tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68807276147571746202024-03-13T07:46:29.398-04:00AWDollAWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.comBlogger20125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-83679218850996516002012-02-24T04:22:00.003-05:002012-02-25T16:47:11.651-05:00Make Way for the Blonde Toddler in Work Boots<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="mso-tab-count:1"> </span></div> <div style="text-align: left; font-family: times new roman;">One of the most treasured family snapshots that survives my early years captured a moment when I tried on Daddy’s work boots.<span style=""> </span>My wavy blonde hair goes every-which-way, and although I am facing away from the camera, I suspect that the look on my face would have been one of determination, as I hauled myself across the floor of the shop in that pair of heavy work boots.<span style=""> </span>My little hands hold tight to the tops of the boots, the better to pull myself up by the bootstraps; and the toe of one boot points forward, in my direction of travel, while the toe of the other boot points backwards, trailing behind me.<span style=""> </span>My feet were so small that they couldn’t hold the boot straight.<br /><br />Although in all honesty, I don’t have any independent memory of wearing my father’s boots, I am told that this was a favorite childhood game of mine.<span style=""> </span>Part of the retelling of this particular idiosyncrasy of my play is that it was common for the adults watching me “walk a mile” in my parents’ shoes to ask me what I was doing.<br /><br />“Goin’ to work!” I would state. Not proudly, not with any particular passion. Just the facts.<br /><br />The real fun would begin when the adult asked what I did for work. Again, I really don’t remember this for myself. However, the family stories have been passed down that my responses varied wildly on this point.<br /><br />At times I said: “I’m a post-secondaaawwwy Engwish teacher!” (Of course. At the time, Mom was teaching English courses for the local business college at the local maximum-security prison, so why not?)<br /><br />Other times, I declared: “Got to get to the mine for an unannounced safety inspection.”<span style=""> </span>(No surprise here. At the time, Dad was putting his electrical engineering savvy to the test by laying methane detectors in “gassy” mines, interpreting their results, and reporting to mine operators the findings, sort of in-house MSHA equivalent.)<br /><br />Other times, the answer was: “She’s dropping her calf and it’s forty below!” (Hey, when you live on a farm, you live on a farm.)<br /><br />Times have changed and now when I choose my shoes for work, they fit my own feet and the toes point the right direction. I put the shoes on the correct feet, every time, and no longer do the toes point behind me. It’s been a long time since I had to pull on the tops of the boots to drag them with both arm power and leg power.<span style=""> </span>On most days, the footwear I choose are usually not boots but shoes.<span style=""> </span>At the moment, not a single pair has steel toes.<br /><br />As the times have changed, however, two things haven’t.<br /><br />When I am putting on my shoes, if someone asks what I’m doing, the first answer I’<span style="font-size:100%;">m likely to give is still: “Goin’ to work.”</span><span style=" Times New Roman";font-size:12pt;" ><span style="font-size:100%;"> The other thing that still has not changed is that the type of work I do still depends on the day. Most days, I serve as a behavior analyst and as an administrator. Then there are the days that I use the skills I learned as a biology teacher, a special educator, a grip or a gaff. To this day, I remain a Jane-of-All-Trades.</span><br /><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family:"Times New Roman";mso-fareast-Times New Roman";mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US; mso-bidi-language:AR-SAfont-family:";font-size:12.0pt;" ></span></div>AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-52786802285140730012010-11-12T12:28:00.002-05:002010-11-12T12:28:40.183-05:00The "evidence" in evidence-based decision making with High Stakes TestingHigh Stakes Testing provides the opportunity for data-based decision making. The question is: will doing so be an opportunity for a "garbage in, garbage out" process, or for true "evidence-based practice?"<br /><br />Advantages of High Stakes Testing:<br />At the individual student level, one little-discussed advantage to high-stakes testing is that appropriately calibrated and normed tests can give data that validate grades earned. This would end the dilemma faced by students with high grades from poorly-achieving schools. Students presently enrolled in schools like New York City’s John Dewey High School face challenges in applying to prestigious colleges: admissions counselors can say: “Sure, you have a high GPA, but it’s from a school under registration review. What does it mean?” If that grade is accompanied by a set of correspondingly high scores on achievement tests, it’s clear that the student’s grades are reflective of earned accomplishment.<br /><br />At the school building level, the use of data from high stakes testing (and other assessments) can clear the path for educational leaders to change students’ experiences to alternate modes of education (for example to an in-school tutoring model, to different materials, or to Direct Instruction curricula) so that they no longer have to repeat an experience that was already measurably ineffective for them. This use of test data can help solve a “culture problem” in education today: the rift between philosophy and outcomes. Doing what is right for children isn’t always easy in education because we are in a field with many stakeholders, and each group tends to hold disparate philosophies of education. It seems that many sub-groups, by dint of previous training and orthodoxy, are equally assured that their way of providing education is the “one true way.”<br /><br />Disadvantages of High Stakes Testing:<br />At all levels, just because a decision is “data-driven” doesn’t mean that it is correct. Knowledge may be power, but power corrupts; and the absolute power that corrupts absolutely probably had its case argued by mis-analyzed or frankly manipulated data. In some localities, administrators and school boards use aggregated performance data to make wrongheaded decisions; take for just one example the article’s report that in Texas low-performing schools are bolstered with additional financial support and rarely closed. In some fields, such an arrangement would be called “anti-merit pay.”<br /><br />Finally, from a personal level, an observation that data from a poorly constructed or badly normed test may be worse than no data at all. I was a member of the cohort of students that was in the fourth year of Ohio Ninth-Grade Proficiency Tests (now being phased out) and the first year of Ohio Twelfth-Grade Proficiency Tests. My Ninth Grade proficiency tests were not a problem at all. As a daughter of one of the high school faculty members, it was expected that I performed well in high school. In fact, I represented the school in statewide comparisons by taking “Scholarship Tests” each year. When my results came in for the Twelfth Grade tests, imagine my surprise to learn that I had “pegged” all the other subtests, yet failed Reading Comprehension. To this day, I have no explanation for this spurious result. Was the test faulty? Was the wrong key used to score my test? Did anybody in the school pass? Was I “one bubble off” in my response sheet? Don’t know, don’t care, glad it didn’t count, except for the fact that my high school diploma did not have an extra sticker indicating that I passed those Twelfth Grade tests. Who knows what became of other “star students” who came in the next cohort for whom that subtest was a requirement, and not a pilot project. It could have been a disaster, and in that place at that time, I’m personally very glad the State of Ohio was NOT “playing for keeps.”AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-75214960350186852832010-11-01T12:09:00.000-04:002010-11-01T12:10:04.587-04:00Multiculturalism - an "ism" of Education?Racism. Sexism. Elitism. Generally, it’s not good to have an “ism.” I know when and how I caught my case of Multiculturalism, and it has given me discomfort ever since. In the late 1990s, when I was an undergraduate student, the college I attended overhauled its core curriculum. Suddenly, we had Themes around which to choose core and elective classes. The Themes were intended to be somehow universal for all majors and minors, transcendent; perhaps we accepted them as beyond reproach or debate. I don’t really remember. In fact, the reform effort was such a smashing success that I not only can I not name all the Themes that the Educational Policies Committee worked so hard to craft. Whether the effort was futile or not, we will never know; the entire college shuttered its campus within the decade.<br /><br />What I do remember, however, was that one Theme among the others was the hardest around which to create consensus and the hardest to defend. That Theme, I recall with a shake of the head, was “Globalism & Diversity.” Discussions about globalism and diversity, infused throughout the curriculum, were meant to create a multicultural appreciation that would aid in creating honorable behavior from all students, from those with Peace Studies minors to business students to educators. The problem with using Globalism & Diversity as a curricular theme was that talking about diversity is similar to talking about the weather: most people agree on the facts; many people disagree about the interpretation; and just about nobody does anything about it.<br /><br />And talking about Globalism? Forget about it. Nobody could determine then (and few can now) whether increasing globalization is a net good or a net ill for our own society, let alone the world’s. The recommendations were endless and usually contradictory. Embrace free trade and a liberal import/export policy; no, wait – demand that your goods are made by people making a living wage and using ecologically sustainable practices. Assist developing countries to have a Green Revolution; no, wait – enjoy only local, organic foods. Who knew? Who knows?<br /><br />Perhaps the problem is that the College was ahead of its time. The World Trade Center tragedy of 2001 demonstrated far too realistically how very real and present the impacts of globalism were. And although we did not know it then, and we still may not yet fully appreciate what to do about it, we are coming to understand events such as those terrorist attacks as having come from under-appreciation of diversity.<br />Slightly uneasy with “multicultural” efforts for years, I was not quite sure what bothered me about the Globalism & Diversity Theme until quite a bit later. After graduate school and after having taught in and left the NYC public schools, I picked up Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat, which by 2005 presented a detailed if not succinct account of the enormity of the changes in the world and the aftermath of globalization.<br /><br />Finally, I realized that my discomfort with most discussions of diversity came from education efforts that were well-intentioned but involved a severe push-pull between cultural appropriation and cultural misappropriation.<br /><br />"Cultural appropriation is the adoption of some specific elements of one culture by a different cultural group. It describes acculturation or assimilation, but can imply a negative view towards acculturation from a minority culture by a dominant culture. It can include the introduction of forms of dress or personal adornment, music and art, religion, language, or social behavior. These elements, once removed from their indigenous cultural contexts, can take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held (Wikipedia).<br /><br />UUA Task Force on Cultural Misappropriation:<br />“Cultural misappropriation is the term given to the set of injuries marked by:<br />- using music, reading, symbols, ritual, or iconography of a group without a willingness to engage in their struggle and/or story and connecting their struggle and/or story with our own<br />- the use of cultural practices as bait rather than an as organic part of our cultural experience<br />- an unwillingness to respect the community of origin or dishonoring the refusal of a community to share<br />- disrespect or casual engagement with a practice, or<br />- unwillingness to share the pain caused by intentional or unintentional misuse.”<br /><br />It seems to me that teaching tolerance, inquisitiveness, and respect for one another is the true ultimate goal of multicultural education. Unfortunately, however, it has been my uncomfortable experience that many attempts at “multicultural education” inadvertently injure the parties that they were meant to include. Particularly when there is no representative from the “diverse” culture available to participate in the planning of an event, clumsy attempts at “celebration” more closely resemble cultural misappropriation than integration. In this situation, the notion that symbols and practices “take on meanings that are significantly divergent from, or merely less nuanced than, those they originally held” is especially true. If the United States is still a “melting pot,” then certainly it is also a crucible; let us hope that we continue to refine our skills at multicultural education, even as we praise those uncomfortable efforts.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-80335203109275580812010-10-31T09:39:00.002-04:002010-10-31T09:44:10.776-04:00Notes from the Headmistress of the School for the Literally Minded<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> <o:pixelsperinch>72</o:PixelsPerInch> <o:targetscreensize>1024x768</o:TargetScreenSize> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> </w:Compatibility> <w:donotoptimizeforbrowser/> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="156"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">A friend of mine once said: "There are some things that do not need to be said, but are better said than not said." Along those same lines, here are some notes on technical writing that I recently found occasion to pass along to some graduate students in behavior analysis.<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">1.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>What does 2.6 years mean?<span style=""> </span>It probably means 2.5 years – 2 years, 6 months.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">2.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>An A<sup>V</sup> is not the same thing as an S<sup>D</sup>.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">3.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>The use of an A<sup>V</sup> is sometimes inadvisable because it may, in fact, become an S<sup>D</sup>; e.g., tact and textual responding programs.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">4.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Learn Units may be used as a Dependent Variable, but when used to change behavior, then they are likely to be an Independent Variable.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">5.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>A “directive” and a “direction” are not exactly the same things.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">6.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Prompts and error corrections are not exactly the same things.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">7.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Beware partial-echoic or phonetic prompts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">8.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Meeting criterion for a short term objective is not exactly the same as achieving MASTERY.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">9.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Good titles contain an IV and a DV and would be helpful for somebody looking for your article if they searched for it in JABA.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">10.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>For short papers, the Review of Literature is best when it is short and sweet.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">11.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Method sections should differentiate between procedures for data collection and the research design, which is a set of procedures for data evaluation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">12.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>When reporting data in percent, also report the number of items in the sets from which percents were derived.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">13.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>The verb “look” is not usually correct when discussing research methods, unless one has employed a magnifying glass, a microscope, or some other means of direct observation.</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">14.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>Avoid the “implied future” tense (Will+Verb) unless implicating the future is what is desirable (e.g., within a goal statement).</p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.25in; text-indent: -0.25in;"><span style="">15.<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";"> </span></span>“Punctuation,” she said, “generally goes inside quotes.”</p>AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-31492413546375821802010-10-26T15:22:00.003-04:002010-10-26T15:31:29.271-04:00Inclusion: Non-Trivial Responses to Non-Trivial QuestionsStaring at me from a blank screen were two questions:<br /> <br />1) Do Inclusion classes impact positively on the educational achievement and social development of children with disabilities?<br />2) What are the implications for students without disabilities in inclusion classes?<br /><br />And as I stared back, also blankly, my first thought was to write two, one-word replies.<br /><br />1) Sometimes.<br />2) Many.<br /><br />Not sure if my response was the right vein of humor for the venue, I discarded the first thought and wrote from the second thought that came to mind. I will leave it to you, dear reader, to decide whether the trivial answer sufficed, or whether the expansion was, indeed, an improvement.<br /><br />On the large scale, these are both "it depends" questions. Inclusion as a solution to special education ignites philosophical debates in many schools of education; is the topic of ongoing Federal lawsuits; and is a relatively under-studied area in the research literature on educational outcomes.<br /><br />Inclusion classes may or may not impact positively on the educational achievement and social development of children with disabilities. As others have noted, success or failure of an inclusion effort has largely to do with the number, type and severity of disabilities of the “children with disabilities” in question. The same goes for the size of the class and its resources, and let’s not forget the interpersonal and teaching effectiveness of the teachers in the inclusion class in question. The students without disabilities in the inclusion class could benefit greatly from exposure to additional resources, mentoring, and coaching; or they could be endlessly distracted by medical, behavioral, and crisis interventions required for their disabled peers’ sustenance.<br /><br />The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) creates statutory rights for students with disabilities that are somewhat different from rights of children without disabilities. These statutory rights may appear at times to be at least partly contradictory with one another, and certainly create tension within the education system. Specifically, under IDEA, children with disabilities ages 3-21 are entitled to a free, appropriate education that BOTH confers “meaningful educational benefit” AND is conducted in the “least restrictive environment” practical.<br /><br />For years, the rallying cry of special educators who preferred increasingly inclusive practices was, “Special Education is a SERVICE, not a PLACE.” The idea was that instructional practices that could be moved into classrooms, should be moved to classrooms, and learners who could benefit from the general education curriculum with supports, should do so. This makes sense on a number of levels.<br /><br />Presently, a very popular approach to providing free, appropriate public education (FAPE) to students with disabilities is to declare a district a “full inclusion” or “total integration” setting. This type of approach minimizes the chance that a district will be cited by the federal or state regulatory auditors for spending an inordinate proportion of funds on a small number of self-contained special education classrooms or for over-identification of minority students as having disabilities.<br /><br />While “full inclusion” as a district policy indeed achieves the goal of minimizing broad, population-based scrutiny, it also tends to increase the chances of individual families, particularly well-funded, highly-educated families, bringing lawsuits. The difficulty with supporting only one type of educational environment for all students with disabilities is that not all needs are best met in one setting.<br /><br />Federal courts have held that the question of service delivery location (i.e., inclusion setting vs. special class setting) is secondary to the question of whether the child makes substantial educational progress. In one case, Federal Courts have upheld a family’s argument that their child had a right to full inclusion (K. B. vs. Nebo, 2004; U. S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals). In a different case, a different Circuit upheld the District’s petition to move a child from inclusion to a special class, when the child was not making progress in an inclusion setting (Hartmann vs. Loudoun County Board of Education, 1997; U. S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals).<br /><br />Banerji and Dailey (1995) conducted a study of children in grades 2-5 with specific learning disabilities. They found that both nondisabled and learning-disabled children made gains of about one year’s academic achievement in an inclusive setting. Teachers, children with and without disabilities, and parents all had high praise for the model, indicating that the social acceptability of an inclusive special education model is excellent.<br /><br />As pleased as the authors and the participants were with the findings, it gives me pause that the educational outcomes were what they were. Joe Torgesen has long maintained that “special education as per usual” for reading disabilities (arguably the most common affliction in American education today) is not effective enough – without special education, students stop progressing; once special education is implemented, students begin making about a year’s progress in a year’s time, but they never “close the gap.” Without explicit, systematic instruction in phonetics and orthography, rate- and phonics- disabled readers do not ever read on grade level. Without opportunities for intensive instruction (which would be difficult if not impossible to accomplish in a “full inclusion” environment without any pull-out services), how will these students “close the gap”? They won’t.<br /><br />If it seems virtually impossible to “close the gap” with “garden variety poor readers” in a full inclusion setting, then how will it ever be possible to remediate much more challenging problems, like oral-motor apraxia, traumatic brain injuries, and selective mutism in a fully inclusive classroom? Without even a hedge, I can predict: It won’t.<br /><br />My fear is that very soon, instead of working for habilitative and normalizing educational outcomes for these students, the new goal will be that it is enough that these children are in the same classroom as their peers – but nobody cares what they learn. It will be the opposite problem as “warehousing.” Their needs will be hiding in plain sight.<br /><br />So now, I wish to return to the idea that “special education is a SERVICE, not a PLACE.” Some services are intrusive, and are therefore best provided in a location that facilitates their delivery. If extra time or special materials are needed to provide specialized instruction, let us make those available to highly-trained instructors – let us not worry if their “place” is not a general education classroom.<br /><br />References:<br />http://www.paulakluth.com/articles/pulloutsvc.html<br /><br />Banerji, M., & Dailey, R. A. (1995). A study of the effects of an inclusion model on students with specific learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 28, 511-522.<br /><br />Kluth, P. (2003). You're going to love this kid: Teaching students with autism in the inclusive classroom. Baltimore: Brookes Publishing)AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-17303152967175489552010-10-25T07:54:00.001-04:002010-10-25T07:54:53.415-04:00Phantom Variables in Education - class size, for exampleThere is no doubt that one-to-one tutelage with a highly qualified instructor is a very effective way to learn something difficult. After all, there is no reason to believe that Plato’s education via the Socratic method took place among the rabble of the agora. When it comes time for graduate students to become polished researchers, they find one person to sponsor their dissertation and take leave of group classes until the hard work is finally done.<br /><br />There is also very little doubt that those very small, prestigious schools with exalted reputations frequently tout those small class sizes associated with fine results. The question becomes, is it actually the size of the class that makes the educational experience high-quality? If it is the size of the class that matters, then why do efforts to reduce mean class size for larger schools tends not to impact test scores and metrics used to estimate disciplinary troubles?<br /><br />My answer is that class SIZE is a phantom variable, one that is easy to measure but is irrelevant to most educational questions. Because counting the number of people in a room is easy to do, it is frequently done. It’s a metric that is used as a stand-in for educational quality, as a substitute for something more meaningful, something to do with the “amount of attention” each teacher can give to each student.<br /><br />I have another “favorite” phantom variable, another common psychometric and educational distraction. It’s INSTRUCTIONAL TIME. Number of school days available, length of the school day, minutes assigned to each subject; these, too, are easy to measure and also substitute for something more meaningful, something to do with the “amount of instruction” the children can receive in total, or on each subject in the curriculum.<br /><br />My contention is that, barring unsafe or ridiculous circumstances, class size can seldom be an actual barrier to instruction (notable exceptions being situations such as one teacher overseeing hundreds of students or children packed into spaces so that fire codes are violated); similarly, neither are questions of instructional time (except in exigencies such as those brought on by natural disasters, such as when Hurricane Katrina dramatically shortened the school year for children along the Gulf Coast).<br /><br />What actually matters, and what is seldom measured directly, is HOW MUCH ACTUAL INSTRUCTION learners receive. Not hypothetical “attention” as a division of students-per-adult; not “time per subject matter.” How many interactions with the teacher occur? How many interactions with instructional materials occur? This is a very old-fashioned idea in education and in industry – it has variously been called “total quality management” and “behaviorism” and “evidence-based practice.”<br /><br />What it looks like is smart students, working hard. They are engaged in “ASR” or active student responding. In a group lesson, the students may be participating simultaneously using choral responding, response cards, or guided notes. Individual students may be working at a computer that has a program that gives them many response opportunities with feedback; or they may be receiving tutoring from a peer or from an adult (e.g., classwide peer tutoring).<br /><br />Are all of these tactics easier to do in a classroom with a favorable student-to-teacher ratio? Absolutely. Will the effectiveness of any instructional tactic that works be enhanced with additional time to deliver more of an effective educational practice? Certainly. But is the ACTUAL variable of interest the size of the class or the amount of time? Not the way I see it. The ACTUAL variable of interest is WHAT IS BEING DONE in that class, regardless of “for how long?” or “with how many students present?”<br /><br />Perhaps the studies that fail to show systematic effects of reducing class size or increasing instructional time, have problems with their outcome variables because they failed to take into control for variability in WHAT THE TEACHERS ARE DOING in those classes of varying size and duration.<br /><br />Archimedes famously said: “Give me a place to stand and a lever long enough and I will move the world.” 220 BC<br /><br />I think I know where I stand on measurement issues and research questions. What I don’t have is a lever (a pry-bar?) to move the world of educational administration & policy, so that the measured outcomes are variables that are actually relevant dimensions of the phenomena of interest. That Eureka moment has still not come, for me, or for American education.<br /><br />Reference:<br />Heward, W. L. (1994). Three "low-tech" strategies for increasing the frequency of Active Student Responding.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-74004926917250904962010-10-22T17:40:00.002-04:002010-10-22T17:44:40.084-04:00Homeschooling: Not endangering public education, and maybe not anybody elseSome say that homeschooling, on the increase nationwide, is a threat to free public education. I am confident that homeschooling presents less of a destabilizing threat to school systems as a whole than it does to individual children and their families who choose to homeschool. Within the population of families who choose to homeschool, there is sufficient diversity of motives for initiating homeschooling and support for the curriculum that it is probably impossible to judge the efficacy of “homeschooling” as an entity; each situation is different enough to merit individual scrutiny.<br /><br />Having come to New York only after a childhood and adolescence in rural south-central Ohio (“Heard of the Bible Belt? Welcome to the Buckle!”), I have some experience on both sides of the homeschooling question. As a student of some of the most poverty-stricken rural public schools of the State of Ohio and the daughter of the freshman English teacher in the high school I attended, I observed first-hand as local families protested that local public schools do not meet their needs at all (Old Order Mennonite; Amish) or may be sufficient for college-preparation but do so only while also corrupting their youth terribly (conservative protestant Christianity). Many of these families elected to have their children stop school attendance altogether after middle school (through religious exception), or to continue middle and high school through homeschooling.<br /><br />My parents’ college friends remained in the university town where they all met in southwest Ohio. A couple who was very close to them had a daughter six months older than me who is absolutely brilliant, funny, well-rounded, and a great mother: however, with a baby on the way of the last year of high school, college did not seem to be the next step for her. When I left to come to college in New York, she began parenting. That son, born into a highly-educated extended family and to a mother who herself did not attend college, rapidly showed himself to be the type of student that each teacher would successively either LOVE or DETEST. He is exceptional in every way: gifted intellectually, emotionally, mechanically, athletically. Small problem. He lives in Southwest Ohio. That’s something like the South Bronx of the Midwest. After a ruinous year of kindergarten in the public schools, the family realized that the public school system grade 4 or 5 would be more appropriate for him, but the children would be way too big. So they scraped together some money for the City's Christian Academy. That didn’t work out so well, either, as the liberal elite “farmers” (retired engineer, retired paralegal, all the various children and grandchildren) did not exactly share the values required for the City Christian Academy crowd. Next step? Homeschooling. My childhood friend, still not a college credit to her name, is by far a better natural talent at education, motherhood, and curriculum planning for her children than anything available to her, for her tax dollars or for hard-earned tuition. The children are thriving, and “peg” the top of the norms each year on the CTBS tests, required by the State of Ohio of the homeschooled students. Her motives are pure – a higher quality of education, without the knife-fights and drugs. The educators are “highly qualified,” despite what NCLB criteria they may lack: she has a retired engineer, a retired paralegal, herself, and her sister-in-law, an accountant, as day-to-day faculty, and my own sister (once-biologist-turned-truck-driver) as occasional faculty.<br /><br />As a professional educator, I have also encountered home instruction scenarios in which the student is excluded from school education. Sometimes this is a school decision (for example, following expulsion), and the school provides home tutoring as compensatory education. I have also worked in homes providing instruction when students have had hospital stays and are not yet cleared to return to school. These are not properly classified as “homeschooling” as the families have not elected to run the curriculum themselves, and professional educators are being provided at public expense. In these situations, the learners themselves typically complain that they are “losing all their friends” and that they no longer “feel normal.” This can be heart-wrenching.<br /><br />As disturbing as the children’s complaints are, short-term exclusions from school, whether for medical or discipline reasons, are not nearly so tragic as homeschooling situations in which the children and the person responsible for the instruction do not assent to or be prepared to provide the homeschooling. As a behavior consultant, I have from time to time had calls from concerned friends and even service providers regarding home schooling situations in which it appears that one parent (in most cases the father, but sometimes the mother) wishes for the children to be homeschooled, while the other parent prefers public or private education at a school. It appears that in this type of situation, the questions may be more serious than quality of instruction provided. Because one of the functions of a modern school is social connection among learners, it is conceivable that children who are homeschooled may have fewer opportunities to connect with sympathetic adults, and if there are questions that concern them, they may have fewer ways to reach out for help in coping with life’s problems.<br /><br />Finally, a concern about detecting problems in time to correct them: Since compulsory school attendance only specifies that some schooling will be provided, and homeschooling can count as attendance, there may be very little cause for intervention unless or until a serious problem is detected. Given the baseline rate of learning and emotional troubles among children in general, it seems that one of the biggest consequences for children leaving the public schools would be that they will usually miss all screening efforts to find and treat learning disabilities, emotional troubles, or even medical issues routinely tested for in public schools. Leaving these challenges undetected and untreated while in the hands of untrained and possibly unhappy teachers may mean preventable damage coming to individual children.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-78306243554001919862010-10-17T09:48:00.002-04:002010-10-17T09:51:40.796-04:00Can Character Education and the First Amendment Co-Exist?Stripped of its specific movement or leaders, character education in its greater sense is almost impossible to extricate from public school education. Whether we expect to for it to be the case or not, the process of group education provides learners with models (for good and for ill) of different ways of caring, mentoring, and social interaction. That comprises character education, largely of the unintentional variety.<br /><br />When character education is left wholly to chance (unintentional and unprincipled), then some families will choose parochial schools or homeschooling in order to counteract “godlessness” and “lack of values” in the schools. However, when character education is implemented (intentional and principled), then other families will choose parochial or non-sectarian schools or homeschooling in order to redress grievances related to anti-religious or liberal “substitute theologies” introduced by character education. Some families go further and bring lawsuits, on First Amendment grounds, that certain types of Character Education programs separate the separation of Church and State.<br /><br />There have already been examples of Character Education efforts that provoked lawsuits. One was brought a couple of years ago in Ohio. A health and human ecology teacher instructed students to deal with stress through guided meditation. The family objected, stating that such practices interfered with their religious guidance of the pupil. The family sued successfully to terminate the curriculum, on First Amendment grounds.<br /><br />Below I have pulled some bulleted points from a lecture about what teachers and schools practicing Character Education should do. It appears to me that some practices are no different from what al teachers do, all the time. Others may be acceptable, provided the “content” and “context” are right. But others, given the right mix of students, parents, and conditions, could start a “church-and-state” fire!<br /><br />Individual Teachers who provide Character Education are called upon to<br />• Act as a caregiver, model, and mentor<br />• Create a moral community<br />• Practice moral discipline<br />• Create a democratic classroom environment<br />• Teach values through the curriculum<br />• Use cooperative learning<br />• Develop the conscience of craft<br />• Encourage moral reflection<br />• Teach conflict resolution<br /><br />Entire schools committed to Character Education are tasked with other tasks:<br />• Fostering caring beyond the classroom<br />• Creating a positive moral culture in the school<br />• Recruit parents and the community as partners<br /><br />I don’t know for sure, but it seems to me that not all of those activities will pass the Lemon test, at least not for all students in all schools in all locations!AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-83585722674362517692010-10-16T15:48:00.000-04:002010-10-16T15:49:30.773-04:00The New Civil Rights Battle<style>@font-face { font-family: "Cambria"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }</style> <p class="MsoNormal">"I believe public education is the new civil rights battle and I support charter schools."<br />Andrew Cuomo<br /><br />Since his opponent looks like The Count from Sesame Street and has a hard time speaking without putting his foot in his mouth, it seems the prediction polls may for once be right. Our soon-to-be-guv appears to luv the Charter School movement.<br /><br />Here are some advantages and disadvantages from the national scene:</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u>Advantage: Charters increase options for families and educators</u>.<span style=""> </span>Charter Schools create new options for families and educators who are dissatisfied with the status quo.<span style=""> </span>In the past, families could choose public school, private school, or homeschooling.<span style=""> </span>Now, in some locales, there is also the option of a charter school.<span style=""> </span>Charters provide many of the same perceived advantages as private schools, such as increased flexibility in hiring; smaller class sizes; exemption form many of the curricular orthodoxies that are de rigueur in public schools in a given City or State, while accomplishing these tasks mostly at taxpayer expense (Charter schools cannot use taxpayer money to fund their buildings and grounds).<span style=""> </span>With the advent of Charter Schools, families who wish for something different from the local home zone school who are fortunate enough to have a Charter as an option, can elect to enroll their child without out-of-pocket tuition expenses.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u>Advantage: Charters are a lab to try out new methods of compensation and personnel evaluation</u>.<span style=""> </span>While many Charter Schools have been criticized for lacking the teachers’ contracts, salaries, and union protections endemic to public school systems, some Charters have found ways to implement handsome salary schedules and to avoid rule-based systems of performance appraisal, rank and tenure decisions, and the like, creating truly innovative personnel programs (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2009/0825/p25s01-ussc.html).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u>Disadvantage: Charters create questions about efficacy when comparisons are made between non-equivalent groups.</u><span style=""> </span>Some of the “best” reasons to initiate a request for a charter is to create an “academy of excellence,” or to serve “at-risk” or disadvantaged students.<span style=""> </span>Perhaps because Charters are started with so many varied purposes in mind, it shouldn’t be surprising that researchers are finding mixed results as to whether students at Charter Schools actually do outperform their peers at standard public schools (http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2010/0629/Study-On-average-charter-schools-do-no-better-than-public-schools).<span style=""> </span>The lead author of the report described findings both on the whole (broad-based result: no discernible difference between achievement from charter schools vs. public school) and in specific: charter schools in large urban areas and those serving a more disadvantaged student population had positive impacts on students' achievement in math (http://www.mathematica-mpr.com/newsroom/releases/2010/Charterschool_6_10.asp).</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><u>Disadvantage:<span style=""> </span>Charters instigate a fear of a “brain drain” in the public schools</u>.<span style=""> </span>Charter school and voucher programs are similar in that both types of programs allocate some public funding to non-public schools.<span style=""> </span>In both types of programs, some students and some teachers who might otherwise participate in public school settings will instead participate in private school settings.<span style=""> </span>When the dust settles from lawsuits brought by parties interested in how the State spends Taxpayer money, a parity question remains: do Charter Schools (and, for that matter, do private, parochial, and other non-public schools) pose a “brain-drain” threat to adult and child talent within the public schools?<span style=""> </span>The answer is probably yes.<span style=""> </span>But in a free and fair democratic society, is it really better to eliminate the threat as posed by the Charters, Vouchers, and other institutions, our would it perhaps be better to allow the situation to be educative to the public schools? Let’s use the “flight” as data as to what is wrong in the system, and fix the problems there, rather than stomp on the alternatives.<span style=""> </span>We can call it free market capitalist education. </p>AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-59912286157749650372010-05-20T18:33:00.003-04:002010-05-20T18:55:59.964-04:00Rhymes, but not in Time<div style="text-align: center;">"Leaves of three - let 'em be." <br />Summer<br /><br />"Thick wooly rope? Don't be a dope."<br />Fall and Winter<br /></div><br />These crass couplets have been passed down from botanist to lay-person and from camp counselor to camper since, well, maybe not since time immemorial, but probably since before Al Gore "invented" the internet; and definitely before anyone thought twice about the environmental impact of drowning unwanted flora in pesticides. These witty mnemonic devices are employed in (usually failed) efforts to educate the learner about the perils of creeping, climbing, noxious vines. The instructional theory seems to be that if the learner can identify the plant in question, then no contact will occur, and then there should be no chance of itching and scratching secondary to contact with urushiol<b></b> oil, that nasty evolutionary defense system common to the "poison" plants (like ivy, sumac, and oak). <br /><br />Alas, like so many pedagogical ideas, there is fault to find with the "rhyme prevents contact dermatitis" formulation. Knowing the description of the villainous species is certainly useful, but, sadly, neither incantation is sufficient to ensure an itch-free season. After some practice in discriminating Virginia Creeper from Poison Ivy in summer and Poison Ivy from harmless grapevine in winter, most people can avoid the plant itself. However, since it is the oil that precipitates contact dermatitis in most (compounded by allergy in the chosen several), avoiding the plant itself is not even enough.<br /><br />Being blessed with the familial package-deal of genetics, one of my most obvious traits is "cheap Lithuanian skin." Translation: near-zero levels of melanin, bruising from insults that are unremembered, scratches that become years-later-visible scars, and sensitivities even to "gentle" and "clear" products for cleansing. Hoo boy, can I contract the contact dermatitis, especially from the dreaded PI! The tingling vesicles have appeared, unbidden, on the bridge of my nose, from dropping my sunglasses in a newly mown lawn (no sign of PI anywhere there: doc's best guess is the lawn mower blades transferred some urushiol to the grass where the sunglasses fell); in a perfect seat-belt pattern on my neck (for my wedding!).<br /><br />Most recently, twice now my garden has given ME the gift that keeps on giving when I have done NO yard work at all. My wonderful husband has, in fact, banned me entirely from all areas of our property that has not yet been cleared of the PI. And still, twice in three months, it has struck.<br /><br />I let it be.<br /><br />I am not a dope.<br /><br />And still, I itch.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-54633296234241144222009-11-14T11:26:00.004-05:002009-11-16T08:30:57.073-05:00A headache, but a fun headache....<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRs8NO-wU38NtPdEOL_fJ6t9WxiwiN4vmS0VQsYYYe_m5cpLT7CCj6Qhu7yHs6yrj_ukoCRD2iIzEbpedC-Izf21aFIsnUTDNxkOGr0SqBYyis9ASle6za3If7izRIDyujnazTDFN68dpG/s1600-h/32Bryant.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 320px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 240px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403996727679214754" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRs8NO-wU38NtPdEOL_fJ6t9WxiwiN4vmS0VQsYYYe_m5cpLT7CCj6Qhu7yHs6yrj_ukoCRD2iIzEbpedC-Izf21aFIsnUTDNxkOGr0SqBYyis9ASle6za3If7izRIDyujnazTDFN68dpG/s320/32Bryant.jpg" /></a>Here it is! This little house is the newest reason for Billy and me to take near-overdose quantities of over-the-counter anti-inflammatories and analgesics at "o'dark thirty" in the morning. Our first house, beautiful, full of light, and for a good little while at least, a pain in the everything.<br /><br />Mary Miltenberger, longtime family friend, said it best: "Owning your own home is a headache, but it's a fun headache." We moved to this home from a 1-bedroom apartment, using a 17-foot U-Haul. By the next day, everything hurt, right to the fingertips. So it's fair to say that by the time that only heads were aching, we were very happy indeed.<br /><br />Within the first week, there has been a lot to laugh about. Much of this has been our minds playing tricks on our brains, thanks to sleep deprivation. We have thought we lost our kitchen sink (apparently neither one of us is good at maintaining relational positions in new places); searched for clothes and food by holding flashlights in our mouths (note to self: search for light switches and outlets during daylight hours next time!); and awakened in the middle of the night not only wondering where we were, but also thinking the house was aflame (wives, don't allow your husbands to play with fireplaces unattended!).<br /><br />Life is good. And funny, when you are two dopes in a new house, on short rest as they say in the baseball trades.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-60282434184326537532009-11-01T07:27:00.002-05:002009-11-01T07:52:59.579-05:00Hey! That's not one of my preferred TLA's!Everything anyone ever taught you about clear communication and professional writing skills is correct. The thing is that attempting to practice the behaviors suggested in those lessons is highly irritating. Simply put, explicit and spelled-out is just not how anyone really wants to write when they're GSD or "getting stuff done". Left to our own devices, easier is better, and easy for me may not be easy for you: I'll write it fast now and go back and de-code later if I have to. Those of us who think at all, tend to think quick and think in largely idiosyncratic code. <br /><br />This laziness-in-service-to-quick-thought has been a persistent pattern of mine (not, dear readers, an asset!) for years and years. It was an in-joke to those around me, even before I graduated college. There was an "Amanda-to-English" translation guide on one of my first websites, and the code my friends continuously worked to crack was called variously "CryptoWilloughby" and "Amandese" and "Amandisms."<br /><br />Sadly, this affliction continues to dog me to the present, and I'm afraid it's maintained and even shaped in my everyday environment (it, and I, are caught in a behavior trap, to those who appreciate the reference). As a SpEd-BCBA studying for the NYS SBL/SDL credentials, I throw about TLA's (three-letter acronyms), not to mention the odd 4-LA and 2-LA (FLA? TwLA?) with the best and worst of "them." At work, we talk about FBA's, BIP's, IEP's, IFSP's, SEIT's, DTT, DTS, VB, VBA, VB-MAPP, DAR's, TPRA's, CABAS, NYSEd, the DoH, the DoE (that's Education, not Energy), NYC, NYS, BCBA's, BCaBA's, and the BACB, among many, many others. It's no mere alphabet soup: it's an invitation to acquired dyslexia. But at least in our own tight-knit little verbal community we have some idea of what we're all talking about. When a rookie doesn't know the TLA (2-LA, 4-LA), we gleefully teach the acronym, and, if necessary, the associated decryption and import of the vocabulary and referent associated with the acronym, and scurry onward.<br /><br />Imagine my surprise to receive an email related to buying a house that stopped my eyes mid-scan of screen. It took me quite a while to get just half its jist. It said, in part:<br /><br />"Then all conditions have been met for file to go to QC then <span class="il">CTC</span>."<br /><br />HUH?<br /><br />Like the Star Trek computer calculating pi, I began sifting through all the terminology I had been learning these past six months. What natural-language match could I come up with for "CTC"? Fine mind for science that I have, I gathered by its terminal place in the sentence that CTC must be the final step before actually closing on the house, so it must be more important than anything coming between now and the end of the sentence. Hmmm. C. Close. Aha! Clear to Close! Yes, that must be it. Attorney, mortgage guy, realtor, all week all anyone had said was "Clear to Close." Some status the mortgage bank gives before closing. Got that.<br /><br />QC. Ahem. Quality Control? Dunno. Still don't know. Actually, still working on the assumption that it's a passing phase before the Clear to Close. Will find out sometime tomorrow, I guess. If it's not a TLA, then it can't be THAT important, can it?AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-51116397808215041462009-10-25T10:55:00.002-04:002009-10-25T10:58:13.602-04:00How to Study in a Board Certified Behavior Analyst Program1. Your very least favorite (track coach, physical education teacher, driver’s education instructor) was correct: “You get what you practice.” In fact, research suggests that you get exactly what you practice. So: when you study, practice the same operant that will be tested in class or used in the field. Students are frequently dismayed when they feel they have understood the text when they read it, but perform poorly on quizzes. However, they were tested on “writing responses to a quiz,” not on “reading a quiz,” and generally most students “read” when they study. So a good first-line intervention would be practicing more “writing” while studying the texts, in preparation for written quizzes.<br /><br />• Instead of merely reading and re-reading texts (Kazdin; Cooper, Heron, & Heward), devise ways of inducing ASR or “active student responding” while you read. Here are some suggestions:<br />• The Prentice-Hall website provides guided notes for the Cooper, Heron, & Heward text; you will prepare study guides for one another. Use the guided notes and study guides while you do your first read-through to increase your ASR.<br />• Learn to summarize whole chapters into very short lists of “P’s and Q’s” (Points & Questions). As soon as you finish reading a chapter (filling in a study guide as you read), put away your book and notes, and write a chapter summary of no more than five bulleted Points and three lingering Questions for further discussion with your BCBA supervisor, study group, or instructor. If your list is more than 5 P’s and 3 Q’s, you need to revise – Sorry, Polonius, but brevity is the soul not only of wit but also of adduced contingencies.<br />• The Prentice-Hall website also provides another resource for the Cooper, Heron, & Heward text: online quizzes. Take these after your first read-through of a chapter and then again after further study to gauge whether you are ready for the in-class quiz. Charting your progress on these quizzes is a good way to prepare for the BCBA exam. Keep at it until you are at your personal goal: 100%? 90%? 80%?<br /><br />2. Behavior analysts do not communicate only by writing and reading. We also speak and listen. So, for better or for worse, your oral fluency with the “high-falutin’-est” verbal behavior of the science of applied behavior analysis is important. Some of this can be addressed through written quizzes, but speaker/listener skills are best practiced through speaking and listening. To this end:<br />• Sign up for and use Quizlet. There is a group set up for Manhattanville BCBA students especially. You can practice vocabulary with flashcards, vocab quizzes, games, and more: http://quizlet.com/group/16033/<br />• Tutor one another on vocabulary flashcards. Not only will both of you benefit from the exposure to the vocabulary as you tutor one another, but doing Verbal Fluency Tutoring sessions is a good way to develop your expertise with presenting discrete trial teaching and collecting and analyzing data.<br />• Take advantage of the fact that there are now several cable-TV shows that illustrate many principles of applied behavior analysis. Excellent examples include: SuperFetch, SuperNanny, It’s Me or the Dog, and Good Dog U. Examples that are possible to use but will provide less clear illustrations and/or more complicated operants and applications include: Dr. Phil, The Biggest Loser, and CleanSweep. What is common to all these shows is that the practitioners on these shows seldom use scientific terminology correctly, if at all, to describe the procedures they recommend. Get together with a peer or peers (motivating operations like popcorn and soda are OK, and may even be necessary!) and watch one of these shows (preferably on DVD, TiVo, via Internet connection, or some other way in which you can “pause” the action for discussion). Observe the procedures, pause, and discuss. Look through your notes and texts and tact the principles of behavior and behavior change tactics being employed in the vignettes. If you as a group cannot decide, write down the example and bring it to your BCBA supervision or to class.<br />3. Like it or not, you are entering this class 4/15 of the way through the program (almost a third of the way there), and you’ll leave this class 7/15 of the way through this program (almost half-way there). It is already time to be studying for the BCBA exam. Research tells us that distributed practice is superior to massed practice, so:<br />• The CBA modules from Behavior Development Solutions worked for me, and I had only 10 days between notification that I was qualified to sit for the test and my testing date. They have a money back guarantee if you complete all the modules to criterion before the test and then for some reason do not pass.<br />• Keep plugging through the online quizzes for the Cooper, Heron, & Heward text. Use a grid to mark each score and recycle until you get to 100% on each and every quiz. You will know when you are fluent!AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-19551490097196292112009-10-22T05:57:00.003-04:002009-10-22T06:19:46.637-04:00When "Abstract" is really "Concrete"<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >Mid-October saw the deadline for submissions for the 2010 Convention for the Association for Behavior Analysis International (ABAI, but we still pronounce it "ah-buh"). At the school where I work, bucketloads of social reinforcement is available for staff members who prepare and present papers at ABAI each year. There is a frenzy just before and after the actual Convention to think about papers that would be good for next year's convention, but the real work generally gets done about half a year later: at submission time for the following year's convention.<br /><br />Applications require submission of the abstract to the paper to be presented. Sometimes this is easy: the study has been done, the paper is written, just send the abstract as it already exists.<br /><br />Other times, the study is just a great idea, and the convention becomes to goal line for completing the study. When this is the case, a loosely assembled set of fairly </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >abstract</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > ideas for a study have to be </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >abstracted</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > into an </span><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" >abstract</span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;" > in short order. It's time to get down to business and pull together the essential ideas of background literature, purpose, design, and expected results. The document that comes from this process, the abstract, tends to be pretty concrete in the end.<br /><br />Here's a sample abstract for a study we're just putting together now:<br /><br /> <>AMANDA W. DOLL, Ed.M, BCBA, Tina Covington, PhD, BCBA, <span style="color: black;">Rachel Sgueglia, MS.Ed., and </span>Dana Logozio, MS.Ed.<>Previous research (Doll, Covington, Rosenfeld, & Cerrone, 2009) has identified that a subset of teaching staff do not respond to repeated observation-and-feedback cycles with a modified TPRA form fashioned after Ingham & Greer, 1992. In the 2009 study, those teachers who continued to commit instructional errors subsequently improved when they were taught how to use the modified TPRA form and then used this form in order to self-score their own teaching behavior from video samples.<span style=""> </span>Teaching accuracy improved and instructional rate also improved; accuracy was a treated variable, while rate was an untreated variable.<span style=""> </span>The present study seeks to replicate results from the 2009 study; to identify teachers for whom observation-and-feedback cycles are not serving to improve instructional behavior; to create a data-base for using video self-observation as a tactic when instructional practices need to be improved. Data collection is ongong.</span><!--EndFragment-->AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-25367436640047869632009-06-01T19:32:00.007-04:002009-06-03T08:15:01.265-04:00Moderation Doesn't Always Come in Moderation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLwkos3FbEcChJQ8Oz6mgrTfFgEENRXb6_aI_nToOkGwm12Y3b5u1lnme3b2-xtKgRwMIiRV2SBJyujR6_oCfDb7xHD9VZYoIl5Pdgv1vPfzNEuaqn5JPwrmIGp-JCkn8PU5FEby-VzPqU/s1600-h/Billy&Amanda"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLwkos3FbEcChJQ8Oz6mgrTfFgEENRXb6_aI_nToOkGwm12Y3b5u1lnme3b2-xtKgRwMIiRV2SBJyujR6_oCfDb7xHD9VZYoIl5Pdgv1vPfzNEuaqn5JPwrmIGp-JCkn8PU5FEby-VzPqU/s320/Billy&Amanda" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342511326749477906" border="0" /></a><br /><br />In college I first learned and fell in love with the idea that life is best lived enjoying all things in moderation. Thus far, however, I have found that moderation itself seems to come not constantly but in fits and starts. There are beautiful, almost-perfect-despite-their-imperfection periods in which it is possible to balance and re-balance responsibilities, adjusting oneself to the necessities of daily life. This is sometimes called "one day at a time living."<br /><br />And then... and then... then there are those other, more challenging, stretches of time when "all the days come at once." There is very little need to describe these times. We all live in them. Some of us never escape them. They are the stuff of television situation comedies. They are the stuff of road rage. They are the stuff of desperation and suffering, too. I suppose they always have been - or why would the ancients have written about them, for me to learn about "all things in moderation" in 100-level Humanities courses?<br /><br />Very recently, many months of "life in moderation" or normal time yielded to "everything all at once" time for a little while. Partly, this is mere occupational hazard. Working in a school while continuing my own education means that I do almost everything I do by the whirrings of multiple academic calendars. Usually, academic calendars have enough similarity to be somewhat predictable, and enough difference to be maddening. This year has been no exception.<br /><br />Despite my cherished notion that time exists to prevent events from happening "at the same time," the overlap of the calendars allowed for a few synchronicities that were quite enjoyable (at least in retrospect, once fully rested again from the return trip East!).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbieH8SM1niGjydfHJaROYbjWxj7zTdYceiYzV_KqzmJD4LchUjRuYNDbO31jUm0Bwa4LgHMHO6Vi09dpV7SisoxlaDuNcLmUEkL4eyuCNZsgndQh4fLlPvmwYVFVfk_oenRgKLK8xkcgC/s1600-h/Tina&Amanda"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbieH8SM1niGjydfHJaROYbjWxj7zTdYceiYzV_KqzmJD4LchUjRuYNDbO31jUm0Bwa4LgHMHO6Vi09dpV7SisoxlaDuNcLmUEkL4eyuCNZsgndQh4fLlPvmwYVFVfk_oenRgKLK8xkcgC/s320/Tina&Amanda" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5342511065578842146" border="0" /></a>Within the span of a week, I was able to participate in the Columbia University Teachers College Masters Convocation; learn that I had in fact passed the BCBA exam; and present at ABAI in Phoenix, AZ. Here's a picture of Dr. Tina Covington and me in front of my poster on stimulus-stimulus pairing and the emergence of early language. Several other colleagues and I also presented papers in a symposium the same day. It was a humbling and energizing experience...Possibly too much fun for me for one week. Now what I'm really looking for is a whole lot of moderation for a while!AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-49280942235786269652008-12-31T13:17:00.004-05:002009-01-03T17:57:07.925-05:00Getting the best gift ever....again!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0RfIVVy6ywfSbPWDwj9Atgx9sODt_ybuADhG9_fTsm5KVh2yqMfBNrQk-u5-QCywUS5_UqsKpVzfBA5ydVcYGVEev37wUkhki8zEgvpq4E0kZn-P9F_f4NxPOUZQpjmZsBqVicsxx65Kc/s1600-h/Pentax3cropped.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0RfIVVy6ywfSbPWDwj9Atgx9sODt_ybuADhG9_fTsm5KVh2yqMfBNrQk-u5-QCywUS5_UqsKpVzfBA5ydVcYGVEev37wUkhki8zEgvpq4E0kZn-P9F_f4NxPOUZQpjmZsBqVicsxx65Kc/s320/Pentax3cropped.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286020412104259378" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">The best gift ever</span><span style="font-weight: bold;">, part one:</span><br />In the summer of 1995, my Aunt Jen and Uncle Pete gave me what became my very favorite of all my high-school graduation gifts. As I opened the gift, at first all I knew was I was getting my first "real" camera. You can see me opening the camera cover and lens care kit in this snapshot; the box with the camera body is barely visible in the frame, bottom right.<br /><br />The camera Aunt Jen chose for me was a Pentax K1000, which I was soon to learn was the renowned "workhorse" of sturdy, solid 35-mm manual-everything cameras. The only thing on it that required a battery was a through-the-lens light meter, and its long-lasting battery required only one replacement in my long relationship with that camera. With some practice, I learned the basics of manual focus, aperture, shutter control, and using available light instead of relying on flash. Though I never learned wet darkroom techniques, I played around with shooting both color and black-and-white film, and have had quite a lot of fun with that Pentax.<br /><br />Things changed, as they always do. Throughout graduate school and early adulthood, I moved several times; physical "things" became more inconvenient at the same time that prices for their digital counterparts began to fall. I began to rely more and more on digital media for everything. No longer content to relegate my pictures to shoeboxes under the bed and physical albums collecting dust, I started to avoid shooting film (at first without noticing the insidious digital slide), not just because of the processing fees, but because more and more I was enjoying the ability to do my own "digital darkroom" tweaks and desktop publishing from my point-and-shoot digital camera.<br /><br />And yet... I missed the ability to choose how I wanted to focus a shot, without scrolling through endless "soft menus" and having a camera eat batteries like tic-tacs.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEira6ObNbowKUOcNmaQDRF_84SjmuvHKizHaRRj99ZDKAwh2Ru9SPFQfPNKRbI0Sx0fm-kW_ys6WKO7pZI0-TWVUIbvs6tG0Zg5KwY3SUBUYmI4BcC_vCfc51wPIvUJq5slT2prebbIUvZj/s1600-h/DSCN1384.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEira6ObNbowKUOcNmaQDRF_84SjmuvHKizHaRRj99ZDKAwh2Ru9SPFQfPNKRbI0Sx0fm-kW_ys6WKO7pZI0-TWVUIbvs6tG0Zg5KwY3SUBUYmI4BcC_vCfc51wPIvUJq5slT2prebbIUvZj/s320/DSCN1384.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5286023065162861330" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The best gift ever, part two:</span><br />During the holiday season of 2008, it finally happened. My wonderful husband looked at me and said: "I don't know what you want for a gift." I put down the book on digital photography I had been longingly leafing through and sighed: "What I really want is a digital, single-lens reflex camera." He blinked, shook his head slightly in disbelief, and said, "Really? You know what you want? You want a camera?" I showed him the book, which had diagrams of cameras, sample pictures each model could take, and specs. The prices were easily four times what we could possibly afford. Fortunately, the copyright date was about 4 years old.<br /><br />So the story has a happy ending. As had happened when I was in graduate school, prices for digital cameras had come down, this time for the digital SLR's, both prosumer models and the true-pro models. A local retailer was able to set us up with a Pentax *ist, which is the best gift ever, part two.<br /><br />As you can see, it makes me smile just playing around with it. Here I am at a local nature conservancy, trampling around in the ice and snow. That wonderful husband of mine took this picture with my "ol' reliable" Nikon CoolPix P2. He did a beautiful job, didn't he?AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-82401433577841592542008-12-24T09:10:00.007-05:002008-12-31T13:49:33.994-05:00The Seven Books I Purchase Again and Again...Having grown up in a home with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves spanning long, long upstairs hallways and built into most of the other rooms, I am wary of the habits of book-collecting and book-hoarding. Whenever possible, I borrow books; I buy them used; and give away any books that I suspect I will not read again. This makes it easy for me to know when a book is important to me: I find myself purchasing that title again and again.<br /><br />At the turn of the year, in prime gift-giving and gift-getting season, I am in full-on possession-shedding mode, and hearing many of those around me set long-term objectives (more fashionably clothed in the language of "New Year's Resolutions"). These seven books I part with readily when a loved one, friend, colleague, student, or client needs it more than I do, but I keep coming back to them, time after time:<br /><br />1. <span style="font-style: italic;">Getting Things Done: The art of stress-free productivity</span>. David Allen (2001). The principles behind this book are also a staple of such blogs as LifeHacker.com and DavidCo.com; I have frequently given this one away and told the recipient, "This book can improve your life today, and you can spend the rest of your life perfecting the whole of it." Available without ordering in most brick-and-mortar bookshops and very inexpensive at the Amazon Marketplace.<br /><br />2. <span style="font-style: italic;">How to Win Friends and Influence People</span>. Dale Carnegie (Original copyright 1936, numerous editions since then). You know what this is. If you haven't read it, read it. If it's been a while, refresh yourself. For maximum benefit, follow -- yes, actually follow! -- the directions he gives for using the book as a manual. Read it slow, repeat it at intervals. He tells you how to do it, so give it a try and see if it works for you. Available with and without ordering depending on the volume your neighborhood bookshop does; various years can be very inexpensive at the Amazon Marketplace.<br /><br />3. <span style="font-style: italic;">Nurturing Resilience in Our Children</span>. Robert Brooks & Sam Goldstein (2003). Not just for parents, but for anyone who deals with children: for teachers, coaches, therapists, and childcare providers, this book is a clear-headed and kind-hearted read. It's especially good for starting conversations among faculty at small schools. Many local bookshops will have to special-order this title, but you may be pleasantly surprised; ordering online through the authors' sites supports further program development.<br /><br />4. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Power of Positive Parenting</span>. Glenn Latham (1990). For anyone who ever thought, "I didn't want to do that... again" or "I didn't want to say that.... again" in dealing with a student, child, or even a supervisee, this book just might do it. Achieves many similar aims to <span style="font-style: italic;">Nurturing Resilience in Our Children</span>, with a few more "cookbook" type suggestions. This one is almost exclusively a special-order, whether at a store or online; the good news is, it's still in print.<br /><br />5. <span style="font-style: italic;">The One Minute Manager</span>. Kenneth Blanchard & Spencer Johnson (1981, 1982, 1994). This was the Who Moved My Cheese from before people were mice. Tiny little allegory; quick and gives three crucial skills to working with others. These skills are based in part on the interpersonal styles advocated in Carnegie's <span style="font-style: italic;">How to Win Friends & Influence People</span> and the behavioral principles described in books like <span style="font-style: italic;">The Power of Positive Parenting</span>. Frequently hard to find in regular bookstores, but quick to order.<br /><br />6. Unless you are a professional behavior analyst (working in a school setting at that!), you may not want or need the two books I'm collapsing into the same recommendation here. However, by my lone criterion of "Purchasing Again and Again," I must mention two books whose titles I refer to only by their TLA's (three-letter-acronyms) in my everyday life. DTS & VBA are books I purchase and give away on a near-constant basis. DTS stands for <span style="font-style: italic;">Designing Teaching Strategies: An Applied Behavior Analysis systems approach</span> (2002) by R. Douglas Greer. VBA stands for<span style="font-size:100%;"><span id="btAsinTitle" style=""> <span style="font-style: italic;">Verbal Behavior Analysis: Inducing and Expanding New Verbal Capabilities in Children with Language Delays</span></span></span> by R. Douglas Greer & Denise Ross (2007). For my previous reviews of each, see the pages for each title on Amazon.com. Neither is ever available on a shelf at anything but a college bookstore; both order fairly speedily if required, though.<br /><br />7. <span style="font-style: italic;">I'll Stop Procrastinating....When I Get Around to It</span> (Richard W. Mallott & Holly Harrison). Congratulations on persevering to the end of the list; now what should you have been doing as you've been browsing this blog? If you're serious about putting any of your new long-term objectives into play for 2009 and have had mixed success in the past, this "course pack" is probably just the thing for you. Unfortunately, this is one that you wouldn't find without a tip. Point your browser to <a href="http://dickmalott.com/procrastination/">http://dickmalott.com/procrastination/</a> and follow the instructions. You will have to call a work-study student in Michigan and order the text in a rather unusual way, but it's worth it!<br /><br />Happy reading!AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-47735784434533607842008-12-20T06:51:00.000-05:002008-12-20T07:18:27.152-05:00Out, Standing in our FieldRecently, I have started to think that one of the main projects I worked on as an undergraduate and graduate student might just have qualified for the "Out, Standing in A Field" type of certificate. You know, the ones that imply not greatness, but loneliness. Typically they picture a single person, usually in business attire, standing alone in a vast expanse of tall grass. If these can be awarded far after the fact, I think a project from the 95-2002 or so probably qualifies for such a notation.<br /><br />For several years I worked on college-sponsored electronic portfolio projects. The projects were ambitious, aiming to improve student connections between the relevant licensing or professional standards in their chosen fields of study and their academic preparation to work. The colleges meant to use the portfolios as an outcomes assessment, while the students could use them as interviewing aids. <br /><br />It was a great idea, but before its time: we did not yet have any of the authoring software that made it practical (does anybody who remembers MS FrontPage 98 not grimace now?), had little idea of how to secure intellectual property, and hadn't worked out how long schools would host student data into the future. We did try out many ideas that were worthwhile, including juried portfolio exhibitions, places for reviewer comments and threaded discussions, and the like. Unfortunately, it was ultimately unsustainable for both schools. Marymount College, Tarrytown eventually closed. Columbia University, Teachers College let the project come to a stop slowly, through its own inertia.<br /><br />With the inevitable slow-down that comes with days-off for the holidays and the resume-review that comes with economic hard times, I have spent some time on sites like Linked-In and CareerBuilder. That's when it occurred to me: looking at Linked-In in particular was a glimpse "back to the future." No sooner had I created my own profile than I realized: this new-fangled thing contained most of the elements of what had been termed the "display portfolio" in the old programs. A little biographical information, some work history: like a resume with hypertext, footnotes, whatever. There it all was. The only thing it lacked was a place for a philosophy statement and rationales for "why" certain items were included: but then again, these pieces were often ultimately omitted from presentation portfolios.<br /><br />Shazam! The principles of the old Career Achievement Portfolio, live in hypertext. All the old problems solved. It just took an additional decade to get it done. And not by us. But it was pretty nifty to see. We may have been out, standing in our field back then, but we're in pretty good company now.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-53813663378788959182008-12-07T11:02:00.000-05:002008-12-07T11:17:39.631-05:00ExperienceA dear friend of mine frequently says, "Experience is what you get, when you don't get what you want." That's certainly true. Negotiating with difficult co-workers, driving in perilous road conditions, and restoring data from a terminally frazzled computer all gave me "experience" straight from the "this isn't what I wanted!" department.<br /><br />What is also true is that when you get what you want, look out! It may be more than you bargained for. As folks who are wiser than me so frequently say, "be careful what you wish for, you just might get it." When I was a brand-new graduate student studying early childhood special education, I really wanted a public school job very close to where I was in graduate school. Even though my teaching certificate at the time was for high-school biology, I got the job I wanted, and I spent two years in one of the most challenging settings in special education. So perhaps, experience is what you get, whether you get what you want or get what you do not want.<br /><br />But what is "experience," and what does one do with it?<br /><br />One thing experience has been, for me, is a stock of "war stories." I can say to another person, "I was <span style="font-style: italic;">there</span>." These stories are sometimes entertaining, sometimes poignant, and frequently help others identify with me. After swapping stories, a speaker and a listener seem to be more likely to be able to connect"and do whatever work must be done in a collaborative manner.<br /><br />Another thing experience has given me is a reference for what does and does not work in certain situations. In my field, we call this a repertoire of contingency-shaped behaviors. After enduring a few fire-drills in a few different settings, it becomes easier and easier to know what to do in any fire-drill, anywhere. With experience, you begin to know "what to do when you don't know what to do."<br /><br />Possibly the most important thing experience continues to give me on a daily basis is humility. The more I see and the more I do, the more I learn from others. This reminds me how much I still have to learn -- there's a wide world out there, still to be experienced.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6880727614757174620.post-35684095078833590802008-12-04T20:37:00.000-05:002008-12-04T20:50:11.699-05:00A Firm Grasp of the ObviousOne of the most dismissive evaluations my mother dispensed (to me and to others) was, "that one has a really firm grasp on the obvious." Loaded with derision, this comment was never meant as a compliment. Rather, she meant that the object of her scorn failed to meet her standards of perceptiveness or abstract thinking.<br /><br />More recently, however, I have come to think that having a "firm grasp of the obvious" is not as common as I once thought. And you know what else? It's probably not such a poor quality to have in a person. <br /><br />When we are around people with a firm grasp of the obvious, we learn that the king has no clothes, not new clothes. We may learn that the alarm is not a drill, and we should in fact leave the premises immediately. Obviously, a firm grasp of the obvious isn't such a bad thing after all.AWDollhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00802983133331844797noreply@blogger.com0