An Idealistic Thought On Teaching

You spend God-knows-how-many-years working to get a Ph.D. in your field. Clearly you believe it's important. How can you not convey this enthusiasm to your students? Your students may never take another course in economics (or Math/English/Whatever). Do you keep this in mind when developing a class or lecture?

On a related note, you have to appreciate Mankiw's enthusiasm as indicated by his personalized license plate.

Should schools teach kids how to talk?

Lately I've been reading selected articles from The New Education Reader: Leading Educators Speak Out. One of the articles pointed something out that is completely obvious that I have never thought of. Phonics is less likely to be effective for children who don't speak "properly" since they may not associate the "right" sound with letters.

This may explain why some kids have trouble learning to read. Especially kids from disadvantaged backgrounds. Also, this suggests that kids must be taught how to speak "properly" to teach phonics. I wonder if people are comfortable with this.

(You might argue that, more generally, teaching reading necessitates teaching how to speak properly but I don't think this is the case. Not in the sense that reading is word recognition anyways.)

Bad Bias: Handwriting and Student Evaluation

While I'm not as huge a propononent of overcoming bias as these folks, I think this case deserves wider recognition and some action....

There have been a ton of studies going way back (to at least 1927) that show student handwriting impacts teacher's evaluation of their work. To me, the most obvious explanation for this phenomenon is that good handwriting is a signal of intelligence (or high achievement) which teachers use as a shortcut to evaluate the work.

It is potentially very easy to rule out this explanation. If handwriting is not related to intelligence or school performance as measured by a computerized test, then we can rule out the above explanation. Of course, if it is related to these measures, it doesn't mean we can rule out competing hypotheses that may play a role in the story.

As far as competing hypotheses are concerned, it's possible that good handwriting signals something else (or something more) than intelligence or high achievement. Based on my experience grading plenty of university-level homework and exams, the most likely candidate is gender and, to a lesser degree, race. That is, female and Asian students tend to have the nicest handwriting. So one possible explanation is that teacher's behavior is biased by gender and/or racial attitudes.

Regardless of what exactly is driving the bias, the costs are potentially severe. In addition to the possibility that this bias can affect a child every time he/she turns in a piece of handwritten work is the fact that the single most important test that most students ever take is also subject to the bias. The SAT is supposed to be a great measure of ability because it's standardized and because the scores are objective. But how can these tests (in which cursive essays score higher than printed essays) be truly objective while maintaining a handwritten writing section?

What does all this mean for you? You should put effort into improving your child's handwriting. This is unfortunate because it really seems like a waste of time. (That is, it's unlikely to improve their real productivity as adults.)

What does all this mean for us? Given that this problem has been well known for so long, it's a wonder that no direct efforts have been made to deal with it (that I know of.) Perhaps remedies weren't so easy when a lot of this research was done in the 70s and 80s. In any case, today there are a number of low cost measures that can be taken immediately to mitigate the problem. First, we can spread the word about the bias and commit to not succumbing to it ourselves. Second, student evaluation can be more focused on multiple choice type questions. (Cheer on fellow TAs!) Of course, the extent to which multiple choice questions can test understanding is limited. For this reason, term papers (in which the identity of the students are masked prior to evaluation) are a good option. Fully computerized work by students seems to be the ultimate solution--perhaps this is coming anyways.

As far as research goes, as I said before, much work has been done on this topic. At the same time, based on the limited amount of reading I've done, the quality leaves much to be desired. Here's the experiment I'd run:

1. Have a collection of students write a page of random words.
2. Give students an answer to a question and have them write it in their own handwriting.
3. Randomly assign samples from #2 to teachers to evaluate.
4. Randomly assign samples from #1 to teachers. Have them evaluate the quality of handwriting on a 1-10 scale. Also have them evaluate how confident they are that the sample is from a boy/girl on a 1-10 scale.
5. Make sure to collect demographic data on students and teachers.

There are two main innovations of this experimental design. First, the evaluation of the handwriting quality is separated from the evaluation of the "work." Second, and more importantly, is obtaining data on the teachers impression of the child's sex. With this data we could to separate the sex signal from the handwriting signal. And we could also test the initial hypothesis I posed above (by collecting data on the kids prior academic achievement.)

Too bad this would probably be a lot of work. Anyone want want to do the heavy lifting?

TeacherTube!

First of all, innovation is needed in education. There's simply no way that computers have been integrated into teaching quickly enough. As a start, I think pretty much all K-6 teachers should have blogs/websites so parents can keep track of what's going on in the classroom without digging through their kid's backpacks. And I'm all for using videogames like Brain Age to help kids learn. Heck, I say do whatever you have to do to get kids to learn with some enthusiasm. Even stuff like this.

Anyways, the main reason for this post is to share a few videos I found on TeacherTube. As expected with this sort of site, few of the videos are great but you have to love the spirit of everyone involved. Especially from Mrs. Burk!



The following video makes a great argument for having kids blog. (Blogs can be made private if that's a concern.)



Sorry I can't figure out how to get the videos to show up through the feed to those of you on Google Reader or the like.

Teaching Hacks: Class Participation

I'm organizing a course on teaching for first-time economics department TAs in the fall so I've been thinking more about teaching lately. Besides getting over the initial nerves, I think the biggest challenge is in getting undergrads to participate. Here are a few scattered thoughts on the issue:

1. Try to start getting participation beginning with the first class. It's a lot easier for students to join in after their peers have already done so. And it can be hard to recover if a non-participatory environment is the status quo.
   
2. I find it helpful to ease the class into participating. For example, I usually begin the first meeting of the quarter by asking about their background. "Raise your hand if you're a first year. Raise your hand if you've taken such-and-such level math. Raise your hand if you're from out of state." I often use this approach on a class by class basis as well. For example, I'll begin the class with "raise your hand if you think minimum wages always reduce employment. Now raise your hand if you disagree" to start the class before moving on to open-ended questions later on.
   
3. Reward participation with enthusiasm.
4. When someone gives a wrong answer, move on quickly so they don't feel bad and so others aren't intimidated. I like to give the correct answer right away. I understand why some may disagree with this approach because it takes the challenge away from other students.
5. The 10 second rule. After you ask a question, be patient and look the class over while waiting for a response. It will get uncomfortable if no one answers. Stick to it. Before 10 seconds are through a student will likely break the silence. Now that you've committed to getting feedback, they will usually answer subsequent questions more quickly. Second, now that (at least) one person has participated, others will feel more comfortable joining in. If the 10 seconds pass without an answer, it's probably time to move on. Try again with a different question after a few minutes.
   
6. Don't ask questions that are too easy. If you do and your students give you the "are you serious?" stare, just give the answer yourself and move on.

I'd love to hear your thoughts/suggestions in the comments.