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This Is The Most Interesting Piece About Education Research That I’ve Read In A Long Time
Though I don’t quite agree with everything they say, this piece, Phonics is a fad, but it’s also good, so we should do it anyway, even though it will probably disappoint people, is the most interesting commentary on education research that I’ve read in quite awhile. It rightly points out that: The outcomes we like to measure, such as reading comprehension, depend on many personal and environmental factors, making it hard for a discrete change in schooling to make much of a difference. . . But that doesn’t mean that the small positive effects that in-schooling changes can make don’t add up. In addition to checking out that very readable post, I’d recommend you also read a commentary on it at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science. I’m adding this info to The Best Resources For Understanding How To Interpret Education Research.      Research Studies Of The Week Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay
I often write about research studies from various fields and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature. You can see all my “Best” lists related to education research here. Here are some new useful studies (and related resources): Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics in Grades 3-6 Toolkit is from REL.
 A Look Back: The Similarities Between How We Look At Car Crashes & How We Look At SchoolsFor the next several months, each week I’ll be republishing posts from the past that I think readers might still find useful. This post first appeared in 2022.
The Atlantic recently published an article headlined The Deadly Myth That Human Error Causes Most Car Crashes. It’s subtitled “Every year thousands of Americans die on the roads. Individuals take the blame for systemic problems.” Here’s a key excerpt: In 2015, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Transportation, published a two-page memo declaring that “the critical reason, which is the last event in the crash causal chain, was assigned to the driver in 94% of the crashes.” The memo, which was based on the NHTSA’s own analysis of crashes, then offered a key caveat: “Although the critical reason is an important part of the description of events leading up to the crash, it is not intended to be interpreted as the cause of the crash.” In other words, human error is described as the reason for 94% of crashes – it’s called “the critical reason.” But, as the article goes on to explain, the real cause of most crashes are systemic issues like road an vehicle design. As the David Zipper, the author, writes, “the idea that human error causes nearly all crashes is a useful talking point.” It seems to me that this kind of analysis can easily be applied to schools, too. Schools, and their teachers, are held by many in the public to be primarily responsible for student success or failure, even though research has constantly found outside factors, including institutional socio/economic ones like racism, have been found to be the primary influencers of academic achievement (see The Best Places To Learn What Impact A Teacher (& Outside Factors) Have On Student Achievement). School may be the “critical reasons,” but the “causes” are outside of the schoolhouse walls. Going back to Zipper’s article, he writes: With responsibility falling on those directly involved in a crash, it’s unsurprising that so many highway-safety efforts revolve around education campaigns, assuming that if people were just more careful, we’d all be okay. With schools being viewed as the cause of success or failure, the primary public belief is that if we educators just teach better, our students will learn better… The article explains that the new federal infrastructure bill has elements that may force authorities to re-examine this “critical reason – cause” disconnect. And, clearly, the pandemic has helped some realize that outside factors do, indeed, have an impact on student learning, and the Biden Administration, though its expanding the child tax credit, food stamps, and affordable medical care, recognizes systemic issues. I’m not suggesting that we teachers, and our schools, should not do our best to stretch the amount of impact we can have on our students’ learning. But I am suggesting that, perhaps, everyone would benefit if we all had a clearer acknowledgement that we are the “critical reasons” and not the “causes” of our students’ academic success or lack of academic success.  This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom geralt / Pixabay
At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM: Zuno Tales lets teachers create virtual classrooms for AI-powered “educational” stories. There’s a limited free plan. AI and Showing Our Work is from Practical Theory. I’m adding this next post to THE “BEST” IDEAS FOR USING CHATGPT, BARD, & OTHER FORMS OF AI WITH STUDENTS:
Can AI Really Personalize Learning?
   “Rethinking ‘What Works’ in Education”Rethinking ‘What Works’ in Education is the headline of one of my recent Education Week columns, a guest post. How the question “what works” is defined misses too much of what matters in schools. Here are some excerpts:
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