Arguments help teens figure out what they know and believe

...and also provide them with valuable information about their developing identities. Parents should not argue with their teens to control them, to win the battle of wits, or to show them "who's boss" but, rather, argue to inform and to teach them -- and help them develop intellectually.

Why A Teen Who Talks Back May Have A Bright Future : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

The Role of Youth

An excellent mini-history on the recent history (post-WWII) of youth in modern/post-modern society.

The Role of Youth - Video Library - The New York Times

Another harmful myth about adolescents is debunked

Turns out, adolescents may not be the sex-crazed social mutants that many adults assume them to be.

"Just 1 percent of teens say they've created sexually explicit images and shared them, according to a new survey of 1,560 teenagers by the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. About 2.5 percent of teens said they'd appeared in or created nude or nearly nude photos or videos. That's a far cry from the "22 percent of all teens are sexting" data that's been tossed around in the past few years."

Read more here:
Teens Aren't the Rampant Sexting Maniacs We Thought : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Zero-tolerance policies should not be tolerated

They are ineffective, ridiculous, harmful, and send the wrong messages to students about "grown-up" adults' abilities to treat them fairly, respectfully, and honestly. Other than they, hey, they work great.

Are school zero-tolerance policies too harsh? – USATODAY.com

Students weigh in on the ingredients for a "great teacher"

What is it that makes for a great high school teacher? This report contains five essays by diverse groups of students about teaching strategies that worked for them and summarizes 10 practices that students think are most important for effective teaching.

Student Voices: What Makes a Great Teacher? | Connecting education policy with experience

Counselors cannot promote student development

Secondary school counselors cannot effectively promote students' development if schools don't utilize counselors' skills and knowledge appropriately. But, promoting student development (which should be the principal activity of counselors) and prepping students for high stakes test performance (a misguided task foisted upon teachers) are hardly complementary missions. And, students suffer the consequences.

Counselors Say Schools' Missions are Misguided - High School Notes (usnews.com)

National survey on STEM interests

Students find their STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) groove early.

Microsoft Releases National Survey Findings on How to Inspire the Next Generation of Doctors, Scientists, Software Developers and Engineers: New survey among college students and parents of K–12 students provides implications for nurturing interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers.

Transgender kids: The most challenging identity work

Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are - CNN.com

No clear guidelines for educators here...the best advice is to accept the child/student as they are, promote tolerance, and prohibit any form of teasing, ridicule, and bullying.

Identity: Relevant to women and girls in science and engineering

I am participating this morning in a webinar offered by Women in Engineering ProActive Network on Identity: Why it is important to think about how women and girls see themselves in science and engineering, and presented by Marie-Claire Shanahan, of the University of Alberta. Nice to see that engineering educators are thinking about the importance of identity development to students' interest and participation in STEM and their academic achievement in these fields.

A few key ideas from Professor Shanahan's webinar:

• Women's participation in STEM has leveled off in recent years. 
• Strongest predictors of participation in science, for women, are intrinsic interest, situational (topic) interest, self-efficacy for math and science, and recognition from parents, teachers, and peers.  
• Students' personal desire (to learn and do science) is also important.
• Influences on identity include students' expectations about science work (i.e., what it takes to be a scientist, i.e., intelligence).
• Providing positive female role models may not have a significant impact on female students' interest in science.
• Teacher characteristics make a difference to student identities (i.e., teachers perceived as competent, interesting; not their gender).
• We need to change the ways students view science and themselves.

Of course, how we make these sorts of changes among students is still very much an open question. However, I am convinced that, when STEM educators develop deeper understanding of the relevance of students' identities to interest, pursuit of, and achievement STEM, they will be better able to attend to identity work in the context of STEM teaching.  

It's all about the fame

Study: Tween TV today is all about fame – The Chart - CNN.com Blogs

Dropping Out

A well-done, informative story on some of the personal and school-related factors that contribute to students' dropping out of school, and how they deal with the consequences of their decision.

Dropping Out, A Life-Changing Decision : NPR

Congressional support for social learning in school

Not clear to me how schools and teachers will be able to successfully manage to incorporate social-emotional learning into curriculum and instruction that is driven by standardized testing. This stuff is easy to mandate, but tough to implement.

Analysis, Congressional Bill Support Classroom Social Learning - Inside School Research - Education Week

Effective relationships in school can support students' identity development

A few key ideas from this brief 2005 article:

We need to understand other peopoe before we can expect them to understand us. Thus, secondary teachers should strive to get to know their students -- their developmental needs, their interests, talents, and personal backgrounds, as well as their academic proficiencies.

Relationship-centered teaching involves managing the learning context, not the learners. Thus, secondary teachers should strive to create motivating classroom environments that engage students' interests, capitalize upon their skills and knowledge, and promote caring, mutually-responsive relationships. Such learning conditions foster intrinsic motivation and sends a message to students that what they know, do, and can learn is important. Teachers should avoid trying to dominate or control students.

Teachers and school administrators must work effectively with parents as well as students to create engaging, motivation classrooms and school environments where all stakeholders -- parents, students, teachers, administrators, support staff -- are involved participants.

The Fourth R in Education-Relationships - Education News - redOrbit

Give students a voice on boards of education

This is a good start...but doesn't go far enough. Give students a voice AND a vote.

Vt. high school student to sit on ed board - Boston.com

Smart alternatives to zero-tolerance

Moving past zero-tolerance disciplinary policies - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

And yet many school administrators continue to be intolerant

Zero tolerance does not work and, in many cases, is harmful to students' development and academic performance.

More schools are rethinking zero tolerance - The Washington Post

Motivating students: The MUSIC model

An intriguing new model of student motivation...I am happy to report that the authors of this work, Jason Osbourne and Brett Jones, are also interested in the role of student identity development in motivation and achievement, as published in a recent paper in Educational Psychology Review.

Motivating Students | Home

An identity-finding experience

The challenge for schools is to create the right kinds of conditions and opportunities -- engaging, diverse curriculum; motivated, caring teachers who can effectively mentor students; a warm and welcoming school environment -- for students to discover what they love to learn, know, and do.

Why St. Viator grad who hated science now loves science - DailyHerald.com

Students' perspectives on high-stakes tests

Adolescents' voices regarding the over-use of standardized testing in school are clear and largely uniform. Why aren't responsible adults listening?

Students: Too many tests given; no pay for performance | CharlotteObserver.com & The Charlotte Observer Newspaper

Negative school environments create stressed students

Students in negative environments, such as classrooms where teachers feel disrespected by their co-workers, have more behavioral and emotional problems, after controlling for other factors, according to a recent study, led by Melissa Milkie, a sociology professor at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Hardly surprising. Positive behaviors and prosocial interactions among students (and between teachers and students) are unlikely to emerge in school environments where teachers (and students) feel stressed, disrespected, and discounted. Nobody feels good about themselves or others in such situations.

Do School Cuts Lead to Stressed Students? - The Juggle - WSJ

Coming out: Required reading for secondary teachers

Unfortunately, secondary educators often unwittingly (or, sometimes, deliberately) contribute to the bullying that GLBTQ teens experience in school. It shouldn't happen. Perhaps reading these first-person stories of what it means to be a gay teen will be helpful.

Coming Out: Audio, Photos, Stories of Gay Teens - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Teens responsible to parents more engaged in school

According to Eva M. Pomerantz, professor of psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who led the study, "[e]xplicitly talking with teens about acting responsibly is likely to be useful. Involvement in teens' lives is also very important. For example, when parents are involved in teens' learning, teens tend to develop a sense of responsibility to parents, which maintains their achievement over the middle school years."

Teens who feel responsible to their parents are more engaged in school

Moving up to middle school

Some good advice:

Educational Leadership:The Transition Years:Movin' Up to the Middle

Personal and social development related to academic achievement

Study: Promoting Students' Personal and Social Development Boosts Academic Outcomes, a Guest Blog by Joseph Durlak | Edutopia

Teens predict their future lives

An interesting project from the NYTimes:

High-School Seniors Predict Their Future - Interactive Feature - NYTimes.com

Let kids rule the school, or at least the curriculum

This is identity work in school:

Let Kids Rule the School - NYTimes.com

Giving children the power to be scientists

Students who are taught how to think and act like scientists -- through the method of "personal inquiry" -- develop a clearer understanding of the subject.

Read more here: Giving children the power to be scientists

Negative classroom environment affects mental health

Negative classroom environment adversely affects children's mental health

And likely that of adolescents, too.

Peer pressure may change students' brains

The headline may overstate the case, but it's an interesting study to think about. Still -- one should be wary about making broad implications from neuroscience research to the school and classroom.

Study: Peer Pressure May Change Students' Brains - Inside School Research - Education Week

Teacher praise: Helpful or harmful?

This article seeks to debunk the work of Alfie Kohn and others who have claimed that teachers' positive messages of appraisal ("Good work, Johnny!") is detrimental to students over the longer term. Kohn argues that students will come to be dependent upon teacher praise, will only respond when they are certain that they will be praised, and are, therefore, "punished by rewards" of this sort. This has demonstrated by the empirical work of Deci and Ryan and their self-determination theory colleagues. Incidents of teacher praise in classrooms appear to be somewhat uncommon, however, perhaps because there simply isn't time for teachers to verbally respond to, and positively reinforce, students' behaviors.

Read more here:

The Power of Teacher Praise | Essential Educator

Questioning the value of 'College for all'

A new report out of Harvard University raises serious questions about how students should be prepared for work once they graduate from high school, according to an article in Education Week:

Leaders of the “Pathways to Prosperity” project at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education argue for an education system that clearly articulates students’ career options as early as middle school and defines the coursework and training required, so young people can chart an informed course toward work, whether as an electrician or a college professor.

A particular emphasis is on preparing students to enter middle-level jobs that do not require a college degree or, perhaps, even college experience but some kind of post-high school training.

Critics of the report argue that it advocates an academic tracking system in schools which will inevitably lead to low-income and minority students being placed into low-tier tracks that are both an academic and career-preparation dead-end:

“They’re arguing for different standards and separate tracks,” said Kati Haycock, the president of the Education Trust, a Washington-based group that focuses on policies to improve education for low-income students. “Every single time we create multiple tracks, we always send disproportionate numbers of poor kids and kids of color down the lesser one. Until we can find a way not to do that, then people like me will object.”

What appears to be missing here is a deeper consideration of adolescent students' identity development and how premature placement into particular kinds of academic tracks or career preparation streams might impede, rather than advance, individuals' identity formation. If such systems are not sufficiently flexible and fluid so that students can move seamlessly as their interests change, their skills develop, and their needs evolve, then such approaches will be little better than current schooling at supporting, encouraging, and developing students' identities -- as learners, workers, and citizens.

Read more here:
Education Week: Harvard Report Questions Value of 'College for All'

Pay attention to middle school friendships

A new study, appearing in the February issue of the Journal of Early Adolescence, found that middle grades boys and girls whose friends are socially active in ways where rules are respected do better in their classroom work. Having friends who engage in problem behavior, in contrast, is related to a decrease in their grades. Having pro-social friends and staying away from deviant peers proved more effective for academic payoffs than simply being friends with high-achieving peers.

Read more here:
Middle school is when the right friends may matter most

Lack of support for college

From Public Education Network:

In the spring of 2010, a group of 12 high school students in Hamilton County, Tenn., and another 13 high school students in Seattle asked their peers questions as part of a What Kids Can Do (WKCD) project called Hear Us Out, a collaboration with two local education funds, Chattanooga's Public Education Foundation and Seattle's Alliance for Education. The results showed that too often, students lack supports and resources on their path to college. Almost a third of students said they had never spoken with a school counselor on the topic, and though 86 percent said the idea of college had been planted starting in elementary school and peaking in grades 6-9, they wished these early conversations had been followed up with concrete advice and help as soon as they entered high school, instead of junior or senior year. Sixty-eight percent indicated they planned to attend college right after graduation, but more than two-thirds said the cost of college was their biggest hurdle, and 40 percent knew little about financial aid. On almost every measure, lower-income students faced more obstacles and less support than higher-income students, beginning at the planning stage, when 78 percent of higher-income students say they expect to attend college right after graduation, compared with 64 percent of lower-income students. Comparable gaps show up when responses of white and Asian students are placed beside African-American and Hispanic students. For example, 79 percent of Asian students expect to attend college right after graduation, but only 56 percent of Hispanics do.

See the report here.

The power of choice is engaging to students

Read more here:

Giving Students a Say May Spur Engagement and Achievement - Inside School Research - Education Week

A youth manifesto perhaps

Why can't more American kids be this passionate and articulate about the very real threats to their education -- threats being perpetrated by the very adults who are supposed to be looking out for the best interests of our children?

YouTube - 15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.

Gay-straight alliances beneficial

Read more here:

LGBT students benefit from gay-straight alliances even if they aren’t members « Education Research Digest

Positive expectations make all the difference

Read a summary of the study here:
Expecting to succeed in school protects African American youth from negative influences « Education Research Digest

Urban youth are resilient

Read more here: Urban youth cope with neighborhood violence in diverse ways

Thanks, ScienceDaily!

Failure is impossible when learning is the goal

Learning takes time. Deep, meaningful learning takes a lot of time. Not all students learn in the same way and at the same rate. Yet, students -- and teachers -- are frequently held prisoner to the 9-week quarter, the 5-day instructional "unit" of the curriculum: "If it's Thursday, we have to be on p. 158."

When struggling students are provided with opportunities to re-work less-than-satisfactory work, to demonstrate their ability to make a concerted effort at learning, and to persist until they "get it right," they learn more about themselves -- their potentials and capabilities -- than they do when they simply find a "D" or an "F" marked on their assigned work.

Such approaches to instruction foster a mastery-oriented approach to learning that pays dividends to students and teachers. Students will be motivated to learn for the sake of learning -- enjoyment of and interest in the subject matter, a desire to demonstrate their competence -- rather than to simply earn a grade or to outperform the student sitting next to them.

If we truly want to create a well-prepared workforce that is able to meet the demands of the 21st century's global economy, then what better preparation is there than a mindset that seeks mastery of skills and knowledge?


Failure is impossible for high school students! (No, really) on Shine

Teens' tolerance inspires

According to an article in today's Chicago Tribune, today's adolescents are a more tolerant generation regarding issues of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation.

Parents' influence on academic achievement

A new study by researchers at the University of Leicester and University of Leeds (England) has concluded that parents' efforts towards their child's educational achievement is crucial -- playing a more significant role than that of the school or child. The findings suggest there is a relationship between children's performance and the effort put in by parents in supporting their education.

Thanks, ScienceDaily!

Listening to what young people have to say

From Public School Insights:

In 2006, CLASP surveyed nearly 200 formerly disconnected youth—young people who dropped out of high school but reconnected with career and education supports—about their experiences, including what was most useful in bringing them back. Their analysis will be released in November 2010. But available now is In Their Own Words, a video on the CLASP website that captured the experiences of 79 formerly disconnected males of color.

In Their Own Words | LFA: Join The Conversation - Public School Insights

Teens' bullying: An epidemic

A new study indicates that half of the adolescents surveyed admitted to engaging in some form of bullying behavior. This suggests that bullying has reached epidemic proportions. Or, it may suggest that given the recent media attention to the problem, that there is heightened awareness and sensitivity to bullying and teens (and others) may regard some behaviors as bullying -- behaviors that in earlier times would have been considered merely "teasing," "rough-housing," or perhaps just "bad manners."

I'm not an apologist for bullies. I'm only suggesting that the diagnosis and self-diagnosis of bullying may not be valid given the widespread attention that bullying is receiving in the popular media. If I make a thoughtless, unkind remark to my friend, is that bullying? Could be. Depends on your perspective.

Study: Half of teens admit bullying in last year - Boston.com

National Science Teachers Association

I'll be heading off to Kansas City late next week for a regional meeting of the National Science Teachers' Association meeting. I'll be giving a presentation on identity work in secondary science classrooms, describing 4 broad strategies for promoting students' identities around science and academic achievement. I haven't been to this conference but the science teachers I've worked with over the past couple of years have been pretty receptive to these ideas. We'll see what a broader audience has to say.

Identity development and academic achievement

A central argument that I have expressed on this blog over the past two years is that identity development is an important avenue to academic achievement for adolescent students -- from middle school to college. To the extent that schools and teachers can arrange environments, structure activities, and enhance relationships (student-to-student and student-to-teacher), then students are more likely to have a better developed sense of their identities. When students possess a strong sense of identity, then they are more likely to focus on socially validated goals such as academic achievement and career planning. They are less likely to feel personally insecure and, thereby, less likely to engage in the kinds of mocking and bullying behavior that seems to be epidemic in middle schools. They are less likely to participate in risky behaviors that characterize many older teens, such as drug experimentation and sexual activity.

Academic achievement also likely contributes, in a reciprocal fashion, to students' developing identities. Students who find themselves doing well in school are more likely to imagine a positive possible future self (i.e., high school graduate, college student, working adult), and to engage in the behaviors that will assure that they continue to "make the grade."

Further, identity may mediate relationships between certain background variables, such as poverty, and behavioral and academic outcomes for secondary students.

Given the powerful role of identity development in adolescent students' behavior, academic performance, social relationships, adjustment, and long-term goals, why doesn't identity garner greater attention among secondary (and post-secondary) educators? The objective of IdentityWork is to educate educators about the importance of identity work in schools.

A number of studies have been published in the educational psychology -- and related -- literature over the past two decades that document the relationship between identity formation and academic achievement. Most of these studies have focused on college students (an easily accessible population for investigators), but several have also studied younger teens.


These studies include the following:

Adams, G.R., & Fitch, S.A. (1983). Psychological environments of university departments: Effects of college students' identity status and ego stage development. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1266-1275.

Batchelder, T.H., & Root, S. (1994). Effects of an undergraduate program to integrate academic learning and service: Cognitive, prosocial cognitive, and identity outcomes. Journal of Adolescence, 17(4), 341-355.

Berzonsky, M.D. (1985). Diffusion within Marcia's identity-status paradigm: Does it foreshadow academic problems? Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 41, 527-538.

Boyd, V.S., Hunt, P.F., Kandell, J.J., & Lucas, M.S. (2003). The relationship between identity processing style and academic success in undergraduate students. Journal of College Student Development, 44, 155-167.

De Haan, L.G., & MacDermid, S.M. (1999). Identity development as a mediating factor between urban poverty and behavioral outcomes for junior high school students. Journal of Family and Economic Issues, 20(2), 123-148.

Good, M., & Adams, G.R. (2008). Linking academic social environments, ego-identity formation, ego virtues, and academic success. Adolescence, 43(170), 221-236.

Hummel, R., & Roselli, L. (1983). Identity status and academic achievement in female adolescents. Adolescence, 18, 17-27.

Lounsbury, J.W., Huffstetler, B.C., Leong, F.T., & Gibson, L.W. (2005). Sense of identity and collegiate academic achievement. Journal of College Student Development, 46(5), 501-514.

Streitmatter, J.L. (1989). Identity development and academic achievement in early adolescence. Journal of Early Adolescence, 9(1-2), 99-111.

Middle school is a tough time to be gay

With recent stories of anti-gay bullying and tragic suicides of gay youth at the forefront of the national conversation, experts say they are increasingly seeing evidence that middle school is the toughest time for gay youth -- a time of intense self-discovery, but also one when bullying and intolerance is at its peak.

Read more here:
For gay youths, middle school can be toughest time - Boston.com

Alienated youths more likely to lash out

Among the findings of a Dutch study of 10-13 year old teens:

Students who had been rejected were more likely to act aggressively -- taking away money ... and/or writing comments like "this person is fat and mean." They were even more aggressive if they'd scored high on a measure of alienation -- agreeing with statements like, "Hardly anyone I know is interested in how I really feel inside."

Read more here: Alienated youths are more likely to lash out, study finds

Teaching teachers about how adolescents learn

There is clearly a need for teacher educators to better prepare new teachers (and also to help in-service teachers) to work with adolescent students in secondary schools. Much of teacher education and professional development ignores the social-emotional and identity formation aspects of learning. Professors James Comer (Yale University) and Robert Pianta (University of Virginia) have published an important report on how developmental science can inform teacher preparation:

If teachers don’t know how to address their students’ emotional, cognitive, and social needs, they face an uphill battle in improving student achievement, especially among “at-risk” populations facing persistent achievement gaps.

In classrooms where teachers address children’s individual emotional and social needs, you’ll see students doing challenging work at their own pace, either in groups or individually, as the teacher actively monitors and encourages their progress.


Translating scientific knowledge into educational practice takes research and real-world testing to identify teaching strategies that directly apply our understanding of students’ developmental needs.

In large part, this state of affairs is due to the continuation of silo-based approaches to teacher education. Students take courses in curriculum. They take courses in (if they are lucky) classroom management. They take courses in educational psychology (learning, development, assessment). But, rarely are these courses ever blended in a meaningful way and even less often are they connected to actual practice. This has to change -- and faculty need to be the ones leading the charge to change practices.

Thanks, Washington Post Answer Sheet!

Teaching social and emotional skills

Schools are increasingly turning to explicit instruction to improve young students' social and emotional skills in the late elementary and middle school grades to improve behavior and increase academic performance.

As one expert noted:
"In a perfect world, parents would teach these skills … but it doesn't always work that way," Duffell said. "Even in the finest schools, classroom management is a problem. You can throw millions of dollars at a great math program, but if the classroom is out of control and the teacher can't teach … then the best curriculum in the world won't improve your scores."

Read more here:
Beyond book learning: Schools teach social and emotional skills - Chicago Tribune

Encouraging students to shoot for the stars

This story also suggests implications for promoting students' "possible selves," that is, their ideas about what they wish to become (or want to avoid becoming).

Read more here:

Educators should encourage college students to shoot for the stars, study suggests