I Speak of Dreams

Getting to mastery by practicing the individual elements

I'm working on a post on the in-process revision of the DSM and autism. In the course of doing that, I ran across a blog called Theoria com Praxi, written by G. Brett Miller (his previous blog was 29 Marbles).

Miller has a lot good to say, which I will get to in a minute.

Here I am at my daughter's competition. It maybe doesn't look hard: go canter around and jump over fairly small obstacles but there a lot of separate sub-elements just having to do with riding,  steering, increasing or decreasing the rate of speed, increasing or decreasing the size of the horse's stride.  Then there are the strategy elements.

So Miller's article on mastery really struck by this one: Theoria cum Praxi » You don’t get better at writing essays by writing more essays.

The problem is, as the title of this post hints at, that you can’t get better at something by just doing that something. The early part of Talent is Overrated is full of examples: Jerry Rice didn’t become the greatest football player ever by playing football games; Tiger Woods didn’t become the greatest golfer by simply playing endless rounds of golf; and Benjamin Franklin didn’t become the incredible writer that he was by writing essays. All of these people, and many more, became incredibly good at what they do (did) through deliberate practice.

You don't get better at jumping by jumping. Mastery of the sub-elements is essential. And of course the implications for k-12 education are also there.

At The Horseshow

Jumper Girl is having a great show.  Photos to follow.  Connectivity is odd -- can post, but can't access bloglines (for example).

Animal Agentz :: Fun and interactive computer learning tool to help children manage and overcome stress, anxiety and poor concentration

Animal Agentz :: Fun and interactive computer learning tool to help children manage and overcome stress, anxiety and poor concentration.

Lasting effects of phonics instruction at Teach Effectively!

Lasting effects of phonics instruction at Teach Effectively!.

Professor G. Brian Thompson and colleagues reported that early reading instruction has lasting effects on how people as adults read pseudowords. Although this finding is primarily informational, I note it here because it illustrates an important point about long-term effects of instruction: The differences in instructional methods may seem trivial, but they continue to exist many years after the fact.

The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual and Co-Morbidities in Autism

Autism - Change.org: TLAs like ASD, ADD, and DSM.

One of the focuses of the DSM-V Neurodevelopmental Disorders Work Group is whether the mutual exclusion of ADD/ADHD and ASD should remain or be lifted. Currently a person can not, according strictly to the letter of the DSM, be diagnosed with both neurodevelopmental disorders at once. The neurodevelopmental group is working on possible re-definitions of autism spectrum disorders for the new version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).

Though the DSM may currently place some restrictions on which letters can go with which other letters, this article from Times Online asks the question, "Does having a clutch of acronyms after their names help or hinder children with multiple behaviour problems?" and then proceeds to discuss kids being diagnosed with multiple neurodevelopmental and/or psychological disorders from the DSM including the ASD/ADD dual diagnosis. The article raised some interesting (to me anyway) different ideas about where the sudden explosion of DSM diagnoses might be coming from, including some non-medical ones such as changing social and cultural norms and misdiagnoses based on not properly looking at lifestyle (e.g. difficulty concentrating because of lack of sufficient sleep).

What If There Were Enough Support for Families Having Members with Autism

One mother of a school-aged son with autism had this dream:

If I had an opportunity to discuss autism with First Lady Michelle Obama, here's what I'd want to talk about:

Below the fold, text of the petition. If you want to sign, go here. Tell your friends.

From Inflexible Knowledge to Flexible Knowledge

This is an oldie but goodie from Daniel Willingham: Inflexible Knowledge: The First Step to Expertise AFT: Publications: American Educator: Winter 2002: Ask the Cognitive Scientist.

What Does This Suggest for Teachers?

1. Use examples: The fact that students seem to get stuck on examples does not mean that teachers should refrain from providing examples. Certainly, examples help students understand the abstract concepts and some researchers (e.g., Gick & Holyoak, 1983; Gentner et al., 1993) believe that by providing multiple examples, one encourages students to compare the examples and to thereby consider what they have in common; what they have in common, of course, is the deep structure we would like students to learn. Thus, it is probably helpful to tell them not just about Pavlov’s dog, but about a number of wide-ranging examples.

2. Make a distinction between rote and inflexible knowledge: This might be the most important point. Rote knowledge is meaningless. But inflexible knowledge is a natural consequence of learning. We should neither despair when it appears, nor take drastic measures to eliminate it when its elimination could cause collateral damage to our students (i.e., diminished factual knowledge).

 3. Appreciate the importance of students’ growing knowledge, even if it’s inflexible: Don’t be reluctant to build students’ factual knowledge base. Some facts end up in memory without any meaning, and other facts have meanings that are quite inflexible, but that doesn’t mean that teachers should minimize the teaching of facts in the curriculum. "Fact" is not synonymous with rote knowledge or with inflexible knowledge. Knowing more facts makes many cognitive functions (e.g., comprehension, problem solving) operate more efficiently. If we minimize the learning of facts out of fear that they will be absorbed as rote knowledge, we are truly throwing the baby out with the bath water.

4. Remember that inflexible knowledge is a natural step on the way to the deeper knowledge that we want our students to have: Frustration that students’ knowledge is inflexible is a bit like frustration that a child can add but can’t do long division. It’s not that this child knows nothing; rather, he doesn’t know everything we want him to know yet. But the knowledge he does have is the natural step on the road to deeper knowledge. What turns the inflexible knowledge of a beginning student into the flexible knowledge of an expert seems to be a lot more knowledge, more examples, and more practice.

Oh, Vaccination Is Unnatural -- Getting the Disease Is So Much Better

Kev Leitch writes:

One of the common arguments from vaccine rejectionists is “These diseases aren’t really that bad”. Often this includes graphs of death rates over time, with the suggestion that the diseases were already going away by themselves when the vaccination program started. It boggles the mind that intelligent people can make that claim, but they do.

The other argument is that with modern medicine and sanitation, the diseases were not a big problem. Again, mind boggling.

People will say, without any hint of irony, “I got the disease and I didn’t die.” The response being so obvious (the dead people aren’t here to speak) that I am astounded that these people make this claim.

Doctor reflects on reality of measles suffering from a UK physician, Dr. DeeTee

But recently 2 cases I saw reminded me of measles' potentially devastating legacy. The first was a patient who had lost one of her 2 children in infancy. "Measles", she said, matter-of-factly, when I asked her why. The other case was a patient in her fifties who came in for an unrelated problem, but had a lifelong severe disability because of a paralysed left side, and who had poorly-controlled epilepsy. I imagined these were the result of a congenital problem such as cerebral palsy. "No", explained her carer. "It was encephalitis from measles".

Much of my time is spent battling illnesses that are largely unavoidable, but from time to time I see things that are totally preventable, like the measles cases last summer, and it rankles, big time. Knowing that there are those who actively campaign against vaccines makes me unspeakably angry

If you think anti-vaccine loons are just crunchy left-wing New Agers, think again

There's a measles outbreak in Montgomery County, Maryland.

The officials suspect that all the cases are related to an unvaccinated adult who came down with measles after a trip to China. He, in turn, infected a co-worker. Another adult and an eight-month-old child have all come down with the disease since then.

There's a measles outbreak in Allegany and Westmoreland Counties, Pennsylvania.

As predicted, the source of the measles outbreak in southwestern Pennsylvania was a foreign visitor, a child from India.

While neither the child nor any of five other people infected with measles have been identified, their whereabouts late in March included visits to Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset-Fayette counties, Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh of UPMC, Alle-Kiski Medical Center in Natrona Heights and various trips on Allegheny County Port Authority buses.

The state Department of Health and Allegheny County Health Department said other "probable" cases of infection await confirmation.

But the source of infection was "a traveler from India" who arrived March 7 in the United States.

That the source was a child is confirmed by the investigation's focus at Children's Hospital, where two Westmoreland County preschool-age children contracted measles, which also infected their 33-year-old father.

There may be a mumps outbreak in Boston

There is another outbreak of a “preventable” childhood disease. This one is not measles, but mumps. There are four Northeastern University students in Boston who are suspected of having mumps. Their symptoms are consistent with mumps, but the laboratory results are not back yet to confirm the diagnosis.

Beck, Bachmann, Tribalism and Terrorism - A Pagan's Blog

Beck, Bachmann, Tribalism and Terrorism - A Pagan's Blog.

Glenn Beck, Michelle Bachmann, Rush Limbaugh, and others like the are seeking to destroy the United States by replacing citizenship with tribalism. I do not think most of them intend this consequence, but they are so intoxicated by their self-righteousness that they are blind to the deeper consequences of what they are accomplishing. Richard Poplawski's murderous rage is one result. Almost certainly there will be others just as bad. An awful lot depends on hoew many.

They are taking us backwards in time, to tribalism, and our salvation may be that theirs is a very small tribe. Even so, they can do enormous damage. It has happened before.

The break up of Yugoslavia showed it is possible for divisive politicians to destroy a country. All they and their media allies needed to do was gradually convince people that their differences between one another were more important than their similarities. The rest followed.

Tribalism has been the chief barrier to establishing viable democracies in many parts of the world. Most African countries' boundaries were drawn ignoring who lived there. As a result peoples who lived peaceably with one another were divided, and lumped with peoples with very different cultural and political identities. Chaos and dictatorship resulted. When boundaries respected tribal divisions, democracy succeeds. Botswana is a good example.

We see the same problem in Iraq today where Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds form three groups with little sense of mutual identity. What sense they once had as Iraqis has been eroded by ambitious politicians. Violence is down in Baghdad at least as much due to ethnic cleansing having separated whole peoples as to Bush's 'surge.'

The same took place in Yugoslavia, another country where divisions were deliberately exacerbated by ambitious politicians, with incredibly lethal results. There was little likelihood of this carnage until politicians with the aid of their media allies began convincing Yugoslavs that many of their fellow citizens were no good.

Their American equivalents are the media stars and leading politicians among the "Christian" right and the culture warriors in geenral.

For a tribal mentality, loyalty to one's tribe, not one's country is what counts. This can establish a viable country when it is homogenous, but the stage is set for trouble when it is not. When one group wins they seek to install permanent rule: one man, one vote, one time. Then the other group feels tyrannized over, and rebels.

Republicans and American conservatives are increasingly acting like tribes hostile to the rest of us, not citizens. Never in the lifetime of anyone now living have the losers of an American election done so much to discredit the electoral process, deliberately prevent government from working, and encourage a wide ranging sense of crisis and danger among their followers as have the modern Republican Party and its allies. Never.

Utter nutjobs like Michele Bachmann, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and others have done their level best to instill panic fear and rage among those stupid enough to believe them. And yes, 'stupid' is the right word. Bachmann calls for revolution. Beck says we are headed to either communism or fascism , depending on the day he speaks. Then, when the weakest minds among their audience lash out lethally, they claim innocence.

Dropout Prevention

Ask the Expert.

The high school dropout problem is a severe epidemic for the United States, as nationwide, it is reported that only 71 percent of students graduate from high school. Understanding the magnitude of the problem and the forces that impact dropout rates is critically important to developing effective strategies. High school students are dropping out at alarming rates every day across the country. There is urgency for obtaining more accurate, consistent, and timely data to analyze who is dropping out and the reasons contributing to these life-altering decisions.

To curb the alarming dropout rate, school systems should focus prevention efforts in the beginning of the middle grades if not earlier. The key indicators that researchers have identified as indicative of who is most likely to drop out are: poor grades in core subjects, low attendance, failure to be promoted to the next grade, and disengagement in the classroom, including behavioral problems.

These key indicators can assist decision makers in targeting prevention resources to the students most at risk of imminently leaving school. Some very useful prevention strategies include: small learning communities and school within a school for greater personalization, partnerships between high schools and feeder middle schools, ninth grade transition programs, support for students with disabilities outside of school.

I wonder if improving reading scores beginning in the very early grades would have a positive effect. Also see Bill Milliken's The Last Dropout.