jgonce's Public Library

Sixteen years ago, Charlotte Danielson, an Oxford-trained economist, developed a description of good teaching that became the foundation for attempts by federal and state officials and school districts to quantify teacher performance.
“If all you do is judge teachers by test results,”
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- “it doesn’t tell you what you should do differently.”
- ETS was also redesigning its teacher assessment system for licensing. I learned that when you have clear standards of practice, then everybody involved in that enterprise — the teachers themselves, the people assessing them, everybody — learns a lot.
- You can’t begin to help teaching get better if you’ve not even defined it. If you think it’s some sort of magic, you’re never going to help it improve. That whole exercise convinced me that offering a clear statement of ‘What is good teaching?’ would be of service to the profession.
- levels of performance
- tells you what you should be looking for in the classroom or in a teacher’s work plan. And if you’re the teacher, it tells you what a trained observer’s going to be looking for.
- Teaching is rocket science. Teaching is really hard work.
- What’s really a good thing to do, although not everybody has the luxury of this, is to introduce the framework, and the language of teaching that is embedded in it, before you use it for evaluation. Just introduce it. Just introduce it as, ‘This is the language of teaching, and let’s get used to talking this language.’
- The problem that teachers and teachers’ unions have had all along with teachers’ evaluations is that they basically don’t trust the administrators to know what they’re doing. And there’s been just enough of this in the past so that it’s not an unrealistic fear. They’ll say, ‘Oh, well, my principal just doesn’t like me. He’ll take it out on me by giving me a bad evaluation.’
- Being able to ensure the accuracy of the evaluators and to have backup systems (her system includes videotaping of teachers’ performance, as well as online training and assessment of observers).
- When states design evaluation systems, like New York is doing at the moment, do you think standardized test scores should factor into evaluations?
  
  A.
  
  My expertise is on defining good teaching. It’s not on how to use test scores. I do think that it’s reasonable for teachers to demonstrate that their kids have learned. I think that does make sense. Beyond that, though, I’m not at all convinced that it can be done fairly for teachers based on what we know now, particularly in a high-stakes environment.

Mar

8

2012

How Companies Learn Your Secrets - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...shopping-habits.html

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brain psych

Feb

28

2012

Educational Leadership:The Resourceful School:It's How You Use a Strategy

www.ascd.org/...'s-How-You-Use-a-Strategy.aspx

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instructionalcoaching

our levels of implementation that might help explain some of the variation in research findings
I have found that how a teacher uses a strategy is key to how effective the strategy is.
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- similarities and differences using a comparison matrix.
- a teacher has little fluency with the strategy and is prone to errors using it. At this level, the strategy probably has little effect on student learning
- mistake of expecting students to compare too many elements
- Another common error is neglecting to ensure that students identify how the compared elements are both similar and different on each characteristic.
- In the studies I've conducted with classroom teachers, this seems to be the typical level of strategy use in the classroom—teachers use a strategy without significant error and with relative ease. However, this level of use does not produce the large gains in student learning
- Starting at this level, we find the catalysts for large gains in student learning. Here, the teacher not only makes no mistakes in using the strategy and uses it with relative ease, but also monitors students' reactions to see whether the strategy has had the desired effect.
- At this level, the teacher continually interacts with students to tease out finer distinctions regarding the elements being compared.
- At this level, the teacher is so familiar with the strategy that he or she has adapted it to meet specific student needs.
- For example, if some students concluded that dictatorships are always detrimental to the citizens of a country and other students disagreed, the teacher would use these differences of opinion as a springboard for asking students to collect information from the Internet and other sources to support their points of view.
- a strategy is just a tool that teachers can use at different levels of effectiveness.
  
  At a minimum, teachers should strive to use strategies at the applying level, continually monitoring students to see whether the strategy is having its intended effect on student learning. Ideally, over time, teachers should move toward the innovating level, adapting strategies to meet student needs and maximize learning.

Feb

9

2012

Human Brain Project - Neuroinformatics

www.humanbrainproject.eu/neuroinformatics.html

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e Human Brain Project will “federate” this data – making it accessible to the project and scientists throughout the world and allowing

Feb

2

2012

'I Wanted To Live': New Depression Drugs Offer Hope For Toughest Cases : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

www.npr.org/...-offer-hope-for-toughest-cases

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psych brain depression therapy

depression as a bit like a leaky faucet in the brain. There are different ways to stop the leak, he says. "You can go straight to the faucet and you can fix it," he says. "Or you can go to the water plant and shut down the water plant. The end result will be the same."
The current antidepressants act in a way that is like shutting down the water plant, Zarate says. It takes a long time for the water to stop flowing through the miles of pipes that eventually lead to the leaky faucet.

He thinks the reason is that these drugs act primarily on the brain chemicals serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. Ketamine acts on a chemical called glutamate, which is much closer to the problem, Zarate says.

Nov

16

2011

The brain acts fast to reappraise angry faces | e! Science News

esciencenews.com/...ts.fast.reappraise.angry.faces

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brain emotion psych

Nov

10

2011

Drug helps monkeys lose weight -- humans next? - Health - Diet and nutrition - msnbc.com

www.msnbc.msn.com/...health-diet_and_nutrition

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motivation psych

Nov

8

2011

Possible study of anthrax vaccine's effectiveness in children stirs debate - The Washington Post

www.washingtonpost.com/...gIQAFWLdDM_story.html

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ArticleOfTheWeek

The Obama administration is wrestling with the thorny question of whether scientists should inject healthy children with the anthrax vaccine to see whether the shots would safely protect them against a bioterrorism attack.

Oct

25

2011

Penn team finds success with talk therapy for schizophrenics - Philly.com

The famous Aaron Beck!

articles.philly.com/...y-schizophrenia-mental-illness

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abnormal psych schizophrenia

In a study published this month in the Archives of General Psychiatry
reported that cognitive therapy aimed at changing 31 patients' dysfunctional beliefs and reaching concrete goals helped even very low-functioning people. Beck, the senior author on the study, supervised the therapy, which was conducted weekly over 18 months.

IQ Isn't Set In Stone, Suggests Study That Finds Big Jumps, Dips In Teens : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

www.npr.org/...-finds-big-jumps-dips-in-teens

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esearchers at University College London report documenting significant fluctuations in the IQs of a group of British teenagers.
The researchers tested 33 healthy adolescents between the ages of 12 and 16 years. They repeated the tests four years later and found that some teens improved their scores by as much as 20 points on the standardized IQ scale.
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- not random
- "We were able to see that the degree to which their IQ had changed was proportional to the degree to which different parts of their brain had changed," explains Price. For instance, an increase in verbal IQ score correlated with a structural change in the left motor cortex of the brain that is activated when we speak.
- lots of prior research has found that educational environment is key. Some researchers have found that rigorous academic curricula lead to improved IQ scores.
- "It should caution all of us against assuming that one low IQ score, at one time, is capturing all that an individual is capable of,"

Will Smartphones And iPads Mush My Toddler's Brain? : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Now this crosses the line...

www.npr.org/...d-ipads-mush-my-toddlers-brain

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psych development

Real 'Sybil' Admits Multiple Personalities Were Fake : NPR

!!!

www.npr.org/...ltiple-personalities-were-fake

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abnormal dissociative psych

Oct

10

2011

The Brain-Based Benefits of Writing for Math and Science Learning | Edutopia

www.edutopia.org/...ion-brain-research-judy-willis

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Executive Function
These include judgment, critical analysis, induction, deduction, delay of immediate gratification for long-term goals, recognition of relationships (symbolism, conceptualization), prioritizing, risk assessment, organization, creative problem solving. There are also emotional aspects to executive function, including the ability to identify one's emotional state, exert emotional self-control, and reflect about emotional response choices.
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- The practice of writing can enhance the brain's intake, processing, retaining, and retrieving of information. Through writing, students can increase their comfort with and success in understanding complex material, unfamiliar concepts, and subject-specific vocabulary. When writing is embedded throughout the curriculum, it promotes the brain's attentive focus to classwork and homework, boosts long-term memory, illuminates patterns, gives the brain time for reflection, and when well-guided, is a source of conceptual development and stimulus of the brain's highest cognition.
- When stress is high, the intake filter selectively admits information related to perceived threat, virtually ignoring other sensory input. The high stress state also directs the amygdala switching station to conduct information to the lower, reactive brain, where long-term retrievable memories cannot be formed.
- Fear of making mistakes in front of classmates is one of the greatest sources of anxiety for students. This fear impacts learning.
- Use Code Names to Reduce Anxiety
- With these tools, we can introduce a variety of writing activities that reduce the stress that blocks passage through the amygdala to the reflective prefrontal cortex. For instance, students can write descriptive responses to math or science questions, as well as predictions, hypotheses, and questions
- formal research-style formatted reports of student experimentation with data analysis.
- actively participate in learning
- writing can build confidence and reveal gaps in foundational knowledge
- As students consider and define their opinions, conclusions, and predictions in writing, their brains construct valuable concept networks.
- We know that students are engaged when material is personally relevant, and connects to real world issues and problems. And when this happens, there is increased information flow through the attention and emotional filters to the higher processing prefrontal cortex.
- Writing can increase both personal relevance and confidence
- Even when the facts of the math or science are not debatable, individual responses to the information are appropriate writing topics.
- Reminding students of previous successes promotes confidence, as does providing them the opportunity to recognize their own progress over time. One way to help them recognize their progress is through their written assessments:
- These can be maintained in computer files or portfolios and reviewed as evidence of successful, incremental progress with student opportunities for metacognition about strategies used for success.
- The construction of conceptual memory networks builds the most valuable neural architecture a brain owner can have. These networks serve as "nets” to catch and hold new input with similar patterns, and "work” when activated for creative transfer -- use of the information learned in one context for application in a new context.
- What's Going on in There? Writing "Sprouts" Conceptual Brain Networks
- When the brain seeks to predict the best response, answer, solution to a problem or make a choice, the executive function control networks in the prefrontal cortex send out messages
- These messages activate stored prior knowledge memories that relate to the new situation. The more extensive the brain's collection of memory networks, the more successful it will be in activating the best prior knowledge to predict the best responses, answers, and choices for any new situation
- The many varieties of writing can serve to guide the brain to recognize, construct, and extend its patterns. Writing can illuminate sequential procedures that students need to learn in mathematics and science, from factoring an equation to the photosynthetic chemical process.
- The neural activity or mental manipulation that transforms formulas, procedures, graphs, and statistical analyses into words represents the brain's recognition of patterns. When this is also done in writing, the facts, procedures, and observations are processed symbolically in the writing process -- giving the memory another storage modality and truly illuminating the patterns for the brain to follow as it adds new learning to existing concept networks.

Three Brain-based Teaching Strategies to Build Executive Function in Students | Edutopia

www.edutopia.org/...eaching-strategies-judy-willis

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instructionalcoaching psych memory learning

Information learned by rote memorization will not enter the sturdy long-term neural networks in the pre-frontal cortex (PFC) unless students have the opportunity to actively recognize relationships to their prior knowledge and/or apply new learning to new situations.
provide students with opportunities to apply learning
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- and then provide formative assessments and feedback throughout a unit, facts move from rote memory to become part of the memory bank.
- small neural networks
- link them into larger neural circuits of related information
- (Piaget's schema)
- can be activated when students are prompted to use new learning to solve problems or create new products.
- Without these opportunities for strengthening, any memories learned by rote are simply pruned away from disuse after the test.
- Students need to be explicitly taught and given opportunities to practice using executive functions such as how to learn, study, organize, prioritize, review, and actively participate in class.
- and symbolize new learning into new formats
- summarize
- When motivated to solve problems that are personally meaningful, students apply effort, collaborate successfully, ask questions, revise hypotheses, redo work, and seek the foundational knowledge you need them to learn
- When students acquire desired facts, skills, or procedures to achieve authentic, valued goals, the information has a template (neural circuit) to which it can link.
- Judgment
- eparate low relevance details from the main ideas of a text or topic of study
- Prioritizing networks will be activated as you guide students to organize, plan ahead, keep records of their most successful strategies, and use this information
- Until students fully develop these pre-frontal cortex (PFC) executive functions, they are limited in their capacity to set and stick to realistic and manageable goals. As they develop these executive functions, they need guidance to recognize their incremental progress they make as they apply effort towards their larger goals
- Plan activities where students can relate what they know from past experiences to their current learning and tie it to the larger concept. When you provide learning experiences by which students can apply new learning to multiple applications, you promote the neural construction of larger conceptual networks that make the new information a valued tool and part of long-term memory.
- your students will come to recognize their own changing attitudes and achievements
- Describe your mental manipulation, challenges, and the executive functions you used to create something new as you found the authentic active learning opportunities that activated the students' interest, perseverance, and higher levels of thinking.
- As the caretaker of your students' brains during the years of rapid prefrontal cortex development, you should consider how you can activate and guide the development of your students' greatest resources -- strong executive functions
- hese tools will empower them to achieve their highest potentials and greatest satisfaction as they inherit the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century.
- Planning instruction and teaching units that activate executive function processing takes teacher and student time -- and it's time that's already severely taxed. However, that time is regained because the learning in these units is successfully retained in long-term memory and re-teaching time is vastly reduced.
- Beyond the increased engagement they experience through active learning, they will find it takes less time to review for tests beyond the unit test, such as a final exam.
- If you didn't have to re-teach "last year's material" you'd be getting all those weeks of time at the beginning of each unit. Thus the a school that promotes instruction for the activation that is needed for development of strong tracts of executive function and long-term memory will build better brains for its students. These brains will retain learning in sustained, transferable, and retrievable long-term memory. Instead of the re-teaching previously required before new instruction can start, there will be weeks of "found time."
- It is critical that we prepare today's students with the executive function skill sets they will need for success in the globalized, information explosive, and ever-expanding technologically progressive 21st century. Just as certain is the continued accountability by educators to teach the over-packed curriculum in the existing standards.
- What I'm advocating regarding more activation of students' executive function networks may not provide you with immediate evidence of the changes you are promoting in their brains -- although it is highly likely you'll find behavior "management" problems decrease as engagement increases.
- persevere on the long-term goal of setting in motion the birth of dendrites and synapses to give your students the best chance of achieving their highest potentials of professional, social, and emotional joy, and success in the years to come.

Oct

5

2011

Eating Meals With Men May Mean Eating Less : The Salt : NPR

www.npr.org/...-with-men-may-mean-eating-less

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psych social obesity

It turns out that the gender of your dining companions makes a big difference in what you eat and how much you eat.
Both men and women appear to choose larger portions when they eat with women, and both men and women choose smaller portions when they eat in the company of men

Sep

27

2011

How Psychology Solved The Mystery Of A Lost Shipwreck : NPR

www.npr.org/...olved-a-wwii-shipwreck-mystery

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When a memory is made, the content you're trying to remember is embedded in a schema, or theory of what is going on. Over time, you remember less of the original content and more of the general theory. That is, you remember the basic gist of the story and supplement it or change it so that it fits a more comfortable mold. The same pattern of change is seen as a story passes from one person to the next — another experiment that Bartlett did.

Sep

26

2011

Teenage Brains - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

The first full series of scans of the developing adolescent brain—a National Institutes of Health (NIH) project that studied over a hundred young people as they grew up during the 1990s—showed that our brains undergo a massive reorganization between our 12th and 25th years. The brain doesn't actually grow very much during this period. It has already reached 90 percent of its full size by the time a person is six, and a thickening skull accounts for most head growth afterward. But as we move through adolescence, the brain undergoes extensive remodeling, resembling a network and wiring upgrade.

ngm.nationalgeographic.com/...dobbs-text

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brain psychology development

Sep

16

2011

Alex the African Grey: My parrot and I | The Economist

www.economist.com/12459697

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learning psych intelligence animal

jgonce's Public Library

Gapminder World

Hans Rosling: Religions and babies | Video on TED.com

An Evaluation Architect Says Teaching Is Hard, but Assessing It Shouldn't Be – SchoolBook

How Companies Learn Your Secrets - NYTimes.com

Educational Leadership:The Resourceful School:It's How You Use a Strategy

Human Brain Project - Neuroinformatics

'I Wanted To Live': New Depression Drugs Offer Hope For Toughest Cases : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

The brain acts fast to reappraise angry faces | e! Science News

Drug helps monkeys lose weight -- humans next? - Health - Diet and nutrition - msnbc.com

Possible study of anthrax vaccine's effectiveness in children stirs debate - The Washington Post

Penn team finds success with talk therapy for schizophrenics - Philly.com

IQ Isn't Set In Stone, Suggests Study That Finds Big Jumps, Dips In Teens : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Will Smartphones And iPads Mush My Toddler's Brain? : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Real 'Sybil' Admits Multiple Personalities Were Fake : NPR

The Brain-Based Benefits of Writing for Math and Science Learning | Edutopia

Three Brain-based Teaching Strategies to Build Executive Function in Students | Edutopia

Eating Meals With Men May Mean Eating Less : The Salt : NPR

How Psychology Solved The Mystery Of A Lost Shipwreck : NPR

Teenage Brains - Pictures, More From National Geographic Magazine

Alex the African Grey: My parrot and I | The Economist

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