Understanding Student's Prior Knowledge

In the article "Prior knowledge is more than content: Skills and beliefs also impact learning", authors Susan Ambrose and Marsha Lovett, examine how teachers can determine the prior knowledge their students possess and how to effectively incorporate it into their teaching to promote student learning.
The four types of prior knowledge discussed in this article are content specific, intellectual skills, epistemological beliefs, and metacognition.  Strong and accurate content-specific prior knowledge can aid in a smoother acquisition of new information but when the foundation of this prior knowledge is weak or faulty,  new information is rejected because it does not connect with the prior and teachers must modify their instruction to correct misinformation. To assess content specific prior knowledge, teachers can administer diagnostics test, have students self-evaluate or look for patterns of error. Intellectual skills are what students need to be able to digest, express, apply and demonstrate the knowledge that has been taught to them and any form of assessment given can be affected if intellectual skills have not been taught. Epistemological beliefs are a student's views on learning stemming from their perceived capacities, experiences and notations of the world, which can have a bigger impact on students behavior than their actual capability. Teachers should be taking these perceptions on learning into consideration and plan to combat the negative beliefs that impact behavior and hinder learning.  Metacognition is also a crucial process that allows students to reflect, assess and plan on their own understanding of the content material. It allows students to take control of their own learning not only in grade school but prepares them to college and beyond.

Main point is that "(1) Prior knowledge plays a critical role in learning, which means that (2) faculty members need to assess the content, beliefs and skills students bring with them into courses and (3) use that information as both a foundation for new learning as well as an opportunity to intervene when content knowledge is inaccurate or insufficient; skills are not adequately developed; and beliefs are interfering with productive learning behaviors." (pg. 16)

The part of the article that really stuck out to me was how "Many believe that learners’ beliefs about their capabilities – often preconscious and often inaccurate– can be more important drivers of behavior than their actual capability (pg. 13). This made me reflect on a student that I have that has a hard time staying on task during independent work. The student often gets stuck early on in the work and instead of asking for help, the student goes on to distract other students. I have tried to combat this by frequently checking in with this student during independent work while we work on getting him more comfortable to ask for help. Outside of independent work, I have also tried to give the student discrete positive affirmations about himself to help build up his morale. When the student makes habituated negative comments about himself like "well, of course, I wouldn't understand that", I always try to immediately intervene on those as well. While it seems that this is a mindset that the student has already accepted about himself, I think that this would have been important information for myself, as well as future teachers that have him, to have known so that we could have worked on it since the beginning instead of waiting until the patterns brought up this concern.

Reference: Ambrose, S. A., & Lovett, M. C. (2014). Prior knowledge is more important than content: Skills and beliefs also impact learning. In V. A. Benassi, C. E. Overson, & C. M. Hakala (Eds.),Applying science of learning in education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum (pp. 7-19). Retrieved from http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/asle2014/index.php

Mindfullness Against Burnout

In the article "The protective effects of mindfulness against burnout among educators", authors Abenavoli, Jennings, Greenberg, Harris, and Katz, analyze the self-reports completed by 64 educators (98 percent Caucasian) from two middle schools in Pennsylvania to associate the three components of burnout and its causes. Statistics gathered by MetLife show that 51 percent of US educators report "experiencing excessive stress several days per week and nearly 40percent leave the profession within the first five years of teaching" (pg 57). This study aims to identify factors that can be altered in the stress of the profession to help teachers cope and the authors believe that social and emotional competence can be the key. After weeks of reading and learning about Social and Emotional Learning, it seems pretty obvious that if teachers believe that it can be extremely beneficial to the overall well-being, motivation and academic excellence for students, why not apply the same practices for themselves to receive similar benefits.

The study's results found mindfulness (defined as paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally) to be a key component of association leading to burnout (characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and low personal accomplishment). Statistical data retrieved from this study showed a strong correlation between low levels of mindfulness and the characteristics of burnout as well as a strong correlation also between high levels of mindfulness and lower reports of characteristics of burnout. Mindfulness also seemed to be a "protective factor" against burnout, having found that when mindlessness is not strong, higher levels of ambition lead to high levels of burnout.

As learned throughout this course, Social and Emotional Learning can have a huge impact on students to give them the tools not only to maneuver through the educational system but through life. Again, if educators can promote this for students because of the known advantages and positive effects, why not promote it for themselves as well? Of course, if schools struggle with introducing and maintaining SEL programs for students, I don't seem them jumping at the idea of introducing them for their teachers as well. Nonetheless, even if districts or schools do not give full support for the implementation of these programs for teachers, there are still little things that can be done between departments or even individual teachers. A quick google search even brought up journals and books for teachers to use and go by. As teacher use each other for researches as well, those individually practicing SEL for themselves could also recommend it to their colleagues.

Reference: Abenavoli, R. M., Jennings, P. A., Greenberg, M. T., Harris, A. R., & Katz, D. A. (2013). The protective effects of mindfulness against burnout among educators. Psychology of Education Review, 37(2), 57-69.

Strong Start Curriculum

The article "Social and Emotional Learning in the Kindergarten Evaluation of the Strong Start Curriculum", examines the effect of Strong Start, a social and emotional learning curriculum, on Kindergarten students.  The study mentions that while about 20% of students have social or behavioral problems, only 16% of those students are actually receiving appropriate interventions and many teachers report feeling that they do not possess the adequate training to meet their needs. It seems that not many studies have been conducted on the effects of social and emotional learning at the kindergarten level but this study claims that social competencies being to form since pre-school and are strongly influenced by their early learning environments.
This study evaluated the Strong Start curriculum as a preventative program implemented in four predominantly Caucasian Kindergarten classrooms in suburban Utah. A total of 67 students were studies and results showed an increase between the pretest and post-test of the School Social Behavioral Scale (SSBS) conducted by the teachers and the Home and Community Social Behavioral Scales (HCSBS) conducted by parents and maintained the increase at a 6 week follow up. However, while there was an improvement in visible behavior, internalizing behaviors were only reported at a slight decrease, although it can be more difficult to examine.

Even though I am currently students teaching at the high school level and plan to continue my career here, I believe that it is important to acknowledge and understand the educational journeys that our students have gone through thus far. Although we each work to create the environments that we desire for our classroom, as this study mentions, the learning environments that students are in, especially in early education, effects the behaviors that students exhibit years later. Personally, I take this as an insight into the importance of gathering information from the previous schools that my students attended and seeing the programs and resources that were available to them. Although this is definitely not the same as knowing the environment that your students were in, at least we can get a sense of the learning community they come from.
A very interesting note brought up within the study was how there were only minor changes to internalizing behaviors, yet are identified as being just as critical in the development and overall mental and emotional health of students.  As a teacher, this reminds me that even though a student's visible behavior make be stellar, we can not assume that internalizing behaviors are at par. We must always check in with our students and build relationships with them so that they may feel comfortable with sharing the things that we do not see.

Reference: Kramer, T.J., Caldarella, P., Christensen, L., & Shatzer, R.H. (2010). Social and Emotional Learning in the Kindergarten Classroom: Evaluation of the Strong Start Curriculum. Early Childhood Education Journal 37, 303-309.