Research

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.