Getting Boys to Read

One of the things that drives me to become a better literacy teacher is the gender gap in literacy abilities.  You can see it in the U.S. through National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores,

Retrieved from http://www.nationsreportcard.gov/reading_math_g12_2015/#reading/gaps

and you can see it internationally through Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores.

Retrieved from https://data.oecd.org/pisa/reading-performance-pisa.htm

There has been a lot of attention paid to increasing female achievement in STEM subjects, and I'm fully in favor of that, but there doesn't seem to be anywhere near that level of attention and funding for helping males succeed in reading and other literacy activities.  The math efforts are helping to close the gender gap,

Retrieved from https://data.oecd.org/pisa/mathematics-performance-pisa.htm#indicator-chart

so it seems logical that heightened efforts can help close the reading gap as well.  It is especially important to focus on the reading gap, because, unlike the math gap which is at the higher level (ex. fewer girls in advanced math and science classes), the reading gap is largest at the basic proficiency level.  That means that the largest difference is in whether or not male students can effectively read and understand text.  Sure, there are more girls than boys in creative writing electives, and it would be great to get more male voices in there, but what I find truly alarming is the gap in basic literacy skills needed to be a productive citizen.  

I spent several years teaching "remedial" reading classes, and every year my class was disproportionately minority students and disproportionately male.  Obviously racial gaps are important, but why aren't more people talking about the gender gap in reading?  The gender gap feels especially pressing when looking at the PISA data.  This is data from countries all over the world, with all different kinds of racial demographics.  While the math data has a few countries that have closed the gender gap, every single country has a sizable reading gender gap.

So what do we do?  We try to implement strategies that will benefit all learners, but can hopefully reach male students better than current practices.  

In Australia, Jann Carroll approached the problem of getting adolescent boys more engaged in literacy by looking at what they're already engaged in, video games.  Her article describes her work with 27 middle school boys to see how gaming practices can be applied to literacy learning.  What I really appreciate is Carroll's emphasis on literacy as a social activity that has to be relevant in order to be truly engaging.  This matches with what Gregory and Kaufeldt said are the needs of our seeking brains in The Motivated Brain.  They talked about the importance of interaction and play, as well as students' needs for projects and problems that are challenging and require 21st century skills to solve.

Carroll included this table at the end of her article:

These suggestions fit really well with Pink and Deci and Ryan's models that I outlined in my last post.

Ali Carr-Chellman is also concerned about how boys are doing in school and thinks that video games could potentially provide some solutions.  I've included her TED talk below.  I don't necessarily agree with everything she says, but her presentation of the problem is thought provoking.

There's also this fascinating TED talk by Daphne Bavelier on potential positive effects that video games can have on the brain.

I love how she concludes with comparing the brain science to broccoli and the entertainment of video games to chocolate.  She points out that no one wants to eat chocolate covered broccoli.  The current challenge is designing a game that is the equivalent of brownies with pureed vegetables in them, so that they taste awesome but are still good for you.  I'm not completely sold yet, but I think it's an interesting path forward.

A Motivated Brain

Membership in ASCD has many perks.  My favorite perk is having access to Educational Leadership, but I also appreciate that membership means receiving promotional ASCD member books.  Recently, I got a copy of The Motivated Brain: Improving Student Attention, Engagement, and Perseverance.

This book basically has all my favorite words in the title.  Since I have no free time, I'm making slow progress in it, but so far I'm nodding as I'm reading.  Part of the book's initial set up is an argument I've heard before, namely, that it's ridiculous for decisions about the structure and content of education to be made without reference to what works for the human brain.  One of my favorite quick overviews of how our education system is mired in an obsolete model is the RSA Animate version of Ken Robinson's talk on changing education paradigms.  Robinson points out that our current education system is still stuck in the original industrial age paradigm that was in place at the beginning of wide spread public education.  Doing things a certain way because that's the way we've always done it is not only a poor rationale, but it's also a path to failure in this rapidly changing world.

One of the educational changes I would love to see is a greater emphasis on motivating students.  Another great RSA Animate is one by Daniel Pink summarizing some of his major points on what does and does not motivate workers.  Pink focuses on three components that a workplace should provide in order to get successful results from employees: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

Pink's three points correlate well with Deci and Ryan's educational psychology based self-determination theory which discusses the basic human need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness.  The best part about self-determination theory, or SDT as it's often abbreviated, is that it has been tested in real classroom situations with consistent confirmation of its validity as a model.

Both Pink's model and Ryan and Deci's model emphasize the importance of autonomy.  Ryan and Deci even describe autonomous motivation in contrast to controlled motivation.  I still have to read some more to figure out how this fits with intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.  I'm realizing that in order to effectively research motivation it will be important to make sure I'm really clear on my terms.  

The first chapter of The Motivated Brain gives an overview of many of the top theories and works related to motivation.  In skimming it, I saw a heading for emotional intelligence, another big buzzword.  The picture next to it shows arrows between the rational and emotional sides of the brain, implying that emotional intelligence is what connects the two.  Thanks to my good friends at RSA Animate I know that the brain's division of duties isn't as simple as we are sometimes lead to believe. 

 

I'm looking forward to reading the next chapter of the book and seeing what I learn.  Please feel free to share any resources you think would help me better understand the brain and motivation.  In case you didn't already figure it out, I especially like explanations with visuals :-)

Does It Help or Hurt?

I just finished reading an interesting Edutopia post by Nell Duke entitled "What Doesn't Work: Literacy Practices We Should Abandon."  She focused on five teaching practices that are not proven to help with long term literacy.  Some of them I agreed with without a second thought, for example, banning weekly spelling lists.  I still remember weekly spelling lists with a shudder.  Memorizing words in isolation was always painful for me, and I was a horrible speller until I started writing things I cared about for an audience I respected.

Another literacy practice that drives me nuts is giving students a list of words and telling them to look them up in the dictionary.  I was glad to see this on the abandon list, but I wish she had delved a little further into why this is such a useless exercise.  When is the last time you looked a word up in the dictionary?  I teach a unit on dictionary skills, and I have yet to come across a word that has only one definition.  Many words have widely different definitions depending on the context in which they are used.  Giving a student a list of words and a dictionary is setting that student up for failure.  It's the worst kind of lazy teaching.  That said, I do pre-teach vocabulary, but I usually make a matching game where I've prepared for the lesson by creating age and context appropriate definitions for the students to match with the vocabulary words.  The students will also see those words in the context of their reading and be able to use them in their own writing.  The words are relevant to the task at hand.

Taking away recess as a punishment is also on the list.  My army veteran husband would laugh at this one.  He's a firm believer that punishment should involve MORE physical activity, not less.  You couldn't sit still during class? Do some sit ups.  Still having trouble behaving? Add some push ups.  Duke's article is aimed more at elementary school teachers, but there is no age at which sitting still for six hours is acceptable.  I'm an adult who couldn't last in an office job, because I couldn't sit at a desk all day.  Who am I to judge a kid who can't sit still and be quiet?

I had no hesitations in endorsing Duke's views on abandoning weekly spelling lists, sending students to the dictionary with no context, and taking away recess as a punishment, but the last two literacy practices on the abandon list hit a little closer to home.  Duke called for removing prizes for reading.  I agree with her, and I like how she emphasized spending time talking about reading, rather than just giving unrelated prizes such as stickers.  There is a wealth of research on extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation.  In fact, that's what I want to do my research on.  So while I agree that stickers aren't really helpful in fostering life long readers, it's important to give teachers lots of constructive suggestions of what to put in place of those types of prizes to help keep students' momentum going.

The final item on Duke's naughty list was unsupported independent reading.  Again this one gave me some pause, because sometimes kids just need time to READ, but I agree that this only works if students have some key things in place before and after they read.  Students need to know how to pick a good book, and they need people to talk to about the book.  I think it's okay to have programs like DEAR (Drop Everything and Read), but the teachers implementing these programs need to know what the larger reading plan is.

Overall, Duke's article was a quick read that helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on helpful and hurtful literacy practices.