The Authority Podcast — Expert Insights and Fresh Ideas for Education Leaders

Ross Romano: [00:00:00] Welcome in, everybody. You are listening, as always, to the Authority Podcast here on the Be Podcast Network. Thanks for being with us and really pleased to bring you an episode here where we have a returning guest from a previous episode that a lot of you indicated You really enjoyed and she has an additional guest with her.

So we're going to be able to build on some of our previous conversation around science of learning, really talk a lot about what school leaders and instructional leaders can be doing to bring some of these practices to the school wide level, overcoming some of the resistance and some of the, Factors that make that sometimes easier said than done.

Right. But really moving through them to ensure that [00:01:00] we are delivering the best possible instruction for our learners. So great thing for everyone listening here. My guests are Dr. Kimberly Behrens. She is a scientist, educator, and the founder of FIT Learning. She co created a powerful system of instruction based in behavioral science and the technology of teaching, which has transformed the learning abilities of thousands of children worldwide.

Her first book was called Blind Spots, Why Students Fail. And the science that can save them. It was released in 2020 and that was the subject of our previous episode. She is joined today by Dr. Michael Joseph, Marti Anthony. He is the principal of Antonio Pantoja Preparatory School, which is a public school for students grades six to 12 in the southwest Bronx.

He is also an elected member of the Greenwich Connecticut Board of Education where he served as chair. On the 2024 ResearchEd Greenwich Conference and taught high school social studies and English for 10 years before becoming an administrator. Kimberly and Mike, welcome to the [00:02:00] show.

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: Thanks for having us.

Kim Berens: Thanks for having us. Thanks for having me back.

Ross Romano: Yes. And I know, in our last episode, we Talked a lot about science of learning, of course, and so, but for some who haven't heard that one or are could use a refresher as we all could. Right. Kim, can you talk us through science of learning a little bit defining it and just giving the, the context for a lot of what we'll be discussing today?

Kim Berens: Sure. And so, the science of learning is kind of a broad description of what I really like to talk about is kind of three divisions inside of it. So I would point to three, different, Sciences that address learning in this way. And so there's neuroscience. And when you think about the three level, when you think about the three divisions, it's good to think about levels of analysis.

So neuroscience is a science of learning and their level of analysis is neurology, right? So it would be, direct measurement of neurological change [00:03:00] as a function of the learning process and understanding learning at the neurological level. And then I'm kind of one level up from that, which is the behavior science of learning.

So I look at, learning through a behavioral lens. which means I'm focusing on measuring behavioral changes that are also indicative of neurological changes. But, I can't measure those in a, I'm a practitioner, so I can't measure neurology at the practical level when I'm working with kids, which is all we do all day.

So I measure behavior changes and that allows me to understand what's going on neurologically with a student. And then there's another kind of branch of the science of learning that I would say that Mike is more really kind of more involved with, which would be the coming from the cognitive realm.

So more the cognitive psychology realm, which is looking at the kind of what I would call constructs of long term memory processing speed. Those kinds of notions about learning that comes from more of a cognitive psychology, kind of social psychology realm.

I mean, [00:04:00] not sorry, social science realm, not social psychology. So those were, those would be like the divisions of learning. So really the science of learning is basically the science behind the learning process. And what ensures that when instruction is provided, learning actually happens and now there's decades and decades of work on this so that we know how to design effective instructions so that permanent learning outcomes, which some would call long term memory.

We call that retention in behavior science, and it's similarly called in neuroscience retention of skills, retention of behaviors that you have changed and through the instructional process and produced a new kind of permanent. Repertoire or a habit for, you could call, there's lots of things you could lots of ways you could, define these things, but it's really the science behind the learning process is what the science of learning is (ad here)? ?

Ross Romano: And one of the important things that I think is worth a moment to make [00:05:00] explicit I guess is how this applies to all students and students that are at all various stages and relationships to their learning and have particular whatever is well suited to their learning needs to their growth goals that The science applies across the board if you want to talk a little bit more about that, but I think that's an important thing to contextualize for our listeners as they're going to hear what we're talking about.

Is that we're not just referring to this group or that group.

Kim Berens: right. I mean, what I would say is what the science of well, especially my science, my, My division of the science of learning, which is behavior science, it's really the science of the individual, which is unbelievably important when you're dealing with learning, because unfortunately, one of the, one of the biggest errors that's, that gets made in this is the notion that a blanket research, and this is why I really want to get into data driven versus evidence based because, we have a lot, a large [00:06:00] scale kind of more Social science research study that's done with a big group of students, and it's a pre post test, right?

You have a large sample of kids with statistics being used to factor out sources of variance so that you can have You can discover maybe some statistically significant change as a function of an intervention, and that's all well and good, but the problem is that the individual learning level, there are variables that source of variance that gets factored out is actually the most critical part of learning because every student shows up to a learning incentive.

experience with very different history. They show up with unbelievably different histories of reinforcement for engaging in various, maybe aberrant behaviors that, that interfere with, that are barriers to instruction. They also show up with different levels of mastery of core component or prerequisite skills and deficiencies in those prerequisite skills.

So no child or no learner shows up to a learning. Experience the same. And so if you [00:07:00] apply, if you take the evidence of a blanket research study and then just assume it's going to work with students at the individual level, it unfortunately does not work, which is why a lot of that, what's done in research actually doesn't translate well to practice because of that reason.

And so the individual nature of learning is unbelievably important. And this is what we're talking about today applies to any human being learning any skill 100%.? ?

Ross Romano: I love that you naturally have previewed, I think, a lot of the most important things for us to talk about, which shouldn't be a surprise, right? But but even as we're getting to the individual level, as well as the school wide level, and I think some of the things that may come up as far as.

You know, earned skepticism or based on some of the some of the things that educators have probably been through in the past and having confidence in, I would say the approach and the validity of [00:08:00] the approach versus having certainty in exactly how that's going to work in this school and what, the linearity of that and not have not being able to Understand what is working best for us.

What's not totally working here. What do we need to work on? Right? All of those things that would, I think, lead to frustration and resistance or skepticism about. I don't really see what's so great about this. So we'll talk more about that. But I want Mike. I wanted to hear from you about how you come to the conversation as well.

So. Kimberly referenced the cognitive side of it and that being in your bailiwick. And I'd love to hear about that to help us continue building on our definition here as well as just, how you've come to that through the years. Right? Through the different roles that you've been in and and the learning that you've continued to do and engage in and implement as part of Your practice,

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: [00:09:00] Sure. Sure. And I think that's the key here is the learning, right? Because, I mean, I'm a, I don't pretend, I'm not a cognitive scientist. And I think that's important for a lot of folks, on the practitioner side, which is I'm one to recognize here, the right. I'm a principal in a public school in the Bronx, trying to achieve a maximum learning outcomes for my students.

And I think that's, I think that's the that's the important perspective here, the, and, a long time ago, this is my 26th year in education and for the first, 10, 12 years, almost 15 years, it seemed like I was missing something through my own education.

important. You know, career as a teacher and administrator and things like that. And it seemed like there was a hole in my own education because I never really knew or understood or had any sense of. How kids learn or that, the learning process, we talked about a little bit in school and things like that, but it was only when I realized that [00:10:00] there were these whole fields that Kim's talking about, it really didn't have anything or barely touched upon in my own teacher preparation that really spoke to that, that was missing there was cognitive science, behavioral science and all those things that were happening.

Across the quad from the grad school of education. That didn't necessarily penetrated into my own teacher prep program. Really make a difference. And I think, this is the more you read about that. And the more I read about that, the more I read about the importance of how you know what a lot of very smart people actually know, a lot about how people.

Yeah. how the mind works and how the mind stores, creates memory and stores it in the working memory and creates all these pathways so that students can know and do and transfer a lot more. The more we do that, the more I learn about that, the more we realize, hey, we've got to make some real changes in how [00:11:00] we're doing school.

So I come in from that perspective. And these aren't new, like Kim said, none of the, nothing in what's the science of learning is new ideas that were all been around, but they're only slowly seem to be penetrating in different pockets into the into K 12 education, which is my field, and particularly K 12 public education.

And it's slow going there but that's my, so that's my that's my perspective of where, where all this is coming from.

Ross Romano: so we do have decades of research behind this, right? There's a sufficient evidence to demonstrate the effectiveness of science learning and instruction based on the science of learning. But as you've indicated, certainly not consistent adoption or even understanding of that. And so there's.

I mean, there's, I guess, 1 element of people who maybe have never learned about or engaged with it. And as you said, [00:12:00] is it sufficiently a part of prep programs and pre service and all of that? And that's. We won't necessarily get into that part today, but certainly getting into what's happening in schools for the people who are in schools, especially when there is an interest and motivation at the leadership level to, to have instruction that really is based on the science of learning.

We have the sometimes skepticism. We have resistance. Sometimes it's those relate and sometimes they're coming from different sources, but Start, Mike, with you around the skepticism, and then we'll kind of build on that, and we'd love to hear what you have. Encountered and observed, as far as some of the causes of skepticism toward the science of learning and would also love as you're talking through that, your perspective on, I would say, how, like, relatively earned [00:13:00] versus unearned they are.

Right. And, where it's coming from and why, I guess, though, that skepticism is engendered in some educators.

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. And I almost wish that we didn't have this term, because as soon As anybody who's been in public education for a while, as soon as, you have a concept or a body of ideas, and it gets encapsulated under some kind of heading and things, it can become a buzzword, and then when it becomes a buzzword, it naturally is going to become the a target for cynicism and things like that.

And there's a lot of, there's a lot of appropriate cause for citizen in K 12, right? Anyone everybody who works in schools knows that there is the innovation of the year, right? Or, this is what we're going to do now. And and if you're a veteran teacher and you don't want to be bothered, just close your door and this too shall [00:14:00] pass.

And that is the real very much the reality of our profession and you've got to be, we got to be very careful that when we're talking about, these ideas that represent the science of learning, this is not like, one to one iPads, or any of these other things that have, come and gone that are going to be the next great thing in education, right?

This is instead actually very concrete in some ways, traditional ideas that aren't going anywhere and work. So when you're combating the the skepticism or I guess when you're taking it and when you're looking to introduce these ideas to faculty there's a couple of ways to do it.

The and one is. The first thing you have to do is acknowledge the complexity that is, that is teaching, right? It comes and say, hey, this is not a, this is not the new solution that's going to solve everything and whatnot. But instead, the when we're talking about these ideas, I think the idea is [00:15:00] for, and this is how we've done it at APPA, which is the abbreviation but how we've done it at APA is we've looked at them collectively and explored the ideas from a problem based approach.

Here's an issue that we have with our students. What's the science say? And learn collaboratively and where, and, what are some strategies here that can support that? Where, so you have teachers talking to teachers and spreading those ideas in a systemic yet organic way where people can see the results in their own classrooms and talk about it and share with each other.

That's the kind of thing that moves this conversation away from buzzwords. I will say that there is a couple of openings here that we have. One is the science of reading. I think so many of us over the last five years have seen that there were some real holes. In what we thought we knew about reading education and it sounds, and then apparently other people in other parts [00:16:00] of the academy knew knew how and more about reading education.

I see Kim shaking her head. And so that's an example of where we can take a humble stance and say, hey, if that's about literacy. You know what, there's actually a lot of other things about learning that weren't getting to us either. For one reason or another.

And so let's explore that. And the other idea is the other way that we can really get in to take that humble stance is really this idea of neural myths, right? This idea that there are these. Common myths that are so pervasive in our in our profession that are a conventional wisdom that can set people back and give people an open mind.

So if we're still coming from a standpoint that people have different learning styles and we have to identify who's the kinesthetic learner and who's the musical learner and who's the, the the, the The verbal and the visual and sort them that way, or who's left brain and who's right brain and things like that.

Those are ways that say, hey, you know what, there's no science behind that. And [00:17:00] so both of those are ways in that we can then start having a conversation as a faculty about what's actually out there,

Ross Romano: Yeah. Are there Kimberly, like, beyond that, like other reasons that you have found why there is resistance in schools to implementing science driven instruction. And 1 thing that I'm just thinking about as Mike is talking through this just. In terms of who we're speaking to, who's listening is that certainly for the two of you and having, been involved in this work for a long time.

And then even for myself, having these conversations all the time. Right? I almost feel like sometimes some of these important ideas can feel obvious or routine or, oh, everybody listening has already been through this a bunch of times, but everybody. Has a first time at some point, right? Their first time where they're in the school leadership position, and they're really [00:18:00] excited about trying to bring a new idea and going to encounter the resistance, even if they were a teacher before who might have been resistant sometimes, or or has an idea that they know is It's completely valid.

It's the right way to go, but has a lot of history and baggage to grapple with as far as previous initiatives that were ill conceived or just things that were poorly communicated, the vision or the grounding for it wasn't made clear, right? And so. You know, variety of people felt like I'm not quite sure if this is the right thing if this is for me.

So, are there, within that door or just because of other reasons the resistance that comes up that is important to anticipate, understand, encounter.

Kim Berens: So, yeah, I mean, I wrote like a largely my book is about this that I wrote and I've been an outsider for, 26 [00:19:00] years. I started fit learning 26 years ago and actually response to being ostracized from the school environment because I, my first commitment was to go into schools and do this.

You know, at the public school level, because that's my commitment. But I the resistance and it wasn't just resistance. Was the complete blocking of that I experienced. And I've been experiencing this for decades until Mike. No, I'm just kidding. We've had more experiences with just then.

I mean, Mike and I have now partnered and we're working together in the Bronx. We're doing a high impact literacy intervention with some of his kids

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: which has been amazing.

Kim Berens: Yeah, it's, I mean, we just started, but it's already pretty amazing. But I'll tell you I wrote my book about this and I think the primary issue has always been that education is an ideological institution rather than a scientific one.

And I've said this in our podcast that we did together previously, and I write about this in my book. And that comes from the history of the rise of education in America. I mean, it rose as an [00:20:00] ideological kind of initiative, really, ideologically it was every child, like let's educate every person so that they can be functioning, productive members of our democracy.

But it came with, it came from more of an idea, right. Rather than from a scientific process. And that hasn't changed. And so unfortunately, because that's so instantiated in how teachers are trained and it's so instantiated inside of how schools are run the first response of a new administrator, like you're saying, who steps into this new role and has the opportunity to make changes, they're not looking at that through the lens as a scientist.

They're looking at that through the lens of a flop of really an ideologue in a way where they're like, what's the next big cool idea that I can maybe come up with? And to be honest with you that's problematic, in any, inside any institution that is based in evidence and that's really should be based in outcome, like.

Any outcome [00:21:00] based institution, I should say any institution that is trying to solve a problem or produce a result, which is what education is about. I mean, if the whole point of education is to produce an outcome, which is to educate kids, right, or educate learners so that if you're in an outcome driven industry, yet your entire premise is based on opinions and ideas.

Well, there's a real problem there because we know from, I mean, God walked throughout history that, taking effective action or making, pragmatic change comes from science, comes from the scientific method. I think that's, to be honest with you, the primary problem is that, if administrators step into a new role, having the opportunity to actually know the difference between ideological positions and scientifically driven ones.

That alone would change everything because if you have the opportunity to have that blind spot, which is why my book is called [00:22:00] this blind spots, if you have the opportunity to have a distinction created for you about a blind spot, you have about your opinion or your belief system or your or a night or a cool idea versus.

I am going to step into this role as a science driven person, meaning I am only going to implement methodologies that have a scientific basis. And not only that, I'm going to continually act as a scientist in my own school setting, meaning I'm going to consistently evaluate the impact of that intervention.

And if it's not working because I'm taking data on my kids, I'm going to change something. I'm going to systematically manipulate variables myself. I'm going to act like a scientist in my own work. That would be, that's a game changer, right? But so that, that means overhauling the whole philosophy of education and shifting it from ideological to pragmatic and empirical, really.

Ross Romano: Now, yeah, and I'm trying to think of it. There's so many directions we could go. And I think some of them [00:23:00] would, we could go down those threads for all week. I'm trying to, I want to readjust to, like, effectively building school, high capacity, right? And some of those steps and thinking about, The very real and often challenging context in which that's happening that I could see one, one way where we could see, okay, this can definitely be done is if you were.

Starting a brand new school and you said, okay, as the leadership, this is how we're going to do things here. We're going to make that clear. Everybody that we're hiring, you're coming on board. You're bought into this. We're going to prepare and we're going to have it ready. And then by the time students enroll, everybody's on board.

Right? But of course, that's rarely rarely the case. And so you're having educators who have had a whole variety of different approaches, some of which. At least appear to have worked right, whether it was [00:24:00] causal or not. Okay. This is the way I've been doing things. My students have been generally successful.

That could be the case. A lot of times for the 1 who ends up moving into administration as well. I got here for a reason. I was doing some things and they were working and either. Okay, I'm going to use my anecdotal experience and maybe over generalize that toward. Everybody could do this or whatever the case may be.

If I wasn't previously introduced to. Instruction based on science of learning and understanding that, and maybe now I'm less likely to seek it out intentionally and find those blind spots. As you said, part of understand the blind spots is you have to really be willing to go out and seek them and to engage with that.

But, of course, it can be done and has been done in instances where it's been done. Right? So from that school wide capacity. I think there's a lot of things, right? There's gaining buy in and understanding. There's [00:25:00] providing proper training. There's our ongoing professional learning and capacity building.

I'll let you tackle this from whichever angle you feel like is the best place to start, but what are The elements for leaders to think about and and I actually think a helpful part of leading us into this question would be if you'd also help to define like instructional leadership and what the role of the school leader is as an instructional leader and the mentality around that.

Right? And the responsibilities of that to really help define what we're, who we're talking about, who is leading this and then how that leads to what needs to be done.

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: right. Yeah. Well, and woe to the school administrator who thinks he's the smartest guy in the room. Because nothing will sink. Nothing will sink any kind of instructional leadership or. Instructional innovation or any shifting with any [00:26:00] shifting of the instructional culture, which is really what we're talking about here.

We're talking about here is shifting instructional culture to embrace more of a to better embraces the science of learning, Nothing will impede that more than a sense that That the administrator, what is the principle or the system principle and whatnot secretly knows where we're going and is trying to inauthentically say, hey, guys, we're going to go explore this, but this is what I really want you to do at this sense of insincerity.

Where the the you're trying to lead the teachers to a predetermined outcome, right? That, that that's not what we're talking about here. Right? The so if you're really talking about, to your point here, if you're really talking about trying to shift instructional culture.

It, you need two things, I would argue, and this is just from our experience at APPA and some other schools where, all the schools where we've done this in, in, in the Bronx in my previous [00:27:00] role. You need a team, and you need a spirit of collaboration. And so, so, the, I, In my I have an article in Ed Leadership in the March issue of Ed Leadership that talks about this.

It's going to talk about this, but we wrote the shifting instructional culture and the concept of instructional leadership team, which is a group of teachers that come together and explore the these ideas around the science of learning, which I know we're kind of being a little vague at, but it's a whole different conversation.

But you need that team to explore a root in the problem, to identify and play with some strategies, and then to spread that gradually to the rest of the to, to their colleagues in a collaborative error of stance. I mean, those are the two things that you really need. You need this, you need to take it from the standpoint of a group of teachers, and you also need to take it from a sense of collaboration.

In both instances, it can't be predetermined. Yeah what road you're going to go down, right? So here's the science. Here are the [00:28:00] problems that we have. What is it that we need to what is it we can try to solve here? What is it that's missing from our own instruction that we can do?

What's that happen to give you far more concrete? So what we ended up doing at APPA is we have a set of five strategies at this point, that are our core strategies what we call the apple way that define teaching and learning. At APA around retrieval practice and metacognition and an explanation and the idea of the being that those are the core of our instruction.

And now what we're doing is our teachers are building off that and exploring in their own classroom or in the small groups. Of new problems that can help define their own their own perspectives and their own classroom management a little bit more. The idea being that we are a learning organization and every year we're continuing to learn we do what we do every year, which I think is a terrific strategy for every school, in all honesty if you want to think about shifting [00:29:00] instructional culture, we at our last faculty meeting of the year everybody has a journal, and I bring these out once a year and it's the same prompt every year, every faculty, every staff member, paraprofessional, teacher, every staff member, we sit in the journal prompt is what have you learned this year?

How has your practice changed and evolved? The and we spend some time we spend about, 20 minutes or so writing that prompt and then sharing in small group and the journals go away till next year. But we know that's always there and that annual tradition very much helps frame our whole culture as this whole cultures of school that learning organization that we know that we're all constantly trying to learn and improve our practice.

And the idea is that you know our practice this year. Is it going to be the same as our practice in three years because the kids are changing, science is evolving but we know these and we know that much more. So that's how we start to incrementally move the culture, I think, in those, in that collaborative spirit. (ad here)? ?
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Ross Romano: The way you talked about that, and one of the things I think is so important is, Not allowing the outcomes to be predetermined that relates to something that's worth talking about, understanding the difference between evidence based and data driven instruction. I think it also, it's making me think about something that maybe we often learn as kids that sticks in our heads for a long time.

When we talk about approaching things like a scientist, but I feel like the first definition you learn of a hypothesis is that it's a guess, it's your best guess and people actually involved in science. That's not really so right. There's evidence to give us the belief that this hypothesis will bear out.

But now we have to actually test it and see what the data says and what the results are. And see if it's proven true or untrue, or we have to adapt off of that. And same thing when we're approaching learning, either at the building level, the [00:31:00] classroom level, the individual student level, evidence suggests that these practices, these approaches will be effective, but then we have to, in fact, see if they are.

And when we also think about having students understand and have appropriate ownership over their learning and, understanding how to learn. Same thing. I need to understand how what I'm doing is. Affecting the outcomes I'm having if it all just seems random or well, they say this is the right thing and I'm doing that and my results aren't good.

So that must just mean there's something wrong with me, versus let's figure out how to iterate off of that. Or let's get extra support on this area where I'm struggling, that all of those different dynamics, if we're not, in fact, looking at the data on an individual level, not every practice, I'm sure, That is supported by the [00:32:00] evidence is going to work equally well in every single school, and there might be certain practices that work well in certain schools that don't necessarily have a lot of evidence base, but you have data in your school to say when we do this, it works.

So, yeah, would you talk more about that?

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: Yeah, I think there's I think there's a a distinction and sometimes I get into trouble with this because there's a tradition of certainly in New York City public education. There's a, there's an inquiry tradition and the traditional inquiry team is a little different. And I think the distinction is odd here because what we're not saying is that we want a team of teachers to come together And say, okay, here's a strategy, create a hypothesis.

If this strategy is going to work, go out, collect lots of data, spend a lot of time pretending to be a learning scientist. To either prove or disprove your hypothesis. Because whenever we make teacher teams do that surprise, [00:33:00] they, their hypothesis is proven correct and everybody slaps them back.

The teachers have enough to do on their plate than to spend hours and hours poring over spreadsheets and things like that. The proving strategies that we know work, right? The so the distinction here is Coming at these ideas not from a, Hey, will this work? Test it out. See if you can work, run your own experiment.

It's Coming at these ideas with, hey, these are ideas that work, they they've been proven in the laboratory, in the classroom. This is how people learn the what aspects of this seem most relevant to where we are right now. All right. Let's play with them. Let's go out. Let's go implement them. And support each other and try and trying them out the which one of these ideas makes the most sense for us right now.

In a much more, which is a much more respectful. I've found we've found much more respectful teachers time. And is also, the Kim's point results oriented the in a way that's [00:34:00] meaningful without bogging teachers down in a lot of that. Data collection that is is unnecessary and tangential to their day job.

When you make it meaningful in that way, I think it, it it, it becomes really impactful and people want to know more and more. I see Kim wanting to jump in.

Ross Romano: Yeah. Can

Kim Berens: Well, I think this is my bag, right? Like all this, like the data driven instruction side is my bag. So I think what it's really important to distinguish is what I think the point you're making, Mike, is, there's been a large research study of like one of the big things that's I think being talked about is working memory, right?

So like teachers who present way too much at once in a classroom and kids cannot respond to all of that content in one piece. Right. So there's a lot of like working memory work that's been done in research and then now it's being, emphasized to put that into practice. So yeah, teachers should not be doing their own working memory studies, right?

They shouldn't have to say, [00:35:00] okay, well, I'm going to, I'm going to manipulate four word lesson, like four word statements versus seven word statements versus 10 word statements in my classroom and, in an alternating treatments design, whatever, right? No, like that. That's not gonna work.

And it isn't what I mean. So when I talk about data driven instruction, what I mean is taking ongoing measures of student learning. As a function of your instruction. And so, and that's very important. And it's also really important to make the distinction now really clear about the natural science approach to learning and the social science approach to learning.

And so I come from the natural science tradition. And so, so what we do in the natural science tradition is we're not hypothesis testers. So hypothesis testing actually stems from social science. It doesn't stem from natural science. Like natural science is actually inductive [00:36:00] and social science is deductive.

So when you talk about deductive science, that's when you have a, you put forward a hypothesis, you design a methodology, You test, you run a big study, usually with a very large, what we call in, which means a big sample size, and you take very few measures. Of your subjects. So you take like usually it's like usually it's two.

It's a pre post like you take a pre test measure of some kind of whatever you're measuring. Then you do your intervention and you actually don't even take data on your intervention. You're just doing your intervention according to a protocol that you've written for your study. And then you take post test measures.

And those are the two measures you share, right? And then you do a statistical analysis of the difference between the two scores. Great. Natural science is very different. It's a very small number of subjects, and it's a lot of measures of that one subject over time, and you're intervening, you're manipulating variables, and you know, you get a baseline, we call it a baseline, before you do [00:37:00] whatever intervention it is, and you see, okay, what's the level of which this, whatever I'm trying to intervene on is occurring, then you intervene, and then you continue, and you, as you're doing your intervention, you're taking ongoing measures of that, Whatever that phenomenon is, and you evaluate the difference between the first, between the phases, I would say.

So that's what behavior science is. And so when I mean data driven instruction, what I mean is, like, for instance, this is, let's go back to the science of reading. This is a perfect example. Perfect, perfect, perfect example. Because right now the science of reading is so hot. It's like suddenly we all, suddenly it's like a new discovery that phonics matters, which makes all of us want to gouge our eyeballs out because we've known this since the 60s, since the 1960s, there were studies done on how to teach reading.

And we knew it was like this we have tied a bow on that a long time ago. And so suddenly it's kind of a new thing again, whatever. I'm not going to, I should also be happy because schools are actually paying attention this time. So, but the point is [00:38:00] just telling teachers to teach phonics.

Does not translate to every kid in a classroom mastering phonics. Those are two very different things. So like, knowing that I need to spend more time teaching phonics than I do teaching kids to guess words via sight word training or you know, looking at the first letter and then the picture and try to guess what the word is I actually need to spend a majority of my time teaching kids the sound of words, the rules of how to sound out words, and getting kids practicing sounding out words, or what we call decoding.

Right, so, but that doesn't mean that a teacher is going to do that well. And that also doesn't mean that kids are going to learn that automatically just because that's what's been a teacher's been told to do, which is why, like, for instance, this high impact literacy intervention, we call fit light.

That's kind of the school implementation version of our fit learning model of instruction, which is based in. Learning science. You know, we're doing and these are older kids that have been through the system that have never learned [00:39:00] phonics. They have never learned to sound out words. They learned via traditional reading instruction.

And so now they're at the end of their high school education and they're pretty much functionally illiterate. And so we're trying to remediate that before they graduate. That's what Mike and I are doing together. And so These kids are being are engaging in phonics and decoding instruction with us.

But what that it doesn't mean that I'm just assuming that my team is doing their job and getting these kids to learn phonics. No, what it means is every time our kid, those kids attend a session with us. They're responding to letter sounds is measured in terms of count correct and count incorrect per minute, and we evaluate that over time on learning charts, and we already, I mean, this has been going on for a couple weeks now.

There have now, I mean, I could probably, I mean, I looked at their charts right before this podcast. I would say there's been 17 interventions. Across 10 kids to, to ensure [00:40:00] that their errors decrease on vowel sounds and consonant sounds and their corrects increase 17 different interventions across 10 kids on.

And these are high level kids. These are juniors and seniors in high school that are needing individual interventions because all of them have different issues. You know, one kid has a hard time knowing that hearing the difference between E and O and another kid has a hard time. You know, paying attention to the differences in STEM letters like B's and D's and C's.

These are, these, this is what I mean about nuances in instruction that must be, like, understood and they must be measured on an individual basis or nothing matters. Like, it's because your teacher's teaching phonics has absolutely no, no guaranteed outcome with the learners, which is why You know, teacher behavior must always be linked to the outcome with a student, or what's the point, right?

Just because I'm doing what they told me to do, because apparently phonics matters, [00:41:00] but none of my kids can, are still not fluently at discriminating vowels, there's a disconnect there, you see what I'm saying? That's the difference between data driven and evidence based, from my perspective as a behavior scientist.

Ross Romano: Yeah, look, I mean, even looking at that green granularly say that word in the. In a school, in a classroom I guess what is effective and practical regarding a process for the data collection and activation, right? Like, we're on, we're, taking this data ongoing via our assessment, via the different ways that we are doing diagnostics or whatever that may be, and then actually putting it into practice.

You know, to meet individual students where they are and the domains where they're struggling or the areas where they still need to catch up or where they're excelling, whatever, whatever the data is showing. But of course, that's the part I think that you're getting to right is just because we know what to teach.

We need to actually know how [00:42:00] students are learning it to be able to to support that. And that's 1 of the things that. Time and tools and resources certainly affect is, are we then able to take appropriate action on that data and what it's showing us?

Kim Berens: And like, and look, I'm going to jump in one more time, and I know that's like, we're doing, obviously we're at the tail end of this, and this has been a, this has been a system, a long term problem for these kids, right? So we're trying to fix years of reading disfluency in a very short period of time, which is why we call it a high impact intervention, right?

Like we're doing. So what my team does is absolutely very different than what a teacher could do in a classroom with a group of students, obviously, right? Like, us timing and taking data and measuring every single thing a learner does in a session is not what a teacher can necessarily do in a classroom with a group of kids.

But! That does not mean, and we've done this successfully, and there's actually schools that do this, I mean Morningside [00:43:00] Academy being one in Seattle, where teachers do spend a portion of every single class period testing out their students on a, whatever skill it is they're trying to master, and taking individual measurements.

And now they may not take five, like, if our kids are running five practice timings on a skill, we're taking data on every single timing because we can, but a teacher can't do that. So if kids are at their desk or doing some kind of, independent practice on a skill, teachers can take one measure a day, which is better than none.

Right? So like one, and I'm talking like a 15 second, a 30 second, a one minute timing on phonics sound. So it's not like, okay. You're not talking about a half an hour assessment. I mean, this is like, if you have 30 kids In 30 minutes, you can take a one minute sample on it on every single kid on a skill.

You're trying to get them to master and make individual decisions. But that definitely means changing how schools are structured, meaning there's more [00:44:00] time for practice and less time is spent on exposing kids to so much content that they actually have no business learning anyway, because they don't have the core prerequisite skills required to learn it.

So I mean, all of this requires a shift. Right. But something needs to shift because look at our educational outcomes. I mean, we're in trouble. 70 percent of kids now are below proficiency across the board, according to the National Assessment of Academic Progress. So something needs to change. Like this whole, exposure to lots and lots of content and moving on according to arbitrary timelines.

that are set by school boards or school districts, that's not working, right? So I'm not saying that this is something that can just naturally happen, that teachers can take data on what their kids are doing and make decisions and individualize instruction the way under the current system. They can't, but science says that they should be.

And so that means the structure of schools has to change, which is not my area. I don't know how the heck to do that, but it is what needs to happen.

Ross Romano: Yeah, Mike.

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: Well, I mean, [00:45:00] it's just from anecdotally, let me just tell you, because I I mean, I see the kids doing Kim's program every day. So many of them do it in my office. And I think the other aspect that is key here is the sense of student agency. You know, when we're talking about data and things like that, having students track their own data and seeing their own progress, whether it's that 32nd thing that, in the whole class, like Kim saying, or, when we're talking about this very intensive, tier 3, to use educational jargon, intervention that we're doing with our upperclassmen, being able to do all of our students track their own goals and make track their own progress and make their own goals.

And that makes all the difference. And you should see the smiles on our students faces, as they're. Mastering these phonics sounds. I mean, these are students that we have doing this program. Most of them are most of them are seniors. Many of them have college acceptances already.

And they know because of the pandemic and because we're in the [00:46:00] South Bronx and because of everything else, they don't, they are very cognizant of the gaps in their own learning. And we are very sincere with them about it because I think that's other part of it. I mean, kids don't, you can't sugarcoat this with teenagers and things like that.

They want to be real. And so, and that's why they are, it is so impactful and they're, and they find it so meaningful because they see their own progress and they know that this is not about Moving from, making you moving from a C to a B plus or some other weird arbitrary measure.

This is about getting smarter. You know, this is about, reading. This is about these skills that really mean something and are going to mean something for them, when they're 55 years old. And we have those conversations with them and that that really makes all the difference for them.

Ross Romano: Yeah, Mike, if this question makes no sense, you can you can talk about something

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: I'll make up an

Ross Romano: let me tell you that in advance. So you don't have to [00:47:00] answer it if you think it's stupid. But, I'm thinking about, especially for this. you know, the effort among school leadership to get teachers to feel confident, comfortable, and successful in implementing these science based practices.

There's sort of almost these four Pieces that could be possible and kind of the what, why, how and what now I know, like what we should teach. What's the, evidence behind why that's the right thing to teach. How do we actually teach it? And then based on. The data we're getting, like, what do we do now that we did the initial instruction?

And understanding that time and attention and effort are, there's a limit, right? There's a cap on how much is available. If there's four pieces there and the, so you would divide it up 25 percent each, but how should we actually where's the most important [00:48:00] places to focus for teachers?

What are the things that are most important for them to be spending their attention on and understanding in order to be successful? Understanding they don't just have limited time to read through all of the science. Does that make any

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: yeah. What's the entry? What's the entry point here? Yeah. So I've actually, the, so my previous job, I had this only in New York city role called the director of continuous improvement. And my job was I worked with a number of schools in the Bronx. Around struggling schools are underperforming on the state list around trying to turn the schools around.

And so I I had to deal a lot with this idea of entry points and where to start this conversation and things like that. And one of the things that I'm going to write, talk about this in my article. One of the key questions that I actually found most. impactful in starting the conversation. And it couldn't be simpler is how do we learn? Because [00:49:00] so, so if you go to a, if you go to a a faculty meeting or well meaning earnest

Kim Berens: Oh. Oh no!

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: Actually meeting the and you ask that question. A lot of the, a lot of the questions are going to be around engagement answers can be around engagement or relevance or interest, which is all not wrong, right? You know, how do we learn? Well, we have to be interested. You have to be constructive, things like that.

But cognitive science has a very different answer to that, right? They around Sensory input and working memory and cognitive load and storage into long term memory and things like that. And that's not something that we talk about. Right? So, if you start from that question, like, this is our core business, right?

This is what we, this is supposedly what we're supposed to be doing, right? This is our job is supporting students in learning. But most of us don't really have a really great working understanding working explanation of. How [00:50:00] learning happens and, taking that from not a know it all perspective, but from, okay let's talk about this, the and let's collaboratively look at this, and from that perspective is often a way to, to get that conversation started.

Ross Romano: Excellent. Well, this has been a great conversation and we're coming close to the end and I'm thinking a great way to, to close it is like a final call to action and and assurance of the that this can move forward and maybe a great way to divide it is, if there's a a last kind of sense of urgency, like you must Kimberly around listeners to really make sure they're engaging with the science of learning and Prioritizing instruction in their schools that is based around it.

And then, Mike, if you would like to add to that around, the fact that it really can be done by school leaders, if the approach is right and what that really means for students. And you've talked about that a little bit [00:51:00] already, but of course, that's what we're all. Going back to right at the end is whether this is difficult or brand new or easy, whatever the case may be the end result being what this really means for learners and that really providing enough reason to do it.

Kim Berens: So, and before I jump into that, here's what I'm going to say since we've been in this very different conversation today, our previous episode together, I get into the weeds about what the science of learning actually is from a behavior science perspective, but I'll really quickly just summarize it now that from in behavior science, learning occurs and only occurs through the repeated reinforcement of behavior over time.

And a behavior is anything we do as a human being, anything we learn to do, not reflexes like blinking our eyes or sneezing when something gets in our nose. But I'm saying Behavior we learn over time, learning occurs through repeated reinforcement, and we know that at the [00:52:00] behavioral level. And we also know that at the neurological level, it's at the neurological level.

It's called long term potentiation. When a skill is repeatedly reinforced, that's what actually produces a permanent neuropathway in the brain. But it happens. It requires repeated reinforcement. And what does that translate to? So when you hear the whole thing, practice makes perfect, that actually is common sense and also based in scientific fact.

Also, permanent learning cannot happen unless prerequisite skills are learned first. So what we know in all branches. I don't care if you're talking neuroscience, behavior science, or cognitive science. We know that the, that a complex repertoire of behavior cannot be learned and mastered before the components of that repertoire are learned and mastered, which means that complicated skills must be broken down into pieces and that each of those pieces must be repeatedly practiced until it is mastered before you, a kid advances up the curriculum ladder to something harder.

Okay. So I just, I felt bad because your listeners, we've been talking in these kinds of more [00:53:00] generalities today. So that's what learning science is. It's the repeated reinforcement of behavior over time. So that mastery of skills occurs. So there we go. So the other part of the question was, if you, if there was one thing to do right, do this.

Well, that's what I love about behavior science because that definition of learning is simple and it is generalizable to anything. So whenever you're in a classroom and you're teaching, the number one thing you should always be thinking about is, are my kids behaving with respect to the classroom? What I to the material to be learned.

And am I providing a lot of feedback on that behavior? So what that translates to is inquiry learning and lecture based learning doesn't line up with what the science says, produces learning. So if a teacher's doing all the talking and kids are sitting there at their desks, drooling, sleeping, staring, messing with each other, doodling, That's now learning.

Right? [00:54:00] Which is why approaches like direct instruction, which requires a, almost a one-to-one correspondence between teacher talk and student responding, right? So, te kids are consistently and quarterly responding to, to, in, to a teacher's instruction. And then the teacher's immediately providing feedback.

Why does that approach work? Think about what I just said about how learning happens because the kids are repeatedly responding to instructional stimuli, and they're receiving repeated reinforcement for that response. So when a teacher understands this at that fundamental scientific level, it can generalize to everything you're doing in the classroom, which means You're always thinking about, am I giving my students enough opportunities to actively respond so that I can provide reinforcement for that responding or corrective feedback if it's errorful?

So I think understanding that notion of learning helps a teacher. Bring that to bear in every single thing he or she does in the classroom on a regular basis, meaning [00:55:00] is the component, do these kids have the prerequisites for what I'm asking them to do? If they can't even add, I can't introduce, simplifying fractions.

They're not even multiplying basic numbers like those kinds of things will help teachers You know, bring this to bear. And also what they're required to do half the time is completely irrational. You know, if you have kids in your class that can't add, subtract, multiply and divide, but yet you're supposed to move into, finding equivalent fractions that day.

Well, fight back, man. Resist. Say, Actually, I can't teach this. Like, I'm not doing what you asked me to do because my teeth, my kids can't multiply. So, right, like getting actively engaged by understanding how learning works, understanding that a lot of what you've been trained is incorrect. And a lot of what you're expected to do is impossible.

And you have to fight back on that. You have to push back on that as a teacher. Like, say, I can't teach my kids to do this when they can't do this first, right? So that's that would be my suggestion is [00:56:00] getting teachers to be more warriors around this, and that comes from, wielding their power, which they have, and that power comes from first the knowledge of understanding how learning works in the first place from a scientific perspective.

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: Kim hit the nail on the head there. I mean, you had Damon Lindy on the other week the learn all leader. And so much of, I thought so much of the conversation you had with him really resonated with this idea that. All of us, particularly in education, have to take this learning stance and this idea that there's always more and whether it's being a warrior, and being humble is, it's a humble warrior because we're all constantly, have new things to learn as we try to figure out how to best support our students.

Read Kim's book. And read Daniel Willingham's you know, why children don't, why children don't like school. Because both of those are, if you, if nobody, if you don't know anything about, all these ideas are new to you and you keep saying, wow, the science of learning, what is all this, what are they talking about?

Both of those books [00:57:00] are going to get you waiting, get you started on this journey.

Ross Romano: Yeah, excellent. We will make it easy for listeners. We'll link to our previous episode with Kim in the show notes below, so you can go back, reference that, add those ideas here. A lot to think about, but all these ideas throughout tie really closely together and certainly a big one to enable what Kim was just referencing is that piece of music. Giving, giving educators that agency, right, and understanding of what we're doing, why we're doing it, the evidence behind it, but then them being able to see how that's going, what's happening, okay, we're not ready to move on to that next thing because we need to spend more time on this, or you know what, I understand what we're supposed to be doing here, this idea seems like it's inconsistent with that.

Let's challenge that idea and see are we losing our way here a little bit, right? We all, that's going to happen from time to time that some idea [00:58:00] comes up and we realize, oh, you know what, actually, we kind of, we need to refer back to what the You know, research shows what our approach is supposed to be here and let's tether that.

And then we can all hold each other accountable here for staying consistent with the vision that we've set out. So, it doesn't make it easy, but it does mean that there's consistent learning. There's kind of ongoing refinement that is both. According to the research and according to what's happening in our school environment and the relationships that we're developing here, how our students are progressing.

So a lot there, a lot to learn from. It was, I think, a really valuable conversation for listeners. We'll put also in the show notes below. More resources to find. We have websites there where you can learn about him's work and also fit learning and as well as her book, we have a link to some of Mike's writings and presentations, some slide decks there from some [00:59:00] things he's presented at ResearchEd, which also align to and expand on the conversation we've had here in addition to related articles from Edutopia and other outlets in which he writes about some of the things that we only had A little bit of time to talk about here.

So if certain elements of this conversation are resonating with you, there's more to read there, more to learn. So we'll make sure to share all of that below to make it really easy for you to find that Mike and Kim, it's been such a pleasure to have you here.

Kim Berens: Thank you so much. I had a blast again.

Michael Mercanti-Anthony: really great, Ross. Thanks a lot. Thanks for your work.

Ross Romano: Yes. Thank you both. Thanks to all of our listeners. Please subscribe to The Authority if you haven't already. We'll continue to have more great conversations like this. And until then, we will catch you next time.