Student Resistance

Review of “Johnny won’t read, and Susie won’t either: Reading instruction and student resistance”

In the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Rebecca Powell, Ellen McIntyre, and Elizabeth Rightmyer published a study which evaluated literacy activities (like Jumpstart) in which students engaged in off-task behavior at least 25% of the time. In my review of their report, I will forego their own constructions of meaning from the results in favour of one which is simpler and more applicable to a setting like Jumpstart. To begin, I will define two important concepts in classroom management and curriculum development: off-task behaviour and engaged time. Then I will go into the actual findings of the study, which evaluated teaching style and qualities of instructional tasks. The purpose of this review is to provide a background of good teaching practices to those who have limited classroom experience.

Before any evaluation is done, it is important to be clear about what is being evaluated. In the case of this study, classrooms were selected for extensive review when off-task behaviour was observed for more than 25% of activity time (this does not include transition time). Off-task behavior was treated as a pre-defined term in the study and not explicitly discussed, but a brief overview and a few examples will clarify what is meant by it. Off-task behavior is behavior which interferes with learning - as will be discussed later, it can result from a variety of different circumstances. Some examples of off-task behavior cited in the article are: students talking instead of listening to the teacher, lying on the floor and rolling around, interruption with unrelated questions and comments, going to the bathroom or getting water during activity time, etc. The presence of these behaviours does not mean instruction is ineffective, but if they are taking up a significant portion of your teaching time it may be difficult to teach effectively.

One aspect of effective teaching is the amount of time students are engaged. While they are off-task, they are obviously not engaged. But just because a child looks like they are on-task, it does not necessarily mean they are engaged. Students are engaged when they are actively attending to the learning task, and the more time your students are engaged the more successful they will be. There are several obstacles to student engagement, however. First, students tend to perceive the educational process negatively. They do not see how it is relevant to their daily lives and their family values. If the instruction they receive lacks real-world validity, minimal engagement will result. Second, students may resist engagement when they have a lack of control over their own learning or when they have the perception that a task might lead to failure and/or embarrassment. Obviously there may be emotional or temperamental reasons for low engagement, but there are things that you can do as a teacher to encourage it.

At this point in time, we are moving beyond qualification of terms and into practices that will actually help you in the classroom. In the study, particular teaching styles were found to be more effective than others. Ineffective practices were: adherence to procedures, scripted models, tasks being too difficult or easy, and students being unable to self-regulate. In my opinion, these practices can partially be the result of inexperienced teachers - teachers who are new to teaching and are too reliant on procedures and models rather than relaxing into their own teaching style, teachers who are unaware of developmental appropriateness and so cannot determine whether tasks are the right difficulty, teachers who have difficulties balancing student choice with classroom chaos. Teachers are faced with a choice, too, and the study showed that some teaching choices were more effective: providing appropriately challenging tasks, encouraging peer collaboration, providing opportunities for student choice, and encouraging self-regulation (independent application of reading strategies) were all aspects of effective teaching styles. This study seemed to focus more on older students (about grade 3), but these practices can still be implemented in a preschool setting: the Jumpstart curriculum is a good starting point for keeping the teaching appropriate to your students’ abilities, you can encourage your students to tell each other their favorite parts of the book they just read, students can choose what colors to write their names in and which center stations to go to first, and you can encourage rich language when students tell stories back to you. Having an effective teaching style is as much about knowledge as it is about flexibility - you have some important tools for teaching literacy, but few people know your students better than you. It is up to you to create a classroom environment that is responsive to the unique needs and strengths of both your students and coworkers. The following table is a layout of the above information organized in a way to help clarify how you can make your teaching practices more effective:



Finally, in implementing teaching methods, the study noted two significantly different qualities of instructional tasks: closed tasks and open tasks. Closed tasks are things such as worksheets or simple questions - activities where there is only one right answer. Closed tasks such as these were found to be directly related to higher incidence of off-task behavior. The study found that where there was a high degree of off-task behavior, tasks were often found to be closed.

However, the study defined several core components of open tasks - those which allow children to complete activities in their own way and come up with answers that are unique to them. Turner and Paris (1995) found six critical features of open tasks. These ‘six Cs’ are: choice, challenge, control, collaboration, constructive comprehension, and (positive) consequences. The following table provides illustrations of these instruction qualities in the classroom:


Especially in a preschool environment, students must be encouraged in all aspects of learning. It may be counterintuitive to tell a child that every answer they give is the “right answer,” but remember that you are helping to formulate how they view education for the rest of their lives. Jumpstart students have usually been identified as students struggling with literacy skills. They often are dealing with circumstances and environments at home that can make learning difficult. This can lead to difficulties in the classroom, but the practices described above will help ANY TEACHER with ANY STUDENT. The findings of this study were based both on previous studies as well as a sample of over 70 literacy activities. Off-task behavior can inhibit learning, but engaged behavior as well as open teaching styles and utilizing the ‘six Cs’ can both address off-task behavior as well as increase student performance.

Watch your perspective

Okay, so I see this movie about a severed corpus callosum (okay, I didn’t actually watch it - I simply saw the web page title and started thinking willy-nilly with no thought for decorum), and it makes me think about how with genes, for example, we define their effects by what the organism is like withOUT them - that is how we define their functionality. And I think "Wow, it's so damaging, that this is science's approach to discovering things. Why can't they just observe whatever it is?" But obviously you can't (or, we don't know how to) observe a gene, for example. so then I thought "Well, you can observe an arm."

Imagine if someone wanted to figure out what an arm did, and to do so they cut it off and watched the behavior of the organism afterwards. The interesting thing is that the organism would begin to compensate immediately - by perhaps a redistribution of weight, by simply "making do" with their whole arm instead. To make an equation of their behavior, it would be: Body & Behavior with 2 arms - 1 arm = Body & Behavior with 1 arm + Compensation. There is something NEW in this equation: Compensation. So, the question is: How do you separate function from compensation when you are practicing this science-by-deletion?

On top of that, you STILL need the observational component - a lot of compensation behavior of course is directly related to the missing component and you need a control to compare.

This, in turn, makes me think of the Behaviorist/Holist debate - do we learn about the world around us by breaking it up or by looking in great detail (at one thing at a time) or in a wider-perspective kind of observational way?

Of course the answer is: a little of both. It really pretty much always is, but people get so caught up in what their training is that they find it difficult to switch their perspective back and forth.

So here’s a friendly public reminder: don’t be an extremist.

To Abort or Not to Abort?

I've read a few places that 80% of foetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. This figure horrifies me because:

1. of the implicit cultural priority of neurotypicality
2. abortions are never cause for a party
3. I don't have such an attachment to giving birth myself - I don't see the point in carrying a child if you're just going to abort it if it isn't "what you want" - I'd just adopt if I wasn't comfortable enough with my odds of having a healthy child
4. I have worked with children with Down's, and indeed those with many "special needs" (ah - a phrase that should be the subject of another post) who were: funny, bright, loving, compassionate, etc. etc. etc.
5. I think parents are selfish. Well okay - not ALL parents. And not ALL the time. But I wanted to get your attention.

In my field, there is a lot (a LOT) of talk about supporting parents and families. We focus on strengthening and empowering parents, pretty much at all costs. There are those who say that it is actually the parents, and not the children, who are our clients. This perspective is practical, useful, sensible - teachers are on the front lines. Ours is not a position of prediction and prevention; we go into class each day and deal with the fact that Johnny bit Sally. Our time frame is right now, and right now we have kids in our classes, and they have families that will be with them long after us. Our concern is dealing with what IS, not what is BEST.

But that doesn't mean we don't think about it. Okay - so Johnny bit Sally. I am telling you - it's probably due to the same reason he's always late for school and often has a runny nose: Maybe Johnny's mom shouldn't have freakin' had another kid. And I'm not just talking about lower-income, high-birth-rate populations. Actually, all of my jobs have been in middle-to-upper-middle-class areas. People - parents - think it is a right, to have children. That is just as much true as this: it is a responsibility to have children.

These things are both true - both equally true. But many people feel one way more strongly than the other, and this attitude leads to some moral dilemmas. If you think that having a child is a right, what else do you think you "should" have when it comes to children? Do you think your child should be good at sports? So would you force.... I mean... encourage your child to stay on a sports team even when they protest vociferously? Will you reject your child if they aren't attracted to the right gender? You may contest that these things cross a line - that you can have reasonable expectations of your children (they will be physically fit) and also let them be themselves (my son takes ballet classes).

I contend that you begin to draw that line when you choose to have a child and, when you conceive, you decide to have screening done for things like Down Syndrome. I think that starting to draw the line there is a dangerous, dangerous thing. It is drawing the line at "I want my child to fit in to my society and culture easily." "I don't want to deal with large medical expenses." "I want this to be easy." These sentiments are very easy to understand. Everyone wants these things. But life happens to everyone, anyway. Your child dies at 13. They are in a terrible car accident at 15 and severely brain damaged. You learn they have autism and slowly realize they will never love you the way you want to be loved. They become an addict and throw their life away, homeless by 21 and overdosed by 29.

Expectations are normal. They are human. But if we predicate our love on them then we have already done those we love a grave disservice. And it is our responsibility to give our children the very best love we can.

To: The Last Psychiatrist. Re: Your blog about Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’

The third sentence in your post is “Has anyone actually read this book? Nine people total, all literary critics?”

Let’s assume, for a moment, that I stopped reading there. There are a lot of blogs like this - people rant about things which they may not be able to express fully to the people around them, and really all it is is that they have a lot of bad things to say about something they don’t really understand. Me, I have been tempted to rant about: coworkers whose pedagogy differs significantly from mine, people who leave grocery carts in the parking lot, restaurant managers who try to say that “organic” may mean “tastes bad.” It’s fine - ranting is okay I guess, as long as you don’t pretend you’re actually making a point. Your sarcastic remark was enough to clue me in that this was all you were going to say, so I really didn’t need to read on. So I didn’t.

I started reading your blog because ‘On the Road’ was a bit of a seminal read for me. It ranks with

“Cancer Ward” by Solzhenitsyn
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Marquez
“Madam Bovary” by Flaubert
“Sexing the Cherry” by Winterson
“Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me” by Farina
“The Fountainhead” by Rand, and
“The Crossing” by McCarthy

What differentiates these books from many others I have read is that the authors took a fundamentally different approach to writing and the art of fiction. They combined refined skill and really definitively unique perspectives to create a work not of fiction, not of writing, or social commentary, or self-aggrandizement, but of life. They revealed the ultimate truths of relationships, identity, passion, despair, loss. They were creations of art, not public health pamphlets.

I also read all of these books with absolutely no preconceived notions; I didn’t know about “Atlas Shrugged” or “The First Circle.” I’d never heard about how important the books were. They were recommended by friends whose literary tastes I couldn’t know I agreed with, and by those whose tastes I KNEW I disagreed with. They were stolen from school libraries and picked up from the 50¢ box outside a budget bookstore. I read them out of curiosity and boredom. I had no idea what I was in for.

You thought ‘On The Road’ was narcissistic and spiritually shallow. You call Sal “a passive guy who needs to be lead,” and say that “Dean isn't an antihero, or even amoral, or a free spirit-- he's simply a jerk.” You go on to say that “not only does he do nothing of any value to anyone, he does nothing with purpose.”

It’s so very interesting that you obviously “got” the book, and yet somehow managed to convince yourself there was nothing to get. You say that your problem is with people who misunderstood the book, and yet you go on to rant about how stupid the books characters are (yes, I did eventually read what you wrote. It was just as much of a waste of time as I thought it would be, but if I hadn’t I couldn’t fairly respond to you). You don’t discuss why people may have misunderstood the work, or why they review it the way they do. I see that kind of analysis in the comments, but not in your own writing.

I don’t know what people say about ‘On The Road,’ and I can’t really be bothered to look it up. Your argument that so many people have “got it so wrong” seems fruitless in that you don’t even seem to be concerned about what getting it right would be about. You say that “even when someone actually sits and reads the primary text and finds it is different, it doesn't replace their existing (wrong) information, it only supplements it.” You did the same thing - rather than experiencing the book for yourself, you looked at it through someone else’s eyes - you looked for “young, potent men, lost in a growing commercial society, two coiled springs ready to pop, looking for adventure-- America style.” And when you didn’t find it, instead of finding what it was REALLY about, you only looked at all of the things that were OPPOSITE your expectations. You speak of two “On The Road”s. Speaking as an artist, I am nonplussed at this obvious false dichotomy.

I wanted to write something in response to your post, because I believe the book is wonderful. I’m not really interested in spouting praise like “it’s wonderful that there are so many interpretations of the work” or “it changed my perspective on life.” What I want to say is that it would be great if people were more honest. I don’t really expect my wish to produce results, but then did you expect your rant to keep already closed-minded people from picking up this book? I do think it’s a shame that you practiced this kind of manipulation. I think it’s more a shame that you, yourself, are a victim of it.

Paprika

This is one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. I mean, this movie......... I don't want to say much, because it's late and I need to go to bed. But when it was over I said "That was the best dream.... I mean movie. Ever."

When we first looked at it, I wasn't really put out when we decided on something more mainstream - it looked like the sort of thing where I would be saying "But I thought..." and "Wasn't she the one who..." and "What is going on?" every few minutes. But a couple months later we remembered it and picked it up again. And, sure enough, two minutes into the film I was completely confused (I know I know, not really that much of a statement for me, but I'm telling you: !!!). The point when I realized that I was watching something great and not something merely confusing and interesting was when not one of three (mostly conscious) people in the room had any idea what was going on, but we were all breathlessly watching a scene with very little going on in the frame.

This movie turned my mind inside out and then told a cohesive story in the form of a Mobius Strip.