Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies to Improve Student Achievement

By Lou Whitaker, Ed. D., Brain Junkie

 “…(Teachers)… work in a laboratory called the classroom, and we have a tremendous amount of knowledge and understanding of the teaching/learning process. We have gained this knowledge through experience and from research in educational psychology, cognitive psychology, and teaching methodology. It is up to us to decide how the research from all these sources (including neuroscience) best informs our practice.”    

— Pat Wolfe, President at Mind Matters, Inc.

High-impact, effective teachers are constantly asking themselves questions about student achievement and what factors has the greatest influence on learning. They begin to question themselves and look for ways to improve their teaching strategies. They ask, “How great will my impact be on their personal learning? What are the most effective teaching strategies I should be using in the classroom?”

Here we will take a close look at how the brain learns best through the research and studies conducted through neuroscience and then cross-reference that information with which best practices provide the optimal chance for improving student achievement.

Best Practices Research

Effective educators turn to data-driven research when creating a plan of action. In John Hattie’s book, Visible Learning, A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-analysis Relating to Achievement, he lists indicators that have the greatest impact on student achievement. Based on neuroscience and best practices, I began to think about the Top 10 evidence-based teaching strategies that had the greatest impact on student achievement:

Top Ten Teaching Strategies

10. Positive Teacher/Student Relationships

The relationship teachers have with their students dictates the impact they will have on their students’ achievement. When there is a positive teacher/student relationship, students feel safe and there is a strong bond of trust within the classroom. Students are not afraid to take risks and understand that making errors are all part of the learning process. Students are more likely to feel positive about school and have a greater chance of developing a true love for learning.

Neuroscience is also telling us that there is a direct link between a student’s academic learning and one’s emotions and social environment….and it all starts with the relationships between the teacher and his/her students. Having a basic understanding of social emotional learning is essential when working in our current school systems. Developing a positive, supporting, trustworthy relationship is a basic strategy and critical to the success relating to student achievement.

9. Real-life, Meaningful, Problem Solving Assignments

Personal experiences form many of our strongest neural networks. Many lessons contain references to developing critical-thinking and problem-solving skills but are often hypothetical which usually have predicted outcomes. Teachers need to assign actual problems in their own school or community. These challenges may not be easy to solve, however, struggling with such things as time constraints and insufficient information, students will improve their critical thinking skills as the work to solve these problems.

8. Mnemonics

According to the Oxford Dictionary, mnemonics is “the study and development for improving and assisting memory”.  Although many teachers view them as simply “memory tricks,” they can be effective learning strategies. Research suggests that the use of mnemonics to acquire factual information can often improve the students’ ability to apply that information.

7. Concept Mapping

Concept mapping involves a graphical representation of the major points of the lesson. By summarizing the major concepts into a visual representation, the brain has a better chance of retraining what was presented. The brain is consistently checking to see where it is at and where it is headed.

It’s like when you walk into a mall and you’re looking for a certain store. To begin with, you head for a map and look for the “you are here” sign. Next, you search for your store and then figure out your route to get there. The brain reacts in the same way when it’s learning something new…hooking its prior knowledge to the new information. Using concept maps provides a visual relationship of ideas and topics and shows how items are interconnected and related to one another.

6. Rehearsal Strategies

Active rehearsal strategies are required for long-term retention. In working memory, there are two types of rehearsal strategies, rote and elaborative. Rote rehearsal is used for acquiring certain skills or procedures when automaticity is required, such as learning to type. Elaborate rehearsal is needed for encoding and retrieving enormous amounts of information, such as understanding the concepts regarding the Civil War.

 “It is the frequency of different opportunities rather than merely spending more time on task that makes the difference to learning,” says Gerry Miller in his summary of Hattie’s book.  This is not “drill and kill practice,” but includes deliberative practice involving specific skills and complex variations of the material.  

5. Music, Rhyme, Rhythm

Music does have certain beneficial effects on learning. Researchers Gordon Shaw and Frances Rauscher conducted studies showing the relationship between music training and spatial-temporal reasoning.  Spatial-temporal reasoning is the ability to conceptually solve a problem because of one’s ability to visualize the problem, according to Pat Wolfe. The brain seeks patterns and therefore “…rhyme and rhythm prove great mechanisms for storing information that would otherwise be difficult to retain”. Naming the parts of a neuron will be easily remembered when it’s put into the nursery rhyme, “I’m a little Teapot.”

            I’m a little neuron – axon out!
            Here are my dendrites.

            Watch them sprout!

            When I make connections you can count,

            Over 6,000, without a doubt!

As with mnemonics, using music, rhyme, and rhythm seems to fall under best practices category of teaching strategies.

4. Classroom Discussions

Having good classroom discussions is one of the factors that have the greatest impact on student achievement and is one of the most effective intervention factors related to learning.

According to Tom Barrett in The Curious Creative, teachers should provide opportunities for classroom discussions because they:

• Encourage student interaction and active participation that provide the avenue for social interaction and helps students build confidence as they improve their own personal skills. Students not only develop their speaking abilities but are required to use and perfect their listening skills.  
• Provide an opportunity for the students to connect to a topic. Students are more inclined to stay focused and gain interest in the topic if they are actively engaged in a conversation.
• Provide a forum for expressing personal opinions. Being able to express one’s ideas and thoughts in an articulate manor is an essential life skill. Discussions allow for all opinions to be expressed and give the student a chance to see things from another point of view.
• Build “intellectual agility” as student listen to various viewpoints; they acquire the ability to formulate opinions as they develop their metacognitive skills. They need to “think on their feet” as the discussion moves on.

The brain is a social organ. Its purpose is survival and when we were hunter-gatherers it was imperative that people were able to communicate with others in their tribe. Just as communication is essential in today’s society, classroom discussions are a natural strategy that should be used for the various reasons listed above. 

Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. The human brain has a growth spirit during the adolescent years. Not only is this teaching strategy effective for teenagers, rich classroom discussions are highly effective no matter what the age of the students.

3. Collaborative Learning

Peers can greatly influence one’s learning by tutoring, giving feedback, helping and providing friendship. In Hattie’s research he found peers play an important role in “emotional support, social facilitation, cognitive restructuring, and rehearsal or deliberative practice.” Educators are realizing they can no longer just focus on the academics and that social and emotional learning is essential to improve student achievement.

From the point of neuroscience, neuroplasticity occurs as the brain changes as it learns something new. “Active learning takes advantage of processes that stimulate multiple neural connections in the brain and promotes memory,” according to recent research from the GSI Teaching & Learning Center at The University of California, Berkeley. Active learning includes working in groups through collaborative learning.

2. Reciprocal Teaching

When a student listens to the teacher explain a concept or idea in a lesson, such as learning the parts of a plant, the student pays special attend to the various names, learns how each part is related to the whole and studies the purpose or function of each part. The teacher then puts the students into pairs and asks one student to “teach” the other what they just learned. The first student repeats what the teacher taught in the lesson, naming each part, explains the part’s relationship to the whole, and so forth. After a few minutes, the other child has a chance to reciprocate the action by putting into their own worlds what they have just learned. Just this simple act of teaching one another helps students retain more making it easier to remember and recall the information when test time comes around.

And why is this strategy so effective? When sitting in a lecture hall, there are mainly two regions of the brain that are highly active; the occipital lobes (visually watching the presentation) and the temporal lobes (listening to the lecture). When someone is teaching, or elaborating on what they have learned, not only are the occipital and temporal lobes activated, the parietal lobes (important in language processing) and the frontal lobes (higher order thinking) are stimulated. Doesn’t it make sense that the more regions activated, the better the chance of transferring the information into long-term memory?

1. Understanding the Human Brain and How We Learn Best

“If we want to empower students, we must show them how they can control their own cognitive and emotional health and their own learning,” says neurologist Judy Willis M.D., M.Ed in the article “How to teach students about the brain” in Educational Leadership. And this all starts with understanding the human brain and how we learn. While teaching strategies determine the teacher’s impact, students can learn strategies that help them more efficiently and support a deeper understanding of how the brain functions. It’s very powerful when students, preschool aged through adult, are made aware that they can literally change their brains through neuroplasticity.

Conclusion

John Hattie explains that Visual Learning is “…when teachers see learning through the eyes of the student, and when students see themselves as their own teachers”. By blending teaching strategies based on neuroscience and those ranked high in best practice research, educators provide the greatest opportunity to improve student achievement. Learning is very personal to the teacher as well as the student and when teachers help students understand how they learn, how they think, teachers provide the tools students need to become successful in life. 

Author Bio

Dr. Lou E. Whitaker has a Bachelor of Science in Education, a Masters in Administration, and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership. Dr. Whitaker has been a teacher, a principal, and served as an Associate Superintendent for Schools. She has experience as a Disney Educator and is currently the President for Florida ASCD. Today she is an Educational Consultant for Open Minds Enterprises, The Global Center for College & Career Readiness, and MeTEOR Education. For comments and/or questions, contact Dr. Whitaker at DrLou@meteoreducation.com

Dr. Lou Whitaker will present "What Constitutes an Enriched Environment" at EDspaces 2018 on Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 8:00 am at the Tampa Convention Center.

The Five Es of Entrepreneurship Education

By Gary Schoeniger

The world is changing rapidly. From artificial intelligence, robotics and self-driving cars to the new “gig” economy, the evidence of dramatic change is abundantly clear. And it’s all happening at lightning speed. Suddenly, the rules for survival have changed and the mindset that once enabled us to succeed is rapidly becoming obsolete. We are at the dawn of a new workforce revolution; one that requires everyone to think like an entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurship has never been more important than it is today. Academic, business, government, and nonprofit leaders around the world have begun to recognize entrepreneurship education as essential for creating the societies of the future. Among the most vocal is the World Economic Forum (WEF). In one report, they cite the need to embed entrepreneurship at all levels of education, emphasizing that “it is not enough to add entrepreneurship on the perimeter – it needs to be at the core of the way education operates.” WEF further states that this will require new teaching methods, new frameworks, and new models.

And yet, while entrepreneurship education initiatives have exploded within colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations worldwide, our understanding of entrepreneurship remains limited and narrowly defined. As a result, much of these efforts have yielded limited results. In fact, a recent report published by the Kauffman Foundation declared that "the traditional methods of encouraging entrepreneurship are not producing desired results and should be replaced with methods that are more likely to gain traction."

Thus far, we have been creating innovators and entrepreneurs by accident rather than by design. Therefore, if we are to infuse entrepreneurship into the core of our systems of education, we need to focus on the five key concepts - the five E’s of entrepreneurship education:

1. Expand the definition. We must begin by re-defining the term “entrepreneurship” in a way that is accessible to all, regardless of their circumstances, interests, or chosen path. Entrepreneurship at its core is a process of discovery - the search for the intersection between our own interests and abilities and the needs of our fellow humans. It does not require, big ideas, venture capital, a unique personality, or an Ivy League MBA. It simply requires discovery skills - skills that anyone can learn to develop, yet skills that our system of education historically undervalued, overlooked, or ignored. 

Too often, entrepreneurship education initiatives are over-influenced by Silicon Valley success stories or reality television shows that encourage students to come up with big ideas, write business plans, and pursue venture capital investment. While these stories may captivate our imagination, they are by far the exception and do not reflect the boots-on-the-ground reality of the mindset and the methods that a typical entrepreneur undertakes. By continuously promoting these narrowly defined models, we may be alienating both students and faculty whose interests lie outside of the traditional business domain.

2. Explore the mindset. In order to truly understand the “how” of entrepreneurship, it is essential to look beneath the surface to examine the “why”. What are the underlying beliefs that drive entrepreneurial behavior? And what are the psychological as  well as the environmental factors that either encourage or inhibit the development of entrepreneurial attitudes, behaviors, and skills?

If we are to infuse entrepreneurial thinking throughout the curriculum, we must recognize  entrepreneurship as a behavioral phenomenon rather than a business discipline. We must recognize that, while not all students have a desire to start a business in the traditional sense, we are all driven by an innate desire to be engaged in work that matters, to pursue opportunities, to have control over our day-to-day lives, and to see a viable path towards a better future. And when given the chance to do so, we are much more likely to become engaged in our work, to recognize the value of education, to persist, and ultimately to thrive.

3. Engage our students. We need to do a better job of connecting learning experiences to our student’s individual hopes and dreams. For some, hope may be seen as a touchy-feely concept that is easy to overlook within an academic context. Yet a growing body of research indicates that hope uniquely predicts objective academic achievement above intelligence, personality, and previous academic achievement. In the words of Antoine de Saint-Exupery, “If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”

4. Embrace entrepreneurial learning. Entrepreneurial learning can be transformative, challenging students to re-imagine themselves and the world around them in ways that lead to positive lasting change. If we are to embed entrepreneurship at all levels of education, we must embrace experiential, problem-based learning. We must provide all students with opportunities to develop the skills necessary to identify and solve real-world problems within resource-constrained circumstances where the rules are unknown, no one is in charge, and no one is coming to the rescue. It is only through this process, in these circumstances, that we can truly develop self-reliance and resourcefulness, creativity and critical thinking, effective communication, teamwork, and other entrepreneurial skills. As Google’s Chief Education Evangelist Jaime Casap put it, “Stop asking students what they want to be when they grow up and start asking them what problems they want to solve and what they need to learn in order to solve those problems.”

5. Examine ourselves. W. Edwards Deming once noted that every system is perfectly designed to create the results it is creating. If we are to fully embrace entrepreneurial education we must also look within to recognize the extent to which our systems of education and our organizational structures discourage the development of entrepreneurial attitudes, behaviors, and skills. We must re-examine our own deeply held, taken-for-granted beliefs and assumptions that may no longer be effective. We must embrace new methods, new frameworks, and new models that encourage all students to be innovative and entrepreneurial regardless of their chosen path. In other words, we must also recognize the power of systems to shape behavior.

As the American Theologian Richard Shaull once wrote - “Education either functions as an instrument which is used to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which men and women deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world.”

The entrepreneurial spirit is the human spirit — it’s not just in some of us, it’s in all of us. If we are to shift entrepreneurship from the perimeter to the core of the way education operates, we must recognize the transformative power of entrepreneurship education as a means to empower ordinary people to accomplish extraordinary things, thus enabling them to participate in the much-needed transformation of their world.

Author Bio

Author and Entrepreneur Gary Schoeniger is an internationally-recognized thought leader in the field of entrepreneurial mindset education. As the Founder and CEO of the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, Gary led the development of the Ice House Entrepreneurship Program, which has been recognized by the Kauffman Foundation as “redefining entrepreneurship education in classrooms and communities around the world.” Schoeniger, along with Pulitzer nominee Clifton Taulbert, is also the co-author of Who Owns the Ice House? Eight Life Lessons from an Unlikely Entrepreneur, an international bestseller described as “required reading for humanity.”

Gary Schoeniger will present "Creating Entrepreneurial Learning Environments" at EDspaces 2018 on Thursday, November 8, 2018 at 8:00 am at the Tampa Convention Center.

Session Sponsor: 

Understanding the K-12 Landscape: Spotlight on Public and Charter Schools

By Melissa Pelletier and Anne Wujcik

It’s important for stakeholders in the business of space and learning to understand the state of both public and charter K-12 schools. MDR Educational Marketing Solutions recently published The K-12 Education Landscape report, that provides high level information on schools and enrollment figures, among other topics. This article provides an overview of the report’s chapter on public and charter schools.

Public and Charter Schools in Education

There are almost 55,000,000 students in public K-12 schools in the United States, and roughly 60% of all public schools are elementary schools. Sixteen percent are middle schools, 20% are high schools, and 6% are combined K-12 schools. The charter school mix by grade level differs from that of traditional public schools. Only 10% of charter schools are middle schools, compared with 16% of traditional public schools. It is interesting to note the popularity of the K-12 model among charter schools, where K-12 schools make up 17% of all charter schools, compared with only 5% of traditional public schools.[1] The K-12 model is an efficient way to serve small student populations.

Public Schools by Grade

The Charter Schools’ Role

Charter schools garner much more attention than their numbers or student enrollments would normally predict. In the fall of 2017, there were 7,390 charter schools in operation, serving 3,026,038 students, according to MDR’s K-12 Education Market Database. Charters accounted for 6% of all public schools and enrolled roughly 5% of all public-school students. With charter schools’ twin emphasis on accountability and innovation, they have become critical in the school reform movement. Charter schools embody a prime tenet of school reformers—that providing a variety of learning options and allowing parents to choose what is best for their child offers every student the chance to succeed.

Charter schools are publicly funded schools operated by independent entities. They are authorized by state-sanctioned entities such as the state board of education, an institution of higher education, a local school district, or in some cases a specially constituted authorizing body. The authorizing entity has the responsibility of monitoring each charter school it establishes, and is ultimately responsible for the operational and educational integrity of these charters, and for closing any that fail to meet their educational or operational responsibilities. Charter schools are granted more operational control over their budgets, curriculum, and personnel, functioning with greater flexibility than other public schools in exchange for producing specified results.

Charter funding from the district and the state is based on the number of students attending. The amount of funding a charter receives, and the way those funds are distributed differ dramatically within individual states, and even within individual communities within a state. According to the Center for Education Reform, charter schools receive on average, 36% less revenue than their traditional school counterparts do. Charter schools are funded at $7,131 per pupil.

Charter Enrollment is On the Rise

Charter Management Organizations (CMO) are organizations that create and operate networks of schools that embody a shared educational vision and mission. They represent an attempt to bring high performance to scale, replicating educational approaches that show evidence of being effective. CMOs also help address some of the operational challenges faced by stand-alone charter schools. By centralizing administration, CMOs can provide significant ongoing administrative support to schools in their network, freeing principals to serve as instructional leaders. CMOs can also realize some economies of scale, leveraging their greater purchasing power to meet operational needs. MDR has identified 296 CMOs which are part of its National K-12 Education Market Database.

Just under 40% of CMOs operate small networks, managing three or fewer schools. Thirty percent of CMOs manage between 4 and 9 schools, and another third manage 10 or more schools. Among these larger CMOs are:

• Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) operates 209 schools in 21 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 85,000 students.
• IDEA Public Schools serves more than 35,000 students in 61 schools throughout the Texas Rio Grande Valley, Austin, and San Antonio.
• The Uncommon School Network enrolls more than 13,000 students in 52 schools, located in five northeastern cities—Boston, Newark, New York City, Troy, and Rochester.
• Aspire Public Schools runs 40 schools across California and in Memphis, TN, serving 16,000 students.
• Achievement First operates a network of 34 public charter schools in Connecticut, New York, and Rhode Island, serving 11,600 students.
• Mastery Schools operates 24 schools in Philadelphia, PA and Camden, NJ serving 13,500 students. 

The Regional Public and Charter Mix 

The region with the largest number of traditional public schools is the South (36%), followed by the Midwest (25%), the West (23%), and the Northeast (17%). Charter schools are distributed differently across the regions: 35% of all charter schools in the nation are located in the West, while only 11% are in the Northeast. Western states have a tradition of being more independent and open to individual initiatives. That tradition seems to have created a welcoming environment for charter schools, with enabling legislation and fewer caps on charter school growth. The charter model is well established in the region, with some of the oldest charters found in the West. California was the second state to pass charter legislation in 1992, followed by Colorado and New Mexico in 1993, and Arizona in 1994.

Overall, traditional public schools are distributed relatively evenly over urban (27%), suburban (34%), and rural (24%) settings. Fifteen percent of public schools are located in towns. Charter schools, on the other hand, are an urban phenomenon. Well over half of all charter schools (58%) are located in urban settings, followed by 27% in suburban locations. Only 7% of charter schools are found in rural areas. Originally, most public charter schools were organized as an alternative to poorly performing public schools, many of which are found in America’s major urban centers. Furthermore, because urban and suburban districts have so many students and schools, it is easier for charter schools to generate the resources needed to launch and attract students. In rural settings, the logistics of organizing a charter school can be much more challenging.

Marketing to Individual Charter Schools Versus CMOs

Not only is the charter school segment quite small, it can be difficult to reach. Nearly three-quarters of charters operate as freestanding, independently administered organizations. These one-off operations use a wide variety of instructional approaches and choose their own instructional materials to support the curriculum. They often have small budgets.

The CMO sector of the charter market—roughly 25% of all charter schools— operates somewhat like traditional school districts. In addition to helping all schools in the network present a consistent educational vision, CMOs can provide significant ongoing administrative support to schools in their network. This may include centralized purchasing of at least some instructional materials, making the various CMO networks more attractive targets than their one-off counterparts. That said, most CMOs manage fewer than 10 schools, and many of the larger CMOs use home-grown curricula and instructional resources.

The smaller size of most charter schools, coupled with their more flexible working environments could make them good partners for piloting new products, and conducting effectiveness research, especially among the CMOs. These organizations have a common philosophy about learning, some degree of standardization in terms of classroom management and instructional approach, and centralized professional development, all of which can help ensure ease of implementation.

Melissa Pelletier is the Education Research Editor for MDR and write this article based on MDR’s State of the Market Report – The K-12 Education Landscape. The report was originally written by Anne Wujcik, a former education analyst for MDR.

The Future of School Design

By Michael B. Horn

The steady march of disruptive innovation is growing louder in K–12 schools across America.

It is introducing new learning designs — powered by blended-learning models, which mix brick-and-mortar schools with online learning where each student has some control over the time, place, path, and pace of their learning — to upend the traditional classroom.

The most disruptive of these models invite us to rethink the use of time and space in learning along several dimensions, including personalization, access and equity, and productivity.

Ultimately these new models could allow all students to build their passion and fulfill their unique human potential—something today’s schools do not do. But for this to happen, we will need to rethink the physical design of schools themselves.

Legacy schools

Today’s schools were built based on a factory model of schooling in which students proceed in lockstep through school based on their age regardless of their distinct learning needs. It was built to optimize efficiency for universal schooling in an era where that had never been done before. It was not built to optimize learning.

Because the disruption of blended learning is emerging to a large extent within the physical architecture of these existing “egg-crate” model schools, this architecture could allow the traditional classroom to harness online learning as a sustaining innovation to preserve itself and co-opt the disruption for a long time to come.

This is the challenge before school designers over the next several years: to create new designs that harness the power of new learning models for years to come, even as those new models are still in their infancy, and to avoid doubling down on the traditional school design that would harden the factory model of schooling.

New school designs

For many, particularly those who are seeking to bring sustaining improvements to the traditional classroom model, the basic layout of egg-crate classrooms may be perfectly adequate. Many blended programs, however, are choosing to rearrange their furniture and physical space to align with the principles of student agency, flexibility, and choice that are at the core of their new models.

For example, the Khan Lab School, an independent school founded by the renowned Sal Khan in California, has converted the bottom floor of an office park into a learning studio. There are no interior walls in the studio; it feels more like a one-room schoolhouse, in keeping with Khan’s book The One-World Schoolhouse, than like a standard school building. The open space gives students the flexibility they need to complete collaborative term projects, such as starting a greeting card business or building a computer from scratch, while providing distinct spaces for individual work online or small-group instruction.

In Chicago, Intrinsic Schools, a public charter school, operates in a building that Larry Kearns, an architect at Wheeler Kearns Architects, designed. When designing it, he said it was key to turn off the autopilot switch and focus on the activities that fuel learning. Because “learning is monopolized by large-group direct instruction, all you need are cellular classrooms, with rows of desks focused on a single instructor” in a traditional school, he told me. But because blended-learning models use multiple modes of learning, they need spaces designed to support different modalities.

When designing the building for Intrinsic, Kearns first spent a year prototyping ideas with the schools in multiple pilots in temporary spaces. Without the feedback from those pilots, he said, the ultimate learning space would have looked totally different and been based on assumptions that proved false.

In Kearns’ words, the school looks like the following:

Each grade at Intrinsic, which includes eight instructors and up to 180 students, is accommodated in a pair of interconnected “pods,” each with its own acoustically isolated room. Each pod is an open studio with spaces dedicated to individual, collaborative, and small-group learning. One pod focuses on a humanities curriculum and the other on a STEM curriculum. In each pod, a “coastline” of workspaces provides for personalized online learning, “exchange tables” host peer-to-peer learning, and “pop-up classes” provide areas for teachers to work with 12 students at a time. These spaces are skillfully interlocked with one another to minimize disturbance between activities. First time visitors to Intrinsic are always surprised by the corridors. You won’t find hallway lockers or the ubiquitous double-loaded school corridor anywhere. Instead, you will find hallways lined with windows and views. Since Intrinsic students use Chromebooks, they don’t have to rely on lockers to store books as they move from room to room.

The resulting building has far more space dedicated to learning than a traditional building where so much square footage is wasted on large hallways—55 percent compared to 25 percent at most new district high schools in Chicago. As a result, it is a much more cost-effective building. Intrinsic, which was built with union labor, enjoyed cost savings that were at least twice that of schools of a comparable size.

Challenges to moving in this direction

There is a lot of inertia in school building design, so moving in this direction will not be easy. There are two obvious challenges.

First, in the 1970s a wave of builders tried to move to an open classroom design, which ultimately failed as educators spent the 1980s and 1990s erecting walls. There is a difference now, however. In the 1970s, there was an assumption that any learning activity could occur anywhere. In other words, you wouldn’t need to design specific spaces for specific modalities of learning. In trying to be all things to all modalities, however, the spaces were suboptimal for any activity. On top of that, in the absence of any technological advances, the dominant model of instruction was still a teacher talking to her class, which produces noise that could disturb a neighboring class or silent learning activity. Blended learning changes this dynamic because of the introduction of online learning, but it’s still important to bear in mind that spaces in new buildings must be purpose-built and not try to be universal in nature.

Second, a significant number of building codes have emerged in districts and cities over the years that are at odds with what designers and educators may want to do with new building designs. With Intrinsic Schools, for example, Kearns said they had to apply “for every kind of code relief possible. Since the codes only referenced the egg-crate school, no one knew how to apply the rules. So the major trap to avoid is the impulse to design schools literally by the books that exist now.”

Other opportunities with new designs

There are two other clear opportunities with new school design. First, there is the opportunity to create spaces that feature far more interaction for teachers with their fellow peers. Research has shown this professional interaction is a big positive, and new designs can greatly increase the number of interactions beyond anything we are accustomed to, as teachers can co-teach and students will benefit from exposure to a much larger social group and multiple instructors with different strengths and styles.

Second, it’s likely that with technology handling basic instruction, maker spaces will become far more common in schools. These spaces will allow students to work on 3D-printers, laser cutters, and more to explore and test ideas in the humanities, math, science, and engineering.

The future

As Kearns said, “If blended learning is a more effective way to educate, it is similarly a more efficient way to build schools.” Although the best many educators can do at the moment is hack their current space with simple workarounds, the real example of a missed opportunity is when leaders get the chance to build a new building or renovate an old, and they choose to perpetuate the integrated factory-type blueprint. After all, who wants to be the designer that builds the last twentieth-century school building?

Michael B. Horn Michael Horn speaks and writes about the future of education and works with a portfolio of education organizations to improve the life of each and every student. He is the co-founder of and a distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, a non-profit think tank, and he serves as a principal consultant for Entangled Solutions, which offers innovation services to higher education institutions. Horn is the author and coauthor of multiple books, white papers, and articles on education, including the award-winning book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns and the Amazon-bestseller Blended: Using Disruptive Innovation to Improve Schools.


Michael B. Horn is the EDspaces 2018 Keynote Speaker at the Opening Plenary on Wednesday, November 7, 2018 at 9:30 am at the Tampa Convention Center.

Plenary Session Sponsor: 

Designing Educational Spaces That Support Executive Function

By Dr. Nancy Sulla

Imagine you enter your home, fling open the door, and the door knob punches a hole in your wall. You decide to fix it yourself. All you have to do is “Google” it. You locate a how-to sheet with step-by-step directions for spackling a wall; you find a video of someone demonstrating the process. Easy, right? Not so fast. Suppose you did not possess the skills of focus, following multiple steps, shifting focus from one event to another, catching and correcting errors, attending to an activity, and persisting in a task? Even the best how-to sheet or video would not yield success. Those are just some of the skills of executive function, managed by a part of your brain just behind your forehead.

It turns out that living in situations of chronic stress, such as poverty, domestic violence, abuse, protracted divorce, and even having parents that put constant pressure on you to succeed, can slow the development of this part of the brain. In his book, How Children Succeed, Paul Tough (2013) draws the correlation between poverty and poor academic achievement due to lack of executive function. Is it possible, then, that the rush to purchase better instructional materials and provide professional development to teachers to offer better lessons might not provide the answer to student achievement as much as would building executive function? Consider that most content you need to master today is easily found on the Internet. What is not found there is the ability to think critically, reason, see unintended consequences -- the skills of executive function. The good news is that the part of the brain that handles executive function has the ability to develop further; we can improve students’ executive function.

The history of classroom design has been to focus on teaching, with students being able to face the front of the room for lessons; but what if, instead, we design classrooms that focus learning, with an emphasis on ensuring growth in executive function that will lead to student achievement? In Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classrooms (Sulla, 2011), students engage in solving real-world problems. Drawing from myriad related learning activities identified and designed by the teacher, students schedule how they will use their class time to learn the content needed to solve the problem. While there are times when the teacher addresses the whole class, these are short 10-15 minute presentations to introduce concepts and raise students’ awareness of what they need to learn. So rather than designing the room to accommodate those few moments over the course of a day or week, the classroom is designed to allow for various opportunities to engage with and grapple with content.

Executive function skills are not strengthened through lessons as much as they are through classroom structures and continued use. In my book, Building Executive Function: The Missing Link to Student Achievement (2018), I take a different approach to executive function skills. Rather than starting with the skills themselves, I recommend focusing on the greater life skills that executive function skills support, namely conscious control, engagement, collaboration, empowerment, efficacy, and leadership. Following are ideas for building educational spaces that support these skills.

Consider the following physical spaces in a classroom to promote greater executive function while advancing academic achievement:

Discourse Center

An area of soft seating with couches and chairs provides a comfortable place for students to discuss their work and texts they are reading. If you can, physically design the space to be tucked into an indented area and have a “nook” feel to it.  Here students build conscious control and engagement, practicing the executive function skills of focus, attending to a person or activity, concentrating, maintaining social appropriateness, and more. Offer students discussion protocols, or “norms of engagement,” so that they see what is expected of them in this area. These may include summarizing what others have said, making a connection to or transition from the last person who spoke, ensuring that all students participate in the conversation, etc.

Observation Deck

Creativity is an executive function skill: it is not a personality trait that only some possess; it can be developed in all. Highly creative people observe (Kaufman & Gregoire, 2015).  Design an area where students can observe. It should have a window to the outside; however, it could also have a counter on which to place various objects, plants, and animals for observation. Here, students build conscious control and engagement. As students build the ability to observe and record observations, they can advance to anticipating and making predictions.

Conference Area

A conference table offers students a place to discuss their readings and research when they need to have perhaps texts, paper, and/or computers with them. Design seating for a group of no more than four at the elementary grades and up to eight at the secondary level. Students sign up to use the conference area for their small-group discussions. Offer students discussion protocols to follow. Here, given the appropriate tasks, students build conscious control, engagement, empowerment, efficacy, and leadership.

Collaborative Area

Collaboration requires the executive function skills of seeing multiple sides of a situation, being open to others’ points of views, maintaining social appropriateness, and overcoming temptation. Students also build skills related to problem-solving, advancing efficacy. The keys to designing collaborative spaces are having 1) a table size that allows students to talk and engage with collaborative materials easily; 2) an unbroken surface area, as opposed to desks pushed together; 3) a round table so that no one is at the head of the table. I recommend 42” table diameters or, in the case of a clover table, 48” (the indentation offers a 42” diameter while the protruded area offers a 48” diameter.) Collaboration is not a process of divide-and-conquer; it requires students to “come to the table” with individual mastery and synthesize to develop a better end product. Provide students with consensus-building tools to guide their interaction. 

Individual Work Area

At times, students need to work independently to build content mastery. Design a section of the room with individual desks apart from the noisier collaborative areas. As students consider their goals and schedule how they will use time, they build important executive function skills related to empowerment, such as monitoring performance, managing time, and reflecting on goals. As they tackle real-world problems, both individually and collaboratively, they build the executive function skills for efficacy -- being able to identify a goal and create a plan to achieve it.

Quiet Work Zone

For students who struggle with focus, concentration, attending to a person or activity, persisting in a task, and overcoming temptation, a quiet work zone will support their growth. Consider study carrels designed to minimize distractions.

Small-Group, Mini-Lesson Area

Students build academic skills through learning activities, teacher facilitation, and small-group lessons offered by the teacher on targeted skills or concepts. It is important to put a table (rectangular or kidney shaped) in an area of the room with a white board and, if possible, projection capability. Students sign up to attend small-group, mini-lessons, building greater executive function skills toward empowerment. Teachers can also require certain students to attend specific lessons.

Daydream Center

Creative people daydream! (Kaufman & Gregoire, 2015) How wonderful to build a space in a room where students can spend a ten-minute period just daydreaming. Fill it with stimulating images and colors.

Game Area

Games, particularly games of strategy, are powerful tools for building the executive function skills for engagement and efficacy, including making mental images, identifying cause-and-effect relationships, and considering future consequences in light of current action. Set up some tables and fill the shelves with board games. Computer games are welcome as well!

Maker Space / STEM Area

Many teachers these days are designing areas to fill with materials that allow students to make objects and/or use a design process to solve a STEM problem. Fill shelves with see-through bins of materials and let students creativity flow! A good design process will move students between divergent and convergent thinking, exercising myriad executive function skills.

Next time you consider designing educational spaces, whether a classroom or entire school, consider how the physical space can promote greater executive function toward increased student achievement.

 References

Kaufman, S.B., Gregoire, C. (2015). Wired to create: Unraveling the mysteries of the creative

mind. New York: Penguin.

Sulla, N. (2011). Students taking charge: Inside the learner-active, technology-infused

classroom. New York: Routledge.

Sulla, N. (2018). Building executive function: The missing link to student achievement. New York: Routledge.

Tough, P. (2013) How children succeed: Grit, curiosity, and the hidden power of character. New York: Mariner Books.

 About the Author

Dr. Nancy Sulla is the President, IDE Corp. — Innovative Designs in Education and an author and the creator of the Learner-Active, Technology-Infused Classroom. You can follow Nancy’s blog and find out more about her at www.nancysulla.com and her company at www.idecorp.com.