How much is that rowdy kid interfering with your child's learning?

9/5/2012

Anyone who has spent much time in classrooms has the sense that just a couple of disorderly kids can really disrupt learning for everyone. These kids distract the other students, and the teacher must allocate a disproportionate amount of attention to them to keep them on task.

Obvious though this point seems, there have been surprisingly few studies of just how high a cost disruptive kids exact on the learning of others.

Lori Skibbe and her colleagues have just published an interesting study on the subject.

Skibbe measured self-regulation in 445 1st graders, using the standard head-toes-knees-shoulders (HTKS) task. In this task, children must first follow the instructors direction ("Touch your toes. Now touch your shoulders.") In a second phase, they were instructed to do the opposite of what the instructor said--when told to touch their toes, they were to touch their head, for example. This is a well-known measure of self regulation in children this age (e.g., Ponitz et al., 2008).

Researchers also evaluated the growth over the first grade year in children's literacy skills, using two subtests from the Woodcock-Johnson: Passage Comprehension and Picture Vocabulary.

We would guess that children's growth in literacy would be related to their self-regulation skill (as measured by their HTKS score). What Skibbe et al showed is that the class average HTKS score also predicts how much an individual child will learn, even after you statistically account for that child's HTKS score. (Researchers also accounted for the school-wide percentage of kids qualifying for free or reduced lunch, as academic growth might covary with self-regulation as due to SES differences.)

Thus it would seem that kids who have trouble inhibiting impulses don't just get distracted from their work; when they get distracted from their work they likely engage in behaviors that distract other kids too.

Skibbe then replicated this finding with a second cohort of 633 children in 68 classrooms.

The effects were sizable both for comprehension (d = .35 for cohort 1 and .31 for cohort 2) and for vocabulary (d = .24 for cohort 1 and .16 for cohort 2). To provide some perspective, the effect on comprehension is close to the effect that an effective principal makes to kids' learning (d = .36) according to Hattie's 2009 meta-analysis.

So a calm classroom makes for a better learning environment. Who didn't know that?

Well, I might have guessed that the effect was present, but I wouldn't have guessed it is as large as it is.

To me, this finding also brings to mind the likely importance of peer self-regulation at older grades. Skibbe et al measured self-regulation at first grade, when most teachers still have ready tools to deal with disruptive behavior: most children (but not all, certainly) are ready to yield to teacher's authority.

That's less often true in middle or high school. What tools do teachers have for older kids? What can be done when kids compromise not only their own education, but those of their classmates?

This strikes me as a terribly difficult problem, and one for which I am without ideas. But it seems like a vital problem to address. Skibbe's work tells me that the effects of disruptive peers may be worse than we would have guessed.

Hattie, J. A. C. (2009). Visible Learning. London: Routledge.

Ponitz, C. C., McClelland, M. M., Jewkes, A. M., Connor, C. M., Farris,
C. L., & Morrison, F. J. (2008). Touch your toes! Developing a direct
measure of behavioral regulation in early childhood. Early Childhood
Research Quarterly, 23, 141–158.

Skibbe, L. E. , Phillips, B. M, Day, S. L., Brophy-Herb, H. E. & Connor, C. M. (2012). Children's early literacy growth in relation to classmate's self-regulation. Journal of Educational Psychology, 104, 541-553.

ejwillingham link

9/5/2012 06:29:33 am

I have ideas. Pretty effective accommodations exist for children with impulse control issues, but they require stepping outside of what many teachers perceive to be "acceptable" classroom behavior. The upshot, however, is a calmer learning environment for everyone. With a datum of one, our experience was that with teachers who did not implement these accommodations, our son spent much of his time sent out of the classroom to sit in the hall or being on the receiving end of the teacher's raised voice (two classroom experiences). With the accommodations (two classroom experiences), our son managed his impulse control much, much better and had a very successful school year that did not involve consistent public humiliation or disrupting his classmates' learning experiences.

Some of these accommodations included gum chewing, being allowed to stand at his desk (in the back of the classroom and not blocking projector/smart board), being allowed to do something with his hands (LEGO work, drawing) during listening times (reading, teacher explanations), having a "fidget," and having frequent but quiet "motor breaks" at a nod from the teacher. The teachers also implemented a silent visual method of letting him know if his engine was revving too high, using a laminated sheet taped to his desk with red, yellow, green on it and a marker to move if his behavior started to portend disruption. All of this was very, very effective, and he has intense ADHD/OCD/tics with severe impulse control issues.

Dan Willingham

9/5/2012 06:38:16 am

Emily, excellent points. My nephew had similar issues, and being allowed to stand in the back of the room made a HUGE difference for him. My wife works with similar strategies in her classroom.
At higher grades I honestly was not thinking of kids who are disruptive because of difficulties with impulse control, but rather who are disruptive because they are desperately behind in the work and would rather make their classmates laugh than feel ashamed by revealing that they don't know what's going on.

ejwillingham link

9/5/2012 07:18:52 am

Interesting point about the "class clown" issue. I've taught students who have used that as a distraction, and I think I probably did the same myself in high school. Our son with the impulse control problems found pretty early on--second grade?--that being funny was a good way to redirect attention from his behaviors that were viewed more negatively by students and teachers. As always, being funny is being defensive, in its way.

Douglas Hainline

9/5/2012 08:27:44 am

(1) I don't recall this being a problem sixty years ago. How did we deal with it then?

(2) I think we must distinguish between -- as I think Daniel Willingham has -- two kinds of disruptors: kids with genuine neurological problems, and those who have been raised in an environment in which respect for authority and consideration for others is absent, and where this general attitude has been passed on to the offspring.

The case studies mentioned here -- and I know of others like this -- seem to me to be of the first type. I suspect the real problem, in terms of numbers, is with the second type. I have sometimes wondered if the "Charter School" movement is not really motivated by a desire to allow children whose parents value education to escape to schools where they do not have to put up with disruptors.

LindaS link

9/6/2012 07:49:03 am

I've always said that the real reason parents move or take their child out of public schools is NOT academic or racially-based, but because the school is tolerant of an incredible amount of disruption. Most of that refusal to deal with disrupters is because they are so often minorities. The school feels horrible because it conflicts with their view of proper multicultural and diversity norms.

In fact, although it is true that many Black and Hispanic children are raised in environments that are more tolerant of boisterous behavior, procedures that demonstrate the expected behavior are easy to incorporate into pre-K, K, and 1st grade classes. Kids love it - they like to conform to the norms at that age, and being able to control their behavior in the expected manner leads to feelings of competency and mastery.

Also, it helps the rest of the class learn more.

Cal

9/7/2012 10:42:13 am

"I don't recall this being a problem sixty years ago. How did we deal with it then?"

Those kids dropped out. The schools weren't blamed for this decision, because at that point in time, a high school dropout could find work and form a family.

Joe Riener

9/5/2012 02:24:41 pm

I taught English at an urban public high school for 17 years, working with both grade level classes, and AP classes. I found that if I was successful in creating an environment of respect, both for the struggling student and the learning process, I was able to manage fairly well to keep the class on task. The various strategies mentioned by other commentators, and others I fashioned, allowed this student to concentrate. Sometimes nothing worked. Sometimes other students would have liked to have the distractor silenced. But by the end of the year, all students seemed to have gained something valuable about cooperation and acceptance, and the experience of laboring in a group setting when students can't always get things to go their way. Those intangibles might be hard to measure, but do feel important to me, when we're trying to consider the value of education in a diverse high school setting.

Michael Smith

9/5/2012 05:38:40 pm

I worked in a school where corporal punishment was used. Disruptive behavior got 3 swats with an 20 inch chunk of spruce 1x2, (On the trousers) right there in front of the class. This was sufficient.

Usually eyes were watering but few real tears. It worked for most kids. A few used it as an attention getting device.

9/6/2012 10:09:28 am

In high school, disruptive behavior may stem from students who are being marched through school subjects that they are tired of. Many kids would pass on analyzing literature by that age (including plenty of middle class kids who can somehow manage their behavior when they're studying something they want to know. Of course, we can't let kids opt out of every subject whenever they want, but by the end of high school you'd think we could come up with alternative curricula (technical, work-study, etc) that would make kids want to attend.

Cal

9/7/2012 10:52:32 am

EB is correct. Dan is incorrect in assuming that most kids act out because they are desperately behind. Most kids who act out do so because they actively reject the material. They don't want to learn it. They may also think (or know) that they can't learn it, but that's irrelevant. In some cases, kids who work much harder have far weaker skills than the kids who treat school as something to drift through. They believe the curriculum is pointless. They may or may not expect to go to college, but they figure that, just as high school is eventually forced to pass them on, college will as well. Or not, because they're teenagers and don't always think things through as well as they might.

They are in no way ignorant of the importance of college, which has been drummed into their heads by well-meaning educators for 10 years or more. They just don't care, and see so little value to school work that they are just going through the motions. School is social hour for them, nothing more.

I am not saying this in disdain or contempt. In fact, I agree with the kids--the curriculum we force most kids to take is an utter waste of their time, and they are learning less as a result. Dan and people who believe that all kids are capable, with help, of learning a college-prep curriculum, are wrong.

And yes, these kids are a HUGE problem. I speak as someone who specializes in teaching math to low ability high school kids; I do it pretty well. I know exactly how much effort it takes to get a kid from Far Below Basic to Below Basic in algebra on their third year through, and what incentives to give to that kid to get him or her to try at all. I have a much higher success rate than most, and yet the kids who don't want to be there significantly impact my ability to help the kids who want to learn math--just enough math to pass the high school test, or to get them to a minimal level on a college placement test.

The way to address it is politically unacceptable. It is to teach a meaningful, but lower level curriculum to kids who haven't demonstrated the interest or ability in more dificult material, rather than pretend that these kids' failure to learn is the teachers' fault.

9/10/2012 04:37:41 am

I go along with much of what Cal says, with the exception that the alternative curriculum that many kids would prefer is not necessarily a lower-level curriculum, just a different one. Kids aiming to be machinists would be learning at a higher level than kids in a generic college prep lite curriculum, definitely. Of course, there would be kids training to be prep cooks and groundskeepers, day care workers and retail clerks; no higher math there, and not much expository writing. But we lose any number of kids who are good learners each year, just because what we ask them to learn is not motivating to them.

9/12/2012 04:13:27 pm

Well D. Willingham wrote an entire book on the subject of why students don't like to learn. It's hard work!

I would add to the discussion this issue the fact that special needs kids that have been streamlined into the classrooms. This must have an impact as they can be disruptive and slow and the teacher must obviously spend more time with those one or two (or more) in the classroom that have learning disabilities. Sometimes, it's not a problem, but other times, when the subject matter or skills are more difficult, it can be demoralizing ("boring") as the teacher must go back and review (ad nauseum) the material so they can get it before moving on. By that time, you've lost the rest of the class.

John Doe

9/25/2012 06:24:06 am

The problems stem from several core ideas we have decided as a culture to be central to education.
1. Trackless courses
2. Differentiated instruction
3. Integrated classrooms
4. Lack of student choice

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How much is that rowdy kid interfering with your child's learning?

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