Research Alert
Less Structure, More Self-Direction?
Students with good executive function have a jump on school success because they're able to self-regulate their behavior. They can make plans, finish their work on time, decide on midcourse corrections, and ask for help—all helpful skills for getting instruction to stick.
So how can we best develop these skills? A recent report suggests a relationship between self-directed executive function and the time children spend in less structured and more structured activities. The authors found that 6- and 7-year-olds who spent more time in less structured activities, such as trips to museums, libraries, and sporting events, displayed better executive function than those who spent more time in structured activities. Less structured activities appear to give children more opportunities to practice self-direction, whereas more structured environments seem to slow the development of self-directed control because adults are continually providing the children with external cues, reminding them what they need to do and when.
The authors note, however, that the children in the sample came from a suburban context—and that less structured time in suburban environments may be safer, quieter, and more resource-rich than such time in more impoverished environments. Nevertheless, the study raises an interesting question about how children's use of time has changed over the years, how we adults let them use that time, and how this can affect children's development.
The report, Less-Structured Time in Children's Daily Lives Predicts Self-Directed Executive Functioning, looked at 70 6- and 7-year-olds in a variety of structured and nonstructured environments. Written by Jane Barker, Andrei Semenov, Laura Michaelson, Lindsay Provan, Hannah Snyder, and Yuko Munakata, the article appears in the June 17, 2014, issue of Frontiers.
World Spin
Walking the World
The Out of Eden Walk. Follow journalist Paul Salopek as he retraces on foot humans' migration out of Africa. His 21,000-mile, 7-year journey started in Ethiopia and is continuing across the Middle East, into Central and Northern Asia, and down the Americas to Terra del Fuego. According to the website, "Moving at the slow beat of his footsteps, Paul is engaging with the major stories of our time—from climate change to technological innovation, from mass migration to cultural survival—by walking alongside the people who inhabit them every day." Share in the adventure.
ScreenGrabs
On TED-Ed, teachers can find curated educational videos and easily create customized lessons around them. For example, for
- English teachers: "<LINK URL="http://ed.ted.com/lessons/what-makes-a-hero-matthew-winkler">What Makes a Hero?</LINK>"
- History teachers: "<LINK URL="http://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-digital-reimagining-of-gettysburg-anne-knowles">A Digital Reimagining of Gettysburg</LINK>"
- Math teachers: "<LINK URL="http://ed.ted.com/lessons/the-infinite-life-of-pi-reynaldo-lopes">The Infinite Life of Pi</LINK>"
Numbers of Note
Who's for the Flip?
75 The percentage of U.S. secondary students who said a flipped classroom would be a good way for them to learn.
62 The percentage of U.S. secondary students who said they'd be more successful in a flipped classroom.
41 The percentage of administrators who say preservice teachers should learn how to set up a flipped classroom before being credentialed.
Source: Project Tomorrow/Flipped Learning Network. (2014). A second year review of flipped learning and 2014 trends in digital learning: Students' views on innovative classroom models. Irvine, CA: Author.
Relevant Reads
How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens
by Benedict Carey (Random House, 2014)
"Like so many others, I grew up believing that learning was all self-discipline: a hard, lonely climb up the sheer rock face of knowledge to where the smart people lived," writes Benedict Carey. Yet as science reporter at the New York Times, Carey kept coming across cognitive research showing that the brain is a quirky, eccentric learning machine that actually works in an entirely different way.
For example, the brain finds nonsense offensive. And it doesn't take orders well—as we realize when we forget precious facts needed for an exam while somehow remembering the lineup of the 1986 Boston Red Sox. We can strengthen memory and comprehension, Carey writes, if we understand the brain better.
App-propos
Educreations lets you create easy-to-follow tutorials, which you can couple with audio and video, to help students review material before an assessment or to provide additional assistance to struggling students.
And if you need to refer to state and national standards on the fly, try Mastery Connect. In addition to apps for the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards, Mastery Connect is rolling out custom apps for every U.S. state. (Apps for nine states are now available.)
PageTurner
Asking "Which teaching strategy works best?" is like walking into a gym full of workout equipment and asking a trainer, "So … which exercise is best?" —Bryan Goodwin
