Peter Meyerhoff

4E cognition gives us a framework to think about learning in 4 ways: • Embodied in our senses & lived reality • Embedded in a cultural & social context • Enacted via experiential problem-solving • Extended across tools, devices, & collaborators bit.ly/3u1vsn3

In theory we could also try talking with kids and listening to what they say. cnn.com/2021/02/16/tec…

Not to be missed Saturday on the Hallmark Channel: PLAYING CUPID, based on the book by @jennymeyerhoff. Jenny's re-telling of Austen's "Emma" is set in a middle school, where 7th grader Clara has started a matchmaking business. A great family watch! hallmarkchannel.com/playing-cupid

New work by a young filmmaker I like a lot

Given a choice, where would you place your student? It’s a nonobvious result, but on outcome measures we care about, an SEL-improving school will have a higher impact than a test-score-improving school. So why do we look only at test scores when measuring school “quality”? 3/3

Some schools are better than others at developing interpersonal skills, building academic and personal resilience, promoting hard work and instilling a sense of belonging at school. Some are better at increasing test scores. 2/3

A consequential finding from @kirabojackson & colleagues: a high school’s ability to develop social-emotional skills has a higher effect on long-run student outcomes, including 4-year college attendance, than its ability to raise test scores. 1/3 nber.org/papers/w26759

New research on test score declines during school closure misses so much of what's essential about school. It’s an “achievement” to make friends. It’s “learning” when you deal with getting jostled in the hallway. It’s a “high-stakes test” to go to homecoming. Those count, too.

True rigor in math education means teaching procedural fluency, conceptual understanding & real-world application with *equal intensity*. It’s time to bring them into balance with activities that give kids fun ways to apply their developing math ideas. /END

As our schools reopen, let’s: (1)Find instructional minutes for supplementary math activities (2)Use the time to let kids work on fun, hands-on math games and projects (3)Recognize student work & interaction during these activities as evidence of mathematical practice 11/12

Instead, we can give kids more ways to *do* math. We need fun in-class activities that engage kids’ hands, eyes, ears, bodies, and voices in active problem-solving. Kids need to move around, interact, make things, and talk math. 10/12

We don’t need to replace our base curricula or stop giving standardized tests or throw away our tried-and-true lessons or stop doing math on screens. All of these have their place in the classroom. 9/12

Computers generally make all of this worse. There’s a place for great software in math education, but kids have too much screen time. The classroom should be a dynamic, material, social environment. Screens should start or support activity, not *be* the activity. 8/12

This is the central failing of elementary school math instruction: its radical abandonment of concreteness, exactly when concreteness is most needed. In order for the formalism of algebra and higher math to make sense, students must connect the abstract to the real. 7/12

“Concepts” like fractions or the coordinate plane were invented as tools to solve everyday problems of measurement, counting and prediction. School math has (mostly) lost this critical connection to the cultural roots of mathematics. Of course it doesn’t make sense! 6/12

Most people believe that early math learning should make use of concrete objects. But as students reach 3rd, 4th and 5th grade, we tell them to put the kid stuff away and get down to the “real” math. That’s exactly backwards. 5/12

If math mainly happens in the flatland of paper, screens and whiteboards, kids miss out. Math can be spatial, embodied and kinetic. We can embed complex mathematical ideas in things kids can design and build, objects they can move and change, phenomena they can measure. 4/12

The problem with school math isn’t with any of the usual suspects: the Common Core, or standardized testing, or the curricular materials that focus on them. These are OK for what they do. But we need to do *more* and *different kinds* of math with kids. 2/12

Imagine an English class that focused on teaching students to read instruction manuals. A science class where students only memorized lists of elements. A gym class where they watched videos of people running around a track. 3/12

Too many kids hate math. No wonder! Most school math is confusing, hard and not fun. It doesn’t have to be this way. As kids get back into classrooms, it’s time to bring new math ideas into school. 1/12