According to UK Teacher Development Trust
“. . . education policy is perhaps more vulnerable to context than many other areas of public policy.”
“Understanding emotion is more critical than ever to understanding the reality of implementation.”
‘”In contexts that allow people to develop divergent perceptions about each other’s positive and negative idiosyncrasies, the traditional trapping of market forces falls away, permitting individuals to seek mates on a more level playing field,’ the researchers write.”
—Ana Swanson, “The real reason some people end up with partners who are way more attractive” on the Washington Post
“What is emerging is a new idea: that qualities like grit and resilience are not formed through the traditional mechanics of “teaching”; instead, a growing number of researchers now believe, they are shaped by several specific environmental forces, both in the classroom and in the home, sometimes in subtle and intricate ways.”
–Paul Tough, “How Kids Really Succeed” in The Atlantic
Chalk up more research confirming what-we’ve-been-saying-all-along here at Schools & Ecosystems: a school’s learning environment impacts student learning.
In case you don’t know, NYC has been collecting what folks call “school climate” data via surveys administered to teachers, parents, and students since 2007. It’s important information to have about a school–arguably more important, to my mind, than test scores (I believe both should be considered).
Last July, I had quoted Match Education’s Mike Goldstein asking an important question about all this data:
Is anyone aware of scholars and reporters digging deep into this data set? Is there any other data set in the USA just as good?
I think it’d be hugely productive to identify NYC schools which have made progress in “Total Climate” — and then study why.
Well, Mike, you’ve got your answer.
NYU’s Research Alliance for New York City Schools published a study using NYC’s school climate information that demonstrates that a school’s learning environment not only impacts student learning, but furthermore teacher retention. As Chalkbeat NY’s Alex Zimmerman reports:
Each measure, the report found, is independently linked to decreases in teacher turnover. And gains on two of those measures, high academic expectations and school safety, were directly connected to better scores on state math exams.
The study found that if a school improved from the 50th percentile across the study’s four measures of school climate (leadership, expectations, relationships, and safety) to the 84th percentile, teacher turnover would decline by 25 percent, or 3.8 percentage points.
A similar percentile increase in measures of school safety and high academic expectations alone boosted math scores enough to account for an extra month and a half of instruction. (Improvements in school climate also boosted language arts scores on state tests, but those gains weren’t statistically significant.)
It’s important to note that this study confined its focus to the following aspects of school climate:
Missing in such an examination (and mostly from these surveys themselves) is a focus on the physical environment of a school. There are questions pertaining to cleanliness and conditions of a school, but as we’ve also been arguing on this blog, the actual design, and the incorporation (or absence) of access to natural light and greenery, colors, furniture, etcetera (all largely subconscious factors), all have an impact on learning and relationships in a school.
If your school is interested in collecting school climate data, the US Department of Education is sharing free surveys and information for collection of data similar to NYC’s. Check it out and share.
“stopping may actually be a relatively automatic and effortless process, and, in some sense, a mere by-product of being appropriately mindful of environmental change. Instead of stopping, the central role is occupied by the ability to attend vigilantly to features of the world that might demand changes in behavior.“
—Cognitive Neuroscience Society blog, “Children Need to Learn Context to Know When to Stop”
This interview is a bit difficult to parse for a layman like myself, but it jibes with my ken.
It makes more sense to train a child to become aware of the physical changes that can occur during emotional stress rather than merely techniques for “stop and think.” You can’t stop and think if you aren’t able to monitor yourself enough to know that you need to stop and think!
Schools & Ecosystems 