Research

Questioning eyeQ

Sara Mead — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:17:00 -0500

One of our favorite cognitive scientists, Daniel Willingham, is introducing a new recurring feature, "Hall of Shame," on the Washington Post's Answer Sheet blog. His point is to debunk the claims made by the marketers of "educational" products, curricula and technologies that are rooted in flawed "science" -- or none at all.

Willingham's first target is eyeQ, an admittedly odd-sounding software program that claims to double reading speed in two weeks of 7-minute daily sessions, by improving eye-brain connectivity. According to the company that produces eyeQ, more than 750 schools are using the program. Willingham makes short work of its claims.

The coup de grace for me is the website’s claim that the left hemisphere is associated with scientific ability and logic, whereas the right brain is associated with intuition and artistic ability. This cartoon characterization of the brain was discredited 30 years ago.

Read the whole thing here.

The real question we have is: Why do schools fall for educational products, methods, curricula, and professional development programs based on such dubious/sketchy evidence? There are lots of programs out there like eyeQ, and there's also a growing market in "brain based" professional development for teachers, based on concepts -- teaching to the boy brain/girl brain, teaching to the left brain/right brain, teaching to visual/audio/kinetic learning styles -- that Willingham can also explain are hooey. It's particularly troubling that, in many cases, districts use federal Title I or Title II teacher quality funds to buy dubious products and training programs.

While we don't know the answer, here are two thoughts:

First, educators are particularly susceptible to "brain based" approaches based on sketchy evidence, because neuroscience findings have gotten a lot of press attention in recent years, because the presentation of PET scans and MRIs by marketers gives these products a false patina of "science," and most importantly, because most educators themselves have shockingly little real training and education in actual cognitive science. There is often little connection between education schools and university researchers in departments of psychology, and educators' pre-service coursework includes either very little information or outdated research on the science of learning and child development. This is particularly problematic for future teachers in the PreK-3rd years, when it's particularly important that teachers have a solid understanding of children's development.

Second, the selection of these programs reflects the education field's ongoing search for "quick fixes," programs or tools that will magically solve education problems and produce results, as opposed to the less glamorous, and harder, task of improving instruction at a fundamental level. This is true at both the policy and practice levels. Unfortunately, we've spent a lot of time and money in education on silver bullet solutions that don't produce results. Just think what could be accomplished if some of that energy were instead focused on goals like aligning standards, curriculum, and instruction; monitoring student progress; diagnosing causes of failure to master content; and differentiating instruction to help all students succeed -- in other words, PreK-3rd. Such an approach may take more time and money to implement than quick fixes like eyeQ, but we'd bet dollars to donuts the long term return on investment is much greater.

Preguntas, Preguntas: What Do We Know About Dual-Language Learners in Pre-K?

Lisa Guernsey — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:53:00 -0500

A symposium in Arlington on Tuesday brought together some of the most well-known researchers in the field of early childhood to dig into a tough and timely question: How do we help young children in the United States who know very little English?

The day-long symposium, "Investigating the Classroom Experiences of Young Dual Language Learners," was hosted by the National Center for Research on Early Childhood Education, based at the University of Virginia, in partnership with the National Center for Latino Child & Family Research. Designed to link together current research while also jumpstarting more probing studies, the symposium was peppered with lively discussions about how to gather and decipher evidence of what works in pre-K classrooms. The hosts intend to publish a collection of the day's papers.

Recent studies have shown that dual-language programs -- roughly defined as programs in which teachers give half of their instruction in a child's home language and half in English -- are effective at improving the school readiness of young children for whom English is a second language. But there is still vast uncharted territory for researchers to determine exactly what that these programs should look like in practice, what kinds of skills teachers need to teach dual-language learners, and what policies should be enacted (or scrapped) to turn classrooms into more appropriate language-learning zones.

The day was not billed as a seminar on research about children from Spanish-speaking homes specifically -- children arrive in early childhood centers speaking dozens of different languages -- but the Latino population was a main focus of discussion.

Among the many, many questions:

Current thinking assumes that Latino parents are less likely to seek out pre-K programs for their children. Is that still true, or is it a supposition based on old research? Are we starting to see a shift in which Latino families are more comfortable, or have more access to, center-based programs and are starting to seek out more pre-K experiences for their children?
How do we determine a child's first language? Just because a child comes from a home where Mom speaks Spanish, does that mean that the child's first language is Spanish or could he be gaining his first language skills from other adults or siblings in his life? Should we rely on the reports of parents and teachers to categorize children's language proficiency?
Are Quality Rating and Improvement Systems taking language-learning into account? These systems use trained observers to rate the quality of early learning centers (giving them, say, a 1, 2 or 3 star rating.) Should those observers be measuring whether child care centers and pre-K programs are helping to support children's home languages as well as helping to teach them English?
What words should we be using to describe children who come to classrooms without strong English skills: dual-language learners or English-language learners? Both? If we call them ELLs, are we ignoring the importance of them continuing to build their home-language skills? If we call them DLLs, will we get confused between categories of children and descriptions of formalized dual-language classrooms (in which half the day might be taught as an immersion in one language, and the other half in English?).
How do state policies that favor English instruction, such as those in California for K-12 systems, impact what early childhood educators do in pre-K classrooms? What happens when a child transitions from a dual-language program into a kindergarten classroom where teachers speak only English?
How should language skill be measured in determining "child outcomes," i.e., how well students are gaining new knowledge and skills? In other words, should we rely on a child's English-based math or English reading scores in determining whether he is learning math or language arts? Can proficiency in reading or answering qusetions in a home language be part of the picture? How do we tease apart what a child actually knows from how a child responds to an English-based test?

Ideas for how to support English-language learners have been trickling forth this year. For example, earlier in 2009, the Society for Research in Child Development published a policy report and accompanying commentaries on the needs of Hispanic children. One of the commenters in that series -- James A. Griffin of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development -- has been urging social scientists to go even further, noting the "paucity" of research on what interventions make the most difference to these English language learners.

Sounds like he's right, given that there are still so many questions hanging out there like those above. Much more needs to be investigated before we can speak definitively about how to prioritize resources and enact better policies to support young children's first language and help them master English. Hopefully the report from Tuesday's meeting will provide a better foundation for building pre-K programs that do the most good.

In the meantime, however, it's worth repeating one of the mantras that came out of Tuesday's symposium: "Good quality is good quality." No matter what a child's language background, we see mounting evidence that 3- and 4-year-old children benefit from teachers who converse with them, ask them about what they are seeing or doing, and respond to and elaborate on their questions. Rich language experiences, whether they happen in children's home language or in second language or both, are a cornerstone to a high-quality learning environment.

Some Words on Webkinz: Can Digital Media Actually Help Emergent Readers?

Lisa Guernsey — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:26:00 -0400

I have decided to pick on Webkinz in a post this week on the Breakthrough Learning blog -- a place where writers are stirring up ideas in preparation for a Google forum later this month called Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age. I'll be moderating the "Literacy 2.0" panel. A copy of my post is below.

P.S. If you're not familiar with Webkinz, take a look at this screen shot, which shows you one view of what children see when they play with Webkinz on screen. Webkinz, you should know, are really two things. They exist physically as hold-in-your-hands plush toys -- like stuffed horses and dogs. And they exist as virtual characters that live online in virtual worlds that children create. Each toy comes with a password so kids can log in on their home computers and design rooms and outdoor spaces for the online versions of their stuffed animals. (I know, it sounds a little odd and confusing. But trust me, these toys and their accompanying virtual worlds are perfectly understandable to the 5- to 8-year-old set.)

A young girl, age 5, sits down at her family's computer and logs into Webkinz with some help from her mother. She's got a plush toy on her lap. It's a Clydesdale horse named Mirabelle who, seconds later, appears reincarnated as a pixilated horse on the screen. The little girl grabs the computer mouse, points to the screen, and shouts, "look Mom!" A three-dimensional room is now before her eyes, and she can fill it with whatever furniture she thinks her horse might like. A catalog of food items appears too - marshmallows, carrot sticks, hamburgers, you name it. The little girl knows that she is supposed to buy whatever will make her horse happy and healthy. She clicks on the carrot sticks and feeds them to Mirabelle. A little thought balloon appears over her horse's head with tiny text inside. Maybe it says "that's delicious" or "thank you!" or "now can you buy me some apples?" But we'll never know, because it appears for only a second and then it disappears.

"What did it say?!" the girl screams. Her face is in a panic. "I couldn't read it!"

She couldn't read it. Why? Two reasons. 1) the little girl is not yet a fluent reader. 2) the digital media did absolutely nothing to help.

I offer this story not to bash Webkinz or to chastise her mother (who is me, as many readers have probably guessed by now.) Nor do I tell this tale to lead you into a sermon on the value of reading a book versus sitting in front of a computer.

I tell this story to highlight the disconnect between digital media and children's literacy today. Consider the elements in place: We have a highly motivated child sitting in front of a highly motivating piece of software. We have text on the screen. But we have no recognition anywhere that this is a moment that could be harnessed to pull her forward in reading, to help take her to the next level. Something as simple as enabling the words to appear on the screen until she took an active role, until she clicked a button to close the thought balloon, could have helped. But much, much more could have happened as well. Imagine a Webkinz world populated by characters who love to read and urge their owners to check out virtual books to stock virtual libraries. Imagine a moment in which my daughter might have been invited, first through an audio prompt, to read more about horses and how to care for them, and then led her to a page of non-fiction designed for her reading level that she could print and read later with the help of parents and teachers? Imagine the richer literacy possibilities that could be infused in the games, email exchanges or printed bulletin boards on the virtual world's walls.

The opportunities to encourage reading through digital media are endless.

And so are the pitfalls. I'm not alone in having dozens of questions about when, why and how to use digital media in a way that doesn't divorce children from reading instead. Here are just four that are on my mind:

1) How can we prevent the power of digital media become overpowering, from doing so much for children that reading seems unnecessary to them? We think of the screen as a place to tell stories visually, and as we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words. So where will children learn to read those words if they so rarely appear before their eyes? Can the "printed" word become more infused in our multimedia experiences? How do we give kids a reason to read?

2) Digital media has been held up as a motivator, but is that enough? We see children excited about using a Nintendo DS or logging onto an online game, and we say we need to use these platforms as a launching pad for introducing reading. But what happens when the novelty wears off? Can these games produce such a love of reading, or even simply a fluency in reading, that it becomes deeply embedded in children's approaches to learning no matter what technology they use in the future?

3) What can digital media do to improve comprehension, to move students beyond a rudimentary ability to decode words? Can we use multimedia and immersive gaming to introduce students to vocabulary and concepts from history, science and literature so they recognize words and ideas when they come across them in texts? And if so, will that be enough? Can digital media become a bridge to better comprehension for children from non-English speaking households? Or is that something that can only come from reading text in the first place?

4) What is the relationship between creating and reading? Digital media is renowned for its ability to spur creativity, motivating children to create videos, develop games, mix and produce music, write messages. Do we know empirically whether this might help them learn to read or propel their reading to new levels? And is one necessary for the other?

Until we find answers to some of these questions, skepticism will remain over whether digital media can play a positive role in raising reading achievement among today's young people. And parents and teachers will continue to nag their children to log off Webkinz and go read a book.

Screen shot courtesy Flickr user ouvyt used under the Creative Commons license.

Pretend Play, Self-Control and 5-Year-Olds

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 14:01:00 -0400

Paul Tough's article in yesterday's New York Times Magazine puts the spotlight on Tools of the Mind -- a teaching strategy that encourages children to engage in make-believe play in the classroom. The idea is that by letting young children adopt and act out roles -- whether it's doctor or daddy or doughnut maker -- these children will be indirectly learning skills of inhibition and self-control. They must stay in character and plan out their next move. What's more, they have to work out how to share the "stage" with their classmates and adapt to the movements and desires of different characters around them.

Early research on Tools of the Mind has been promising. In 2007, research results by Adele Diamond, a cognitive scientist at the University of British Columbia, showed that it made a significant impact on children's "executive functioning" -- their ability to regulate their emotions and focus on tasks. A 2008 study showed similar positive outcomes for children's behavior.The teaching appoach is now the subject of several research studies across the country, and as Tough's article explains, there are still many unanswered questions about exactly which parts of the Tools program are doing the most good and how to replicate them.

The "Tools" approach has been on my mind too -- and not just because it epitomizes the play=learning mantra that may help solve the problems of "kindergarten cram." Recent research, described here at Early Ed Watch, has shown that attention problems may be an overlooked area of concern as we talk about school readiness. Most people may figure that the only way to cope with a lack of focus and poor executive function skill is to rely on rewards and punishments, as well as the much-debated use of "time outs." But are these the most developmentally appropriate methods to use? What strategies should teachers employ as they prod their students to develop more focus and self-control? And can parents take home a few pointers?

To De-Pressurize Kindergarten, Here Are Four Must-Do's (9/10/09)

A Prominent Researcher Asks Some Good, Hard Questions About Playtime (8/11/09)

Two Antidotes to 'Kindergarten Cram' (5/4/09)

In Search of More Play in Kindergarten – and More Solid Research on What’s Happening There (5/31/09)

As I was reading the New York Times article, my daughters were busy "playing school" in our living room. Gillian, 5, was the teacher. Janelle, 7, was her assistant, clipboard in hand. Imaginary, invisible kids were sitting in a row of chairs. Yes, I said to myself, this is self-regulation in action.

But then, from what I could glean in my eavesdropping, one of the imaginary children struck out and hit another imaginary child. Janelle marched over, glaring at what looked to me like empty space. Gillian shouted: Time out! Now you're on "red"!

This talk of being "on red" was a direct replication of the '"conduct code" that has become a central part of her kindergarten experience so far. In her school, children start the day on "green" but get warnings -- usually moving from "yellow" to "red" -- when they act out or disrupt the class. And the "time out?" Well, that was probably something she learned from me, my move of last resort when I throw up my hands and cannot figure out how else to keep my children from clobbering each other. I wonder if we need a few more "Tools" here at home too.

Photograph by flickr user Riaskiff republished under the Creative Commons license.

Popsicle Pushers and 21st Century Childrearing

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:50:00 -0400

It's August, which means that a perennial of the media landscape is in bloom: Eye-brow-raising stories about modern-day parenting that fill that slow summer news hole. Last week's piece in the New York Times about parents protesting the serenades of Mister Softee fit the bill perfectly.

But more on that in a second. Because first, it's worth pausing to digest a fascinating article just published in the journal Qualitative Sociology. It has arrived in time to give us some interesting context for what these parenting stories might be signaling at societal level, not to mention explain what educators are seeing play out in today's families. The article -- "Children's Autonomy and Responsibility: An Analysis of Childrearing Advice" -- was written by Markella B. Rutherford, a sociologist at Wellesley College. A catchier title for it might be: Today's Kids: So Many Choices, So Little Freedom.

Rutherford compared childrearing advice in Parents magazine from 1929 to 2006, poring over 300 texts comprised of advice columns and articles on child development, discipline, parenting methods, and family relationships. She was looking for moments in the texts where authors talked about giving children choices - such as choosing what or when to eat, what activities to be involved in, what kind of chores to do or when to do them. What she found is that parents have, over the decades, given their kids more choices at home while tightening the leash once outside the house.

"Instead of increased autonomy," Rutherford wrote, "there has been a historical trade-off in children's autonomy; while Parents portrays children as having gained some kinds of autonomy in the private spaces of their homes, they have lost much of their public autonomy outside the home."

In the 1930s, at the height of behaviorism and its emphasis on regular routines, good parenting meant training children to sleep when told to sleep and eat what was placed in front of them. That shifted by the 1940s, Rutherford writes, when new findings in psychology led experts to talk about not pushing children too hard, allowing them to find their own will and sense of independence. This has led to parents to encourage children to make their own choices. (Here, for example, is the common refrain in our house: "How do you want your noodles: sauce or no sauce?")

Yet in the public sphere, the trends have moved in an opposite direction, with children having less freedom of movement and responsibility. As Rutherford argues: "Children have fewer opportunities to conduct themselves in public spaces free from adult supervision than they did in the early and mid-twentieth century." Afterschool time, for example, has shifted from children making their way home alone to being in structured activities under adult supervision or being shuttled in cars from one place to another. The automobile-centered nature of today's neighborhoods can make autonomy very hard. This has worrying implications, she suggests, for the ways that children learn to participate in their communities.

Now, consider the choices-versus-freedom paradox in light of "When Parents Scream Against Ice Cream," a story that describes a growing horde of parents who are starting to become irate at ice cream vendors and their repetitive chimes, trying to lure children from the pool or playground to come buy a frozen treat. As Times writer Helene Stapinksi puts it so well: "In a greener, more health-conscious, unsafe world, the ice cream man has lost some of his mojo." On Double X, a relatively new blog from Slate, moms have b een chiming in themselves and chiding each other for being overly protective or overly annoyed at what so many of us remember as a rite of childhood - that walk up to the ice cream truck, all by yourself, with a crumpled dollar bill hot in your hand and a dripping popsicle in your future.

(For more on the Rutherford article in Qualitative Sociology, check out last week's posts on Science News and the Core Knowledge Blog.)

Photos courtesy of Klingon65 (above) and kaytethinks (right) under the Creative Commons license.

James Heckman: Early Intervention Can Make Up for Disadvantages at Home

Catharine Bellinger — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:39:00 -0400

Nobel-prize winning economist James Heckman has been popping up all over the news this week, first in a Boston Globe article downplaying the significance of IQ, and again yesterday in an interview with NPR. "It's this inequality in early conditions which perpetuates inequality into the next generation and the generation after that," said Heckman on NPR's "Tell Me More."

Heckman believes America is gradually fragmenting into "two societies," one affluent and one impoverished, and the gap in access to high-quality early learning is hastening that development. But early intervention can make the difference. He was quoted in the Boston Globe saying that successful preschool programs give students a boost in non-cognitive skills, like "self-control and grit," that will ultimately lead to success later in life.

Musings on Harry Potter, Sparked by New Findings on Depression in Preschoolers

Lisa Guernsey — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 15:11:00 -0400

The first Harry Potter book has become part our family's bedtime reading this summer, and my 7-year-old daughter is even more entranced than I was when the young wizard came into my life at age 29. But in returning to the book now, as a parent, something is gnawing at me about the dear boy: Given what he had to suffer through in his early childhood, how did he manage to come out so well-adjusted?

For deprived adults who haven't read the book, let me explain. Harry spent the first 10 years of his life in a cupboard under the stairs. His parents died suddenly when he was a baby, so he was left to grow up in a house with his aunt, uncle and roly-poly bully of a cousin, Dudley. His aunt and uncle barely paid him any mind, but when they did, their growling responses were always negative. He was, in essence, verbally abused and ignored, not to mention half starved. It was a tough way to grow up. And yet he turned out to not only be a hero, but also a thoughtful, kind and productive person. You wouldn't call Harry happy-go-lucky, but you wouldn't describe him as depressed either.

Yes, I'm being a little facetious. I'm aware that Harry is a charming bit of fiction, at least to us muggles.

But the fact that author J.K. Rowling could endow him with such astounding resilience strikes me as an example of how adults tend to become oblivious to the importance of children's social environments at very young ages.

That needs to change. Researchers who examine the impact of social interactions among children from birth through age 3 have been finding evidence that the way children are treated as infants and toddlers has lasting effects -- not just on their future behaviors and thoughts, but on the architecture of their brains.

The research helps to explain why programs to help new mothers -- like the home visitation program that is part of the health care bill -- can have such a positive impact on young children. It isn't easy to take care of a baby when you're overwhelmed and sleep-deprived, not to mention stressed, poor and alone. It's a lot easier to smile and coo over your infant when a caring professional has just visited your home, helping you through struggles with breastfeeding or pointed out how your baby is already starting to show signs of early language development.

Now some new research in the Archives of General Psychiatry provides another hint of the importance of supportive social environments.

Psychiatrists used to think that signs of depression didn't show up until at least age 6. But over the last 20 years, research has shown that it can be identified in preschool. Its prevalence is not yet known, but one study suggested that depression affects about 2 percent of the population, the same rate found in school-aged children.

Researchers for the new study -- led by Joan L. Luby, director of the Early Emotional Development Program at Washington University at St. Louis -- wanted to know whether preschool depression might persist as children grow up. Could preschool depression simply be a moody phase, or something more serious? The answer, according to their analysis of data on 256 children 3 to 6 years old, was the latter. Preschoolers diagnosed with depression were 11 times more likely than non-depressed preschoolers to be suffering from it 12 months and 24 months later.

"Depression during the preschool years," the report said, is one of the "most robust and significant predictors of later depression."

The research also showed that young children with depression had experienced more stressful and traumatic events than those without the disorder. They were more likely to have experienced, for example, the death of a parent, physical or sexual abuse or they had been removed from what they knew as home.

The study's authors recommend vigilance among early childhood professionals who work with young children, urging them to look for signs of depression so that children can be treated as early as possible. In a well-reported story on the findings by Lindsey Tanner of the Associated Press, experts stressed that this means using age-appropriate therapy (many psychiatrists recommend the use of pretend play and hands-on games) instead of putting 3-year-olds on medication.

For the children's sake, let's hope that research like this leads to more awareness of the significance of these early years -- and more informed, thoughtful approaches to helping children in these years. They aren't going to have the good fortune of being sent to Hogwarts.

UPDATE, 8/5/09 at 1:02 p.m.: Joan L. Luby, lead author of the study, stresses that prescribing anti-depressants is not a safe way to treat depression in young children given how little is known about side effects. She and her team have written another article, to appear next month in The American Journal of Psychiatry, that provides details on a promising treatment that involves parents and children playing together. More details on that study can be found on the project page of the Early Emotional Development Program.

Attention: New Research Is Changing the Picture of Why Children Have Trouble in School

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 13:52:00 -0400

Conventional wisdom often paints a picture of the poorly behaved student as the future flunkee. Even in early elementary school, we're led to believe, the kids who get in trouble will be the ones who struggle academically and eventually come home with failing grades.

Now new research is scrambling that image and bringing a few new culprits into focus. Two of them -- low levels of math and reading skill at early ages -- have received a lot of attention in early childhood circles, driving the movement for academically oriented pre-K programs. But something else may be to blame as well: the inability to pay attention.

A study in last month's Pediatrics shows that the greater a child's attention problems at age 6, the more likely that child will perform poorly on tests of math and reading in the last few years of high school. Contrary to some of their own expectations, researchers found no connection between achievement and behavioral problems, whether they were aggressive actions (such as children pushing classmates or lashing out at the teacher) or issues like depression or withdrawal. The study examined data on nearly 700 children of varying family backgrounds.

In 2007, a study landed with similar -- and similarly surprising -- results. In an examination of data on thousands of children across the country, researchers found that children with behavioral problems were no more likely to be poor achievers in elementary school. Instead, they said, low achievement was most strongly linked to poor skills in math and reading at an early age and to symptoms of attention disorders. Some preliminary data unveiled in April at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research in Child Development follows the same narrative.

"What's striking is how consistent the findings are," said Joshua Breslau, an epidemiology professor at the medical school at the University of California at Davis and the lead author of the Pediatrics article.

The same thought came to Greg J. Duncan, an education professor at the University of California at Irvine who led the 2007 research (he was at Northwestern at the time). "The results are strikingly similar," Duncan said.

Neither study involves medical diagnoses of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD. But both relied on teachers' reports of how children fared on a common rating scale of children's attention, such as their ability to focus, follow directions and finish tasks.

If research continues to zoom in on attention problems, there are large implications for early education. The Pediatrics article, for example, suggests screening children for attention problems as soon as they enter school. Whether this would be done by kindergarten teachers or medical professionals, or both, remains to be seen. But it's likely that policies designed to foster collaboration between education and mental health professionals could gather momentum.

The importance of attention also complicates already hotly debated issues of what should be considered normal behavior in 5 and 6 year old children, what they should be expected to accomplish in the classroom, and how to handle young kids who are so easily distracted and difficult to teach.

And then there's the troublesome thought of kindergarteners taking ADHD medication.

Julie Schweitzer, a co-author of the Pediatrics study and a clinical psychologist at UC-Davis who specializes in ADHD, said she hoped the study would build more awareness among teachers and parents about the impact of attention problems -- and the importance of treating them as soon as possible. She said she encounters many parents whose children are diagnosed as having the disorder but who do nothing about it, often because the disorder still comes with a stigma, as many people continue to believe that it is simply a result of poor parenting or overly high expectations for children's capacity to sit still. Yes, the environment can make a difference, Schweitzer said, but accumulating evidence from the field of neuroscience suggests that ADHD has its roots in a person's physiology.

Still, kindergarten teachers can help children overcome some of the disorder's effects. For example, Tools of the Mind, a teaching method that we've cited at Early Ed Watch, was showcased in an article in Science and the Early Childhood Research Quarterly for its success in improving children's ability to focus and pay attention. In a "Tools" classroom, children are encouraged to engage in pretend-play scenarios, taking different roles and thereby gaining practice in disciplining themselves, keeping their behavior in check and staying "in character."

Teachers can also try simple interventions, Schweitzer said, "such as giving rewards for following rules, listening to the teacher, sitting still in circle time, persistence in their projects, keeping their hands to themselves as well."

"It may be," she continued, "that the ‘wigglers' might also benefit from being allowed to do more socially acceptable wriggling in the classroom."

But, she added, if those efforts don't work, teachers should refer children for an evaluation. "You don't want to waste time," she said. "It will mean worse outcomes for the children in the long run."

National Report Calls For More Early Math

Christina Satkowski — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 20:08:00 -0400

Last week by the National Research Council released an extensive report which argues that children need more math instruction in early childhood than they are getting now - much more. Why? Because children are not only ready to learn but are in fact learning math long before they enter a preschool classroom.

Research shows that even in infancy children develop an implicit understanding of basic mathematical concepts, such as shapes and spatial relationships. The NRC report details the "foundational and achievable" math content that can and should be taught to children in the early years to support and nurture what children are already learning from the world around them. Teachers can help by focusing and building upon this spontaneous learning.

The question for many teachers, then, is not whether but how to teach math to children at such young ages. Many teachers are uneasy -- or even "afraid" -- to teach math to pre-K students, according to a recent policy brief from the Society for Research in Child Development. The SRCD report's authors -- Herbert P. Ginsburg, Joon Sun Lee and Judi Stevenson Boyd -- attribute this ambivalence to the weakness of early math pedagogy in teacher preparation programs. The NRC's report devotes an entire chapter to the need to strengthen teacher preparation programs, plus two more chapters to "teaching-learning paths" (the concepts children can learn at different ages, and how they demonstrate that learning) for the various domains of early math instruction, including number operations, spatial thinking, and measurement.

The NRC report makes an important distinction between explicit, teacher-led "direct instruction" in early math, and "intentional teaching," where a teacher adapts math instruction to different learning experiences, including large group instruction and child-initiated play. As I told Education Week last week, more math learning in early childhood classrooms does not have to mean less time for play. Children can learn math on the playground ("How many rocks do you have in your pail?") and with a crayon their hand ("Which of those two spiders you drew is bigger?").

While policymakers and early educators must recognize that children begin learning math before they enter pre-K or kindergarten, they must also keep an eye on math learning in elementary school, too, where a strong mathematics instruction is crucial to preparing the next generation of science and technology professionals. While the NRC report focuses only on children aged 3 to 6, its recommendations have big implications for math instruction in the later elementary grades. As we all learned in elementary school, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line; the most effective way to teach math is via a straight, seamless pathway between early childhood environments and the K-12 system, with the quality and quantity of math instruction growing along with the child.

UCLA Study: Give Young Children a Chance to Converse

Lisa Guernsey — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:45:00 -0400

Words are good. Conversation is better. That's the message of a study released today in the journal Pediatrics that links young children's language skills to the amount of time that adults engage them in back-and-forth exchanges.

Past research, particularly the acclaimed Hart & Risley study, has shown that children's cognitive abilities are strongest among those whose parents use many words in speaking to them. That study emphasized the importance of exposing children not only to directions or comments about their behavior ("drink your milk") but also to new vocabulary words and descriptions of the world around them ("did you see that hummingbird?"). Today's study builds on those findings, showing what many child development experts have stressed for years -- that some of the strongest learning moments happen in interactions between caregivers and young children.

While vocabulary is important, "we find that the effect of the conversation is six times as great as the words," said Frederick J. Zimmerman, the study's lead author and associate professor in the school of public health at the University of California at Los Angeles.

The study is among the first to use small, unobtrusive recording devices that capture all of the sounds and words spoken to and around young children. The gadgets are put in kids' pockets or attached to their clothing. Researchers report that the technology, called LENA (shorthand for Language Environment Analysis), is breaking new ground in the collection of data on children's natural environments. With LENA, researchers can find out a lot about what children experience at home, at school or on the playground without having to plant an observer to take notes on the kids' every move. (By the way, a 2008 article in the New York Times Magazine described how the technology was at one point intended as a tool for parents to determine if their children were getting enough language time.)

Zimmerman and his colleagues used the devices on 275 children, aged 2 months to 4 years old, capturing data in 12-hour time frames once a month for at least six months. Parents who participated -- they were found through local newspaper and direct mail invitations -- received the device in an overnight envelope, attached it to their children when they awoke in the morning, took it off at night and mailed it back to the researchers the next day.

Once the devices came back, researchers used specialized software to sort what was recorded, differentiating monologues from speech that included "conversational turns" or moments when one speaker responds to another. The software also marked which moments included noise from electronic media, primarily television.

Throughout the study, speech pathologists tested children's language skills using an assessment called the Preschool Language Scale.

Results showed that with each increase of 1,000 words in adult speech, children's language skills also increased. And with each 100 conversational turns per day, the language score jumped further.

Parents and care-givers should take these results as evidence, Zimmerman said, of the importance of encouraging children to express themselves and engage in conversations. "One of the goals should be to engage the child in speaking," Zimmerman said. "In language, practice makes perfect."

The study also showed that television noise was associated with lower language scores in children, although when adult conversation was taken into account, the significance of the association disappeared. In other words, it appears that child-to-adult conversations could ameliorate the negative impact on language that the study showed to be associated with TV. Still, Zimmerman advises limits on TV viewing. The data, he said, show that "TV is crowding out time that would otherwise be spent on these conversations."

The study comes on the heels of a study published earlier this month in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine that also used the technology. That study found that when the TV is on, language use decreases among young children and caregivers.

Zimmerman's study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, with data collection paid for by Infoture, Inc., the company that created the technology. Infoture has since been converted to a non-profit organization called the LENA Foundation that is focused on using technology to screen for developmental delays in children and adults.