A nagging little pamphlet from NIFL appeared in my teacher mailbox the other day. I’d been hopeful that the government’s fetish for experimental reading research design would go into remission with the new administration, but that seems not to be the case. Always curious about government propaganda, I read through “What is Scientifically Based Research?” instead of grading papers or running the copy machine to generate more papers to grade.
Page 1 says that “educators need ways to separate misinformation from genuine knowledge,” and we should be wise consumers of education research to help us “make decisions that guarantee quality instruction.” Looking for the punch line, I continued reading, drawn to riveting passages such as, “Teachers can further strengthen their instruction and protect their students’ valuable time in school by scientifically evaluating claims about teaching methods and recognizing quality research when they see it.” Translation: Good intentions are not enough. Teachers may be misled by educational hucksters. I’ve had those same suspicions myself, but the target population isn’t limited to the teaching profession.
The main point of this document is to give us the “federal perspective” on scientific research, which:
- Progresses by investigating testable problems;
- Yields predictions that could be disproven;
- Is subjected to peer review;
- Allows for criticism and replication by other scientists;
- Is bound by the logic of true experiments.
It reads like the introduction to a sixth-grade science textbook. Nothing on that list, however, is evident in our national school reform policy. But federal education reform is political, not educational. And since this is the age of double standards, I’ll let that go for now, and write it off as another example of how, when you write the rules, accountability is for everyone else.
What interests me at the moment is the federal perspective on curriculum and instruction. Principally, how much weight should be given to teacher observations in instructional decision-making? We often hear that innovation is a good thing, but it’s hard to imagine how new ideas are propagated in a standardized environment that myopically focuses on a single measure of success.
“What is Scientific Research?” tells us that teachers should “look for evidence that an instructional technique has been proven effective by more than one study,” cautioning us to be aware there are different stages of scientific investigation, and that we should “take care to use data generated at each stage in appropriate ways.” Then comes this attention grabber: “For example, some teachers rely on their own observations to make judgments about the success of educational strategies.”
Some teachers?!
At this point, we learn that “observations have limited value” and that scientific observations must be carefully structured to make determinations about cause and effect. Well, maybe so. But experimental evidence has limits, as well. We’re cautioned that, “In order to draw conclusions about outcomes and their causes, data must come from true experiments,” and “Only true experiments can provide evidence of whether an instructional practice works or not.”
So, teachers, don’t get any funny ideas about evaluating your own effectiveness.
Just to make sure we understand they don’t have every little detail quite worked out, we’re reminded that, “In many cases, science has not yet provided the answers teachers and others need to make fully informed decisions about adopting, or dropping, particular educational strategies.” No kidding.
So, what then? My teacher perspective is that all knowing is personal, classrooms are not sterile laboratories in which the variables can be tightly controlled, and doing experiments on children is still frowned upon in our society.
Coincidentally, The federal perspective on education research received some attention in Elaine Garan’s recent article about sustained silent reading in The Reading Teacher. Garan reminds us that the “medical model” is not well-suited for education research because messy human variables such as motivation, emotional difficulties, and other human qualities can contaminate the results. She argued that a lack of consensus among researchers converges with common sense, recommending that students have time to read freely each day, despite the National Reading Panel’s failure to find any evidence in support of the practice. If there is “no evidence” in support of a particular practice, it may have everything to do with the research methodology, and nothing to do with what is true about the real world of classrooms that researchers have awkwardly tried to shoehorn into a narrow view of reading instruction.
I’ll have more to say about free and voluntary reading some other time. It’s working out remarkably well for my students this year. That’s my observation, anyway.
Garan, E.M., & DeVoogd, G. (2008, December). The Benefits of Sustained Silent Reading: Scientific Research and Common Sense Converge. The Reading Teacher, 62(4), 336–344. doi: 10.1598/RT.62.4.6
9 Comments
Such a scary pamplet. I have recently worried about the hit on teacher leadership in the last several years. Not only are we no longer seen as leaders in education but this kind of communication and lack of understanding/respect for the “observations” we make is sad. I am not sure how teachers can make an impact when the power of the things that happen and are observed in the classroom can be taken into account as “real” data. It is a huge piece of the information we have about each child. Thanks for sharing.
What I find most aggravating about this is the sheer amount of time it would take — even if you totally believe in all this stuff — to figure out that an intervention that was effective in raising second grade test scores resulted in lower scores in eighth or 12th grade.
Yeah. Well, it’s a self-contradictory pile of BS. You can’t call it science and discount the observations of people who are closest to the action.
Like Franki says, it’s scary that people actually want us to believe this.
I have to say, don’t blame the current administration for this pamphlet. It’s clearly been in process for some time. That’s not to say that things are going to improve, but I haven’t given up hope yet.
I’m very impressed with your thoughts here, but I’m also left wondering if you are a glutton for punishment!
No, not blaming the current administration, Jenny. They’ve got too much on their hands at the moment to be busy with this kind of stuff. The document is actually a shorter version of a report authored by Paula and Keith Stanovich in 2006. Even if they’re just cleaning out the closets at the DOE, this stuff is out there affecting reading policy, textbook publishing, and curriculum writing. And yeah, I’m a sucker for this garbage.
Hi Doug – I just found you on http://www.change.org and left a rather long comment (twice, sorry) on your excellent discussion-starter about standardisation. Here’s another one:
I read this post with interest. I agree with you completely on all you have to say in relation to this pamphlet – but I have to say that many, many teachers I have worked or socialised with over the years (as well most other people) would simply not understand the points that you make so clearly.
To me, the concept of a “real teacher” is not someone who is simply qualified to teach. It’s someone who understands and respects the true nature and value of learning – a lifelong, wholly individual and iterative process that is sparked by motivation and results not in memorisation of fact, but in truly making knowledge one’s own. Much of it is not easily measurable through exams or tests. It’s evident in the human being in front of you though (your unscientific teacher observation/evaluation tells you that, doesn’t it?!).
These real “teachers” are so few and far between, and this is why I can’t bring myself to send my children to school when the time comes. I think they’ll do far better outside of it – although going to school will always be an option, should they so choose. So many people think of children (and adults) as empty vessels to be filled with their specific brand of important information, and then measured to ensure that the information is retained complete, accurate and unchanged.
As we know, the study of human beings by human beings rightly embraces not just the empirical evidence we may or may not be able obtain, but also the less tangible, unpredicable, complex and utterly subjective information that is of equal valuable. Sadly, I can believe that a government is quite happy to stamp all over that theory
Renegade parents and renegade teachers unite! I enjoy your observations that learning is an iterative process, as is any creative activity. One of my guiding principles is that in order to teach, I first have to recognize and respect the intelligence of other people. Unfortunately, it’s easier said than done in the classroom for a variety of reasons, and I’m not always successful. Teaching and learning always happen in relationship to each other, in my experience.
I’m interested in your comment about not being able to send your kids to school when the time comes. My wife and I chose to send ours. We wanted them to experience a social environment that would provide challenges for them that we couldn’t offer at home. We have 3 kids, all born within three years time. They’re in high school now, involved in things we’d never have predicted years ago, all doing well.
Thanks for your comments about “real” teaching. The least important evidence is recorded in folders and file cabinets.
Doug – it’s been a pleasure to find your blog.
Whilst I don’t (yet) know a huge amount about the US education system, I suspect that overall it is very different to what we have here in the UK. We can debate the detail, but I believe the US to have a less interventionist government, and, overall your citizens place a higher premium on personal freedoms.
This is of course a generalisation, but I feel the majority here don’t even see or care that their civil liberties are being seriously eroded. They are yoked into a paradigm of adherence to the state’s authority that ultimately requires increasing levels of intervention to ‘solve’ the very problems it creates. We’ve been made dependent, lazy, and apt to blame others. This week we have had a senior public health official advocating another increase in legislation to “save us from ourselves” (his words). Most educationalists here are not so different. State education is increasingly used here as a “cure” for all of society’s health and social welfare problems, in addition to our educational malaise (the government antidote to which is glorious standardisation – of curriculum, appearance and behaviour). Following two high profile failures of government services in identifying at-risk children, there’s a big push to significantly increase the numbers of children taken into state care. I am surprised *all* children aren’t removed at birth to be placed into the hands of the “experts”.
The “real teacher” friends I do have remaining in the state system are walking away in droves. They know this paternalistic approach has serious long-term consequences for autonomy, personal responsibility – and ultimately of course the 21st century economy. The parents I know who understand these issues are increasingly choosing home-based education (not the same as “school at home”).
We don’t want to give our children over to those “experts”. I don’t want my daughter to be identified as at-risk because she has bruised arms and legs from climbing trees, put in a school uniform at 3 or labelled with ADHD because she doesn’t slot in – and I don’t want to be sent to prison for taking her on a field trip to Peru for a month during term time (“But what about her education?” the judge would say.) So I prefer not to automatically opt in. But the option is there for her if that’s what she wants.
We chose to set up a business so we’re both regularly at home, and we have freedom over how we spend our time. We both get a huge amount out of daytime and evening work, academic, voluntary and charitable activities. I see no difference between spending enjoyable and productive social time with a group of five year olds, fifty year olds or 95 year olds. I find it exciting too that I can’t predict what she’ll be involved in as she grows up. Whether she goes to school or has a home-based education, the most important thing is that she has real choice. As long as we have no choice as to the school she will attend and no choice as to the education she receives once she’s in that school, it won’t be our choice to send her there!
It ought to cause fear that my husband based on my room has “research” going into AERA.
Where nothing is replicable.
Loved reading here today.
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