Teachers of Color

January 24, 2018

You can research the racial makeup of educators in any number of places, such as this study, this study analysis, or this 2015 NY Times article that asks, “Where are the Teachers of Color?” The numbers change depending on the years and the part of the country, but the fact is, American educators are disproportionately white, even in areas that are majority minority.

Surely, it’s clear I care because I’m an educator of color myself, but if it were just a fact, and it had no impact on outcomes, it wouldn’t really matter that much. There are plenty of career tracks that correlate strongly with particular demographics, and sometimes for perfectly innocent reasons. But, as many of those pieces show, there are real issues in a monochromatic group of educators – not the least of which is that, just by nature, most people struggle with cross-racial empathy and understanding – especially considering that so many minority students lack support.

My question isn’t really about whether or not it would help to have more teachers of color. If we go along with the premise that it would be beneficial (disagree if you’d like), my question becomes, how do we make the job and the career more attractive to different demographics?

“It’s the money!” you say.

Yeah, okay. But aside from that – and teacher salaries, while not high (it depends on the state and county, of course), are not as low as many other common careers – what makes someone choose a job? And what is making minority college graduates choose other careers?

It could simply be that there are only so many graduates. People of color graduate at lower rates that white students, and black men in particular have the lowest rates of any racial/gender group.

With that said, in that same article you can see that graduation rates are increasing, bit by bit, over time, for all groups and even for the groups who tend to struggle. I am hesitant to say that the best remedy might simply be to wait for college graduation rates to pull even, but that far-off hope may be the likeliest option.

But what do you think?

The Other Skills

January 18, 2018

If you read through this article from The Economist, you will see that it’s becoming readily apparent that, especially as technology develops more and more rapidly, simply finishing college and expecting your life to unfurl in front of you is not something that holds true any longer. Whether it’s degree-granting programs or those mentioned in said article, people are shelling out the bucks to become more attractive in their careers, on top of the potential joy realized by actively learning.

Most of these schools teach coding, but that will change. Something else might yet become more valuable in 2023, or 2030. And some version of these schools, or MOOCs, will teach that.

There are, of course, online courses that are essentially college lectures, offering great literature and language learning for a discount.

But I wonder if there is a way to find a different route. Maybe there’s a different set of skills to be taught, a set that is unlikely to vanish.

The term “soft” skills is rather pejorative, and I suspect used because the skills are typically assocated with women. But, dismissive though we might be about them, they are necessary. Look here: 

Regardless of location, it is important for young professionals and seasoned professionals to understand that the dynamics of the workplace require the use of myriad soft skills. While no particular area is more important than the next, it is important that the skills be used in tandem.

The problem, among many, is that these skills are hard to quantify, and thus hard to measure. Yet ultimately, aside from a handful of positions, what we tend to interview for is indeed these sort of skills.

Maybe there is a way to actually quantify such skills, to innovate therein, and to forge ahead with this very particular sort of lifelong learning. Or maybe I’m just dreaming.

Massive OECD Study, Minor Focus on Education

January 11, 2018

I believe strongly that behavioral insights can have an impact on educational outcomes. It is, of course, much of what I write about. But, understandably so, most of the impact that behavioral insights have had has been through other fields.

I found an extensive study yesterday, published this past year on results from across almost all OECD countries. It is nearly 500 pages long, and the evidence is rock-solid, to say the least. But unfortunately for my purposes, there are only two small studies cited on education.

These studies (all of which you can read here, education begins on page 95) are useful. The first concerns an afterschool program in South Africa, where participants are reminded in personal text messages that include specific information. As you might expect, significantly more attended once reminded – and the reminders were personalized, referencing how often they had attended in previous weeks – and their educational outcomes improved once they attended. It was also particularly successful at bringing non-attendees back into the program.

The study admits its own limitations, as it was a short period of time. But I see such studies and I want to take it further. Attrition is a major issue, of course, and no one can learn if they don’t attend in the first place. But what of that next step? What about the students, particularly adults, who make just enough effort to show up but aren’t engaged? How can behavioral insights reach and connect with them?

That’s where I want to go.

The second study centers on adult literacy in the UK, and includes the accepted finding that persistence in education is closely tied to the beliefs that what they are learning is important, that they have the ability to succeed, that practice and effort matter (because why do it otherwise?), and that they feel like they are welcomed and belong. This study sent messages to students, seeking to increase these beliefs, and indeed it significantly (36%) lowered the dropout rate.

Again we have the same issue, though, in that these studies are, in my view, first drafts. They are great, and proof of concept. But if and when I get a chance to be involved in my own work, these will serve as building blocks for the path I want educational research to travel.

Stay tuned.

On Teacher Personalities and Compassion

January 4, 2018

Hello and happy 2018.

If you remember what I referred to last week, I spoke about authenticity and how important it can be for educators. But as much as I think I made some good points, pushing readers to strive for authenticity doesn’t mean a whole lot if we don’t actually define the term, at least to some extent.

So what does it actually mean to be authnetic, then? I don’t actually know for sure, but at the moment I believe it’s when you live the same way both inside and outside of the classroom. This could mean that your classroom persona is inauthentic and should be more aligned with your external life, or it could mean the opposite. I do believe that as an educator, you can’t truly hide your personality behind too much artifice. Maybe you can pretend for most of a day or a week or a semester, but whatever the real or authentic version of yourself is, it will be revealed. And this is a good thing. As educators, like most humans, we are often pushed towards exuding confidence whether or not we actually feel this way, and it seems likely to me (though I have no proof of this) that a disconnect between a classroom personality and an external one could be driven by a struggle with confidence, either in the sense of having too little and trying to project otherwise, or having too much and being thus unable to adequately reflect on challenges. I’ll come back to this.

Having posited this, I wonder if there are personality traits that correlate with better educators. Surely we’ve all experienced effective educators  and thus have images in our minds about what that looks like, but this is entirely subjective. I did some cursory research and came up with a couple articles, one here, and one here. And those links cover almost all of the traits you might have guessed, including patience, graciousness, and optimism.

All of this seems to be amorphous and purely superficial to me, though. What I think is needed is a comparison between the way educators are seen by their colleagues, friends and partners, and the way they are seen by students, ideally students old enough to have a solid grasp of adult personalities.

Imagine a survey that does not seek to condemn. One that lists personality traits and asks participants whether or not TeacherX possesses and/or displays them. Once complete, TeacherX’s results can be compared between their students and the others in their lives.

I doubt any educator would receive an absolutely equally matched score. I am sure some of the most persnickety teachers I ever had would come off as warm and generous to the people closest to them. Returning to my point above, perhaps the educators who were most similar inside the classroom and out might be those who didn’t chase an expression of self-confidence but those who practice self-compassion, which you can read about in this recent article here. The article states:

““The first and most important thing to do is to notice that voice in your head – that running commentary we all have as we go about our lives,” Mr. Barker said. “Often that voice is way too critical. You beat yourself up for every perceived mistake. To be more self-compassionate, you need to notice that voice and correct it.””

Every educator has a few dozen chances to make a mistake in each class, and even the best of us will indeed make many mistakes. If we’re compassionate with ourselves, we can improve, and not spend so much effort trying not to fail. Again, I have yet to study this, but I think this would lead to considerably more authentic teaching, teaching that admits to flaws but does not punish people for having them, teaching that encourages honesty and sharing when needed and not superficial bluster.

I think a list centered on compassion and related traits would be far more instructive than the vague list of beneficial attributes you can find all across the internet. Once a framework has been built, perhaps it would be easier to determine how authentic most teachers are, and potentially compare this to their success as educators. How to measure said success is a question for another day, but I think talking about authenticity will only get us so far without some sort of metrics to support the concept.

What do you think?

On Authenticity

December 29, 2017

So last weekend, I was a bit under the weather (I had tripped and hurt myself), and I helped emcee my family’s holiday party. When my role was complete, a few folks who weren’t close relatives complimented me on how well I had done, and I was a bit surprised, considering it had felt like an intellectual challenge to me.

I thought about that, and throughout this week I’ve been thinking about why this surprised me. Most of my best public speaking has come after days, weeks, or months of preparation, and I’ve long thought it was the time that led to such things. But in retrospect, perhaps it was truly the authenticity that led to connecting with the audience.

I ask you today about your best experiences as a member of an interactive audience. As a student, or as a paying customer, or as a partygoer. The way we conceive of such events, it’s something ineffable like “charisma” or “showmanship” that we think leads to success. But I think it might be authenticity, emotional honesty clearly conveyed. This doesn’t mean every possible nook and cranny must be revealed, but it also means a deliberate distance can backfire.

This may not be true for everyone or every situation. For some, perhaps a distance is necessary. But I would argue that for those men and women, said distance is indeed authentic. Whatever level of openness works for you is what you should seek to attain.

If you think back to educators you’ve had – or been – and remembered your best experiences, I suspect a vibrant authenticity was present in their every choice. And I also believe that, if ever you were let down, it was likely because they tried to play a role they didn’t actually fit.

Sometimes you have to do things outside of your comfort zone in education. The response isn’t to simply give up, of course. But as educators, we have to think consciously about how our tasks can match up with the authentic people we otherwise are, and align ourselves with every part of our work. We’ve all had teachers who were clearly going through the motions, and I’d argue that those teachers were considerably more damaging to our learning than those who genuinely struggled with the materials they were handed. To return to my original example, I genuinely struggled at the party last weekend, but the honesty and openness shone through nonetheless and carried me through on its own.

There is more to being a great educator than authenticity. You can be wonderfully true and not know how to manage a classroom. You can be extremely real and yet be bowled over by our many cognitive biases and heuristics. But without authenticity, we do our students, our colleagues, and ourselves a massive disservice. So on this New Year, I wish only that we can find a way to imbue our output with the spirit of the authentic people we are at the moment we wake up every day.

Peace and love.

Evidence on Sector-Focused Job Training

December 22, 2017

(No, that’s not a pun on the name of this blog, but it is a little funny.)

MDRC is a nonprofit that does research on the implementation of behavioral design in various disciplines. My colleagues and I were lucky enough to attend a seminar of theirs over the summer, and I consider their work to be among the best and most accessible in the behavioral science world. Today I’m writing about a podcast of theirs, in which they describe positive results from tailored and sector-focused job training. You can, and should, listen to the podcast (which is only seven minutes long) at this link.

To summarize the findings, MDRC has been analyzing a program called WorkAdvance, which is “a sector-based, skill-building model, launched in 2011 as a national Social Innovation Fund project sponsored by the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City and the Center for Economic Opportunity. WorkAdvance providers work closely with employers in New York, Tulsa, and northeastern Ohio to help job seekers prepare for and enter quality jobs as well as succeed and advance in the labor market.”

It should come as little surprise to you that actually focusing the training on what the specific populations have needed has improved their results significantly. WorkAdvance prepares its clients for work in burgeoning industries, including IT, medical billing, and long-haul trucking (I’m, uh, not so sure about the long-term prospects of that one, but they know more than I do). The key, though, is that the training is designed alongside the employers, to provide the clients with the very specific skills they are lacking from most applicants.

The results were clear. To paraphrase the podcast, participants were much likelier to attain credentials and employment in their desired field, and two years out were earning 14% more than they otherwise would have. That may not seem like much, but is a considerable difference, especially for clients with less experience or expertise. To wit, the program even increased earnings for long-term unemployed, who are always a particular challenge in training and development.

Let me take a step back here and broaden the potential impact of this study. It seems obvious to posit that workforce development and other sorts of adult education need to be closely tied to employers or other goals that students might have, but a great deal of behavioral science is about common sense best practices that aren’t being done, after all. Job training programs are a dime a dozen, mostly because it’s easier to create a one-size-fits-all model. But without close working relationships with employers or schools (depending on what type of goals that students have), training runs the risk of becoming obsolete or irrelevant very quickly.

You can absolutely learn medical billing, or coding, or English just about anywhere and for not that much money (or even for free). But an employer who knows for sure that you’ve learned exactly the skills they require is much more keen to hire someone, all else being equal.

In my own field, plenty of my colleagues have taught “Business English” to interested parties. And there is absolutely a market for it. But most of the courses advertised are generic and outdated. I’m not sure how many textbooks I’ve seen that really want to make sure students know about fax machines, but it’s more than it should be. Imagine if more employers with international employees were involved in developing their own curricula with trainers and instructors, so that they knew exactly what their new workers had learned? Imagine how many fewer communication issues there might be.

Anyway, I encourage you to check out the podcast and look for other such evidence. The fact is, one-size-fits-all is really only good for baseball caps.

Social-Psychological Interventions

December 14, 2017

Yesterday, by chance, I found a printed-out copy of a report on “Social-Psychological Interventions in Education.” You can find the abstract here, though you’ll have to pay for the entire study, so I’m glad I was able to access it.

The title says “Social-Psychological” but once I got to reading it, it was clear they were speaking about what I (and others) might prefer to call behavioral design. The gist of the report is as follows:

Recent randomized experiments have found that seemingly “small” social-psychological interventions in education—that is, brief exercises that target students’ thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in and about school—can lead to large gains in student achievement and sharply reduce achievement gaps even months and years later. These interventions do not teach students academic content but instead target students’ psychology, such as their beliefs that they have the potential to improve their intelligence or that they belong and are valued in school. When social-psychological interventions have lasting effects, it can seem surprising and even “magical,” leading people either to think of them as quick fixes to complicated problems or to consider them unworthy of serious consideration. The present article discourages both responses.

Yeah, that’s behavioral science in a nutshell.

A few years ago, when I first became interested in out-of-the-box solutions to entrenched problems, I gave a presentation on what I was referring to at the time as “noncognitive skills.” A colleague from my graduate program saw it and was compelled to suggest we collaborate the following year, which we did, and by then it had developed into “conation,” which we took to the TESOL conference in Seattle this past March. But as 2017 rolled along, it became clear that, for me, behavior science was most likely going to be my interest and my focus, as I wrote about last week.

I say all this to say that this report validates my curiosity and my optimism for the potential impact of behavioral design. If you read the report, you will see that each group of students was given just a short exercise – fewer than thirty minutes – at the outset of a semester, and that this these students improved greatly when compared to the control. The results were so dramatic – and long-lasting – that, as the excerpt above suggests, people tend to dismiss it as “magic” or, at the least, unrealistic. But it’s real.

A few things are clear from the research:

  1. It can’t be top-down. Telling students why an intervention or an assignment is important does not convince skeptical boys and girls to buy in.
  2. Contextual experise – “an understanding of the psychological experiences and backgrounds of students in the local context” – is vital. Which is to say, even the best educator can’t walk into a culture with which they have had no previous contact and expect their intervention to succeed.

From here, I’d like to see how this might work quite specifically on adult learners, as these experiments were performed mostly on middle- and high-school students. I’d also like to see if the same dramatic improvement on students of color would remain the same regardless of age. And ultimately, I want to see if this can work even if students and instructors don’t speak the same language – can these exercises, short as they are, be translated for the first day of class? Would this have the same impact on student outcomes? And, as I’ll always return to, would this lead to greater long-term success, be it in terms of employment, income, or other relevant metrics?

There is a lot to look for, but this report and others like it are encouraging. Someday I will do my own such research and hopefully share it with all of you, and with others in my field.