Last week, I wrote about a new study the reinforces what most teachers have experienced — that student motivation is the key to academic growth, not IQ (see Is This The Most Important Research Study Of 2012? Maybe).

TIME Magazine has just published an article on the same study, and it appears that they spoke directly to the researchers. Here’s an excerpt:

“Students with high IQ have high math achievement and students with low IQ have low math achievement,” Murayama says. “But IQ does not predict any growth in math achievement. It determines the starting point.”

So the children who improved in math over the years were disproportionately those who said they “agreed” or “strongly agreed” with statements such as, “When doing math, the harder I try, the better I perform,” or “I invest a lot of effort in math, because I am interested in the subject”– even if they had not started out as high-achieving students. In contrast, kids who said they were motivated purely by the desire to get good grades saw no greater improvement over the average. As for study strategies, those who said they tried to forge connections between mathematical ideas typically improved faster than kids who employed more cursory rote-learning techniques.

I’ve posted a lot about the value of encouraging students to be positive, and for us to do the same. You can find a collection of those posts, which include specific strategies I use, in My Best Posts On Why It’s Important To Be Positive In Class and in The Best Resources On “Gratitude”, and I write even more specifically about it in my upcoming book.

Today, Scientific American published an article reviewing the research that shows the benefits — to those talking and to those listening — of people sharing their positive experiences. Check it out at Share your Good News, and You will be Better Off.

The research in the article isn’t anything new to this blog’s readers — you can find all of it in my previous posts on the topic. But it is useful to have it all in one article. I did, though, especially like how it ended with an Albert Schweitzer quote:

“Happiness is the only thing that multiplies when you share it.”

Here are new additions to The Best Resources For Helping Teens Learn About The Importance Of Sleep:

For God’s Sake, Let the Kids Sleep! is from The Wall Street Journal.

Just A Little More Sleep Makes Kids Ready To Learn is from Annie Murphy Paul.

Here are new additions to The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual:

Language Learning Makes the Brain Grow, Swedish Study Suggests is from Science Daily.

The Cognitive Benefits of Being Bilingual is from The Dana Foundation.

Bilingual Brains – Smarter & Faster is by Judy Willis.

Reasoning Is Sharper in a Foreign Language is from Scientific American.

I often write about research studies from various field and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature:

Why you should give thanks this Thursday—and always is a review of recent research on gratitude, and appeared in Scientific American. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On “Gratitude.”

Cut Through the “Stickiness” of Prior Beliefs is a somewhat interesting article that contains an terrific chart/infographic reflecting some recent research. I’m adding it to The Best Online Resources For Helping Students Learn To Write Persuasive Essays.

Give and Take:Empirical Strategies for Compromise is from The Association For Psychological Science. I’m adding it to The Best Posts & Articles About Compromise.

Assessing creativity is from The Blue Skunk Blog. I’m adding it to The Best Sources Of Advice On Helping Students Strengthen & Develop Their Creativity.

Science Reveals the Power of a Handshake is from Science Daily. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On The Importance Of Building Positive Relationships With Students.

I’ve written a lot about self-control and the famous Marshmallow Experiment, and how I use it in the classroom.

An intriguing study was recently published that brings an additional perspective to the experiment. In this new research, researchers first divided the children into two groups to perform an art-related task prior to marshmallow experiment. Both groups were told that the researcher would return with better supplies, but in one group the researchers did not deliver on their promise. Afterwards, all the children took the marshmallow test and the ones that had been in the group where the researchers had followed-through waited far longer than the other children.

In other words, children who had a previous history of adults delivering on their promises performed better in the marshmallow test. Researchers suggest, then, that it might not be only an issue of self-control. Being in a stable — or unstable — environment could also influence the outcome.

I don’t necessarily think this new experiment affects how I use the Marshmallow Experiment in my classroom (though I’m open to hearing ways that it should). But it does seem to me to re-emphasize the importance of maintaining a relationship of trust in the classroom. It doesn’t negate the value of self-control. But, as an article in the Smithsonian says:

parents [and teachers] of kids who appear to lack self control might want to look more closely at why they would eat the marshmallow–is it because they can’t wait or because they can’t trust that the next marshmallow will appear?

Here are some articles on the new study:

The Marshmallow Study revisited

The marshmallow test, revisited is from The Washington Post.

The Marshmallow Test Gets More Complicated is from The Smithsonian.

Marshmallow-ology: Why Wait, When the Better Treat Might Never Arrive? is from TIME.

To Predict Success in Children, Look Beyond Willpower is from Scientific American.

I’m adding this post to The Best Posts About Helping Students Develop Their Capacity For Self-Control and to The Best Posts About Trust & Education.

A new study has been receiving some media attention for showing that praising someone’s athletic performance results in….their improving their performance. Interestingly, even though it’s clear in the study that the praise is very specific about what was being done, the researchers don’t seem to even highlight that point — they just say that praising someone is successful.

Of course, any research that reinforces what we teachers know is good practice is welcome, but, really, haven’t these folks ever heard of Carol Dweck?

It’s good to know about this new research, but I don’t think it’s even worth putting on The Best Resources For Learning How To Best Give Feedback To Students.

I’ve previously written about how and why I have students regularly share stories with each other about positive events that happen in their lives, and why I encourage other students to ask questions about them (see The Value Of Sharing Positive Events).

To build on the studies I’ve cited in those posts, yet another one has re-enforced the importance of that practice:

a team of psychologists in the USA has performed a series of studies that suggest sharing your good news multiplies its benefits for your happiness and longer-term life satisfaction….

….The researchers found that sharing your good news with another person is especially beneficial, more than writing about it, and more than just enjoying social contact….

What this new study doesn’t tell us is why, when it is enthusiastically received, sharing our good news provides us with an extra dose of positive emotion, more than merely recalling it or writing about it. The researchers made a number of suggestions – for example, they said talking about a positive experience could increase its “social reality”, making it especially accessible to memory; friends may point out positive implications of our news that had so far eluded us; and/or we perhaps take extra joy in making another person happy through our good news.

I’m adding this post to My Best Posts On Why It’s Important To Be Positive In Class.

I often write about research studies from various field and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature:

More education, socioeconomic benefits equals longer life is an article on a frightening report on longevity and schooling. Here’s an excerpt:

“Over the last couple of decades, almost all longevity boats have risen,” said Olshansky, but there have been some subgroups that have had a drop in life expectancy.”

“It’s as if Americans with the least education are living in a time warp,” he said. The least educated black men are living in 1954, black women in 1962, white women in 1964, and white men in 1972.

One surprising finding, according to Olshansky, is that white women with less than 12 years of education can expect to live five years less than their counterparts did in 1990 (a decline from age 78 to 73).

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources For Showing Students Why They Should Continue Their Academic Career.

I’ve written about how I how I try to build a culture of a “Community Of Learners” early each school year, and then how I have explicit conversations with the class about how best to handle things when, as we always do, get lots of transfers in during the second semester. It can be a difficult situation for everyone, and how its important for “veteran” students to be welcoming and supportive, and to model what being a “community of learners” is all about.

I’ve learned from experience the problems that can arise when we don’t do this kind of prep. Since I’ve been pro-active, though, the transitions have generally gone a whole lot smoother. Through a recent study, I learned that the results garnered by this kind of student modeling is called “goal contagion.”

A new study finds that being exposed to low light negatively affects our energy level and our memory. Being in a well-lit space has the opposite effect. Sometimes, I’ll lower the lights in my classroom so students can better see what’s being shown on the document camera (there’s still light from the windows). I’m sure having the lights off for that short period of time isn’t an issue. However, there are times when students will ask me to keep the lights off after we’re done, and sometimes I go along with it. Reading this study will make me think twice about doing so in the future.

Bilingualism ‘Can Increase Mental Agility’ is the headline of an article about a new study that reaffirms a lot of previous research. This is how it begins:

Bilingual children outperform children who speak only one language in problem-solving skills and creative thinking, according to research led at the University of Strathclyde.

I’m adding it to The Best Resources For Learning The Advantages To Being Bilingual.

I often write about strategies to help students develop more self-control and how important that is to their future (and my book shares specific lessons on how I do that).

Dr. Walter Mischel’s famous marshmallow experiment is integral to lots of those writings, and there have been plenty of studies that have supported his findings.

Another one just came out today. Relations between preschool attention span-persistence and age 25 educational outcomes found (this next quotation is from an article reporting on the study — the research itself is behind a paywall):

Young children who are able to pay attention and persist with a task have a 50 percent greater chance of completing college, according to a new study at Oregon State University.

Tracking a group of 430 preschool-age children, the study gives compelling evidence that social and behavioral skills, such as paying attention, following directions and completing a task may be even more crucial than academic abilities.

And the good news for parents and educators, the researchers said, is that attention and persistence skills are malleable and can be taught.

I did purchase access to the study, and that excerpt is a good summary (in fact, I’d encourage you to go to the report on the study and read it all — it’s good). I was struck by a few things in reviewing the study itself:

First, I appreciated a paragraph in it that tried to explain — in a common sense way — the cause of the negative long-term consequences to young children who don’t show self-control:

According to this view, children with poor self-regulation have difficulty navigating classroom settings, which can lead to teachers becoming frustrated and expecting poor behavior and school performance from these children, which can then lead to children having poor perceptions of themselves as students. Over time, this pattern can lead children to be increasingly disengaged from school and to experience academic failure as they get older. Although we did not directly measure teacher–child relationships or children’s disengagement from school, the results from the present study support this possibility and suggest that children’s ability to focus their attention span-persistence, attend to relevant information, and persist through difficulty, can be very helpful as they progress through school and into early adulthood, compared to children with poor attention span-persistence skills

I was surprised, though, that they don’t appear to acknowledge (maybe they do and I just missed it) that Professor James Heckman has found that adolescence is also a prime time when children can learn these skills — not just in early childhood.

Sharing these kinds of studies with our students is, I believe, an important responsibility that we have, as well as sharing Dr. Mischel’s comment:

I often write about research studies from various field and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature:

How to rewire your brain to be more optimistic is from The Boston Globe. It has some useful suggestions I’m going to incorporate in a lesson plan, as well as this interesting fact:

A 2005 University of Kentucky study found that optimistic folks spent a minute longer trying to solve an unsolvable anagram word puzzle than those who were more pessimistic. “They literally don’t give up as easily and this links to greater success in life,” said Fox. “Optimists tend to think they can change things; they have a real sense of control, even if it’s illusory.”

I’m adding it to My Best Posts On Why It’s Important To Be Positive In Class.

What did heroin addiction during the Vietnam war teach us about breaking bad habits? is an interesting report on the importance of disrupting the environment in order to make change. Here’s an excerpt:

To battle bad behaviors then, one answer, Neal and Wood say, is to disrupt the environment in some way. Even small change can help — like eating the ice cream with your non-dominant hand. What this does is alter the action sequence and disrupts the learned body sequence that’s driving the behavior, which allows your conscious mind to come back online and reassert control.

“It’s a brief sort of window of opportunity,” Wood says, “to think, ‘Is this really what I want to do?’ “

It’s just another reinforcer to the idea of making small changes in student environments. For example, changing a student’s seat if he/she is having self-control issues, even if they are not connected to the classmates around them.

I’m adding that info to The Best Posts About Helping Students Develop Their Capacity For Self-Control.

Reducing Academic Pressure May Help Children Succeed is a report on Science Daily that begins:

Children may perform better in school and feel more confident about themselves if they are told that failure is a normal part of learning, rather than being pressured to succeed at all costs, according to new research published by the American Psychological Association.

I’m adding it to The Best Posts, Articles & Videos About Learning From Mistakes & Failures.

On Summer Loss is a nice, short summary of research on summer learning loss. I’m adding it to The Best Resources On The Summer Slide.