Rationed Learning Interview continues the series of observations about learning efficiency. Many behavioral scientists conduct imaginary studies in order to assess merits of hypotheses they consider testing. These assessments help to shape the fidelity of hypotheses, methods, and reporting. The following interview illustrates one aspect of such a test of a longitudinal study of impacts of mobile PCs on learning PK20+. As in any experimental study, the design tests the null hypothesis that no differences will exist between results from experimental and control conditions. Please share your thinking about this possible study.
Tablet PC Education conducted this interview with Bonnie Doowrite, principal investigator of the first longitudinal study about mobile learning among a cohort of six year olds as they entered and progressed through schools starting in 2002. Researchers followed these students until 2012 when the first students in the study graduated from high school. Some teachers and some students used mobile PCs, some did not. We met on the day of the final report press release in her office at Landgrant University – Normsville, California (LUNC).
Tablet PC Education: Thank you for letting me interview you about your research project. I understand that this is the first interview you have granted. You’ve caught my attention with the title of your final report, Rationed Learning: A Conspiracy of “Yes, but … 2002-2012.” It seems loaded with images that challenge more soothing political stereotypes of education. Do you intend to shock, amuse, or do something else with that title?
Doowrite: I think the title aptly describes the results of our study. Our data led to the conclusion that teachers and students ration learning as though learning is a scarce commodity. Since 2002, learning venues and choices have expanded historically and significantly to anytime and anywhere for any reason on-demand. No long must people of school age wait for anyone to guide them to learn anything they want to learn.
It took me a long time to think through the consequences of the conclusion of rationed learning before I agreed to leave it on the report. Our data were strong, so I yielded to the title suggested by our data analysts.
Tablet PC Education: What data convinced you that a conspiracy exists to ration learning? Did one idea stand out from your data?
Doowrite: Our data yielded one idea in two parts. One part is that teachers who talked about how to do something had students who learned more and learned faster. Second, using mobile PCs for teaching and learning increased the amount and rate of student learning. Let me elaborate.
Educators had to figure out how to acquire, learn to use, and maintain mobile PCs in schools. Many of them had no special help. Most of them figured it out on their own. In some cases, they rearranged existing budgets to pay for acquisition and training. In other schools, teachers and students bought and maintained their own. Between these two extremes numerous permutations from these two ideas existed.
We found that students with mobile PCs and with teachers who used mobile PCs to complete academic assignments learned at least 25 percent more during the same school year than students with teachers who did not use these tools. That finding is consistent with other studies not yet released for public review and many peer reviewed published anecdotes and shorter term studies.
Tablet PC Education: Let me press you further. What’s the conspiracy? Do you mean educators got together knowingly, intentionally to limit what any student learns? They stacked the lessons against learning?
Doowrite: Yes and no. I’ll explain.
First, all teachers and students volunteered to participate in this study. Teachers chose how they instructed and students chose how they completed lessons.
Second, teachers decided how efficient to make each lesson. Teachers who used mobile PCs for lessons offered more efficient, more targeted lessons.
Third, students decided how much to attend and complete lessons as presented. We found that the more dense the lessons, the more these students completed assignments successfully.
Tablet PC Education: What do you mean, rationed learning. I don’t understand. It seems counterintuitive that teachers or students would knowingly and intentionally restrict learning. And a conspiracy?
Doowrite: We concluded that daily choices of these teachers to present less than the most efficient, targeted lessons, the fewer students met learning criteria, and the less volume of learning students obtained. We named this condition “rationed learning” the same way others named choices about fuel consumption “rationed fuel” during World War II.
When we collected these decisions into one file, we saw choice patterns teachers made. We called these choices a conspiracy of “Yes, but …” This condition probably resulted from unintended consequences by teachers of unintentional agreements to limit learning. Their choices yielded the same result: less learning than students who used mobile PCs and with teachers who used mobile PCs.
Tablet PC Education: What do you mean, “Yes, but …”?
Doowrite: We could see that teachers do their best each day with each student during each lesson. They make noble efforts to encourage student learning, sometimes against odds stacked against teachers. “But,” and then they’d say something like this: “I could do more in my class or school, if I had X,” and they’d name this or that or something else that they said they needed in order to increase student learning further.
Tablet PC Education: What did they say they needed, and are the correct?
Doowrite: Teachers with students who did not learn as much as others talked about things over which they had no immediate control that promptly influenced student learning through the lesson at hand. They appeared to use an ideology of, “I can’t, and it’s your fault.” I know that sounds harsh, but it’s a different way of talking from the can-do way of teachers with students who increased their learning the most.
I-can’t-because teachers talked about political issues instead of how to improve lessons with whatever they had at that moment and thereby increase student learning that day. They talked about important issues, such as making learning fair to all students, changing sometimes deplorable working conditions, increasing teacher pay, changing their inservice preparation, the use of their experience to influence public policies. We assembled a long list of such noble grievances, wishes, and ideas. We’re analyzing the list with our data to see what influence each issue had on student learning rates.
Tablet PC Education: I want to change the focus slightly. What exactly are BIPS and BLIPs? You mentioned them in your report and I overheard you talking with a staff member about them before our interview.
Doowrite: BIPs is an acronym for Basal Instruction Programs, a measure of the basic academic learning of a student. It’s a function, not a single tangible thing like a curriculum or a classroom.
We saw teachers and parents instructing academics to children from about 30 months of age and older. Many of these learners, some with mobile PCs and some without them, gained control over basic academics before entering preschool, including reading at the first or second grade levels in a few months, solving mathematical and scientific problems, and handling conversations in standard English. We identified otherwise normal children entering kindergarten who read at middle school levels. Most BIPs occurred in homes, some in neighborhood learning centers, and a relatively few in preschools.
We also found these students had to figure out how to fit into classes with students who did not have these academic skills. Teachers made few accommodations of normal students with advanced academic skills. They’d say things like, “Yes, but he needs to learn to get along his peers.” We found almost the same number of girls as boys were advanced over their classroom peers.
BLIPs is an acronym, a shortcut way to talk about Baseline Learning Intervention Programs. They’re publically financed programs of last resort funded through local public school boards of education. BLIPs are to learning today what compensatory school programs had been for the past 45 years to students who tested one standard deviation or more below the mean in an academic subject. Educators developed BLIPs as intensive immersive instruction in order to insure that all children learned to use the traditional English 3Rs promptly as they enter school at whatever age they enrolled. BLIPs occurred in bricks and mortar and in virtual learning environments.
Tablet PC Education: What do you say of talk about snail schools, lemming learning, brain dead schools and other such journalistic, political labels?
Doowrite: I’m going to pass on responding to your question. We don’t use that vocabulary or way of thinking when we discuss learning and learning venues.
Tablet PC Education: What vocabulary and way of thinking do you use?
Doowrite: We use several code words and phrases we learned from educators who took part in our study. These words indicate can-do, such as, “Let’s do it,” “We can figure out how to do that,” “That’s doable,” “Keep going,” “Try again,” things like that. We adapted some of this vocabulary from successful teachers.
Tablet PC Education: Do teachers really talk that way?
Doowrite: We found two types of teacher talk and we have data to support their differences. It surprised us at first, but then we thought about it, and it seemed obvious. Just as athletic coaches show athletes how to increase their performances, so too did can-do teachers.
Teachers who used can-do vocabulary and logic had students who increased their learning rates. When can-do teachers and students used Tablet PCs, Ultra Mobile PCs, and other mobile PCs, these students gained the most and the fastest in academic performance regardless of whether they lived in depressed urban wealthier exurban areas.
Those students did not increase their volume as much or rate of learning as fast with teachers who did not use mobile PCs and who did not consistently talk about how to do something and who did not appear to use can-do logic.
Tablet PC Education: I saved this question for the last. I understand from educators that they would use more electronic learning tools, if they and their schools had more money.
Doowrite: We heard the same comments for educators, boards of education members, national policy advocates, and community members. Educators have used that same refrain for decades with substantial political responses. U.S. schools receive more government funding than total annual budgets of most nations. Perhaps politicians will respond in similar ways again about electronic communication devices in schools.
However, those educators who used the can-do talk faced similar conditions as others. They seemed to accept the premise that it’s what you do with what you have that pays off for students.
We found urban educators determined for their teachers and students to use mobile PCs for learning. So, they used whatever authority they had over their budgets to acquire and support mobiles, mostly through lease contracts. Some obtained assistance from hardware and software manufacturers as demonstrators of certain electronic products. In general, though, manufacturers and publishers did not and likely will not donate products to schools or educators.
Later, we’ll release descriptions of ways educators funded their mobile PC programs.
Tablet PC Education: Thank you, Dr. Doowrite, for taking time to talk discuss your landmark research.
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