It’s the titles that are the first warning: often, they are a seemingly random selection of words – only 60 per cent of which you recognise – housed together in an impossibly long sentence.
If you get past that, you hit the abstract, which sucks you in with some simple lexical choices for approximately two lines before it descends into what appears to be someone randomly mashing the keyboard with their (admittedly well-educated) fist.
Plough on further and you finally hit the beast itself: the academic paper in all its glory. You fumble through it like you’re drunk and searching for your ...
Growth mindset: a real – and important – effect
Recommended by: Dylan Wiliam, emeritus professor of educational assessment, UCL Institute of Education Title: “A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement” What is it about? It explains how a one-hour, computer-delivered growth-mindset intervention, delivered to a nationally representative sample of US 9th grade (Year 10) students in 65 schools, improved the achievement of lower-achieving students – the target of the intervention – by 0.11 standard deviations, with larger effects in schools where the school norms encouraged challenge seeking. The intervention also increased the likelihood that students would choose to study more demanding mathematics courses such as algebra II from 33 per cent to 36 per cent. Why would it be useful to teachers? A number of experiments have shown that getting students to believe that intelligence or ability is malleable rather than fixed – what is sometimes called developing a “growth mindset”– increases student achievement. However, several attempts to replicate these findings have failed, and last year Victoria Sisk and her colleagues discovered that growth mindset interventions had no impact on student achievement in 37 of the 43 growth- mindset studies they found, with an average effect size of just 0.08 standard deviations. Many people, misreading the work of Jacob Cohen on the interpretation of effect sizes, and accustomed to much larger effect sizes popularised by John Hattie in his Visible Learning project, interpreted this as a negligible effect, and concluded that the importance of “growth mindset” had been overstated. In fact, since most of the students participating in these growth- mindset intervention studies were secondary school students, for whom one year’s growth – at least when measured with typical tests or exams – is at most 0.4 standard deviations, a 0.08 effect size would be equivalent to an increase in the rate of learning of at least 20 per cent. When you add in the fact that most growth-mindset interventions take only a few hours per year, such interventions would appear to be among the most cost-effective things that schools can do to increase student achievement. This experiment, by David Yeager and his colleagues, shows that a growth-mindset intervention of less than an hour’s duration can have a large impact on student achievement. This study also draws attention to the fact that asking “do growth-mindset interventions work?” is the wrong question. Instead, the right question is: “Under what circumstances do growth-mindset interventions improve student achievement?” – and this study provides some clear, helpful pointers. Growth-mindset interventions are more effective when students in the school, on average, are more open to undertaking challenging tasks. Yeager, DS et al (2019) “A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement”, Nature, 573: 364-369
Anxiety could be at the root of your school’s poor attendance figures
Recommended by: Tamsin Ford, professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the University of Cambridge Title: “The association between anxiety and poor attendance at school – a systematic review” What is it about? The authors found a clear relationship between anxiety and poor attendance, but a lack of longitudinal data that could help us disentangle cause and effect. Few studies included medical or authorised absence, which is the most common form. This is important because anxiety can cause physical symptoms of such severity that attendance at paediatrics is common. Why would it be useful to teachers? Attendance at school is essential for good educational outcomes. The role of anxiety can easily be overlooked, and is important to consider because it often responds well to cognitive-behaviour approaches. Other emotional difficulties (such as self-harm and depression) also show strong relationships with attendance at school, but anxiety is the most common of these problems. Teachers and mental health leads should be alert to the possibility of poor mental health as an explanation for poor attendance, particularly if the pattern of attendance changes. Finning, K, Ukoumunne, OC, Ford, T*, Danielson-Waters, E, Shaw, L, Romero de Jager, I, Moore, DA et al (2019) “Review: the association between anxiety and poor attendance at school – a systematic review”, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, 24/3, 205-216 *Lead author Katie Finning was studying for her PhD with Tamsin Ford at the time she completed the work
How you present your classroom rules ‘affects whether they are followed’
Recommended by: Alice Jones, director of the Unit for School and Family Studies at Goldsmiths, University of London Title: “Correlates of students’ internalization and defiance of classroom rules: a self-determination theory perspective” What is it about? The authors set out to find out what motivated students to follow classroom rules, and whether these motivations were associated with important behavioural outcomes and attitudes, including: disruptive classroom behaviour; truancy; cheating; and feelings of resentment and anger towards school. Motivations to follow rules can be classed as external (eg, to avoid punishment), internal pressures to conform (eg, to be seen as good) or fitting with a student’s own internal set of values (eg, because respecting others’ right to learn without disruption is right). More than 1,000 11- to 19-year-olds reported on their own attitudes and behaviour, as well as their motivations to follow or defy school rules. Why would it be useful to teachers? The study suggests that if students follow the classroom rules because they value and accept the rules as their own, they are less likely to misbehave or feel resentful. Interestingly, those who follow rules because of external pressures, such avoidance of punishment, are more likely to report feeling resentful and enact “cheating” behaviours – so while not actively disrupting the class, more covert negative behaviours might still be happening. It is useful for teachers and school leaders to think about how school rules might best be presented and made meaningful to students (other research supports a role for student autonomy). Aelterman, N, Vansteenkiste, M and Haerens, L (2019) “Correlates of students’ internalization and defiance of classroom rules: a self-determination theory perspective”, British Journal of Educational Psychology, 89/1: 22-40
Why we must get on board with RCTs if we want evidence-informed teaching
Recommended by: Jonathan Wai, assistant professor of education policy and psychology, and the 21st-century endowed chair in education policy at the University of Arkansas Title: “Objecting to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies or treatments” What is it about? The paper shows that people tend to approve of untested policies being universally implemented but disapprove of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to determine which of those policies or treatments is superior. The authors examined 16 studies of 5,873 participants, spanning nine domains, including education policy, specifically on the topic of “promoting schoolteacher wellbeing”. Why would it be useful to teachers? RCTs have long been the gold standard in medicine and are now increasingly used throughout the social sciences, including in education. In fact, the recent Nobel Prize for Economics was given for using RCTs to fight poverty. This paper, though, demonstrates how the use of RCTs remains a contentious topic. I believe reading this paper would help increase the use of RCTs in education, persuading teachers to take part in them, as it demonstrates that experimentation aversion may be an important barrier to the implementation of evidence-based practice. Meyer, MN, Heck, PR, Holtzman, GS, Anderson, SM, Cai, W, Watts, D and Chabris, CF (2019) “Objecting to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies or treatments”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116/22: 10723-10728
The effect of social media on how happy students are
Recommended by: Pete Etchells, reader in psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University Title: “Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction” What is it about? Using data from more than 10,000 10- to 15-year-olds, the researchers were interested in whether teens who used social media frequently showed differing levels of life satisfaction compared with those who didn’t use it so much – a critical question in the current climate of worries around the potential detrimental effects of screen time. Why would it be useful to teachers? This paper is a highlight for me because it does three things. First, the overall findings reinforce the message that we shouldn’t get too worried about media scare-stories around digital tech use – the associations between social media and life satisfaction were small and inconsistent. Second, it adds much-needed nuance to the debate around screens: the data showed that social media was a predictor of slightly decreased life satisfaction for girls, particularly in regards to their school work and the extent to which they were happy with the school they attend. While we can’t figure out the causal direction of the relationship from this study alone, it’s nevertheless a robust, open-science study. And finally, in highlighting the need for scientists to embrace circumspection and transparency and rigour in this sort of work, to my mind the study makes something else clear: we need to engage more with teachers, the people who have expert insight into the day-to-day lives of adolescents, so that we }can figure out the right questions to ask around digital tech use and education. Orben, A, Dienlin, T and Przybylski, AK (2019) “Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116/21: 10226-10228
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