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Hello and thank you for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. The teaching math teaching podcast is sponsored by the Association of mathematics teacher educators. Your hosts are Eva Sennheiser myself, dusty Jones and Joel Amidon. Today we're talking to Don Baer, who is the executive director of deeper learning advocates, which is on a mission to embed the psychology of learning in K 12 policy. So that policy stops undermining learning, we will discuss the relationship between attitude and learning, deeper learning and about humanizing k 12 schools for deeper learning. We're excited to speak with Don today, we're hoping that teachers and teacher educators in any setting will learn something from listening to this podcast. Welcome, Don, like you're like we're having. So let's just jump into our first question. Can you talk a little bit about what you do my path in education. And what I'm doing right now is, as you said, the mission of the organization deprogramming advocates, to the nonprofit side of what I do is really about how can we shift policy? My, my expertise is in motivation and education. And I studied some schools and you know, it's a really fascinating topic. But what I find is that the challenges are not at the necessarily at the teacher level, they're actually at the level of policy and kind of what the hidden curriculum and teachers inherit when they get the job. There's ways that we do school ways that schools are managed that inhibit the learning. And so we want to remove those barriers and help the school schools at a policy level understand that there is a role to play that they can they play it about how teachers and students are motivated. And that that affects the learning in a fundamental way. What I'm doing is getting the psychology out there into the world, and then working on understanding how that actually is affected also by policy. So that's, that's the bleeding edge of what I'm doing is the policy side. Could you give us an example of what you mean by say, hidden curriculum in those things? So we can wrap our heads around that? Yeah, so a hidden curriculum, people are probably familiar with the term somewhat, it's kind of those things that aren't said, you know, they have a curriculum, and it might be in this case, math, but but there's also how is the room arranged? How is the time schedule done? Those kinds of things actually affect? They're not things that you're necessarily thinking about every day, but they're things that have some effect? And what I find in the motivation, spheres that you need to look at things like how are conflicts handled? How are decisions made? Who's making the decision, it can be very important for the students to make some decisions and the teacher to make others, even from administrative point of view, what are the decisions that teachers are making? Are they making curricular decisions? Or are they just making implementation decisions and instructional decisions? So could you give an example of what kinds of decisions you think students should or could be making? There's a vast range there, because my background is also in I homeschooled other people's kids for about five years, and I've been involved in the democratic education movements. And so on the radical side, and I would consider my roots to be fairly radical in an educational sense, is they give the kids a lot of decision making power, like making day to day choices about what to learn and have learned. more traditional teachers don't have that freedom, they are in different set of constraints. And it's not a bad thing. But they need to be clear about what are the decisions we can make? So if you're presenting particular information, what are some choices that the kids can make? Are there, you know, ways that you can that a small level pick amongst different ways of presenting they're learning, picking different ways to approach a subject? As I'm listening to you? I'm envisioning when you said pick out a present. So potentially, in a poster versus verbal versus Is that the kind of level you're thinking that's one level? Yes, definitely. And are there ways that you can, the more decisions they can make and learn about the consequences of their decisions, then they're going to be have a stronger learning experience. Part of that also depends on the skill level of the students, you have sea level in the sense of like, do they know how to make a reasonable choice about that particular aspect of learning? It's tricky if your university is going to be different than high school that's going to be different from middle or Elementary. So So that's an important thing to take into account is, okay, what degree of decision making are they can they take on and surprises you know, stretch and figure it out, test the limits, and then back off when you've given them too much? So Don, one of the things that I've seen in I guess, at different levels of schooling, first at the elementary levels, but then also up into high school, and at the university level, is this idea of a choice board or a menu of options. Where is that the sort of thing you're talking about where students you know, need to actually

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accomplish something and the teacher says, Well, here's a list of seven things I need you to do two of them is that the sort of great, that's a great way to structure it, so that they're supported in understanding there's a, an acceptable range, there's, you know, there's goals that we need to achieve. Those are the kinds of supports that really helped. In fact, there's a, there are certain democratic type schools that, that just do that on a larger scale. Like, they literally have a choice board at the front of the room. And they say, what are we going to do today? And they Okay, about the kids themselves can offer things and say, Well, I want to learn about this, and anybody wants to join me? Can there's big versions of that. But even if you're scaling it down and saying, okay, here's the five or six topics that we can are under the lessons for the week, and

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how do you want to approach them today, you know, make choices as you go. So there's many ways to organize it, but enabling them to make decisions and is a valuable part is definitely, that makes me think about the whole concept of least restrictive environment. Right here. We thinking about that from a we a lot of times here that within our special education, but I like to think of that overall, just how are we you can't have a least restrictive environment if your environment is so restrictive, that kids are not allowed to make choices, right? So how do you keep wiping out and removing restrictions? I mean, this is a very simple example. But you know, maybe it's, it falls in line with what you're talking about. It's a math teacher that I was observing is actually my son's math teacher, who had just a bunch of different kids in this classroom with different levels of pay. And it just, it felt like the classroom was chaotic, like, people were moving on round and stuff like that people are on the floor, people are standing people. And then I look over at my son, and he's perched like a bird, on his chair in his desk. And I'm just like, How can she you know, and I'm just, I'm getting kind of upset, like, this is not, you know, the kind of environment we don't, it's, it's distracting, but then I just look around, they're all looking at her, right? They're all content. They're all they're all looking at her. They're all like in tune to what she's saying, like she's trying to set up an activity. And then it was go, and it's like, I don't care where you're working this, like, wherever this is what we're doing and work with each other work on your own. It was like, she removed these risks, even to the point where I don't really care if you're sitting on your bottom in the seat to my own son. But it was like, what's important in this situation, right? And to think about how do we give kids choices in environments where a lot of times, they're not given a lot of choices, and that's fine, I love what you've presented. And what you just pointed out was one of the kind of shifts in perspective that I think more people need to gain access to is that shift from what may be on the surface chaotic, can be the very best learning environment when you can see that it's managed, and that everyone's attending and engaged with the thing that's going on. Even if it there's a lot of sound, or a lot of motion, which in the traditional system is is sort of valued arbitrarily, it doesn't have inherent educational value to be quiet and still write what has educational value is engagement. Now, if I often find so I was in magnet programs and things growing up, so my schooling included, I both bounced in and out of a variety of sort of the smart kid programs. That's where I came from. And then as I've the last decades of in education, I've encountered a variety of other kinds of the other side, like the special needs and things like that. And it's interesting, because just about everything that goes on in the margins around special needs and accelerated learning and think, you know, gifted and talented and stuff like that. It's exactly what everyone needs, except there's the least restrictive environment. Well, everybody needs that.

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You know, they need enrichment. Well, it turns out everybody needs that they need things they can focus on. Well, everybody needs that. And so it's a really interesting thing to understand, like, oh, wait a minute, but people one of the trauma informed is a new one that's come out in the last 10 years or so. And it's like, Oh, okay. And so I started, I go to a lot of conferences. And so I go to a conference and I owe a workshop on it. Great, you know, and so I go in and start inquiring and saying, Okay, this, what's the special special sauce here? That's, and I'm thinking about it from the motivational standpoint. And I'm looking for what is the thing that trauma brings into this, that unique from what regular humans, you know, everybody else who's not anybody who's not trying to be regular, that's actually unfair. But anyway, you know, what, the people are not traumatized. And it turns out, I can't find anything. Hmm. They're saying that you need to provide an emotionally psychologically supportive environment. Well, that's exactly what everyone needs. And so just because kids are able to put up with it better, doesn't mean it's a healthier environment for or a better learning environment for and so that's it. Yeah. It's one of the interesting challenges is to realize that the things that are centrally needed Are you

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Universal.

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There are some things you need to do differently for trauma for gifted for the special needs, there are going to be things. But your baseline should be these fundamental universal psychological support. And most of what turns out to be add ons in the margins are those things, they're not actually adding on something unique to their condition. They're adding on the things that all humans actually need. And so it's ironic in that way, but that's a hard conversation to have with a lot of mainstream educators, because they're frustrated by they know that in some ways, but they don't have the supports to actually implement. And that's the challenge. Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by deeper learning? Sure. So deeper learning. I mean, just on the face of it, there's an implication that there's something called shallower learning. And that's true. It's a distinction shallower versus deeper material. But basically, the idea of shallow learning is that well, you just do it by rote. Everybody's had the experience of Yeah, I, I studied for the thing. And then I took the test and forgot about it 10 minutes later. That's the epitome of shallow learning. The more nefarious or bad aspect of shallow learning is that, for instance, in both math and science, but particularly science, education, they became aware A long time ago that Despite receiving instruction, kids, well, humans, of any age, will not necessarily have developed a deeper understanding of what they've what they even if they learned the words that go with the particular idea, they might learn the language, they might be able to pass it a fairly simple test, that just parrot has an apparent language. That doesn't mean they understand it. And so deeper learning is what happens. And when you actually come to understand it, you have the conceptual understanding, that then enables you to apply that there's a aspect of shallow learning, that's important to understand. That's what I call fo Cheeseman. So part of what is going on in schools is that we have a lot of examples where the kids go through the motions, they jump through the hoops, whatever you want to call it, and they get the rewards. But they have lacked the the deeper understanding. So they get the grades, they get the diplomas, they go on to get degrees, but they still have fundamental misunderstandings a great example, this was a film called minds of their own. There was a second 110 years later, I forget what it was called made. So they interviewed recent graduates and faculty at MIT and Harvard, and specifically gave them basic kind of challenges around or questions about, like one was wire their seasons. And another one was, you have a wire, a battery and a boat, can you light up the bulb use just those three things. And majority of people with advanced degrees in physics and sciences failed those tasks, even though they're at the most elite institutions in the world. And so what they realized was like, even though they can pare it back all the things they need to pass a test, they don't have fundamental understandings of the science itself. And that's for achievement, fake achievement, they didn't actually master the subjects they were done, what they mastered was the testing procedures and the and the great getting process, but they still fundamentally have misunderstandings about how their field of specialty works. So what I'm focusing on is, indeed for deeper learning is that there's actually from the psychological point of view, we understand how that comes about. And the prerequisite before the content can be learned. And the conceptual learning occurs, is you need that motivation in place, you need them to be engaged, and then they will have a more fundamentally productive learning experience. That's a that focus event. Idea reminds me this is just a old classic article. It's about Benny's thinking with ipi if, if any of you have ever dusty, remember, it's in that classics of math education research book, it's a brown book, anyway. Yeah, it talks about Benny Benny was, he was taking this individualized, it was like basically a teacher proof curriculum, where you process through it through just taking assessments and this researcher looked at him is just basically look at one student who has identified this kid successful this kid is achieving, right and the researcher just then interviewed him and he had all of these fantastically articulated ideas about how to add fractions and do basic calculations and things and they were just wildly off I mean, it just it but the whole thing was set up for like not to be interfered with like you give them the testing that and like so he has shown this achievement, and but yet the the conceptual understanding was just not there. And it's just like you think like, how your things are still set up in some of those ways where you know, they

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Might be progressing through like you're saying this like fo ciment sort of thing where you're seeing that, and it's like, how do we really get at this idea of deep learning and loving this loving? loving this talk? Yeah, yeah. And one of the, you know, particularly in mathematics, there's a big difference between the procedural learning and the conceptual learning. Yeah, is if you're, and this is one of the, you know, kind of worries I have about, like, systems like Khan Academy is, I don't know, I haven't evaluated Khan Academy in any meaningful way. But, but the concern is that they might just set up a game of all procedures, I mean, they literally are gamifying. Mathematics, that's part of their way they're trying to do it. But it's like, okay, but is the game actually leading to understanding or is the game leading to, you know, a procedure that they don't know how to apply in meaningful contexts. And that's one of the pardon parts of conceptual learning is not just to have a procedure, but to know, oh, which procedure is appropriate now, right, and then down the road. And now a different procedure is needed to make that judgment to make that decision of this is the procedures your eye should do now, is a really hard thing to wrap your mind around. And that's partly why you can't just, you know, flow through mathematics in a simple way is like, they're connected to so many things and applications that if you don't have a sense of where this ties, you'll never apply it. Except in the very narrow circumstances in which you first encountered it. It's called context sensitive learning, is if there's a particular way, like every time I've ever seen say, you know, as a random example, you know, the up by staggering theorem, it has one form, and only has that one form, and then I only see it when it's presented in a certain kind of problem, then that's the only Association I have for the whole thing. It's a terribly useful thing across many contexts. But if I don't realize that, then I have this one way of using it, that that's not mathematical understanding. Yeah, that's not the kind of learning that we need. We need somebody who can take it and then then learn about, oh, what are some different ways that this can look? What are some ways that we can use it? And once some ways that maybe, you know, encountering a unique problem? Oh, maybe that's a tool I could use in this context. And those are, you know, it's actually fiendishly difficult turns out, and to build on that I think one step further is we really want to make sure that kids and humans, I like how you're talking about that everybody's able to understand the world around them. And especially right now, where the news is full of numbers, like 1 million cases, and you know, so many percent of the population, that we can listen to the statements and understand what they mean, rather than just hear a bunch of numbers and think, Oh, that sounds big, or that sounds small. Right? write some great work on understanding graph, mathematical understanding, in a public context. I'm not remembering their names, but the Daniel Kahneman and his partner diversity. And then there's people who's followed up on their work. And there's a particular person whose name is also escaping me at the moment, but really looking at that particular example, remember, from the book I read, was looking at when a doctor says, Here's your chances, you know, it's, it's a devastating moment, if you know, you've been given some chance of living or dying. And it turns out, most people, even the doctors don't understand what that means. They are they're telling these people these dire prognosis without an understanding of what they actually how that actually should be processed or understood by that person, because the doctors themselves don't understand. So yeah, it's a very, it can be a very meaningful issue. Yeah, I had an experience like that to where I ended up getting in an argument with a doctor, when the doctor told me something about oh desync increases your chances by 50%. But it turned out it was 50% of like, 10%. Right, which, in the end makes it 5%, which wasn't worth all the negative side effects that initially sounded like it might be worth it. Anyway, let's wrap up this podcast with just some thoughts about if you are a teacher or a math teacher educator, right now, what are one or two things that you could take away from this podcast that you might be able to start thinking about or start implementing? The question is difficult if it's when it's broadly stated like that because because one of the things like context sensitive learning is like, well, I don't know enough about your context to be able to say

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Specifically, however, the one thing that I would say is really crucial to any teacher is understand your students experience of your teaching. And don't make the mistake of assuming that they can necessarily articulate it well, or say it in a way that is easy to understand, inquire about how that work, but then make it an open conversation that needs to be a regular practice of like, oh, what did you think of that? How did that work? If you don't understand their experience, and I don't mean in the sense of like, they should be giving you feedback on how you're teaching. But I mean, is like, understand what motivates them, what what is it that they think they want? They may not always be right, but they can at least start to say how that's going for them. One of the interesting things about motivation research is that most of the time, you can ask people about their motivation, and they'll probably have a pretty good idea of what's motivated. Now, there's exceptions to that. But by that, I mean, like, are they doing it? Because they're guilty, that they would not please their parents? Or that they would be ashamed of not getting the good grade? Or, you know, that's not the right kind of motivation? When are they interested? What is it that captures their curiosity or gets them excited, is if you can start to have that conversation where you can talk about your own motivation, because motivation is contagious. It's something where even if they don't fully understand your motivator, the what your motivation is, whatever motivation you bring into the situation is going to spread. So the more that you can tap into your own excitement, enthusiasm, curiosities and engagement, the better off you're going to be. But also, if you're not in those places, if you're in like, Hey, I got to do this, it's not my favorite thing. Be honest about that. And if it's something you got to get through, if you can help tap into their interests and curiosities, excitements about that subject that you may not be excited about. It's contagious, you can catch it from them and say, Oh, that's an interesting aspect. Let's explore that further. So really understanding, what I would say is the most practical thing to do is reflect on your own motivation. And be honest about it. And then try to figure out what the experience of your students are in terms of motivation and engagement, figure out and hone, what is it that excites them, what gets them interested and engaged, and do your best to be honest about, there are some things that are not always you don't have the best motivation for it, but you still got to do it. So just be honest about that, and see if there's ways you can maybe bump it up a little bit and make it find ways to make it more engaging or more interesting. And I want to give a shout out here to Mandy Johnson's book, motivation matters and interest counts that has some practical teacher tools in there. And then I think, Don, you also wrote some books. Did you want to share briefly about those? Yeah, so my books are in, you know, really talking about the bigger picture, but my latest book is called unfailing schools. What's Joey got to do with unfailing in both that sort of positive, like schools that are on failing and how to get there, but also like, how do we get away from this image of schools as failing institutions? Mostly, they're not. And so the challenge is, is understanding how we can get the larger level to be consistent with the psychology. That's what and you know, I've three or four books out and you can find them at attitude. or.com, which is a TT it UT o r as an attitude tutor.org or.com. And we will link that site jolin. dusty, did you guys have any closing questions, comments? I think he just gave us a lot to think about. I know, I'm got many notes. And so I'm looking forward to checking out the books and also just to probably listen to this podcast and think about a few things again. Sure. Yeah. And I appreciated how you said it's difficult to think, to give recommendations or talk at a large scale. In my own mind, I thought, well, what class am I teaching next? And I've got a class I'm teaching starting July 1, that's going to be fully online, with some prospective middle school teachers learning about statistics. And I thought, Okay, let me try to, to nail down some of these ideas with that. So I know some of my students already, so that I feel like I have a leg up on that. But I want to try to reach out to them and try to get to know what interests them and what they think motivates them and then see if I can, you know, try to whip up something special.

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That works with that. Yeah, exactly. And just having the humility to real to approach it with the curiosity of I don't know, enough about you, and you can never know enough about your students. But to have that humility to say I need to learn more, I think is an important attitude to bring as well.

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Absolutely. Well, thank you, Dawn, so much for joining us. My pleasure, dude. Thank you again for listening to the teaching math teaching podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast. We hope that you're able to implement something that you just heard and take an opportunity to interact with other math teacher educators.