Early Math and Reading Ability Linked to Job and Income in Adulthood

APS; May 8, 2013—Math and reading ability at age 7 may be linked with socioeconomic status several decades later, according to new research published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. The childhood abilities predict socioeconomic status in adulthood over and above associations with intelligence, education, and socioeconomic status in childhood.
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Teachers' Gestures Boost Math Learning

MSU, March 29, 2013—Students perform better when their instructors use hand gestures—a simple teaching tool that could yield benefits in higher-level math such as algebra.

This is "some of the strongest evidence yet that gesturing may have a unique effect on learning" say the researchers who performed this classroom comparison study.

As a side note, they point out that U.S. students lag behind some countries in math performance, and interestingly, teachers in the United States tend to use gestures less than teachers in other countries.

While previous research has shown the benefits of gestures in a one-on-one tutoring-style environment, the new study is the first to test the role of gestures in equivalence learning in a regular classroom.
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Outdoor Education Helps Minority Students Close Gap in Environmental Literacy

March 22, 2013—Environmental education programs that took middle school students outdoors to learn helped minority students close a gap in environmental literacy (EL), according to research from North Carolina State University.

The study, published March 22 in PLOS ONE, showed that time outdoors seemed to impact African-American and Hispanic students more than Caucasian students, improving minority students' ecological knowledge and cognitive skills, two measures of environmental literacy. The statewide study also measured environmental attitudes and pro-environmental behavior such as recycling and conserving water.

According to the PLOS One abstract, the study findings suggest that "ethnicity-related disparities in EL levels may be mitigated by time spent in nature, especially among black and Hispanic students."
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Engaging Educators

Daniel H. Pink's bestseller Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us addresses how to break out of what Pink calls "Motivation 2.0" thinking—a mentality that depends on carrots and sticks to the point that, in many cases, they have been inappropriately applied. "Motivation 2.0 still serves some purposes well," Pink writes. "Sometimes it works; many times it doesn't. And understanding its defects will help determine which parts to keep and which to discard as we fashion an upgrade."

This is exactly what Pink sets out to accomplish as he distills the research for us in an effort to close the gap between what science knows and what people actually do. After exposing some of the flaws in the way we currently motivate others at home, in business and in education, he offers specifics for fixing them. In this excerpt (reprinted with permission from the author and the Penguin Group), Pink specifically addresses the topic of "merit pay" for teachers.
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Got Behavior Problems in the Classroom?
Call Grandma

Of all the issues teachers face in the classroom, behavioral problems seem to top the list of pet peeves. In fact, student misbehavior has raised such a roadblock to academic achievement in some nations that if there were an intervention program to solve the problem, its developers would surely have school administrators beating down their door. And if the program could address a couple of other pressing issues at the same time, most everyone would have to agree that it would be a keeper.

Interestingly, a program studied by researchers from the University of Tennessee could be said to have reached this level of success. The 2003 study looked at how older adults might affect the school behavior patterns of young children, as well as students’ attitudes toward the elderly. The children in this case were 4th-graders.
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How Important Is Homework?

In May of 2005, two education researchers from Pennsylvania State University—David P. Baker and Gerald K. LeTendre—coauthored an investigative report titled National Differences, Global Similarities: World Culture and the Future of Schooling. Analyzing data collected from schools across more than 41 nations, the researchers came to a conclusion that might surprise many parents and educators: More homework does not necessarily translate to higher academic achievement.

But wait. Isn’t Japan’s technological success due to the slavish study habits of its school children? Isn’t there a strong proven connection between increased homework and good grades? And aren’t we obligated to ensure children’s school success for the greater national good?  After all, how can academically lagging nations expect to maintain economic strength in a world that is increasingly dependent on technology?
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The Homework Debate Continues

Is homework necessary for young children, or is it burdensome? This debate is not new, it returns like a comet, at least once every generation. News sources from PBS to The Washington Post have discussed the issue, searching for the balance: how to educate children at all socio-economic levels without overloading some or boring others. Some innovative schools have even begun to work at eliminating the kind of monotonous busy-work that kills a child's incentive to learn and keeps them from their families for extended periods in the evenings.

But is all homework bad for children? How can parents best help their children learn? This interesting question was addressed presciently by educator John Holt in his 1967 book, How Children Learn. How well have his observations stood the test of time?
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