9 Books to Read and Reread

In this post, I offer some suggested readings that I find help inform my approach to teaching. The books are listed in no particular order. 

For any teacher, I recommend:

• What Works in Schools? Robert J. Marzano, Debra J. Pickering, and Jane E. Pollock. (Note that there is now a second edition available with a substantially different organization. Either edition is valuable.) This book (first edition) discusses nine strategies shown by research to be effective in improving student learning outcomes. Sometimes the strategies are “obvious,” but it can still be helpful to be reminded that they are important teaching tools. For instance, summarizing and note-taking are effective. However, for me, many of my students have never been taught how to take notes, or have never discussed strategies for taking notes. So I make an effort to tell students when someone states an idea that I think everyone should write down, and I set aside some time for students to discuss what they should write down during class. Other strategies take a more concerted and planned effort to implement. For instance, generating and testing hypotheses is another strategy. While this is a natural part of doing mathematics, this reminds me to include tasks in which students do more investigative work. More than a list of nine ideas, the book has specific recommendations that are helpful. For instance, what are some important features to make cooperative learning successful? These are the kinds of specifics that are discussed in the book.
• Why Don’t Students Like School? Daniel Willingham. Willingham is a cognitive psychologist who poses some key questions and answers them from the perspective of his discipline. There are a few things that I like about this book, and that make me go back to it. One of the things I like is that each chapter closes with implications for the classroom. For example, one chapter discusses our human tendency to prefer and make sense of things as stories. In a course like precalculus, this might be used to frame “telling the story of a function,” where a function has properties like limits as x goes to infinity, asymptotes, periodic behavior (or not), symmetry, and so on. In calculus or analysis, the story idea might be put in terms of the central “conflict,” will a sequence converge or not, or another, is a function continuous or not. Rereading (or skimming) this book and thinking about the implications often inspires me to find ways to improve my day-to-day plans.
• What’s the Point of School? Guy Claxton. Claxton describes what he believes are the core goals of an education. These are big-picture concepts like developing people who are curious and are lifelong learners. While this is not a book that I return to for help in thinking through the details of teaching, I find that it helps to remind me of what is really important in my role as an educator.
• Switch. Chip and Dan Heath. This book inspired the name of my blog. The Heaths describe how to make a switch—a change—either in yourself or others. The single most important idea is that a lot of what we do is driven by emotion, and so we need to think in those terms when looking to effect change. The authors go through several ways of activating the emotions that will enable a switch to happen. I have returned to the book many times, for example, to remind me of how to approach students who are struggling, to help them find the emotion that will drive them to turn around their performance in my classes.
• Understanding By Design. Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. This is a book that puts forth a framework for thinking about curriculum design by starting with the end results, then thinking about how those results will be measured, and only then moving into designing the learning activities that will produce the desired end results. I return to this book from time to time to remind myself of how to frame my goals, and how to find ways to measure progress towards those goals.
• Mindset. Carol Dweck. Dweck has done significant research into the power of having a growth mindset, a mindset in which one believes that through hard work, one can get smarter or better. In the book, she describes some of this research and how it can make a difference across different domains of school and life. The book helps to remind me of why a growth mindset matters, and serves up examples that I use in explaining the power of the growth mindset to students.

For math teachers at any level, I recommend:

What’s Math Got To Do With It? Jo Boaler. Boaler has studied high school students experiencing problem-based curricula and compared them with those in traditional curricula in two different countries, the US and the UK. This book describes some of what was learned in those settings, and distills for a general audience—including parents of schoolchildren—some of the key ideas of what mathematics learning is, or should be, about. From the perspective of a math teacher, this book is less likely to offer ideas for day-to-day decisions, but like Claxton’s book, helps to remind me of the goals of teaching mathematics.

For college teachers, I recommend:

What the Best College Teachers Do. Ken Bain. Bain’s book centers how the select group of highly-respected teachers he studied approach teaching, from preparing for class, to setting expectations for students, to conducting class, and so forth. Each chapter holds a wealth of good advice, like seeking the commitment of the students: asking them to consider whether they are willing to do what it takes to succeed in the class, and therefore have them commit to the effort required. I find I sometimes return to the questions he poses in the chapters as a way of gaining a fresh perspective on my courses.

Finally, for college math teachers, I recommend:

The Moore Method: A Pathway To Learner-Centered Instruction. Charles A. Coppin, W. Ted Mahavier, E. Lee May, and G. Edgar Parker. The four authors of this text each describe how to implement the Moore method, as they see it. The book offers the reader a chance to consider various aspects of teaching in a learner-centered environment, and benefits from the approach of the authors, which is essentially to offer their individual responses to the key questions in setting up and operating a Moore Method course. This variations-on-a-theme approach has the effect of providing the reader with a canvas and a palette, rather than promoting a specific paint-by-number prescription. The authors take on a wide variety of issues associated with implementing the Moore method, including such topics as, What if no one has anything to present? How do I grade? and many others. I have returned to the book many times to seek out new ideas of how to handle syllabus construction, or to remind myself of ways to approach managing an IBL classroom. (In full disclosure, I should mention that I am personally acquainted with the authors, and have worked closely with Ed Parker.)

What are some of your favorite or most inspiring reads from the educational realm?

9 Ways to Engage Reluctant Students, aka Tackling the Startup Problem

Any IBL instructor has faced the issue of students who struggle to get going, who seem to want to be passive, and who participate, if at all, only reluctantly. Some years ago, Stan Yoshinobu and I coined "the startup problem" for those students who can't seem to get started with IBL. Let me say up front that I have not solved the startup problem. However, I have developed a number of strategies to use with students who seem disinclined to engage with the class. Let me list them first, and then I will go into detail below.

1. Engage the student in social conversation. 
2. Build habits: set action triggers.
3. Talk about how to succeed in class.
4. Express confidence in IBL.
5. Assign a sociable partner.
6. Invite contributions to discussions.
7. Invite the student to present.
8. Shrink the change.
9. Don't give up.

1. Engage the student in social conversation. One of my first strategies for getting students involved is to make a human connection with them. Ask how they are doing, ask what other classes they are taking, ask about sports or hobbies, but do something so they feel that I recognize their presence in the classroom, and to let them know they are not invisible in the class.
2. Build habits: set action triggers. Sometimes one of the root causes of students' lack of participation is lack of (effective) preparation for class. So I often ask students who are not actively contributing what they are doing outside of class. Based on the information I get, I talk with the student about setting aside a time for working on my class. An action trigger is an idea I learned from Switch. It means you agree to take an action based on some event. In conversations with students, this often sounds like, "OK, so you finish putting your kids to bed, and then that's the best time for you to set an hour to work on this class," or "So, you walk out of the class after mine, and you have a break between classes when you can hide out in the library and work on this class." The idea is just that the student has something external to him or her that will trigger some work time.
3. Talk about how to succeed in class. Closely linked to getting students to make a habit of spending time on the class is helping them understand what to do with that time. In my IBL classes, students are not able to simply mimic a solution provided to them on 20 examples. So we talk about what to do. Read definitions, then reread them. Then try to paraphrase the definition, build examples of the definition, and get comfortable with it. Then read the problem or theorem, and try to understand it with examples. And so on. To the extent that IBL is about not being the source of validation for answers, it is about helping students learn how to learn, which means these kinds of conversations are important.
4. Express confidence in IBL. At this point in my career, I have a lot of success stories, stories of students who struggled at first, but through determination and good work habits, got through my class and went on to graduate. On the first day of class, I let students know that the road will be difficult but worth it. After that, depending on the class and the number of students having the startup problem, either the whole class will hear one of the success stories, or individual students will hear it. I want them to know that I know they can do it, that IBL works, and that I know it will work for them if they put in the effort.
5. Assign a sociable partner. If I think part of the student's lack of engagement is shyness, then I may assign a partner who is confident and sociable, who will engage the quiet student in conversation and encourage him/her to participate in discussions.
6. Invite contributions to discussions. When leading discussions, sometimes I let volunteers share, and sometimes I call on specific students. If I have students who have not contributed in any recent class, I will do a Think-Pair-Share, and then ask a reticent student to share what s/he discussed. By asking for a report on a discussion, rather than asking the student to come up with something on the spot, it relieves some of the pressure on the student, and makes it more likely that s/he will have something to share.
7. Invite the student to present. In my IBL classes, presentations at the board play a role--sometimes larger, sometimes smaller. But in all classes, students are required to present during the semester. If I have students who have not presented, I will seek them out. At first, I may give a non-specific suggestion, like, "I'd like to see you come with a presentation ready in the next week. Let me know." If a week goes by and I get nothing, then I will typically assign the student to a presentation, and remind them that if they are stuck, or worried about it, that they should come talk to me about their ideas in office hours.
8. Shrink the change. Sometimes, even after doing the above, even if the student makes a presentation, s/he doesn't seem to be making progress in the class. If the student is not engaged but attending class, then I will try to find a moment at the end of class when I can catch the student on his/her way out the door, and start a conversation. If the student is not attending class, then they get an email from me. This is where Switch comes in again. I want to get the student emotionally connected with wanting to succeed. Have you ever had one of those "Buy 10, Get 1 Free" cards? Research suggests that people do better with a "Buy 10…" card when they get 2 bonus punches when they start the card, rather than if they had a "Buy 8…" card with no bonus punches. Mathematically, both cards effectively require 8 purchases to earn a free item. But emotionally, we feel farther along with those 3 punches on the first purchase. The term "Shrink the Change" refers to trying to make people feel as if they are farther along than they realize. I will do this both in terms of how far they are toward graduation, and how far they are towards passing the class. Even disengaged students have turned in work, taken the quiz and an exam, etc. So I tell them that they have come this far, and this is what they need to do to complete the course. I also try not to overwhelm them, and I usually focus them on the nearest goal. I might say or write in an email something like, "The first step is to come to the next class with a complete set of attempts on all the problems," or, "The next step is to try this specific problem and either bring a solution to class or bring your ideas to me before class, so you can present a solution."
9. Don't give up. I have been using IBL for more than 10 years. I have seen some surprising cases where students who did not seem to be making progress, even 10 weeks into a 15 week semester, somehow found their way to success in the class. I remind myself of this fact whenever I encounter tough cases. Sometimes if I show faith in the students, that is the small push they need to find the determination to succeed.