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'Reductive' models of wellbeing education risk failing children, researchers warn

tdk25 — Tue, 21 Jun 2022 00:11:28 +0000

In a new compendium of academic analysis, researchers argue that despite decades of investment in ‘positive education’ – such as programmes to teach children happiness and mindfulness – schools still lack a proper framework for cultivating pupil wellbeing.

The critique appears in Wellbeing and Schooling, a book launched on 21 June. It compiles work by members of the European Health and Wellbeing Education research network, which engages specialists from around the world.

It argues that many education systems, including in the UK, treat wellbeing education reductively, generally viewing it as a means to drive up attainment. It links this viewpoint to the prevalence of one-size-fits-all models such as the ‘happiness agenda’: a sequence of initiatives which have tried to promote ‘happier living’ in British schools in recent years. These typically focus on training pupils to adopt a positive mindset. Commonly recommended methods include keeping gratitude journals and recording happy memories.

The authors suggest that such approaches, while useful, have limited impact. Instead, they say wellbeing should be “an educational goal in its own right”. Fulfilling that requires a more nuanced approach, in which pupils engage purposefully with the circumstances that influence their wellbeing, as well as their own feelings.

Their book presents various examples from around the world of how this has been achieved. They range from system-wide strategies, such as the use of ‘Transition Years’ in Ireland and South Korea; to small-scale programmes and pilot studies, such as a project co-created by parents and teachers in New Zealand which drew on indigenous Maori heritage.

Wellbeing is typically conceptualised as having two dimensions: a ‘hedonic’ aspect, which refers to feelings and personal satisfaction, and a ‘eudaimonic’ aspect; a sense of meaningful purpose. Ros McLellan, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Education, ��Ī, who co-edited the book, said most wellbeing education focused only on the hedonic dimension.

“If education doesn’t also guide children towards doing things that they find worthwhile and meaningful, we’re failing them,” McLellan said. “We limit their prospects of becoming successful, flourishing citizens. Life satisfaction is also more complex than we tend to acknowledge. It’s about dealing with both positive and negative experiences. Just running lessons on how to be happy won’t work. At worst, it risks making children who aren’t happy feel as if that’s their own fault.”

There is some evidence that wellbeing education, as presently realised, is failing to cut through. The Children’s Society has reported that 306,000 10 to 15-year-olds are unhappy with their lives, while one in eight feels under pressure at school. Other research on pupil stress raises questions about why the standard policy justification for wellbeing education remains the “positive impact on behaviour and attainment”.

One chapter in the book, co-authored by Professor Venka Simovska, from Aarhus University, Denmark (together with Catriona O`Toole), raises concerns that the happiness agenda overlooks the fact that some pupils inevitably find it difficult to suppress negative emotions, and fails to reflect whether focusing solely on positive feelings is beneficial for wellbeing.

“Students are faced with ever-increasing exhortations to be upbeat, to persist in the face of challenges, to display a growth mindset, to be enterprising and resilient,” the researchers write. “Repeated over time, this can give rise to an atmosphere of toxic positivity, particularly for those whose life experiences and living conditions do not lend themselves to feelings of cheery enthusiasm.”

As an alternative, they point to the recent revival in Scandinavia and elsewhere of Bildung, a German educational philosophy that links independent personal development to wider notions of purpose and social responsibility.

Informed by this tradition, schools in Denmark have applied a participatory and action-oriented pedagogical model to health and wellbeing education. The model starts by encouraging students to discuss an issue, for example how they feel when in school, then the teacher guides the students to critically explore the dynamics – either within their school or beyond – which might influence this, and envision creative possibilities for positive transformation.

Teachers and students together then develop programmes which address these structural influences and try to bring about change. The result has been school-level projects that address issues such as social inequality, marginalisation and discrimination related to health and wellbeing. “One could describe it as a form of citizenship education, but focused on school-related or wider societal determinants of wellbeing,” Simovska said.

The book also underlines the need to avoid generic, often Eurocentric, responses to promoting wellbeing in school, to consider complexities of culturally sensitive and multicultural environments, and to focus on both local circumstances and the specific needs of different demographic groups.

One chapter examines Ireland’s use of an optional ‘Transition Year’, in which students focus on developmental activities and work experience, partly to help them become more “fulfilled citizens”. This has inspired the introduction of ‘Free Years’ in South Korea. The South Korean model, however, necessarily involved adaptations to address local issues. Most obviously, Free Years, introduced in 2013, are compulsory, reflecting deep nationwide concerns in South Korea “about student wellbeing and stress in a high-stakes academic environment” – manifest in rising rates of school violence and youth suicide.

Another chapter reports how researchers at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, orchestrated a series of wānanga – traditional Maori knowledge-sharing gatherings – for parents and teachers on New Zealand’s South Island, to examine local communities’ ideas and priorities for wellbeing.

Teachers used these to devise effective strategies for helping pupils to develop positive relationships and express emotions, often drawing on Maori culture. In one particularly touching example, a primary school teacher introduced a symbolic Maori Stone into her classroom, to which children could ‘transfer’ thoughts and feelings. She found it became a useful tool for working through moments of unrest and disagreement.

McLellan believes such cases illustrate how a more nuanced approach to wellbeing education is particularly feasible in primary settings. “Arguably, it’s important we start as young as we can,” she said. “The examples in the book also show what amazing things teachers and schools can do, if we give them the resources and space to implement really effective, comprehensive, socio-ecological and culturally sensitive wellbeing education.”

Wellbeing and Schooling: Cross Cultural and Cross Disciplinary Perspectives is published by Springer, within the book series of the European Educational Research Association’s book series titled Transdisciplinary Perspectives in Educational research. The book will be launched at an event on 21 June.

An improved vision for wellbeing education should replace the over-simplistic approaches currently employed in many schools, such as happiness lessons, which risk creating an “atmosphere of toxic positivity” for pupils, experts say.

If education doesn’t also guide children towards doing things that they find worthwhile and meaningful, we’re failing them

Ros McLellan

Teacher speaking with students

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Students who self-identify as multilingual perform better at GCSE

tdk25 — Thu, 11 Nov 2021 00:26:41 +0000

The study, of just over 800 pupils in England, found a positive relationship between GCSE scores and ‘multilingual identity’: a reference to whether pupils felt a personal connection with other languages through knowledge and use. Those who self-identified as multilingual typically outperformed their peers not just in subjects such as French and Spanish, but in non-language subjects including maths, geography and science. This applied whether or not they actually spoke a second language fluently.

Perhaps surprisingly, however, not all pupils who were officially described by their schools as having ‘English as a Second Language’ (EAL) thought of themselves as multilingual, even though the term is used by schools and Government as a proxy for multilingualism. Correspondingly, these pupils did not necessarily perform better (or worse) as a group at GCSE than their non-EAL peers.

The results indicate that encouraging pupils to identify with languages and to value different styles of communication could help them to develop a mindset that supports academic progress overall.

Other recent research has argued for broadening the scope of language lessons so that, as well as studying vocabulary and grammar, pupils explore the importance of languages and their significance for their own lives. This new study was the first, however, to examine the relationship between multilingual identity and attainment. It was led by academics at the ��Ī and the findings are published in the Journal of Language, Identity and Education.

Dr Dee Rutgers, a Research Associate at the Faculty of Education, ��Ī, said: “The evidence suggests that the more multilingual you consider yourself to be, the higher your GCSE scores. While we need to understand more about why that relationship exists, it may be that children who see themselves as multilingual have a sort of ‘growth mindset’ which impacts on wider attainment.”

Dr Linda Fisher, Reader in Languages Education at the ��Ī, said: “There could be a strong case for helping children who think that they can’t ‘do’ languages to recognise that we all use a range of communication tools, and that learning a language is simply adding to that range. This may influence attitude and self-belief, which is directly relevant to learning at school. In other words, what you think you are may be more important than what others say you are.”

The study’s authors argue that being multilingual means far more than the official EAL definition of being ‘exposed to a language at home that is known or believed to be other than English’. They suggest that even young people who see themselves as monolingual possess a ‘repertoire’ of communication. For example, they may use different dialects, pick up words and phrases on holiday, know sign language, or understand other types of ‘language’ such as computer code.

The study involved 818 Year-11 pupils at five secondary schools in South East England. As well as establishing whether pupils were officially registered as EAL or non-EAL, the researchers asked each pupil if they personally identified as such. Separately, each pupil was asked to plot where they saw themselves on a 0-100 scale, where 0 represented ‘monolingual’ and 100 ‘multilingual’. This data was compared with their GCSE results in nine subjects.

Students who spoke a second language at home did not always personally identify either as EAL or multilingual. Conversely, pupils who saw themselves as multilingual were not always those earmarked by the school as having English as an additional language.

“The fact that these terms didn’t correlate more closely is surprising considering that they are all supposedly measuring the same thing,” Rutgers said. “Just having experience of other languages clearly doesn’t necessarily translate into a multilingual identity because the experience may not be valued by the student.”

School-reported EAL status had no impact on GCSE results, although pupils who self-identified as EAL generally did better than their peers in modern languages. Those who considered themselves ‘multilingual’ on the 0-100 scale, however, performed better academically across the board.

The strength of this relationship varied between subjects and was, again, particularly pronounced in modern languages. In all nine GCSE subjects assessed, however, each point increase on the monolingual-to-multilingual scale was associated with a fractional rise in pupils’ exam scores.

For example: a one-point increase was found to correspond to 0.012 of a grade in Science, and 0.011 of a grade in Geography. Students who consider themselves very multilingual would, by this measure, typically score a full grade higher than those who consider themselves monolingual. Positively identifying as multilingual could often therefore be enough to push students who would otherwise fall slightly short of a certain grade up to the next level.

The findings appear to indicate that the positive mentality and self-belief which typically develops among pupils with a multilingual identity has spill-over benefits for their wider education. The authors add that this could be cultivated in languages classrooms: for example, by exposing young people to learning programmes that explore different types of language and dialect, or encouraging them to think about how languages shape their lives both inside and outside school.

“Too often we think about other languages as something that we don’t need to know, or as difficult to learn,” Fisher said. “These findings suggest that if pupils were encouraged to see themselves as active and capable language learners, it could have a really positive impact on their wider progress at school.”

Young people who consider themselves ‘multilingual’ tend to perform better across a wide range of subjects at school, regardless of whether they are actually fluent in another language, new research shows.

If pupils were encouraged to see themselves as active and capable language learners, it could have a really positive impact on their wider progress at school.

Linda Fisher

Jacqueline Brandwyn via Unsplash

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"It’s almost as if they don’t exist”: Education policy fails to account for PMLD learners

tdk25 — Tue, 09 Nov 2021 11:41:01 +0000

The research, which is published in a book launched on Tuesday 9 November, found that the key piece of statutory guidance underpinning education for PMLD learners – the Special Needs and Disabilities (SEND) Code of Practice (2015) – indicates that teachers should prepare them for a future that involves independent living, possible further education and employment.

Researchers argue that these are highly unlikely to represent realistic goals for most children with PMLD. Broadly, PMLD describes people with a combination of very severe learning difficulties, sensory impairments, physical disabilities, complex medical conditions, and challenging behaviours. Most require very high levels of care and support throughout their lives, including with tasks such as washing and eating.

The study also analysed other key health and social care policy documents on which support for children with PMLD is meant to be based. It found that these often make similarly unrealistic assumptions: “because judgements are based on the experiences and values of the policy-makers, because all types and levels of disability are seen as effectively the same, and because people with PMLD tend to be viewed as non-contributors to society”.

For example, Valuing People Now, a Government policy document published in 2009, states that people with learning difficulties – apparently including those with PMLD – “should be supported to pay taxes, vote [and] do jury duty”.

The book, Enhancing Wellbeing and Independence for Young People with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties, combines this policy analysis with the findings from staff surveys at more than 110 special schools in 20 countries, including 52 of around 300 schools that teach PMLD pupils in the UK.

It was co-authored by Andrew Colley, a former special education teacher and lecturer, who did the research as part of a Masters Degree at the Faculty of Education, ��Ī; and Julie Tilbury, Lead Teacher for children with PMLD at Chailey Heritage School, East Sussex.

Their findings highlight the outstanding practice of professionals working with pupils with PMLD pupils, but also suggest that teachers rarely refer to the existing policy guidance except when completing official documents. Asked if they felt that the SEND Code of Practice took account of learners with PMLD, teachers commented: “it doesn’t”, “not at all” and “it’s almost as if they don’t exist”.

“The way wellbeing and independence are defined in policy doesn’t appear to support these learners and ends up excluding them because of the complexity of their disability,” Colley said.

“Most of the guidance that exists assumes their education can be rooted in neurotypical expectations about employment or making an economic contribution when the reality is they will probably never be able to work. The policy covers children with PMLD, but doesn’t cater for them. We need a completely different kind of social contract for these young people.”

There are around 11,000 learners with PMLD in English schools, and an estimated 75,000 people of all ages with PMLD in the UK. Previous research has attempted to identify what ‘wellbeing’ and ‘independence’ should mean for these individuals. In general, it recommends that schools should focus on helping them to live with dignity, form social and emotional relationships, stay healthy and active, and communicate – which for people with PMLD often involves unconventional styles of communication such as blinking and physical gestures.

Contrastingly, the SEND Code of Practice, which makes just one reference to pupils with PMLD in 287 pages, states: “With high aspirations and the right support the vast majority of children and young people can go on to achieve successful long-term outcomes in adult life,” before referring to “higher education and/or employment” and “independent living” as examples.

Many practitioners working with PMLD learners treat the Code as an irrelevance, the researchers found. As much as possible, teachers create learning programmes which respond to the needs of each individual. In line with the recommendations of specialists, this often means that lessons prioritise the enhancement of wellbeing and health, communication, and the development of basic skills such as washing, eating, and independent movement. “There is fantastic work going on in schools, but it is completely separate from what policy dictates,” Colley said.

Despite the efforts of education professionals, the study also highlights the limited opportunities learners with PMLD have to engage with their wider communities. 80% of UK teachers mostly or completely agreed with the statement: “the social life of someone with PMLD is largely focused on their family or school”. Almost 50% felt that families with a member who has PMLD “live isolated and unfulfilled lives”.

The research calls for a different type of policy framework for learners with PMLD which focuses on helping them to become happy, fulfilled and empowered adults, with a sense of belonging rooted in warm and trusting relationships.

Colley added: “To demand that their education should lead to independence in a conventional sense stigmatises their condition, as well as their families. Just because pupils with PMLD are unlikely to work or own a house doesn’t make them any less worthy of our attention as human beings.”

“Addressing this also gives us an opportunity to think differently about what education for all young people really means, beyond the perspective of employment or academic attainment. A really inclusive education system that takes PMLD learners into account demands that we look for something more for everyone.”

Enhancing Wellbeing and Independence for Young People with Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties is published by Routledge.

The policy framework that supposedly guides education for pupils with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLD) is setting expectations and goals which are often completely at odds with their capabilities and lives, a study says.

We need a completely different kind of social contract for these young people

Andrew Colley

Getty via Routledge

Teacher with PDML pupil

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Extra classroom time may do little to help pupils recover lost learning after COVID-19

tdk25 — Fri, 28 May 2021 09:39:52 +0000

The ��Ī analysis used five years of Government data, collected from more than 2,800 schools in England, to estimate the likely impact of additional classroom instruction on academic progress, as measured at GCSE.

It found that even substantial increases in classroom teaching time would likely only lead to small improvements. For example, extending Year 11 pupils’ classroom time by one hour per class, in English or maths, was associated with an increase of 0.12 and 0.18 in a school’s ‘value-added’ score – a standard progress measure. This increase appears small, considering that most of the schools in the study had scores ranging between 994 and 1006.

The research also investigated the likely impact for disadvantaged pupils, whose education has been hardest hit by school closures. In keeping with the overall results, it again found that more of the same teaching was likely to do relatively little to improve academic outcomes.

The study was undertaken by Vaughan Connolly, a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education, ��Ī. His paper reporting the findings, published in the London Review of Education, suggests that long-term plans to recoup lost learning may be better off focusing on maximising the value of the existing school day, rather than extending it.

“Simply keeping all students in school for longer, in order to do more maths or more English, probably won’t improve results much; nor is it likely to narrow the attainment gap for those who have missed out the most,” Connolly said.

“This evidence suggests that re-evaluating how time is used in schools – for example, by trimming subject time and replacing it with sessions focusing on ‘learning to learn’ skills – could make a bigger difference. Quality is going to matter much more than quantity in the long run.”

One possible reason why additional instruction time may be relatively ineffective is diminishing returns – namely, that more contact hours simply increase the burden on both teachers and pupils, preventing them from being at their best.

Potentially extending the school day has been widely discussed as one possible component of a forthcoming Government recovery plan for education. While there is international evidence suggesting that additional teaching time only leads to small returns, there had been no large-scale study of this issue in the English school system until now.

The ��Ī study used timetable data gathered from 2,815 schools through the School Workforce Census over five years. It tracked the relationship between changes to the amount of instruction time that pupils received in English, maths, science and humanities subjects, and their academic progress.

‘Progress’ was identified using schools’ value-added scores. The Government gathers these when pupils sit GCSEs at age 16, by comparing their actual results with predictions made after their primary school SATs at age 11.

While the impact of additional classroom tuition on progress varied between subjects and groups, the effects were generally small. For example: one additional hour of instruction for a Year 11 class in English, science, maths, or the humanities, led to an increase in value-added scores of 0.12, 0.09, 0.18 and 0.43 respectively. ‘At a practical level, this seems small, particularly when considering the cost of such time,’ the study notes.

To examine the potential impact of extra classroom time on less-advantaged students, the study also assessed how far it closed the gap between the value-added scores of students on free school meals, and those of students with middle-ranking prior attainment. The results were again found to be modest. For example, an extra 59 minutes per week in English reduced the attainment gap between these groups by about 6.5%; and an extra 57 minutes per week of maths by about 8%.

The findings compare with those of the Education Endowment Foundation’s influential Teaching and Learning toolkit, which summarises international evidence on different teaching interventions and translates their effect sizes into months of progress. It suggests that increased instruction time is likely to lead to two months of progress over an academic year. This compares poorly with the results of other interventions listed in the same document.

In this context, the ��Ī study suggests that methods which focus on increasing the quality of learning in the classroom, rather than the amount of time spent there, may prove more fruitful. It echoes recommendations recently made by the Education Policy Institute which called for ambitious levels of investment in a wider-ranging programme of catch-up measures. The new study suggests that time could be reallocated during the school day, either to support the continuing professional development of staff, or to provide pupils with additional skills.

It also points to research conducted in 2016 in which Key Stage 3 pupils’ test scores improved dramatically after a portion of their regular curriculum was replaced with training in metacognition – the ability to understand how to learn and reason through problems. Other studies, such as a project examining learning recovery after the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, have similarly suggested that supporting schools to better match their curriculum to student needs may have greater effect than extra classroom time.

“Rather than extending the school day to offer more instruction, a successful recovery agenda may well be one that tailors support and makes room for a wider range of learning within it, in line with the recent suggestions made by the EPI,” Connolly said. “In that sense, less instructional time could actually be more. Certainly, these results suggest that giving children more of the same is unlikely to help if we want to recover what has been lost during the pandemic.”

Adding extra classroom time to the school day may only result in marginal gains for pupils who have lost learning during the COVID pandemic, a study says.

Simply keeping all students in school for longer, in order to do more maths or more English, probably won’t improve results much

Vaughan Connolly

Jeswin Thomas via Unsplash

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Young children use physics, not previous rewards, to learn about tools

cjb250 — Fri, 23 Feb 2018 19:00:56 +0000

The findings of the study, based on the Aesop’s fable The Crow and the Pitcher, help solve a debate about whether children learning to use tools are genuinely learning about physical causation or are just driven by what action previously led to a treat.

Learning about causality – about the physical rules that govern the world around us – is a crucial part of our cognitive development. From our observations and the outcome of our own actions, we build an idea – a model – of which tools are functional for particular jobs, and which are not.

However, the information we receive isn’t always as straightforward as it should be. Sometimes outside influences mean that things that should work, don’t. Similarly, sometimes things that shouldn’t work, do.

Dr Lucy Cheke from the Department of Psychology at the ��Ī says: “Imagine a situation where someone is learning about hammers. There are two hammers that they are trying out – a metal one and an inflatable one. Normally, the metal hammer would successfully drive a nail into a plank of wood, while the inflatable hammer would bounce off harmlessly.

“But what if your only experience of these two hammers was trying to use the metal hammer and missing the nail, but using the inflatable hammer to successfully push the nail into a large pre-drilled hole? If you’re then presented with another nail, which tool would you choose to use? The answer depends on what type of information you have taken from your learning experience.”

In this situation, explains, Cheke, a learner concerned with the outcome (a ‘reward’ learner) would learn that the inflatable hammer was the successful tool and opt to use it for later hammering. However, a learner concerned with physical forces (a ‘functionality’ learner) would learn that the metal hammer produced a percussive force, albeit in the wrong place, and that the inflatable hammer did not, and would therefore opt for the metal hammer.

Now, in a study published in the open access journal PLOS ONE, Dr Cheke and colleagues investigated what kind of information children extract from situations where the relevant physical characteristics of a potential tool are observable, but often at odds with whether the use of that tool in practice achieved the desired goal.

The researchers presented children aged 4-11 with a task through which they must retrieve a floating token to earn sticker rewards. Each time, the children were presented with a container of water and a set of tools to use to raise the level. This experiment is based on one of the most famous Aesop’s fables, where a thirty crow drops stones into a pitcher to get to the water.

In this test, some of the tools were ‘functional’ and some ‘non-functional’. Functional tools were those that, if dropped into a standard container, would sink, raising the water level and bringing the token within reach; non-functional tools were those that would not do so, for example because they floated.

However, sometimes the children used functional tools to attempt to raise the level in a leaking container – in this context, the water would never rise high enough to bring the token within reach, no matter how functional the tool used.

At other times, the children were successful in retrieving the reward despite using a non-functional tool; for example, when using a water container that self-fills through an inlet pipe, it doesn’t matter whether the tool is functional as the water is rising anyway.

After these learning sessions, the researchers presented the children with a ‘standard’ water container and a series of choices between different tools. From the pattern of these choices the researchers could calculate what type of information was most influential on children’s decision-making: reward or function.

“A child doesn’t have to know the precise rules of physics that allow a tool to work to have a feeling of whether or not it should work,” says Elsa Loissel, co-first author of the study. “So, we can look at whether a child’s decision making is guided by principles of physics without requiring them to explicitly understand the physics itself.

“We expected older children, who might have a rudimentary understanding of physical forces, to choose according to function, while younger children would be expected to use the simpler learning approach and base their decisions on what had been previously rewarded,” adds co-first author Dr Cheke. “But this wasn’t what we found.”

Instead, the researchers showed that information about reward was never a reliable predictor of children’s choices. Instead, the influence of functionality information increased with age – by the age of seven, this was the dominant influence in their decision making.

“This suggests that, remarkably, children begin to emphasise information about physics over information about previous rewards from as young as seven years of age, even when these two types of information are in direct conflict.”

This research was funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme.

Reference
Elsa Loissel, Lucy Cheke & Nicola Clayton. Exploring the Relative Contributions of Reward-History and Functionality Information to Children’s Acquisition of The Aesop’s Fable Task. PLOS ONE; 23 Feb 2018; DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0193264

Children as young as seven apply basic laws of physics to problem-solving, rather than learning from what has previously been rewarded, suggests new research from the ��Ī.

Remarkably, children begin to emphasise information about physics over information about previous rewards from as young as seven years of age, even when these two types of information are in direct conflict

Lucy Cheke

Sharon Mollerus

Dominoes 3

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Eye contact with your baby helps synchronise your brainwaves

cjb250 — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 08:29:30 +0000

When a parent and infant interact, various aspects of their behaviour can synchronise, including their gaze, emotions and heartrate, but little is known about whether their brain activity also synchronises – and what the consequences of this might be.

Brainwaves reflect the group-level activity of millions of neurons and are involved in information transfer between brain regions. Previous studies have shown that when two adults are talking to each other, communication is more successful if their brainwaves are in synchrony.

Researchers at the Baby-LINC Lab at the ��Ī carried out a study to explore whether infants can synchronise their brainwaves to adults too – and whether eye contact might influence this. Their results are published today in the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The team examined the brainwave patterns of 36 infants (17 in the first experiment and 19 in the second) using electroencephalography (EEG), which measures patterns of brain electrical activity via electrodes in a skull cap worn by the participants. They compared the infants’ brain activity to that of the adult who was singing nursery rhymes to the infant.

In the first of two experiments, the infant watched a video of an adult as she sang nursery rhymes. First, the adult – whose brainwave patterns had already been recorded – was looking directly at the infant. Then, she turned her head to avert her gaze, while still singing nursery rhymes. Finally, she turned her head away, but her eyes looked directly back at the infant.

As anticipated, the researchers found that infants’ brainwaves were more synchronised to the adults’ when the adult’s gaze met the infant’s, as compared to when her gaze was averted Interestingly, the greatest synchronising effect occurred when the adults’ head was turned away but her eyes still looked directly at the infant. The researchers say this may be because such a gaze appears highly deliberate, and so provides a stronger signal to the infant that the adult intends to communicate with her.

In the second experiment, a real adult replaced the video. She only looked either directly at the infant or averted her gaze while singing nursery rhymes. This time, however, her brainwaves could be monitored live to see whether her brainwave patterns were being influenced by the infant’s as well as the other way round.

This time, both infants and adults became more synchronised to each other’s brain activity when mutual eye contact was established. This occurred even though the adult could see the infant at all times, and infants were equally interested in looking at the adult even when she looked away. The researchers say that this shows that brainwave synchronisation isn’t just due to seeing a face or finding something interesting, but about sharing an intention to communicate.

To measure infants’ intention to communicate, the researcher measured how many ‘vocalisations’ infants made to the experimenter. As predicted, infants made a greater effort to communicate, making more ‘vocalisations’, when the adult made direct eye contact – and individual infants who made longer vocalisations also had higher brainwave synchrony with the adult.

Dr Victoria Leong, lead author on the study said: “When the adult and infant are looking at each other, they are signalling their availability and intention to communicate with each other. We found that both adult and infant brains respond to a gaze signal by becoming more in sync with their partner. This mechanism could prepare parents and babies to communicate, by synchronising when to speak and when to listen, which would also make learning more effective.”

Dr Sam Wass, last author on the study, said: “We don’t know what it is, yet, that causes this synchronous brain activity. We’re certainly not claiming to have discovered telepathy! In this study, we were looking at whether infants can synchronise their brains to someone else, just as adults can. And we were also trying to figure out what gives rise to the synchrony.

“Our findings suggested eye gaze and vocalisations may both, somehow, play a role. But the brain synchrony we were observing was at such high time-scales – of three to nine oscillations per second – that we still need to figure out how exactly eye gaze and vocalisations create it.”

This research was supported by an ESRC Transformative Research Grant to Dr Leong and Dr Wass.

Reference
Leong, V et al. Speaker gaze increases infant-adult connectivity. PNAS; 28 Nov 2017; DOI: 10.1101/108878

Making eye contact with an infant makes adults’ and babies’ brainwaves ‘get in sync’ with each other – which is likely to support communication and learning – according to researchers at the ��Ī.

When the adult and infant are looking at each other, they are signalling their availability and intention to communicate with each other

Victoria Leong

Lucy Kivlin and her baby Ginny

Researcher profile: Dr Victoria Leong

Dr Victoria Leong is an Affiliated Lecturer at ��Ī’s Department of Psychology, and also an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Her research aims to understand how parents and infants communicate and learn from each other, and the brain mechanisms that help them to interact effectively as social partners.

“The Baby-LINC lab is designed to look like a home living room so that mothers and babies feel comfortable,” she says. In the lab, they use a wireless EEG system to measure infants’ brain activity, which means that babies don’t have to be tethered to a computer and we can conduct recordings for longer periods of time. “This is invaluable if the baby needs a nap or a nappy change in-between doing our tasks!”

Dr Leong says she is passionate about “real-world neuroscience”. In other words, “understanding and not ignoring the very real – and often very messy – human social contexts that infiltrate brain processes”. This means that in addition to world class facilities and methods, the ability to collect robust data also depends on keeping the infants relaxed and happy. “Many a tantrum can be averted by the judicious and timely application of large soapy bubbles and rice cakes. The ability to blow large charming bubbles thereafter became a key criteria for recruiting research assistants!”

The research project came about “over a cup of tea [with Sam Wass] and a notepad to scratch out some frankly outlandish ideas about brain-to-brain synchrony”. They received £3,995 with the help of ��Ī Neuroscience and ��Ī Language Sciences for a pilot project and within a year went on to secure an ESRC Transformative Research Grant, which allowed them to significantly scale-up research operations, and to build the first mother-infant EEG hyperscanning facility in the UK (the Baby-LINC Lab).

“��Ī is one of probably only a handful of highly-creative research environments in the world where young, untested post-doctoral researchers can organically come together, develop ambitious ideas, and have the support to try these out,” she says. “I am very proud of our humble beginnings, because they remind me that even a small handful of resources, wisely invested with hard work, can grow into world-class research.”

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Yes

Opinion: Genetics: what it is that makes you clever – and why it’s shrouded in controversy

Anonymous — Thu, 21 Apr 2016 11:00:00 +0000

For nearly 150 years, the concept of intelligence and its study have offered scientific ways of classifying people in terms of their “ability”. The drive to identify and quantify exceptional mental capacity may have a chequered history, but it is still being pursued by some researchers today.

Francis Galton, who was Charles Darwin’s cousin, is considered the father of eugenics and was one of the first to formally study intelligence. His 1869 work Hereditary Genius argued that superior mental capabilities were passed down via natural selection – confined to Europe’s most eminent men, a “lineage of genius”. Barring a few exceptions, women, ethnic minorities and lower socioeconomic communities were labelled as inferior in intelligence.

Galton’s controversial theories on race, socioeconomics and intelligence have been highly influential and shaped the ideologies of numerous researchers and theorists around the world.

In the UK, proponents of a Galtonian view on intelligence included educational psychologist Cyril Burt, who helped formulate the 11-plus examination, and psychologist Charles Spearman who is best known for his creation of the concept “g” – the innate general factor of human mental ability. Spearman’s background as an engineer in the British army gave him a statistical sophistication that proved instrumental in shifting the direction of the field of intelligence study.

Spearman: statistician who delved into human intelligence. Eugène Pirou via Wikimedia Commons

Spearman hypothesised that intelligence is comprised of “g” – or “general intelligence”, and two other specific factors: verbal ability and fluency. Spearman’s extensive work on the use of “g” within the field of statistics meant that some used the “hard” sciences and maths as instruments to argue that there were biological differences between races and social classes. “G” as a representation of the biological basis of intelligence is still being used today in research within the current field of behavioural genetics.

Political currency

The concept of inheritance, and specifically the inheritance of intelligence, has carried over into political and educational spheres. A more recent advocate of Galtonian-inspired ideas is Dominic Cummings, who served as a special advisor to the former secretary of state for education, Michael Gove. Cummings wrote the following in a 237-page document titled “Some thoughts on education and political priorities”:

Raising school performance of poorer children … would not necessarily lower parent-offspring correlations (nor change heritability estimates). When people look at the gaps between rich and poor children that already exist at a young age (3-5), they almost universally assume that these differences are because of environmental reasons (“privileges of wealth”) and ignore genetics.

The birth of twins studies

From the 1920s, when twin and adoption studies set out to determine the genetic and environmental origins of intelligence differences, the study of intelligence began to converse with the early stages of human behavioural genetics.

Under the presumption that twins experience similar environmental aspects, twins studies enable researchers to evaluate the variance of a given outcome – such as cognitive ability – in a large group. They can then attempt to estimate how much of this variance is due to the heritability of genes, the shared environment the twins live in, or a non-shared environment.

The 1980s and 1990s saw another rise in twin and adoption studies on intelligence, many of which were more systematic in nature due to advances in technology. Most supported earlier research and showed intelligence to be highly heritable and polygenic, meaning that it is influenced by many different genetic markers.

The researchers Robert Plomin, JC Defries, and Nele Jacobs were at the forefront of this new wave of studies. But this research was still unable to identify the specific genetic markers within the human genome that are connected to intelligence.

Genome – a new frontier

Genome sequencing technologies have taken the search for the genetic components of inheritance another step forward. Despite the seemingly endless possibilities brought forth by the Human Genome Project in 2001, actually using DNA-based techniques to locate which genetic differences contribute to observed differences in intelligence has been markedly more difficult than anticipated.

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) began to take hold as a powerful tool for investigating the human genetic architecture. These studies assess connections between a trait and a multitude of DNA markers. Most commonly, they look for single-nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs. These are variations between genes at specific locations throughout a DNA sequence that might determine an individual’s likelihood to develop a particular disease or trait.

Originally intended to identify genetic risk factors associated with susceptibility to disease, GWAS have become a means through which to try and pinpoint the genetic factors responsible for cognitive ability. But researchers have shown that intelligence is a trait influenced by many different genes: they have so far been unable to locate enough SNPs to predict the IQ of an individual.

Ethical questions

There’s a long way still to go, but this field is receiving a great deal of publicity. This raises several ethical questions. We must ask ourselves if this research can ever be socially neutral given the eugenic-Galtonian history underpinning it.

This kind of research could have an impact on human genetic engineering and the choices parents make when deciding to have children. It could give parents with the money and desire to do so the option to make their offspring “smarter”. Though genetically engineering intelligence may appear to be in the realm of science fiction, if the genes associated with intelligence are identified, it could become a reality.

Some researchers have suggested that schools which have a child’s genetic information could tailor the curriculum and teaching to create a system of “personalised learning”. But this could lead schools to expect certain levels of achievement from certain groups of children – perhaps from different socioeconomic or ethnic groups – and would raise questions of whether richer families would benefit most.

Whether calling it “intelligence”, “cognitive ability”, or “IQ”, behavioural genetics research is still trying to identify the genetic markers for a trait that can predict, in essence, a person’s success in life. Given the history of this field of research, it’s vital it is conducted with an awareness of its possible ethical impact on all parts of society.

Daphne Martschenko, PhD Candidate, ��Ī

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the individual author(s) and do not represent the views of the ��Ī.

Daphne Martschenko (Faculty of Education) discusses the concept of intelligence and the drive to identify and quantify it.

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Yes

Education and the brain: what happens when children learn?

amb206 — Wed, 10 Feb 2016 12:27:02 +0000

Researchers looking at child development often use search-and-find tasks to look at the ways in which children apply what they are learning about the physical world. Tests carried out on toddlers reveal that something quite remarkable happens in child development between the ages of two and five – a stage identified by both educationalists and neuroscientists as critical to the capacity for learning.

Dr Sara Baker is a researcher into early childhood at the Faculty of Education. She is interested in the role of the brain’s prefrontal lobe in how young children learn to adapt their understanding to an ever-shifting environment. Many of her studies chart changes in children’s ways of thinking about the world. She uses longitudinal designs to examine the shape of individual children’s learning curves month by month.

Research by Baker and colleagues is contributing to an understanding of the acquisition of skills essential to learning. She explains: “The brain’s frontal lobe is one of the four major divisions of the cerebral cortex. It regulates decision-making, problem-solving and behaviour. We call these functions executive skills – they are at the root of the cognitive differences between humans and other animals. My executive functions enable me to resist a slice of cake when I know I’m soon having dinner.”

In an experiment designed to identify the age at which executive skills develop, Baker and colleagues used a row of four interconnected boxes to test children’s ability to apply their knowledge of basic physics. A ball rolled down an incline entered the first box and disappeared. A barrier (its top visible) was slotted in between two of the boxes to stop the ball rolling any further. The children were asked to open the door of the box in which the ball was hidden.

Aged 29–31 months, only 32% of the children correctly identified the location of the ball by working out that the barrier would have stopped it. Aged 32–36 months, 66% of children were successful. Toddlers under the age of three appear to understand the principles of solidity and continuity, but have trouble acting on this knowledge. A single month in a child’s age affected their ability to carry out the task correctly.

Baker’s interest in children’s development of executive skills dates from the moment a decade ago when she picked up a picture book while sitting in the foyer of a nursery school; the narrative focused on opposites: big/small, light/dark, hot/cold. How would children respond if they were asked to point to the opposite picture to the one depicting the word they heard spoken? This question became the topic for her PhD. Her findings confirmed that the huge variability of children’s executive skills could explain the range of social and cognitive behaviours we see emerging in the early years. What we learn at this stage, and what we learn to apply, sets us on course for life.

Most three-year-olds find the ‘opposites’ task hard. Given two pictures of bears, one big, one small, they automatically point to the big bear when they hear the word ‘big’ spoken aloud. They point to the big bear even when they have been asked (and appear to have understood) to point to the image that is the opposite of the word they hear.

Five-year-olds are much more successful in carrying out the task explained to them. “By age five, most children have acquired the ability to override their impulses, and put them on hold, in order to follow a request,” says Baker. “The ability to control impulses is vital to children’s socialisation, their ability to share and work in groups – and ultimately to be adaptable and well adjusted.”

What happens in children’s brains and minds to enable them to make these important leaps in understanding? The answer involves an understanding of neuroscience as well as child development. Baker and colleagues are engaged in multidisciplinary projects including examining how individuals with autism may perceive and learn about the physical world differently from those without a diagnosis. Her team is also developing a pedagogical, play-based approach in collaboration with teachers.

“Executive function is a hot topic in education. When we talk to teachers about the psychology behind frontal lobe development, they immediately recognise how important self-regulation is, and will tell you about the child who can’t concentrate. It might be the case that this child is struggling with their executive functions: their working memory or inhibitory control might be flagging,” says Baker.

“The tricky part is to grasp the processes developing in the child’s brain and come up with ways to encourage that development. In early years’ education, playful learning and giving children freedom to explore could help to encourage independence as well as the ability to know when to ask for help, both of which depend on self-regulatory skills. If we want to encourage adaptability and self-reliance, we have to look beyond the formal curriculum.”

Baker’s research into children’s ability to apply knowledge to successfully predict the location of an object hidden from view revealed much more than simply which age group was successful. She says: “In looking at the data from tasks, it’s not enough to focus only on children’s failures. We need to look at why they search for an object in a particular place. Often they’re applying something else that they’ve learnt.”

When younger children opened the same door twice in the boxes experiment, despite the barrier having been moved, they were applying logic: an object may be precisely where it was found before. After all, it’s always worth looking for the house keys first where they should be.

In another experiment (involving dropping balls into opaque tubes that crossed each other), the younger children applied their knowledge of gravity (the ball would fall down the tube) but failed to take into account that the tubes were not straight. Baker says: “When children repeat a mistake, they reveal something about their view of the world and, as researchers, we learn how their brain is developing. As teachers and parents, our role is to help children to overcome that strong, but wrong, impulse.”

During the course of a day, your frontal lobe will have enabled you to do far more than find your keys. The synaptic firing of millions of cells in your brain may have guided you through a tricky situation with colleagues or prompted you to make a split-second decision as you crossed a busy road. “The development of this vital area of your brain happened well before you started formal education and will continue throughout your lifetime,” says Baker.

Have you lost your house keys recently? If so, you probably applied a spot of logical thinking. You looked first in the most obvious places – bags and pockets – and then mentally retraced your steps to the point when you last used them.

The tricky part is to grasp the processes developing in the child’s brain and come up with ways to encourage that development.

Sara Baker

BodyParts3D/Anatomography

Frontal lobe

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Yes

�������������Ī - learning

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Opinion: Genetics: what it is that makes you clever – and why it’s shrouded in controversy

Political currency

The birth of twins studies

Genome – a new frontier

Ethical questions

Education and the brain: what happens when children learn?

��Ī - learning