresun.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79646096\" target=\"_blank\">scarce in the U.S. \u003c/a>Education funding understandably goes to kids with learning disabilities, and while special ed programs deserve every penny they get, VanTassel-Baska said, in many places “gifted students are being cheated out of an appropriate education.” By failing to identify and support these very high-potential students, “we are shooting ourselves in the foot.” Other countries, such as in East Asia, have a clear vision for providing programs for gifted children as part of their national mission, she said.\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>\u003c/p>\u003c/div>",
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"content": "\u003cdiv class=\"post-body\">\u003cp>\u003c/p>\n\u003cp>As Lubinski pointed out, in today’s competitive global economy, “we have to develop our exceptional human capital.” Even though SMPY shows it’s possible to find the young math and verbal whizzes who are most likely to achieve great works, he noted, the U.S. does poorly at identifying kids with a knack for visualizing objects in the mind’s eye — a skill important for inventors, architects, dentists, and orthopedic surgeons. Such “spatially talented” children gravitate to metal shop or home economics classes, but they aren’t getting the robotics or advanced lab courses they need to take off. As a result, Lubinski said, “We are missing modern-day Thomas Edisons and Henry Fords.”\u003c/p>\n\n\u003c/div>\u003c/p>",
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"info": "What kind of no sabo word is Hyphenación? For us, it’s about living within a hyphenation. Like being a third-gen Mexican-American from the Texas border now living that Bay Area Chicano life. Like Xorje! Each week we bring together a couple of hyphenated Latinos to talk all about personal life choices: family, careers, relationships, belonging … everything is on the table. ",
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"info": "The Political Mind of Jerry Brown brings listeners the wisdom of the former Governor, Mayor, and presidential candidate. Scott Shafer interviewed Brown for more than 40 hours, covering the former governor's life and half-century in the political game – and Brown has some lessons he'd like to share. ",
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"marketplace": {
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"info": "Our flagship program, helmed by Kai Ryssdal, examines what the day in money delivered, through stories, conversations, newsworthy numbers and more. Updated Monday through Friday at about 3:30 p.m. PT.",
"airtime": "MON-FRI 4pm-4:30pm, MON-WED 6:30pm-7pm",
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"masters-of-scale": {
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},
"mindshift": {
"id": "mindshift",
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"info": "The MindShift podcast explores the innovations in education that are shaping how kids learn. Hosts Ki Sung and Katrina Schwartz introduce listeners to educators, researchers, parents and students who are developing effective ways to improve how kids learn. We cover topics like how fed-up administrators are developing surprising tactics to deal with classroom disruptions; how listening to podcasts are helping kids develop reading skills; the consequences of overparenting; and why interdisciplinary learning can engage students on all ends of the traditional achievement spectrum. This podcast is part of the MindShift education site, a division of KQED News. KQED is an NPR/PBS member station based in San Francisco. You can also visit the MindShift website for episodes and supplemental blog posts or tweet us \u003ca href=\"https://twitter.com/MindShiftKQED\">@MindShiftKQED\u003c/a> or visit us at \u003ca href=\"/mindshift\">MindShift.KQED.org\u003c/a>",
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"order": 12
},
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"google": "https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5tZWdhcGhvbmUuZm0vS1FJTkM1NzY0NjAwNDI5",
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"morning-edition": {
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"info": "\u003cem>Morning Edition\u003c/em> takes listeners around the country and the world with multi-faceted stories and commentaries every weekday. Hosts Steve Inskeep, David Greene and Rachel Martin bring you the latest breaking news and features to prepare you for the day.",
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"onourwatch": {
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"title": "On Our Watch",
"tagline": "Deeply-reported investigative journalism",
"info": "For decades, the process for how police police themselves has been inconsistent – if not opaque. In some states, like California, these proceedings were completely hidden. After a new police transparency law unsealed scores of internal affairs files, our reporters set out to examine these cases and the shadow world of police discipline. On Our Watch brings listeners into the rooms where officers are questioned and witnesses are interrogated to find out who this system is really protecting. Is it the officers, or the public they've sworn to serve?",
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"order": 11
},
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"on-the-media": {
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"title": "On The Media",
"info": "Our weekly podcast explores how the media 'sausage' is made, casts an incisive eye on fluctuations in the marketplace of ideas, and examines threats to the freedom of information and expression in America and abroad. For one hour a week, the show tries to lift the veil from the process of \"making media,\" especially news media, because it's through that lens that we see the world and the world sees us",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/on-the-media",
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},
"pbs-newshour": {
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"tuneIn": "https://tunein.com/radio/PBS-NewsHour---Full-Show-p425698/",
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},
"perspectives": {
"id": "perspectives",
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"order": 14
},
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"planet-money": {
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"info": "The economy explained. Imagine you could call up a friend and say, Meet me at the bar and tell me what's going on with the economy. Now imagine that's actually a fun evening.",
"airtime": "SUN 3pm-4pm",
"imageSrc": "https://ww2.kqed.org/radio/wp-content/uploads/sites/50/2018/04/planetmoney.jpg",
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},
"link": "/radio/program/planet-money",
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"apple": "https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/planet-money/id290783428?mt=2",
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},
"politicalbreakdown": {
"id": "politicalbreakdown",
"title": "Political Breakdown",
"tagline": "Politics from a personal perspective",
"info": "Political Breakdown is a new series that explores the political intersection of California and the nation. Each week hosts Scott Shafer and Marisa Lagos are joined with a new special guest to unpack politics -- with personality — and offer an insider’s glimpse at how politics happens.",
"airtime": "THU 6:30pm-7pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Political-Breakdown-2024-Podcast-Tile-703x703-1.jpg",
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"order": 5
},
"link": "/podcasts/politicalbreakdown",
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"amazon": "https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/e0c2d153-ad36-4c8d-901d-f1da6a724824/political-breakdown",
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"possible": {
"id": "possible",
"title": "Possible",
"info": "Possible is hosted by entrepreneur Reid Hoffman and writer Aria Finger. Together in Possible, Hoffman and Finger lead enlightening discussions about building a brighter collective future. The show features interviews with visionary guests like Trevor Noah, Sam Altman and Janette Sadik-Khan. Possible paints an optimistic portrait of the world we can create through science, policy, business, art and our shared humanity. It asks: What if everything goes right for once? How can we get there? Each episode also includes a short fiction story generated by advanced AI GPT-4, serving as a thought-provoking springboard to speculate how humanity could leverage technology for good.",
"airtime": "SUN 2pm",
"imageSrc": "https://cdn.kqed.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Possible-Podcast-Tile-360x360-1.jpg",
"officialWebsiteLink": "https://www.possible.fm/",
"meta": {
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"source": "Possible"
},
"link": "/radio/program/possible",
"subscribe": {
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"spotify": "https://open.spotify.com/show/730YpdUSNlMyPQwNnyjp4k"
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},
"pri-the-world": {
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