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• Research, Practice and Policy

  July 26, 2010 5:20 PM Comments Off on Research, Practice and Policy

  There is an increasing call for high quality research to guide both policy and practice in education. Our team at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) refers to the building of strong relationships between research and practice in schools as “knowledge mobilization” (KM). In a previous column we discussed reasons why good evidence is not always applied to practice in education. In this column we talk about actions that could improve educators’ access to relevant knowledge gained from rigorous research.

  During their post-secondary studies, teachers and administrators have regular access to educational research. However, access to research is more difficult in schools, not least due to the pressures of time and the challenge of translating complicated research findings into a form applicable to everyday practice.  Still, the gap between research and practice is certainly not insurmountable. There are many ways in which people are already incorporating evidence into practice in education, and these provide a guide to future efforts.

  All education partners can take steps, many of them relatively easy, to garner greater value from research. Some universities and other research facilities provide researchers with the supports and tools necessary to promote research uptake, such as translating results into teacher-friendly language and formats, or helping to create links and networks between researchers and practitioners so that they can work together to better understand the practical implications for schools.

  On a similar note, schools can make better use of graduate students and teacher candidates, who have one foot grounded in the realm of academia and the other in schools. Graduate students, in particular, can work in ways that help practitioners access research surrounding a particular problem or issue at the school, as well as tailor research findings into a form appropriate for a teacher audience.

  Many school boards already partner with local faculties of education in order to promote the use of research evidence in both policy and practice. These partnerships can include access to library resources; access to expert researchers who are willing to work with schools in order to help them both gain access to research and translate results into practical and relevant applications; or working with the university to produce succinct summaries of research findings on various topics for educators. These connections can sometimes be quite casual or informal, yet still very helpful to people working in schools.

  However, even when research evidence is readily available, there are still accessibility issues to overcome. One serious challenge is research literacy. Educators today are constantly pulled in multiple directions and have little time or incentive to include research in their daily practice. Some school boards provide professional development opportunities that equip administrators and educators with the skills to understand and evaluate the quality of research findings, as well as the ability to identify linkages between research and its practical implications.

  School Boards can also support research by developing stronger professional learning communities, with a research focus, within and across districts. For example, groups that meet informally – sometimes with external experts – to review important research findings can provide an opportunity for educators to share and discuss research with others who understand the complexities of classroom life, while also working on school and district priority issues.

  The value of research is reinforced when policy documents include links to research evidence as well as practical applications for practice. This way practitioners can better understand the rationale behind policy, as well as what works and why when it comes to translating that policy into school life. Policy can be supported by good public reviews of research, including annotated bibliographies so that administrators, practitioners, and the public can track down relevant information on the topic without having to go through a time consuming search.

  When reliable evidence is more readily available, it is more likely to be a regular part of school decision-making. Administrators and teachers can incorporate research evidence into the discussion when trying to determine solutions for school issues or new directions to improve courses or programs. Research can also be used to help solve conflicts within schools by providing sound knowledge that goes beyond popular opinion and personal experience, both of which still tend to be powerful influences on educational decisions and practices. It is especially important to ensure that the empirical evidence is consistent with existing practice because new research has often been important in leading to the adoption of new and better practice in schools.

  Overall, it is clear that improving access to research is one key to teaching as a knowledge-based profession. Indeed, it is hard to imagine what a profession would be if it were not committed to making use of the best available evidence to guide practice. To accomplish this task, all partners in education need to work together to build strong bridges between research, policy, and practice.

• The Big Ideas Behind Whole System Reform

  5:11 PM Comments Off on The Big Ideas Behind Whole System Reform

  I had been writing in the 1990s about “tri-level reform” – how schools/communities, districts, and governments could align their efforts for more comprehensive reform – but I had not had a chance “to do it or help do it” until Tony Blair’s literacy/numeracy large-scale reform initiative in 1997, when a team of us at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) of the University of Toronto won the contract to evaluate England’s bold effort. The term “whole system reform” seems a better fit for this work, conveying the message that it is both comprehensive and cohesive. When Blair and his chief strategist, Michael Barber, set out to improve literacy and numeracy in Britain’s 20,000 primary schools, they focused their efforts on capacity building (professional development, leadership development, curriculum, and instructional resources) and reinforced the whole thing with interventionist accountability schemes.

  In our evaluation, we reported two main outcomes: good news and bad news, so to speak. Student achievement did rise, by some 13 percent over a five-year period. Although there is some debate over the actual numbers, we considered the strategy to be a success in getting substantial improvement over a fairly brief period of time. The bad news was that this success came with a price – it was too top-down, too target driven, and too punitive. It was not a sustainable strategy, and indeed England’s gains leveled off.

  Right on the heels of our final report in 2002 came the Ontario election. Dalton McGuinty was elected in October 2003 with a strong “improve education” platform. He appointed me his adviser, and we immediately implemented a strategy to transform the public system in Ontario, a system that had been stagnant in terms of student achievement for the previous five years. We took the best of the English strategy, jettisoned the weak parts (heavy targets, prescription from the top, and punitive accountability), and built our own brand of partnerships with the 4,000 elementary and 900 secondary schools in the province’s 72 school districts.

  Focusing on improving practice uncovers the best specific ideas. What you learn along the way can be tested in the light of broader research, but practice – not research – should be the driver.

  Ideas Behind the Reform

  Whole system reform means that every vital part of the system – school, community, district, and government – contributes individually and in concert to forward movement and success. The big ideas underlying the Ontario reform strategy are contained in Exhibit 1.

  I have come to the conclusion that practice drives theory.¹ That is, focusing on improving practice uncovers the best specific ideas. What you learn along the way can be tested in the light of broader research, but practice – not research – should be the driver. With this in mind, the elements and insights discussed below were uncovered through implementation of these “big ideas”.

  All children can learn

  A lot of people pay lip service to the notion that all children can learn, but the breakthrough comes when children actually achieve gains that hitherto many did not think possible. Take, for example, Armadale and Crosby Heights elementary schools in York Region District School Board that Lyn Sharratt and I wrote about in Realization.² By implementing the seven big ideas in Exhibit 1, these two schools went from low morale and terrible performance to impressive success. Crosby Heights increased its reading, writing, and math proficiency scores – as assessed by the provinces’ Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) – from 40 percent to 85 percent. Using the same strategies even more intensely, Armadale went from around 60 percent to 80 percent in a single year.

  The main point here is that significant results can be obtained when the specific strategies are applied. But here is the change process insight: It is the actual experience and corresponding results that convince teachers that it can be done, not moral exhortation or mounds of evidence from other situations. The best energizer is actually accomplishing something significant and then building on it – what I call realized moral purpose.

  A small number of core priorities

  The problem in education is not the lack of innovation and initiatives but rather the presence of too many fragmented, piecemeal, rapidly changing priorities. This lesson is backed up by many examples, both negative and positive.

  The objective of the entire Ontario strategy can be stated in a few words: broadly and deeply defined literacy and numeracy, and high school graduation, pursued through capacity building, with a focus on results. We could take a more specific example. Seven years ago the Ottawa Catholic District School Board announced “annual thrusts” which amounted to a dozen or so priorities that were altered every year. In 2003, the new Director, Jamie McCracken, reviewed the situation and announced that from that point on there would be three focuses – student success, staff development, and stewardship of resources; and that these goals would remain the same year after year. Today Ottawa Catholic is one of the top performing districts in the province.³ They accomplished this by following the set of strategies that I am describing here.

  Resolute leadership

  Third, we are beginning to appreciate that successful schools, districts, and larger systems have resolute leadership that stays with the focus, especially during rough periods, and that these leaders cause others around them to be resolute as well. It is so easy to go off message; but if you do, you lose whole-system-reform possibilities. This is hard, persistent work, but it is not overly complex. Resolute leadership is critical at first, when new ideas encounter serious difficulty, but it is also required to sustain and build on success. All the situations of success that we know of were a result of leaders staying on message and problem-solving as they go.

  Another insight that comes from this work: Successful leaders combine resolute leadership with impressive empathy. Again, good leaders persist, but they try to identify and understand what hesitations or objections people might have. This is impressive because their preference would be to get on with action, but they know that there might be legitimate issues to address. In other words, they pay attention to building relationships – even with those who are not so enthusiastic.

  Collective capacity

  Fourth, another big idea – which is not new but is very much underappreciated – is that collective capacity is the hidden resource we fail to understand and cultivate. Collective capacity building is at the heart of our strategies, and both our own evidence and that of the research literature confirm the power of this multifaceted strategy. Let’s take the main components.

  Whole district reform depends on resolute leadership at the district level, which in turn develops collaborative capacity within and across schools.

  The practice and research on collaborative school cultures and professional learning communities is very convincing. When teachers work together, led by an instructionally-focused principal, they are much more successful than when they work alone. We have already seen Armadale and Crosby Heights. Another convincing example comes from the longitudinal research on Chicago schools just reported by Tony Bryk and his colleagues.⁴ They compared 100 elementary schools that had substantial success over the years with a matched sample of 100 schools that had stagnated or declined. The difference between the two groups boiled down to five factors: i) an instructionally focused principal, who in turn developed ii) strong parent and community ties, iii) professional capacity of teachers, iv) a student-centered learning climate, and v) instructional alignment and corresponding resources.

  But there is more to collective capacity than intra-school collaboration. Whole district reform depends on resolute leadership at the district level, which in turn develops collaborative capacity within and across schools by helping schools learn in small clusters and networks. I have described four such examples in All Systems Go – Long Beach Unified District (California), Ottawa Catholic and York Region in Ontario, Tower Hamlets in London.⁵ Rick Dufour documented a further ten examples,⁶ and in Motion Leadership the Movie (in preparation) we have filmed nine examples in Canada, the UK and the U.S.

  Beyond the district level, we have invested in spreading practices across districts. One example is Ontario’s “Schools on the Move” initiative, in which 150 successful schools have been identified and resources made available for others to learn from their experiences. In all of this, two strong change forces are unleashed. First and most obvious, by casting a wide net we increase access to effective practices. The second force is even more powerful; as schools learn from each other, their sense of identity and allegiance expands, spurring an even greater commitment to improvement. Along the way we have discovered an interesting twist, which we call “collaborative competition”, in which networks of schools compete with each other to do better – all in a spirit of pursuing important moral goals.

  Strategies with precision

  Because the work is so grounded, and because the only route to success is to be more specific about the instructional practices that are most effective, the overall strategy is to continually identify, retain, and spread practices that are precise (i.e. effective teaching practices that can be specifically described and demonstrated.) (Ontario’s Literacy, Numeracy and Student Success Secretariat’s website is loaded with resources – print and video – that are proven to work.) ⁷ With precision, the speed of quality change can be greatly accelerated. Working on capacity building with specificity, within and across schools, is essential for whole system reform.

  This is also a good place to spell out the high school reform strategy. Although it cuts across all categories, it is an initiative with great specificity in a field (high school reform) that has not demonstrated precision but has rather gone for broader structural innovations. The strategy, in brief, involves creating a new role called Student Success Teacher (SST) that has been funded centrally to all schools and districts. The work of the SSTs, with the principal and other school leaders and teachers, is to identify at-risk students prior to their arrival at the school and to provide individual support for every student.

  In the first two years of high school, the support focuses on individual students’ personal needs, the compulsory Grade 10 literacy test, and achieving the 16 credits that are expected by the end of Grade 10. In Grades 11 and 12, the emphasis is on program innovation to make the educational experiences more relevant and community-/business-based. One of the most successful innovations has been the High School Majors (HSM) program, which began in 2006/07 and is based on forming packages of courses and internships in partnership with businesses and community groups in designated specialties (e.g., transportation, finance, health, tourism). Today more than 20,000 students are enrolled in over 740 HSM programs across all districts.

  Intelligent accountability

  The failure to get accountability right plagues all reform efforts. Andy Hargreaves unlocked the door to intelligent accountability when he observed that “accountability is the remainder that is left when . . . responsibility has been subtracted”.⁸ Intelligent accountability involves a set of policies and practices that 1) actually increases individual, and especially collective, capacity so that shared responsibility carries most of the weight of effective accountability; 2) makes internal and external accountability almost seamless; and 3) leaves external accountability to do its remaining, more-manageable task of necessary intervention.

  Our Ontario Focused Intervention Partnership (OFIP) is a good case in point. The strategy consists of identifying poor performing and coasting schools and providing them with targeted support, all with a non-punitive, transparent, non-stigmatizing attitude. The 1,000 schools in OFIP (one-quarter of all schools) have improved at a faster rate than other schools. The key here is to focus transparently on what needs to be improved and to do so in a way that motivates and helps schools to improve. Most of the needs of accountability are addressed through the transparency and open measurement of achievement. Overt means of intervention are confined to more extreme cases.

  All means all

  Finally, all really does mean all. You can’t solve the problem of whole-system reform through piecemeal efforts that try to get parts of the system improving in order to show the way. There must be constant reminders that all schools, and all districts, are part of the everyday focus of improvement.

  These seven ideas represent the fundamentals of the Ontario strategy.⁹

  The Results

  To get to the point quickly, since 2003 literacy and numeracy achievement results in Ontario have increased some 10-13 percent in the English school boards, and some 18 percent in francophone boards (EQAO provincial results). It is interesting to speculate that the francophone boards may have done better because there is more cross-district joint work (i.e. more collective capacity building). The strategy includes a focus on raising the bar and closing the gap for all significant subgroups, and a commitment to higher order problem solving and critical thinking skills. The work is not done, but the commitment to going deeper with even more precision is evident.

  At the secondary level, the double focus on “personal care and connection” and on more relevant educational programs through the Student Success strategy is also paying off. High school graduation rates have steadily climbed since 2003 at about 2 percent a year and show no sign of abating, having gone from 68 percent to 79 percent.

  Recently we have added Early Learning strategies, including full day integrated services for four- and five-year olds (7:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and continuity in the summer). The program is being phased in with the first group of 600 schools (35,000 students) already selected to begin in September 2010.

  In short, the goal is whole system reform, whereby learning is cumulative (ages 4-18), and comprehensive, covering all 4,900 schools and districts in the province. There is a very strong emphasis on instruction and personalized learning and on developing the individual and collective capacity among teachers and administrators at all levels to get the job done.

  Implications

  Interest in strategies for whole system reform is growing and widespread, across Canada and throughout the world. I have been in most provinces in the past year discussing the topic at local and provincial levels. Ben Levin, Ken Leithwood, and I have an ongoing involvement in Alberta (which has led Canada in international achievement results over the past years). We are working with the College of Alberta School Superintendents (CASS) in which some 30 districts (almost half of the total) are working on “Moving and Improving” the whole district, and with the Department of Education as it prepares its next phase of reform.

  Internationally, interest is growing rapidly. Even the U.S., which historically has not been very interested in international student achievement results, appears to have become alert to the need to compete globally, as it contemplates the reality of having fallen from number one spot in the world in 1980 to its current position of number 24 or so. The international comparisons generated by studies like Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) have led to an examination of how top performing countries achieve their results. The McKinsey group, led by Michael Barber and his team, will soon report on its analysis of how the “top 20 and most promising countries” get strong results. This study is distinctive because it looks beneath the results to examine the policies, practices, and strategies that are characteristic of the highest-performing jurisdictions.¹⁰

  We can expect, then, an increased interest and focus on “whole system reform”. It is especially encouraging that the interest has moved beyond achievement results to policy and strategy questions. Learning how to bring about whole system reform – including “raising the bar and closing the gap” – is the practical, albeit big, question before us right now. Debating policy and strategy together represents a significant advance. The race now is to figure out how to get major improvements across the system by mobilizing educators, parents, students, and communities to engage in the collective efforts necessary for success. The next few years could represent a quantum jump in whole system reform initiatives as we all build on the most recent successes.

   

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  EN BREF – Par réforme globale du système, on entend que chaque élément vital – école, collectivité, conseil ou commission scolaire, gouvernement – contribue individuellement et ensemble au progrès et au succès, en utilisant les pratiques, plutôt que la recherche, comme locomotive de la réforme. Ainsi, plusieurs « grandes idées » fondées sur une mise en application réussie ont contribué à la stratégie de réforme ontarienne :

  • Tous les enfants sont capables d’apprendre.
  • Il ne manque pas d’innovation et d’initiatives, mais il y a trop de priorités fragmentées qui changent rapidement.
  • Le succès de la réforme dépend d’un leadership résolu.
  • Les capacités collectives constituent la ressource cachée que nous n’arrivons pas à comprendre ni à cultiver.
  • Le succès dépend de l’aptitude à constamment dégager, maintenir et étendre des pratiques pédagogiques efficaces et précises.
  • Il faut combler le besoin de responsabilisation par la transparence et en mesurant ouvertement les réalisations.
  • Tout signifie vraiment tout. On ne peut résoudre le problème de la réforme globale au moyen d’efforts hétéroclites.

  ---

  1 M. Fullan, The Change Leader (San Francisco: JosseyBass, in press).

  2 L. Sharratt and M. Fullan, Realization: The Change Imperative for Deepening District Wide Reform (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2009).

  3 M. Fullan, All Systems Go (Thousand Oaks, CA.: Corwin Press; and Ontario Principals Council, 2010).

  4 A. Bryk, P. Bender-Sebring, E. Allensworth, S. Luppescu, and J. Esaton, Organizing for School Improvement (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).

  5 Fullan, All Systems Go

  6 R. Dufour, R. Dufour, R. Eaker, and G. Karhanek, Raising the Bar: Closing the Gap (Bloomington, IN.: Solution Tree Press, 2010).

  7 See also Sharratt and Fullan, 2009.

  8 A. Hargreaves and D. Shirley, The Fourth Way (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2009).

  9 For a full discussion of the strategy see B. Levin, How to Change 5,000 Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press, 2008) and Fullan, All Systems Go.

  10 The McKinsey report is not yet untitled.

• Self-Regulation: Calm, Alert, and Learning

  2:52 PM Comments Off on Self-Regulation: Calm, Alert, and Learning

  Two recent Government of Ontario publications, With our Best Future in Mind^[1] and Every Child Every Opportunity,^[2] have brought self-regulation to the fore of that province’s early learning initiative. This thematic core reflects a growing awareness among developmental scientists that the better a child can self-regulate, the better she can rise to the challenge of mastering ever more complex skills and concepts.^[3] But what exactly is self-regulation, and why is it so important for learning?

  In the simplest terms, self-regulation can be defined as the ability to stay calmly focused and alert, which often involves – but cannot be reduced to – self-control. The idea that self-regulation and self-control are one and the same is surprisingly ancient, dating back to Plato. All of the great treatises on pedagogy, from Erasmus and Comenius, through Locke and Rousseau, right up to Watson and Skinner, can be said to have been inspired by Plato’s vision of emotions and appetites as “wild horses” that need to be restrained by Reason. Given the power of these elemental forces, says this vision, Reason has to be strengthened so as to keep hold of the reins.^[4]

  Five-domain Model

  Now, to be sure, what developmental scientists refer to today as effortful control (e.g., being able to inhibit one’s impulses or ignore distractions) is a critical element of self-regulation. But to get a sense of the full array of processes involved in self-regulation,

  one need only turn to a standard resource tool like Baumeister & Vohs’ Handbook of Self-Regulation, which includes at least five distinct definitions presented in the various chapters: ^[5]

  1. “The ability to attain, maintain and change one’s level of arousal appropriately for a task or situation”
  2. “The ability to control one’s emotions”
  3. “The ability to formulate a goal, monitor goal-progress, adjust one’s behaviors”
  4. “The ability to manage social interactions, to co-regulate”
  5. “To be aware of one’s academic strengths and weaknesses, and have a repertoire of strategies to tackle day-to-day challenges of academic tasks”

  Not surprisingly, each of these definitions reflects the interests of the different sub-disciplines represented in the Handbook (viz., temperament, emotion development, cognitive development, social development, and educational theory). What makes the topic of self-regulation such a rich area of study, however, is the awareness that each of these elements influences all of the others. That is, self-regulation should be viewed through the model of dynamic systems theory, according to which the effect of any level is dependent on the rest of the system, making all factors potentially interdependent and mutually constraining.^[6]

  The better a child can stay calmly focused and alert, the better he integrates the diverse information coming in from his different senses, assimilates it, and sequences his thoughts and actions.

  Indeed, we can introduce still more complexity if we view self-regulation in terms of Uri Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model, for it is clear that we can talk about the self-regulation of a family, a classroom, a school, a community, even a society. But for the purposes of this article, just looking at the level of the child presents more than enough of a challenge!

  The five levels operating in the above definitions are:

  1. Biological (e.g., how well the child regulates her arousal states)
  2. Emotional (e.g., how well the child monitors and modifies her emotional responses)
  3. Cognitive (e.g., how well the child can sustain and switch her attention; inhibit impulses; deal with frustration, delay, distractions; sequence her thoughts)
  4. Social (e.g., the child’s mastery of rules of appropriate behaviour; how well the child can co-regulate and thereby develop prosocial attributes)
  5. Reflective thinking skills

  The key to understanding the complex nature of self-regulation is to recognize the bottom-up and top-down interactions of all these levels, which together facilitate a child’s ability to take in and process information. The better a child can stay calmly focused and alert, the better he integrates the diverse information coming in from his different senses, assimilates it, and sequences his thoughts and actions. What the five-domain model of self-regulation tells us is that this ability to stay self-regulated when confronted with novelty involves all of these levels: arousal states, emotions, behaviour, and – as the child grows older – thinking skills.

  Self-regulation vs. Compliance

  To illustrate this point, I might contrast two Grade 1 classes that I recently visited. In the first, the children were all sitting quietly at their desks. The teacher was reading them a story and pausing every few minutes to ask a question about what she had just read. A couple of hands would shoot up and the selected child would briefly answer while all the rest remained quiet. At the end of the story there was a brief commotion as the children got out their workbooks to practice cursive writing, but quiet soon reigned once again.

  The other class was almost the exact opposite. Children were scattered around the room working in small groups, some on the floor, others at tables. One group was playing with a projector, making stencils of trapeze artists for shadows. Another was making a circus mobile out of pipe cleaners. A third group was using sticks and seashells to make a circus. (Perhaps I should mention that the class had visited a circus the week before). A fourth group was standing at a flip-chart, practicing reading skills. It certainly wasn’t quiet in this room, and there was lots of movement.

  Now, one of these classes demonstrated more self-regulation than the other: Can you guess which? Yes, it was the class with the hubbub, and if we can understand the reason, it will take us a long way towards answering our opening questions about the meaning and importance of self-regulation.

  As I looked carefully at the first class, I noticed that several of the children weren’t paying the least bit of attention, while a number were listening off and on. Only a few of the children were raptly engaged throughout: the same children, as it happens, who put up their hands every time the teacher asked a question. A couple of times the teacher tried to engage a different child to answer, but he tuned her out, seeming not to hear her.

  What was so striking in the second class was that all of the children were fully engrossed in what they were doing, and they stayed this way the entire time I was there. Not a single child was daydreaming or withdrawn. The teacher and Early Childhood Educator (ECE) visited each group for five or ten minutes, responding to questions and offering up suggestions. All of the children immediately engaged with the teacher or ECE when she came to talk with them, yet the activities themselves remained self-directed.

  Another striking contrast between the two classes was in the way anger was handled. There was one sudden outburst in each class while I was present. In the first class, the teacher was very firm in making clear that such behaviour would not be tolerated and that the child would be sent into the hallway if he couldn’t control himself. As a result, the child almost instantly became quiet. In the second class, shouting broke out in one of the groups, which brought the ECE scurrying over. But instead of raising her own voice, she asked the children what the problem was and was gradually able to get each of them to explain what had happened. The children then returned to their activity and remained quietly engrossed for the rest of the class.

  What the contrast between these two classes is telling us is that self-regulation can be every bit as much a matter of up-regulating as of down-regulating one’s emotions and desires.

  For someone who thinks that self-regulation is really just a matter of a child’s getting in control of his negative emotions, there is very little difference between these two examples: that is, between self-regulation and compliance. Certainly this was the case historically, as generation after generation used punishment and reward to keep students quiet. The problem is that a child who is only quiet because of fear of the consequences, or because she is hoping to obtain some reward, isn’t developing the ability to cope with greater and greater challenges. In fact, we know from abundant data that the overuse of punitive measures to elicit compliance is a predictor of externalizing problems, while the overuse of rewards can have a dampening effect on motivation.^[7]

  Asking Why

  Ultimately, what the contrast between these two classes is telling us is that self-regulation can be every bit as much a matter of up-regulating as of down-regulating one’s emotions and desires. It goes without saying that in many cases a child has trouble paying attention because he doesn’t find the material interesting, but the five-domain model directs us to consider why this should be the case.

  Often, when children don’t exert the effort required to follow a lesson, it isn’t because they are bored, or because they have some sort of congenital “motivation deficit”, but because – for one reason or another – they struggle to take in and process the information. Some children may be too excited or restless, but rather than jump to the conclusion that they have an innate “attention deficit”, we need to understand the underlying factors that have made it difficult for them to make sense of the information being presented.

  Whatever the circumstances, we always want to ask ourselves why a child is having a problem staying calmly focused and alert, applying the different levels listed above to try to understand the source of the problem. For example, many children have trouble paying attention because they are anxious, and in many cases the cause of their anxiety might be a hypersensitivity to various kinds of stimuli. The more anxious the child, the more pronounced becomes the hypersensitivity, setting off a vicious circle effect.

  Conversely, a hyposensitive child may not notice a stimulus unless it is fairly strong. Closely related to this are problems in sensory processing. For example, a child might be a little slower in processing auditory information. In fact, I wondered whether this might have been the reason that several of the children in the first class weren’t attending to the story – not because they weren’t interested in the material, but because they were having trouble keeping up with the pace at which the teacher was reading – a pace she unconsciously tailored to the capacities of the small group of children who were keenly attentive.

  Similarly, I wondered whether all of the children in the second class were so absorbed in their activities not only because the activities were actively self-selected, but also because of an unconsciously operating self-selecting bias: that is, were children drawn to a particular activity – playing with the light projector, for example – because of a particular sensory strength or need? If so, it raises another question: how might a teacher capitalize on this proclivity to strengthen the child’s weaker senses?

  For many children, the problem isn’t that they can’t stay regulated per se, but that in order to do so, they adopt a strategy that blocks out social interaction. These children find co-regulation difficult, whether with their teacher or their peers, and they may find it difficult to control their behaviour in social situations because they are over-loaded by the presence of other children. But here, too, we need to ascertain the reasons for these problems, which might trace back to problems in sensory regulation; or problems in attachment; problems in limbic system reactivity; or even problems in understanding the significance of nonverbal cues. Faced with the challenge of keeping in control of her classroom, a teacher may not have the luxury of exploring the underlying causes of the child’s disruptive behaviour. But there will be such causes, and if we resort to medications to control the child’s behaviour, we will have done nothing to address these underlying causes.

  Indeed, the very notion of control is problematic. The medieval view of controlling negative emotions was framed almost entirely in terms of acquiring the willpower and discipline needed to keep one’s unruly appetites and emotions in check. And for this purpose, fear was seen as a prime motivator. But just as a child can be overwhelmed by his sensations, he can also be overwhelmed by his emotions unless he develops the capacity to understand and express them. Far from trying to get him to repress his anger, we need to allow him to feel and talk about this emotion. In some ways the very idea that a child needs to learn how to inhibit his appetites and impulses is worrying; for the real goal of focusing on self-regulation is to help the child learn how to manage his internal states, however difficult we ourselves might find his outbursts.

  Conclusion

  In short, self-regulation serves as a lens for understanding a child, his individual strengths and the areas that need work, and thus as a lens for understanding what we hope to accomplish in our teaching practices. Take our first example of the teacher reading to her class: we know that this is a wonderful activity, but why? What exactly are we hoping to accomplish?

  This is where thinking in terms of self-regulation is particularly useful, for it moves us away from seeing the activity as an end in itself – where, for example, the point of the exercise is simply to get children to learn how to sit quietly and listen – to thinking about the underlying capacities that we are hoping to develop. Reading to a class and asking them questions about the story is such a powerful way to help children develop their comprehension and sequencing skills, learn how to think multi-causally and in shades of grey, and open up to new realms of experience and emotional connectedness. But then, such an exercise is only effective if the child is engaged.

  Which brings us to the last of our contrasts between the two classes. One small group in the second class involved four children listening to their teaching assistant reading a story about Madeline at the circus. Far from sitting quietly, the children were all shouting with glee at various points as they related something in the story to their own experience at the circus. And no one else in the room was in the least bit bothered, for they too were fully absorbed in their own learning adventures.

  EN BREF – Les scientifiques spécialisés en développement prennent de plus en plus conscience du fait que plus un enfant peut faire preuve d’autorégulation, mieux il peut relever le défi qui consiste à maîtriser des compétences et concepts. L’autorégulation peut être définie, simplement, comme la capacité de maintenir un intérêt calme et alerte, ce qui comprend souvent – mais pas exclusivement – l’autocontrôle. Plus l’enfant peut conserver un intérêt calme et alerte, mieux il intègre les divers renseignements provenant de ses différents sens; il les assimile et établit un ordre séquentiel pour ses réflexions et actions. Pour quelqu’un qui croit que l’autorégulation se résume à la maîtrise par l’enfant de ses émotions négatives, il y a peu de différence entre l’autorégulation et la conformité. Mais contrairement à la conformité axée sur la punition, l’autorégulation développe la capacité de faire face à des difficultés de plus en plus grandes, car elle concerne les états d’éveil, les émotions, le comportement et – lorsque l’enfant vieillit – les compétences de réflexion.

  ---

  [1] C. Pascal, “With Our Best Future in Mind: Implementing Early Learning in Ontario,” Report to the Premier (Government of Ontario, 2009). Retrieved November 12, 2009.

  [2] Government of Ontario (2010), Every Child Every Opportunity.

  [3] Stuart Shanker and Roger Downer, “Enhancing the Potential in Children (EPIC),” in Critical Issues in Policy in the Early Years, ed. H. Denise (London, Sage: in press).

  [4] For a much fuller treatment of this topic, see Stuart Shanker, “Emotion Regulation Through the Ages,” in Moving Ourselves, eds. T. Racine and A. Foolen (in press).

  [5] R. F. Baumeister and K. D. Vohs, Handbook of Self-regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications (New York: Guilford Press, 2004).

  [6] A. Fogel, B. J. King and S. Shanker, Human Development in the 21st Century: Visionary Policy Ideas from Systems Scientists (Council on Human Development, 2008).

  [7] See M. R. Lepper, S. Sethi, D. Dialdin and M. Drake, “Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation: A Developmental Perspective,” Developmental Psychopathology: Perspectives on Adjustment, Risk, and Disorder, 1997: 23-50; E. L. Deci, R. Koestner and R. M. Ryan, “A Meta-analytic Review of Experiments Examining the Effects of Extrinsic Rewards on Intrinsic Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin 125, no. 6 (1999): 627-68, 692-700; M. R. Lepper, G. Sagotsky, J. L. Dafoe and D. Greene, “Consequences of Superfluous Social Constraints: Effects on Young Children’s Social Inferences and Subsequent Intrinsic Interest,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 42, no. 1 (1982): 51-65; A. Kruglanski, “Issues in Cognitive Social Psychology,” The Hidden Cost of Reward: New Perspectives on the Psychology of Human Motivation (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1978).

• Reducing Class Size: What do we Know?

  February 24, 2010 12:00 AM Comments Off on Reducing Class Size: What do we Know?

  CEA has released two reports on reducing class size: a formative evaluation of Ontario’s primary class size initiative; and a more ‘popular’ report  for a broad national audience that includes what has been learned from the Ontario evaluation, a review of the literature and other jurisdictions.

  CEA commissioned a research team from the Ontario Institute on Studies in Education (OISE), headed by Dr. Nina Bascia (OISE), to undertake a study that included data analysis, site visits, interviews with educators in eight school districts, and an on-line survey completed by over 3,000 parents. The 140-page evaluation report, Ontario’s Primary Class Size Reduction Initiative: Report on Early Implementation is available in English and French on CEA’s website. Although the study focused on Ontario, it has relevance and value across the country.

  Reducing Class Size: What do we Know? provides insights into how to maximize the positive impact of class size reduction policies directed at elementary schools. Written by Dr. Nina Bascia, the report concludes that reducing class size can make a positive difference to teaching and learning particularly when combined with other policies that support effective classroom practice. But, primary class size reduction is no a “magic bullet” and how it is implemented may be as important as the policy itself.?

• Ontario’s Primary Class Size Reduction Initiative: Report on Early Implementation

  12:00 AM Comments Off on Ontario’s Primary Class Size Reduction Initiative: Report on Early Implementation

  CEA commissioned a research team from the Ontario Institute on Studies in Education (OISE), headed by Dr. Nina Bascia (OISE), to undertake a study that included data analysis, site visits, interviews with educators in eight school districts, and an on-line survey completed by over 3,000 parents. The 140-page evaluation report, Ontario’s Primary Class Size Reduction Initiative: Report on Early Implementation is available in English and French on CEA’s website. Although the study focused on Ontario, it has relevance and value across the country.

• Reducing Class Size: What do we know?

  12:00 AM Comments Off on Reducing Class Size: What do we know?

  Reducing Class Size: What do we Know? provides insights into how to maximize the positive impact of class size reduction policies directed at elementary schools. Written by Dr. Nina Bascia, the report concludes that reducing class size can make a positive difference to teaching and learning particularly when combined with other policies that support effective classroom practice. But, primary class size reduction is no a “magic bullet” and how it is implemented may be as important as the policy itself.

• Learning About Leadership from School Turnaround Efforts in Ontario

  July 28, 2009 12:00 AM Comments Off on Learning About Leadership from School Turnaround Efforts in Ontario

  This report details the results of research undertaken by Dr. Kenneth Leithwood (Associate Dean of Research at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), which examined the context and contribution of principals in effecting school change in schools where student performance was significantly below provincial standards. This report will be of value to those who seek to turn around other low-performing schools.

• Turnaround Schools and the Leadership they Require

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  This report details the results of research undertaken by Dr. Kenneth Leithwood (Associate Dean of Research at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), which examined the context and contribution of principals in effecting school change in schools where student performance was significantly below provincial standards. This report will be of value to those who seek to turn around other low-performing schools.

• Research Use and Its Impact in Secondary Schools: Executive Summary

  July 27, 2009 12:00 AM Comments Off on Research Use and Its Impact in Secondary Schools: Executive Summary

  This is the second annual year-end review of education research that has been featured on the CEA website and in the Bulletin, our monthly newsletter. It summarizes, by theme, notable reports, briefs and studies, identifying trends and highlighting areas of consensus, tension, and discrepancy. Also included are recommendations to related articles from Education Canada, CEA’s flagship magazine. We trust you will find it useful for your work, and encourage you to share it with colleagues.

• Étude Ontario-Québec Secteur de l’éducation

  June 2, 2009 12:00 AM Comments Off on Étude Ontario-Québec Secteur de l’éducation

  ÉTUDE ONTARIO/QUÉBEC  is an interprovincial initiative of the Ministries of Education of Ontario and Quebec that examined the use of information technology in the classroom by comparing students’ level of engagement, comprehension and knowledge transfer using two different technologies. In Ontario, students used a digital audiovideo simulation training module on CD-Rom. In Quebec, students collaborated with peers and the teacher through the use of a Knowledge Forum. This comprehensive report details the process and results of this unique interprovincial collaboration. (Available in French only)

• Class Size Reduction: What the literature Suggests About What Works

  November 24, 2008 12:00 AM Comments Off on Class Size Reduction: What the literature Suggests About What Works

  The literature review, Class Size Reduction: What the Literature Suggests About what Works (PDF) is now available with a stand alone Executive Summary (PDF). This review includes analyses of over eighty reports and articles from a variety of Canadian and international sources, along with five in-depth descriptions of large-scale class size reduction initiatives. It was conducted as part of a CEA research study on The Effects of the Ontario Primary Class Size Reduction Policy. The final report, with findings and implications, will be released early in 2009.

• Class Size Reduction: What the literature Suggests About What Works – Executive Summary

  12:00 AM Comments Off on Class Size Reduction: What the literature Suggests About What Works – Executive Summary

  The literature review, Class Size Reduction: What the Literature Suggests About what Works (PDF) is now available with a stand alone Executive Summary (PDF). This review includes analyses of over eighty reports and articles from a variety of Canadian and international sources, along with five in-depth descriptions of large-scale class size reduction initiatives. It was conducted as part of a CEA research study on The Effects of the Ontario Primary Class Size Reduction Policy. The final report, with findings and implications, will be released early in 2009.

• Public Attitudes Toward Education in Canada: Summary

  November 23, 2007 12:00 AM Comments Off on Public Attitudes Toward Education in Canada: Summary

  With this report, CEA provides a context for rethinking schools to drive dialogue and critical thinking about the challenges we face in educating all students to take their place in a world of dynamic social, technological and economic change. Key findings from CEA’s Public Attitudes Toward Education Survey are contained in this report. This is CEA’s fourth such survey and is based on the opinions of over 2,400 Canadians collected between January and May 2007. Commentaries from educational leaders based on these survey results help provide a context to issues such as student assessment, confidence in school systems, and educational change.

• Public Education in Canada: Facts, Trends, and Attitudes – 2007

  12:00 AM Comments Off on Public Education in Canada: Facts, Trends, and Attitudes – 2007

  With this report, CEA provides a context for rethinking schools to drive dialogue and critical thinking about the challenges we face in educating all students to take their place in a world of dynamic social, technological and economic change. Key findings from CEA’s Public Attitudes Toward Education Survey are contained in this report. This is CEA’s fourth such survey and is based on the opinions of over 2,400 Canadians collected between January and May 2007. Commentaries from educational leaders based on these survey results help provide a context to issues such as student assessment, confidence in school systems, and educational change.

• The Promise and Problem of Literacy for Canada: An Agenda for Action

  October 13, 2004 12:00 AM Comments Off on The Promise and Problem of Literacy for Canada: An Agenda for Action

  Literacy is a serious public policy issue in Canada. The country lacks a national strategy to address the social and economic consequences of low literacy levels. This is particularly important for vulnerable groups. The Canadian Education Association offers its strategy for literacy in this policy brief.

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