From experience to meaning…

Burn-out is something to be taken seriously, imho. I’ve seen some close friends in education who fell victim and honestly: I never would dare to say that I could never become a burnout patient. Still, I’ve learned from earlier research that the causes of burnout are more complex than most people think. It’s no by definition – only – work that can result in people having a burnout. This new study does look at the work place – more specific in education – but examines something special: the effect of colleagues having en burnout. Well, that’s the word that’s being used to sell the study to the public. The correct question is how can the organizational culture in schools make a notable difference for early-career teachers’ burnout levels.

And while the findings of this study seem to have a certain element of ‘no shit, Sherlock, they do are very relevant:

From the press release:

Burnout among young teachers appears to be contagious, indicates a new study led by Michigan State University education scholars.

The study found a significant link between burnout among early-career teachers and exposure to both a school-wide culture of burnout and burnout among the young teachers’ closest circle of colleagues.

Surprisingly, the link was stronger to the school-wide culture of burnout than it was to burnout among close colleagues.

“If you are surrounded by people who are downcast or walking around under a pall of burnout, then it has a high chance of spilling over, even if you don’t have direct contact with these folks,” said Kenneth Frank, professor of measurement and quantitative methods in MSU’s College of Education.

“This study,” Frank added, “is one of the first to provide evidence that the organizational culture in schools can make a notable difference for early-career teachers’ burnout levels.”

Frank co-authored the study with Jihyun Kim, an MSU doctoral student, and Peter Youngs, a former MSU scholar who’s now an associate professor at the University of Virginia. Their findings appear in the journal Teaching and Teacher Education.

The researchers analyzed the survey data on burnout of 171 teachers who were in their first four years in the profession and 289 experienced teachers who served as the young teachers’ mentors or close colleagues.

Kim, lead author on the paper, said she was interested in investigating teacher burnout based on her experiences as an early-career teacher in her native Korea, where she worked long days and weekends.

Early-career teachers are particularly vulnerable to stress and burnout as they adjust to working full-time and respond to school and district expectations, she said. Further, schools often fail to provide teachers with enough resources, including the appropriate teaching materials, assistant teachers, professional development and preparation time.

“These resources are critical not only for reducing teacher burnout, but also for closing gaps in students’ learning,” said Kim, who will begin work in the fall as an assistant professor of education at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania.

Frank said teacher burnout is also tied to the current education policy environment. Controversial policies such as evaluating teachers based primarily on student test scores, merit pay for teachers and lack of voice in assignment of students to teachers can bring added pressure.

“We know that early career teachers are susceptible to burnout because of the significant demands placed on them. It is also clear that the introduction of new reforms in K-12 education on a frequent basis adds to the pressures they experience,” Frank said.

“If school administrators and policymakers are serious about promoting retention and reducing burnout among novice teachers, they should be aware not just of the curriculum they are advocating, or their rules and policies for teachers. They should also attend to how the organizational culture in their schools can have direct effects on burnout levels of their faculty.”

Let’s start of with a big warning: this is a study on mice that if true sounds very promising, but doesn’t mean you’ll be able to buy a medicine next week to make it easier to learn. It does mean that one day this could be the case, but we’re still a long way to go. Ok, now you’ve had this big warning, the actual information: Scientists have discovered that curtailing activity of the neuromodulator adenosine extends the critical period of auditory learning in mice and offers promising results for humans.

From the press release:

Learning language or music is usually a breeze for children, but as even young adults know, that capacity declines dramatically with age. St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists have evidence from mice that restricting a key chemical messenger in the brain helps extend efficient auditory learning much later in life.

Researchers showed that limiting the supply or the function of the neuromodulator adenosine in a brain structure called the auditory thalamus preserved the ability of adult mice to learn from passive exposure to sound much as young children learn from the soundscape of their world. The study appears June 30 in the journal Science.

“By disrupting adenosine signaling in the auditory thalamus, we have extended the window for auditory learning for the longest period yet reported, well into adulthood and far beyond the usual critical period in mice,” said corresponding author Stanislav Zakharenko, M.D., Ph.D., a member of the St. Jude Department of Developmental Neurobiology. “These results offer a promising strategy to extend the same window in humans to acquire language or musical ability by restoring plasticity in critical regions of the brain, possibly by developing drugs that selectively block adenosine activity.”

The auditory thalamus is the brain’s relay station where sound is collected and sent to the auditory cortex for processing. The auditory thalamus and cortex rely on the neurotransmitter glutamate to communicate. Adenosine was known to reduce glutamate levels by inhibiting this neurotransmitter’s release. This study also linked adenosine inhibition to reduced brain plasticity and the end of efficient auditory learning.

Researchers used a variety of methods to demonstrate that reducing adenosine or blocking the A1 adenosine receptor that is essential to the chemical messenger’s function changed how adult mice responded to sound.

Much as young children pick up language simply by hearing it spoken, researchers showed that when adenosine was reduced or the A1 receptor blocked in the auditory thalamus, adult mice passively exposed to a tone responded to the same tone stronger when it was played weeks or months later. These adult mice also gained an ability to distinguish between very close tones (or tones with similar frequencies). Mice usually lack this “perfect pitch” ability.

Researchers also showed that the experimental mice retained the improved tone discrimination for weeks.

“Taken together, the results demonstrated that the window for effective auditory learning re-opened in the mice and that they retained the information,” Zakharenko said.

Among the strategies researchers used to inhibit adenosine activity was the experimental compound FR194921, which selectively blocks the A1 receptor. If paired with sound exposure, the compound rejuvenated auditory learning in adult mice. “That suggests it might be possible to extend the window in humans by targeting the A1 receptor for drug development,” Zakharenko said.

Zakharenko and his colleagues also linked the age-related decline in ease of auditory learning to an age-related increase in an enzyme (ecto-5′-nucleotidase) involved in adenosine production in the auditory thalamus. Researchers reported that mature mice had higher levels than newborn mice of the enzyme and adenosine in the auditory thalamus. Deletion of this enzyme returned the adenosine level in adult mice to the level of newborn mice. Therefore, researchers are currently looking for compounds that target ecto-5′-nucleotidase as an alternative approach for extending the window of auditory learning.

We have know for quite a while that underprivileged teenagers are more likely to give up their university ambitions. But how can we help them?

A new study suggests – again – that early interventions to maintain and raise expectations could increase the number of teenagers from less privileged backgrounds entering higher education. Sadly enough not by trying to solve it, but by examining when their expectations change.

From the press release:

The research, which analysed how young people’s expectations of applying to university change between the ages of 14 and 17, found that those from less advantaged backgrounds were more likely to stop, and less likely to start, thinking they would apply than their more advantaged peers. This was true even when comparing individuals with the same test scores.

Through analysis of a survey of 14-20-year-olds conducted between 2004 and 2010, Dr Jake Anders of UCL Institute of Education (IOE) found that a substantial proportion of young people changed their minds about whether they were planning to apply to university — with the change running in both directions — and that socioeconomic background played a significant part in whether expectations changed. The study used data from the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England,

Compared to the most advantaged fifth of young people, the least advantaged fifth had more than twice the probability of switching from being ‘likely to apply’ to ‘unlikely to apply’. Conversely, the most advantaged fifth had more than twice the probability of changing from being ‘unlikely to apply’ to ‘likely to apply’.

How young people reacted to new information on their academic attainment at age 16 also depended on their background. For those with higher socioeconomic status, improvements in exam results were significantly more likely to raise expectations of applying for university.

Dr Anders said: “These findings suggest that part of the socioeconomic difference in university applications has its roots during the period when potential applicants are aged between 14 and 17 and, as such, it’s not too late to target policies at this age group to try and narrow the gap.

“Intervening early to maintain expectations, rather than attempting to raise them later, is more likely to be successful as this will ensure individuals engage in steps that keep them on track to be in a position to apply for university.

“Sixteen could also be a key age for interventions. This is a difficult point in time to reach young people as many move between educational institutions or leave full time education altogether. However, it may be the case that providing fresh guidance in the light of exam results could play an important part in ensuring young people get the right educational message.”

Abstract of the study:

A much larger proportion of English 14-year-olds expect to apply to university than ultimately make an application by age 21, but the proportion expecting to apply falls from age 14 onwards. In order to assess the role of socioeconomic status in explaining changes in expectations, this paper applies duration modelling techniques to the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England, analysing transitions in young people’s expectations both from being ‘likely to apply’ to being ‘unlikely to apply’ and vice versa. Young people’s socioeconomic background has a significant association with changes in expectations, even after controlling for prior academic attainment and other potentially confounding factors; in addition, young people’s backgrounds affect their responsiveness to new evidence on academic attainment at age 16. This suggests more could usefully be done to maintain the educational expectations of academically able young people from less advantaged families, especially providing guidance on how to view new academic results.