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 The technique, called ‘Tools for the Mind,’ seemed to be
particularly effective in high-poverty schools, the authors write.
“The active ingredient is children are taking responsibility for
their own learning,” said Clancy Blair of the Steinhardt School of
Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University,
who led the study.
“The key aspect is children planning what they’re going to do and
making a plan for it and executing that plan,” Blair said. “They’re
practicing all the cognitive skills that are important for
learning.”
For the two-year study, researchers divided 79 kindergarten
classrooms with a total of 759 children into two groups. Forty-two
classrooms were directed to incorporate the Tools for the Mind
program, and 37 continued with their standard teaching practices.
Researchers assessed students’ attention, speed of processing and
other measures of academic ability twice a year, as well as testing
their saliva samples for levels of stress hormones.
In the Tools for the Mind program, teachers attended several
professional development workshops each year and had a Tools coach
who periodically visited classrooms with the Tools trainer.
The program is meant to improve kids’ control over their ability to
avoid distractions, focus their attention, remember important
details and regulate impulsive behavior.
Teachers organize “shared cooperative activities” designed to
promote social-emotional development and improve thinking skills.
They combine reading, mathematics and science activities with
child-directed activities and structured sociodramatic play.
Kids in the Tools group showed improvements in reading, vocabulary
and mathematics at the end of kindergarten that actually increased
into the first grade, the researchers reported in the journal PLOS
ONE.
“The thing that is most important for our results is we found the
biggest effects in the highest poverty schools,” Blair said. Kids
from poorer families often enter kindergarten less prepared because
they have been exposed to less language and fewer learning
activities, he said.
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Tools kids also had slightly higher levels of the stress hormone
cortisol in their saliva samples when researchers tested them at
10:30 AM during a school day. Although too much cortisol at all
times is a bad thing, a slight increase during the day indicates
that kids are more stimulated, the authors write.
“You want it when you need it and you want it to go away when you
don’t,” Blair said.
Previous studies evaluating the effect of a prekindergarten version
of the Tools for the Mind Program have been inconclusive, the
authors write, and this is the first study of the technique in
kindergarten.
The Tools program wouldn’t be difficult to implement in kindergarten
classrooms in the U.S., although it’s not currently happening
because of a “misguided emphasis” on academics and the belief that
children need to sit at a desk and learn to read, Blair said.
“There’s a lot of debate about moving away from play,” said Allyson
P. Mackey, a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, who was not part of the new study.
“We know that this is a good way for kids to learn, but there’s a
lot of pressure to teach kids pre-reading and pre-math skills,”
Mackey told Reuters Health.
Free play for children might have very important academic
implications, she said.
Parents could try to implement some of these play techniques at
home, too, but peer interaction is an important aspect so it makes
sense to focus on the classroom, Blair said.
“It’s well within the budgets and the capabilities of every
kindergarten classroom in the U.S.,” he said. “Closing the
achievement gap is right there, we know how to do it, and there’s no
excuse not to do it.”
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1v8ol8A PLOS ONE, online November 12, 2014.
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