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In this month’s Lead the Change (LtC) interview, Lauren Yoshizawa shares her insights on how research can remedy educational inequality and contribute to a more just future in education. Drawing from her work at the intersection of school improvement efforts and research use, Yoshizawa emphasizes the importance of contextual understanding, theoretical frameworks, and local expertise in addressing educational inequities. Yoshizawa is an Assistant Professor of Education at Colby College. Her research focuses on policy implementation and understanding when and how educational organizations change The LtC series is produced by Elizabeth Zumpe and colleagues from the Educational Change Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. A pdf of the fully formatted interview is available on the LtC website.

Lead the Change (LtC): The 2025 AERA theme is “Research, Remedy, and Repair: Toward Just Education Renewal.” This theme urges scholars to consider the role that research can play in remedying educational inequality, repairing harm to communities and institutions, and contributing to a more just future in education. What steps are you taking, or do you plan to take, to heed this call?

Lauren Yoshizawa (LY): My answer to this question draws on two different areas of my work. Most of my
previous research has been positioned at the intersection between school improvement efforts and research use. The conventional way of understanding the role of research in supporting school improvement is through “instrumental use”—the idea that decision-makers will select and implement programs and practices based on available evidence of their effectiveness. Yet based on my research, I agree with others who have pointed out that evidence that something is effective is not the same thing as having a theory for why or how to get there. For example, when policies and tools that promote instrumental use are put into practice, they can yield narrow thinking about effectiveness (i.e., something either is or is not effective, has a large effect size or not) and about decision-making (i.e., to do something or not), while obscuring other ways that research can contribute to one’s thinking. A significant but often overlooked benefit of research is in providing frameworks for understanding problems and solutions (e.g., Farrell & Coburn, 2016; Trujillo, 2016).

Recently, I have been doing more work on rural education in my teaching and scholarship, which has also shaped my thinking about the power of theory and context in studying educational inequality. In a forthcoming chapter on “Educational Politics and Spatial Injustice,” I explain that it is not enough to document the fact that educational opportunities are unequally distributed across geography. To meaningfully inform policy and practice, our understanding of geographic inequities should be grounded in and contribute to theories on the spatiality of power, privilege, oppression, and representation. For example, research on educational access shows that where schools are closed, where new schools are opened, and where colleges are established tends to recreate and exacerbate racial and socioeconomic inequality (Buras, 2011; Hillman, 2016; Tieken & Auldridge-Reveles, 2019). As these scholars explain, theory helps us see that this is neither coincidental nor unavoidable but reflects capitalist and postcolonial systematic disinvestment in rural and urban communities, and structural racism that shapes how people value and divide neighborhoods and attempt to accumulate advantage. Furthermore, as many others have argued (e.g., Butler & Sinclair, 2020; Morrison et al., 2023), research and practice with marginalized and peripheralized communities, including rural ones, should consider the importance of place, of local voices and knowledges, and of problematizing simplified deficit narratives.

Therefore, when I think about the role that research can play in remedying educational inequality, I think of research that provides a conceptual roadmap for changing schools, that questions implicit assumptions about what problems demand what solutions, that sheds light on how change actually happens, and that draws on local, contextualized expertise. To emphasize these points, my courses rely heavily on partnerships with local schools, start with students listening to educators and decision-makers, and focus on articulating theories of change. I have spent the last few years in my research also listening to teachers describe their schools, their practice, and their efforts to change it. In my next research project, I plan to develop and partner with a network of rural teachers here in Maine who want to work on practitioner research. I hope this will be a way of building evidence about the unique and strengths concerns of rural schools and engaging educators in the process of using research to critically reflect on their practice (Penuel & Gallagher, 2017; Rust, 2009).

“When I think about the role that research can play in remedying educational inequality, I think of research that provides a conceptual roadmap for changing schools.“

LtC: In your research, you have observed and interviewed state, district, and school leaders to understand how they think about research and using research. What might practitioners and scholars take from this work to foster better school systems for all students?

LY: My work on research use corroborates other recent studies showing that decision-makers believe it is possible for research to be relevant, trustworthy, and valuable to their work (e.g., Penuel et al., 2016). But my study on how states and districts adapted and implemented the ESSA evidence requirements to fit their contexts revealed that the research community can do better. I see two major takeaways.

First, scholars should be attentive to the goals and concerns of practitioners who are trying to use research. In my 2021 article on states’ implementation of the evidence requirements embedded in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), I found that there are multiple ways to interpret the purpose of using research. Some state administrators suggested that the important thing is that, in the end, schools are using evidence-based practices regardless of whether or how they encounter research itself. From this perspective, the role of research is simply to circumscribe a set of promising practices, and the real challenge of improving schools rests on careful implementation. Other state administrators created resources and structures to guide educators through the process of consulting research when evaluating interventions and making decisions. And others focused on building their own repositories of local evidence. In my article, I wrote that these varied approaches reflected administrators’ perceptions of necessary tradeoffs between rigor and relevance, or between focusing either on “good” (research-informed) decisions or good implementation (of research-based practices). That is, administrators were skeptical that research existed that was well-designed with significant results and in contexts that could generalize to their diverse districts, or they saw evidence of effectiveness as separate from tools that helped them understand how to enact effective practices. Therefore, education researchers can make deliberate efforts to counteract what is sometimes seen as urban-centricity, studying what works in small schools and rural schools and schools serving different student populations, and/or highlighting to what degree and why they see their findings generalizing across school and student contexts. And researchers can more explicitly explain their findings contribute to a synergistic understanding of a particular phenomenon, combined with others’ work across a more diverse set of research methodologies. For example, an effectiveness study could highlight in-depth qualitative studies on what those interventions look like in the classroom and suggest practical measures that teachers could use to study their own implementation.

Second, making research useful to practitioners requires a focus on making research meaningful. In my 2022 follow-up study on district-level implementation of the evidence requirements, I suggest that policy efforts to simplify the process of research use (e.g., to distill considerations of research quality into single ratings, to consolidate findings in short summaries) may have unintentionally made it more difficult for practitioners to figure out how to integrate research into their own grounded understanding of what works and why. Drawing on a conceptual framework of research and practice as separate “cultural worlds” (Coburn et al., 2013), I examined the ways that research-based tools spanned the research-practice gap. I studied how practitioners made use of tools such as handbooks and templates that indicated where and how research should be used, and resources such as the What Works Clearinghouse and Evidence for ESSA repositories that summarize research conclusions. Such tools can capture particular understandings from the research community and bring them into practitioners’ decision-making meetings, but they also can lose context and nuance. I found that educators used these tools, but with more attention to compliance than to making meaning from research. I call this in part a problem of incommensurability between research-based knowledge—as simplified, packaged, and elevated by these tools— and educators’ deep practice-based knowledge. If scholars and policymakers want to support the meaningful use of research for improving schools, they might imagine what it would look like to articulate research findings, their value, and their implications in ways that, as CochranSmith and Lytle (1999) would put it, make them open to interpretation, interrogation, and integration with educators’ own knowledge.

“Making research useful to practitioners requires a focus on making research meaningful.”

LtC: Your work has explored policy implementation in schools and districts
operating in a variety of contexts, including some facing pressure to improve. What are some of the major lessons that practitioners and scholars of Educational Change can learn from your work?

LY: My research on evidence requirements has highlighted some of the challenges and unintended consequences involved in using policy pressure to bring about change, particularly when the expected change is very complex. Using research meaningfully to support school improvement often requires collaborative routines, trusting relationships with researchers or research brokers, and new ways of thinking—all things that take time to build, and therefore can be difficult or even illogical to impose or import. As I and others have argued (e.g., Weiss et al., 2008), evidence requirements have been incredibly powerful in shifting behaviors and increasing the presence of evidence, but it is not clear if the resulting practices can always be called meaningful research use. In their case, Weiss and colleagues observed practitioners consulting lists of approved evidence-based programs without reviewing any of the research about them, a response to pressure that focused on following the letter of the requirements (i.e., to have, in the end, adopted a qualifying program) but not their spirit (i.e., the considered integration of research findings into decision-making).

While I observed some of the same patterns, more commonly—and surprisingly—I found leaders who prioritized the spirit over the letter of the ESSA or their state regulations. They recognized that the goal of changing practitioners’ relationship to and habits of mind around research and evidence required a long-term plan. That is, they focused on a theory of change and made a roadmap. One state administrator, for example, envisioned a developmental trajectory for research use. She laid out a plan to help practitioners start by conducting their own research to build curiosity for evidence, and to make research relevant not by translating the work of others but by studying oneself. Building from this experience, practitioners could then gradually develop the skills and dispositions to seek, use, and conduct rigorous research.

By some definitions, some of what I observed above could be labeled as ceremonial responses to policies, or a lack of implementation fidelity. But I think of it instead as an example of leaders making policy pressure meaningful—related to “crafting coherence” (Honig & Hatch, 2004), but specifically about filling in the why and how when interpreting policy demands. I therefore see two lessons about trying to bring about improvement through accountability pressure and imposing requirements. First, my studies of research use raised concerns that maybe the very requirement of research use got in the way of it being done effectively and meaningfully, at least while practitioners were still learning; pressure is sometimes too blunt a policy tool to be appropriate across a long, complex change process. Rather, when I watched practitioners make their earnest efforts to meet the new ESSA evidence requirements in the first year of their implementation, I wished there was more guidance and accommodation acknowledging how short-term implementation might look different from long term implementation, and more articulation of what it might look like to develop over time as a research-using school or district. Second, given the multitude of external demands that typically face schools, leaders must consider when it might be important to buffer practitioners from particular pressures, so that they can focus their attention on the process of working toward a goal rather than on compliance (Honig & Hatch, 2004; Park et al., 2013).

LtC: Educational Change expects those engaged in and with schools, schooling, and school systems to spearhead deep and often difficult transformation. How might those in the field of Educational Change best support these individuals and groups through these processes?

LY: Recently, I interviewed teachers in the state of Maine about changes they made to their curricular or instructional practices in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I was interested to hear from the ground up about how teachers conceived of change and made it happen. Over two rounds of interviews, first in spring 2023 and then again in spring 2024, my research team asked teachers to walk us through a change in their thinking and practice that they made during the pandemic and that they found to be impactful. We also interviewed about a dozen school and district leaders. Preliminary analysis has revealed some insights about what it takes for teachers to make change and what might support them. Building on Coburn’s (2003) conceptualization of depth in reform implementation, I coded each teacher’s change as low (surface level or external to teaching and learning) or high (involving teacher beliefs or how students interact with the curriculum and others). Almost half of the changes were low in depth when we interviewed teachers in 2023. These tended to be changes that started right away in the spring of 2020 and were made in response to some requirement or school or district professional development (e.g., to adopt a particular technology). But when we interviewed teachers again in 2024, a small group of these teachers described how their changes had increased in depth. As conditions changed in schools post-pandemic, they pivoted and figured out whether to drop the new practice, keep it, or adapt it. One possible takeaway is that a little cognitive dissonance may prompt teachers to reflect on not merely whether a new practice is better, but why and whether that “why” can be enacted in other ways.

I found a similar phenomenon when analyzing interviews with teachers and leaders who engaged in changes related to socioemotional learning (SEL). Teachers and leaders expressed a variety of interpretations and framings of SEL (e.g., an expression of care versus an area of professional knowledge). Sometimes the framing of SEL helped to draw connections between different parts of
teachers’ work and unify a school staff, but also sometimes the framing made it difficult to push for deeper change. The way SEL was framed depended on how leaders tried to acknowledge and clarify both the ways in which new SEL practices built on familiar practices and understandings and the ways in
which it would involve a learning curve. These findings build on some well-known truths about educational change. Teachers need time for sustained engagement with new practices and for critical reflection. Sometimes focusing on ease of implementation or simple effectiveness (i.e., “it works”) might shortcut those aspects of the change process. Making change seem familiar can be motivating, but
familiarity can lead to assimilating reforms into existing frameworks rather than deeper changes in thinking and practice (Spillane et al., 2002). Leaders can carefully reframe a change in ways that highlight where it differs from prior conceptions, and thereby motivate teachers to engage over a longer trajectory of professional learning needed to make that change.

LtC: Where do you perceive the field of Educational Change is going? What excites you about Educational Change now and in the future?

LY: As I discussed previously in this publication, what excites me most about the field of Educational Change right now is the opportunity to study how the pandemic opened a window for new thinking, new imperatives, and new practices—and which changes persist. As described above, my recent research has primarily focused on teachers’ experiences in the pandemic and the new possibilities they envisioned and made happen in their classrooms. I see this as a time to think broadly and search widely for examples of how schooling changed, bring them to light, and learn what really makes a window of
opportunity for change. The pandemic shed light on two important avenues for work in educational change. First, the pandemic brought attention to the salience of geography and spatiality, from
transportation and internet access and how access to these resources shape inequitable access to education, to reconsidering what constitutes a “learning space.” Second, there is heightened awareness of the importance of collegiality in schools after the pandemic disrupted many of those routines and norms, and there is a need in many places to figure out ways to address teacher isolation and rebuild
structures and cultures of collaboration. In my research about teachers’ responses to the pandemic, I was struck by how many teachers described a process of problem-solving, innovating, struggling, and learning almost entirely on their own. That is why I am so excited that colleagues in my region of central
Maine are taking steps to build new partnerships and networks between our districts, colleges, and universities to bring educators together and set some shared goals for professional development, research, and teaching.

References:

Buras, K. L. (2011). Race, charter schools, and conscious capitalism: On the spatial
politics of whiteness as property (and the unconscionable assault on black New Orleans). Harvard Educational Review, 81(2), 296-331.

Butler, A., & Sinclair, K. A. (2020). Place matters: A critical review of place inquiry and spatial methods in
education research. Review of Research in Education, 44(1), 64-96.

Coburn, C. E. (2003). Rethinking scale: Moving beyond numbers to deep and lasting change. Educational Researcher, 32(6), 3-12.

Coburn, C. E., Penuel, W. R., & Geil, K. E. (2013). Research-practice partnerships: A strategy for leveraging research for educational improvement in school districts.

Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (1999). Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in
communities. Review of Research in Education, 24, 249-305. https://doi.org/10.2307/1167272

Farrell, C. C., & Coburn, C. E. (2016). What is the conceptual use of research, and why
is it important? William T. Grant Foundation. http://wtgrantfoundation.org/conceptual-use-research-important

Hillman, N. W. (2016). Geography of college opportunity: The case of education deserts. American Educational Research Journal, 53(4), 987-1021.

Honig, M. I., & Hatch, T. C. (2004). Crafting coherence: How schools strategically manage multiple, external demands. Educational Researcher, 33(8), 16-30.

Morrison, D., Annamma, S. A., & Jackson, D. D. (2023). Critical race spatial analysis: Mapping to understand and address educational inequity. Taylor & Francis.

Park, V., Daly, A. J., & Guerra, A. W. (2013). Strategic framing: How leaders craft the meaning of data use for equity and learning. Educational Policy, 27(4), 645-675.

Penuel, W. R., Briggs, D. C., Davidson, K. L., Herlihy, C., Sherer, D., Hill, H. C., . . . Allen, A.-R. (2016). Findings from a national study on research use among school and district leaders.

Penuel, W. R., & Gallagher, D. J. (2017). Creating research practice partnerships in education. ERIC.

Rust, F. (2009). Teacher research and the problem of practice. The Teachers College Record, 111(8), 1882-1893.

Spillane, J. P., Reiser, B. J., & Reimer, T. (2002). Policy implementation and cognition: Reframing and refocusing implementation research. Review of Educational research, 72(3), 387-431.

Tieken, M. C., & Auldridge-Reveles, T. R. (2019). Rethinking the school closure research: School closure as spatial injustice. Review of Educational research, 89(6), 917-953.

Trujillo, T. (2016). Learning from the past to chart new directions in the study of school district effectiveness. Thinking and acting systemically: Improving school districts under pressure, 11-47.

Weiss, C. H., Murphy-Graham, E., Petrosino, A., & Gandhi, A. G. (2008). The fairy godmother—and her warts: Making the dream of evidence-based policy come true. American Journal of Evaluation, 29(1), 29-47.

Yoshizawa, L. (2021). Fidelity, rigor, and relevance: How SEAs are approaching the ESSA evidence requirements. Educational Policy, 37(2), 463-498. https://doi.org/10.1177/08959048211029025

Today, we roundup some of the many headlines that discuss the banning of cellphones as students head back to school in many parts of the world. Part 1 of this year’s Back-to-School scan provided an overview of some of the many election-related education stories that have appeared in the press as the new school year begins in the northern hemisphere (Politics, Policies, and Polarization: Scanning the 2024-25 Back-To-School Headlines in the US). Part 2 brought together stories addressing the cost of supplies, shortages – particularly of bus drivers, hot weather and other issues (Supplies, Shortages, and Other Disruptions? Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines for 2024-25).

Why Schools Are Racing to Ban Student Phones , The New York Times

Cellphone bans in schools take center stage amid mental health crisis, ABC News

There are cellphone bans in schools around the world. Do any of them work?, CBC News

What Research Shows About Smartphone Bans In Schools, Science Friday

Saying phones should be banned in schools is easy. Actually doing it is a lot more complicated, Yahoo! News

School Cellphone Bans Complicated by Logistics, Politics and Violence, Politico

Do smartphone bans work if parents push back?, USA Today

Parents push back on school cellphone bans, K-12 Dive

78% of parents polled want their children to have cellphone access during the school day in case there’s an emergency. Some 58% said cellphone access is needed so parents can get in touch with their children and find out where they are, and 48% said contact is needed to coordinate transportation.

Why do parents oppose cell phone bans? They want to reach their kids if ‘the worst happens.’, Chalkbeat

Cellphone Bans Around the World

Back to School in Central Europe… With or Without Phones, Balkan Institute

European schools crack down on mobile phone use over health concerns, Yahoo! News

Back to school: France tests smartphone ban in 200 middle schools, EuroNews

The state does not contribute to funding this test ban, leaving the financial burden to the country’s departments responsible for funding middle schools, some of which consider it too heavy.

France to trial ban on mobile phones at school for children under 15, The Guardian

Mobile phones to be banned in Greek schools from September, Euronews

Hungary sacks principal for opposing new phone ban in schools, The Strait Times

Netherlands: Nationwide ban on phones in schools underway, DW

Cell phones, smart watches, and tablets are now banned for pupils at Dutch primary and secondary schools. The Dutch government called them a “distraction” that reduces academic performance and social interaction.

Schools in Singapore impose phone bans to reduce distractions, rekindle social interaction, The Strait Times

Cellphone Bans in Canada

On the first day of school, Canada’s new student cellphone bans will face a crucial test, The Globe And Mail

Cellphones will be banned in Ontario classrooms when students return next week. Here is how it will work, CP24

Ontario’s new school cellphone ban has started. Why we should prepare for ‘a hard transition’, Toronto Star

B.C. brings in ‘bell-to-bell’ school cellphone ban, CBC

B.C.’s phone ban in schools: What students and parents/guardians need to know, Vancouver Sun

Cellphone bans in Maritime schools should increase academic performance, says school psychologist, CTV News

We are constantly having parts of our brain being drawn to the phone…So, by just either having it on the desk, in our backpack or in our pocket, as long as it’s in reach of us, our brain is continuously thinking about that. And that diverts the attention away from what the teachers are saying… – Clinical and school psychologist Todd Cunningham

Parents hung up on Manitoba’s school cell phone ban, The Winnipeg Sun

How will the new school cellphone bans actually be enforced?, CBC

Cellphone Bans in the United States

Schools across the U.S. restrict cellphones amid growing behavior, mental health, academic concerns, CBS News

Educators…worry that constant access to social media can adversely impact kids’ mental health. A number of studies have made that correlation, finding that time spent on platforms like Instagram and TikTok can lead to anxiety, depression and low self-esteem as kids get harassed or embarrassed online and compare their lives with the polished and carefully curated narratives crafted by others.

A Look at State Efforts to Ban Cellphones in Schools and Implications for Youth Mental Health, KFF

Back To School But Not To Screens: States Ramp Up Cellphone Bans, Forbes

Eight states have already enacted laws about cell phone use in K-12 schools, including outright bans in Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, and South Carolina…Several others are inching closer to doing the same.

Cell Phone Ban Wagon, The Grade

Cellphone bans becoming more common in California schools, EdSource

‘It’s completely wreaking havoc’: Phone ban in Bay Area schools off to a rough start, SF Gate

Many Connecticut schools are banning cellphones ahead of new school year, and more could follow, CT Insider

Indiana’s cellphone ban means less school drama. But students miss their headphones, NPR

‘We’re not there yet,’ Eric Adams says of NYC-wide school cellphone ban, Chalkbeat New York

Back to school for many NYC students means turn off your cell phone, even without a citywide ban, New York Daily News

South Carolina Board of Education approves statewide cellphone ban, WCBD

Several Texas school districts adopt cellphone bans in classroom. Here’s a list, Austin American-Statesman

Schools across Wisconsin are limiting cell phone use this year, Wisconsin Public Radio

For some historical perspective on how the issues have evolved since the school closures of the COVID-19 pandemic, explore the back-to-school headlines from previous years:

• Fall 23: Crises and Concerns: Scanning the 2023-24 Back-To-School Headlines (Part 1) Natural Disasters, Climate Change and the Start of School in 2023: Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines (Part 2); Educational Issues in the News Across the US: Scanning the Back-to-School Headlines (Part 3)
• Fall 22: Hope and trepidation: Scanning the back-to-school headlines in the US; “Over it” but unable to escape it: Going back to school with Covid in 2022; Going back to school in 2022 (Part 3): Scanning headlines from around the world; 
• Fall 21: Going back to school has never been quite like this (Part 1): Pandemic effects in the US; Going back to school has never been quite like this (Part 2): Quarantines, shortages, wildfires & hurricanes;
• Fall 20: What does it look like to go back to school? It’s different all around the world…;
• Fall 19: Headlines around the world: Back to school 2019 edition.

We’re off until the beginning of September, but will be back with new posts scanning the back to school and election related news as well as interviews and reflections on what’s happening in schools in Finland, China, and other parts of the world.

Persistence, motivation, and digital device use are among the issues that may be affecting declining math scores, according to a survey of students around the world. This week IEN repost’s an article published originally through The Hechinger Report by Christina A. Samuels exploring the decline in math scores on the PISA test and the results of a related survey of students taking the PISA test.

The bottom line is troubling.

Scores on an international math test fell a record 15 points between 2018 and 2022 — the equivalent of students losing three-quarters of a school year of learning.

That finding may not be surprising considering the timing of the test. The world was still recovering from the disruptive effects of the global pandemic when the test, called the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, was administered.

But in many countries, the slide in math scores began years before Covid-19 and was even steeper than the international average. That includes some of the world’s largest and wealthiest countries, and others acclaimed for their education systems, such as Canada, France, Germany and Finland. Only a few school systems — Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong — have been able to maintain their top results for the long haul.

Some of the scores set off another “PISA shock” — a term first used in Germany in 2000 when scores there were much lower than expected — that may change how mathematics is taught around the world.

Although there’s no single culprit behind the decline, PISA is more than a math test: It also includes a wide-ranging survey of the students who take the test, most of whom are around 15 years old and coming to the end of compulsory schooling in their countries. From their responses, and analysis by PISA researchers, several themes stand out, including disconnection from school and teachers, a lack of motivation and a sense that math does not clearly connect to their real lives.

Why motivation matters

PISA uses a series of word problems that assess how well students can use the math they’ve learned throughout their lives to solve problems they might face in the real world. For example, one question in the most recent test gives students the dimensions of a moving truck and then asks them to figure out how many boxes of a certain size can fit.

 Other problems require students to extract information from different types of data, such as a question that asks students to calculate which brand of car has the best value, taking into its price, fuel consumption, and resale value.

“Students need to have the confidence to try different things, and a level of persistence to do these kinds of problems,” said Joan Ferrini-Mundy, a mathematics educator and the president of the University of Maine. Ferrini-Mundy is also the co-chair of the PISA’s Mathematics Expert Group.

But nearly 1 in 4 students reported on the PISA survey that they gave up more than half the time when they were confronted with math that they didn’t understand. A little more than 40 percent said they never, or almost never, actively participated in group discussions in math class. And about 31 percent said they never or almost never asked questions when they didn’t understand the math they were being taught.

In Germany, where scores have dropped faster than those of many other PISA nations, researchers pointed to a collapsing interest in math as a subject that started around 2012, among other factors. Students reported less enjoyment, less interest and more anxiety around the topic, said Doris Lewalter, an educational researcher at the Technical University of Munich. They also were more likely to report that they saw fewer potential benefits from studying math.

Miguel Castro, right, and Josue Andrate work on math problems in their Tulsa, Oklahoma classroom. The U.S. is among the countries with falling scores on international math tests, but the decline is not as steep compared to other nations.  Credit: Shane Bevel for The Hechinger Report

The effects of screen time

Students who reported spending up to an hour on devices for learning purposes scored 14 points higher than students who said they spent no time on digital devices for learning. But too much use of digital devices was a distraction, even indirectly. Students who said they were distracted at least some of the time in school by their peers using devices scored 15 points lower than students who reported that they never, or almost never, were distracted.

Outside the classroom, digital device use also matters when it comes to math scores. Students who spent more than an hour on weekdays surfing the web or on social networks scored between 5 and 20 points lower than peers who spent less than an hour on devices.

Sample PISA Question

Lack of real-world connection

On student surveys, only about a quarter of PISA-takers said they were asked “to think of problems from everyday life that could be solved with new mathematics knowledge we learned” for more than half or almost every lesson.

William Schmidt, a professor at Michigan State University and the founder and director of the Center for the Study of Curriculum Policy, has studied the seeming disconnect between math as it is taught, and math as it is used outside of school.

Schmidt examined the math textbooks of 19 countries, and said that about 15 percent of the computational problems in those books are word problems. But of those, only a tiny percentage — just over one-quarter of 1 percent — ask students to use math reasoning to solve a problem, in his view. An example might be determining how many items you can buy at a store for $52, given certain discounts and taking into account sales tax, he said.

Schmidt, also a member of the PISA math experts group, believes students should grapple with problems like this, which have the benefit of being more interesting as well.

“What we should be doing is exposing our children to real exercises that are real in their world and that have applications they would care about,” Schmidt said.

Good teachers are irreplaceable

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees PISA for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, said the student surveys also showed the importance of teachers’ connection to their students. Math scores were 15 percentage points higher, on average, in places where students said they had good access to teacher help. Those students also felt more confident in their ability to learn on their own, and remotely.

On the 2022 survey, about 70 percent of students reported regularly receiving extra help from teachers, but that figure represents a drop of 3 percentage points from 2012.

“That was actually a surprise to me, that we see fewer students growing up with the notion that my teacher knows who I am, my teacher knows who I want to become, my teacher supports me,” Schleicher said. “Many students perceive education to be more transactional.”

A call to action

Finland’s fall, from a top performer in 2006 to just slightly above the OECD average in 2022, has been the most dramatic among previous high achievers. In math, the proportion of low achievers rose to 25 percent in 2022, from about 7 percent in 2000.

Finnish students’ achievements have been dropping gradually for two decades, and the trend is reflected in national evaluations, said Jenna Hiltunen, a researcher in mathematical pedagogy at the University of Jyvaskyla, who was part of the team that implemented PISA in Finland. “I wouldn’t say that we were surprised by the decline, but we were a little bit surprised by how large the decline was.”

Finnish math education experts cited reduced motivation in students and a disconnect between their life goals and how young people feel about school. It plans to invest 146 million euros — about $158 million in U.S. dollars — over the next three years in schools in disadvantaged areas, and it is adding one hour per week of math lessons for students in grades three to six, which is planned to begin in August 2025. Local authorities will decide which of those grades will get the extra hour.

“We think it’s important to highlight the importance of basic skills, and learning the fundamentals,” said Tommi Karjalainen, a senior ministerial adviser to the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and a former education researcher at the University of Helsinki.

In New Zealand, where math scores on international tests in the past decade have fallen steeply, a new government campaigned on bringing a “back to basics” approach to education. The government has mandated an hour of reading, writing and mathematics in school each day and has banned cellphones. A government-created advisory group has also suggested that the country move to a more traditional, explicit form of mathematics instruction, as opposed to inquiry methods that focus more on having students create their own mathematics learning, with teachers serving as guides.

In Bavaria, one of Germany’s 16 states, leaders announced in February a plan to add additional math and German lessons in the primary years, part of a “PISA Initiative.”

France is responding to its sliding scores by introducing more tracking. Starting in September, France will start testing middle school students to track them into different mathematics and French classes, based on their scores.

And educators are looking to different countries to learn the keys to their success. The former Soviet republic of Estonia, as one example, achieved the highest mathematics scores on the PISA of any other country in Europe.

The country of 1.4 million people has not focused on international math scores as a goal in itself, said Peeter Mehisto, co-author of “Lessons from Estonia’s Education Success Story: Exploring Equity and High Performance Through PISA.”

Instead, it has stopped separating students into groups based on their academic performance, a practice called “streaming” or “tracking.” Mehisto, an honorary research associate at the University of London Institute of Education, said that research shows that “low-track” students often end up alienated from school.

In the United States, in comparison to other countries, no one is talking about widespread changes because of these math scores. No centralized government agency controls curriculum, and the U.S. actually moved up in comparison to other nations because those other nations did so poorly.

Unlike the belief in some other countries, the U.S. scores “are not cause for huge alarm,” said Ferrini-Mundy, one of the PISA experts. “We have to pay attention to this, but it’s not a catastrophe.”

Frieda Klotz contributed reporting and Sarah Butrymowicz contributed research to this story.

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association Reporting Fellowship program.

This story about dropping math scores was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

What are the possibilities for innovation in professional learning post-COVID? The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated many of the long-standing challenges within the teaching profession but simultaneously created opportunities for improvement by accelerating the use of education technology (EdTech) and encouraging stakeholders to reimagine what teacher professional development (TPD), staffing, and teaching could look like. Over the next two weeks, IEN managing editor Sarah Etzel explores the possibilities for innovations in professional learning in this two-part post. The first part of this post describes some remote and hybrid approaches to professional development in use in refugee and crisis contexts even before the pandemic. It also includes an overview of recent news reports on new approaches to professional learning that involve efforts to use AI to provide feedback to teachers. Part 2 summarizes recent articles that discuss how blended and remote delivery models for students might shift the roles of teachers and introduce new avenues for teachers to manage their time and workloads.

Remote and hybrid professional development in refugee and crisis contexts

Even before the pandemic, educators in refugee and crisis contexts with limited access to resources and qualified staff were already exploring how fully remote and blended learning models might support teacher professional development. These efforts included programs that sought to deliver professional development programs via radio or mobile phones (primarily WhatsApp). In Uganda, STiR Education implemented a fully-remote, radio-based professional development program that took place over the course of two weeks and featured 30-minute radio lessons consisting of evidence-based instructional practices. The program combined these lessons with weekly support calls from district officials and follow-up materials for school leaders to support teachers. The radio programs were also shared via WhatsApp channels so that participating teachers could go back and access the lessons at any time. The project implementers found that these approaches helped to motivate teachers and supported their resilience, while also providing them with a sense of community through WhatsApp groups where they could discuss questions related to their specific classroom situations. Challenges included limited follow up, poor network connectivity, and varied levels of program accessibility across districts. Lessons learned pointed to the need to combine different approaches (radio coupled with the interactive WhatsApp component) and to engage stakeholders like school leaders to encourage them to support the programs. 

Countries like Malawi, Botswana, and Tanzania as well as in the Caribbean have also utilized programs relying on mobile phone messaging for professional development. One study of a sample of teachers involved in these programs found that the use of mobile phones “could be a scalable solution with rapid positive outcomes on teaching practices worth investing in,” and highlighted the benefits of community building through WhatsApp channels. At the same time, despite the widespread availability of WhatsApp, many teachers in these countries still don’t have mobile phones and network connectivity remains limited in some areas.

MOOC’s (Massive Open Online Courses) have provided another opportunity for either fully remote or blended learning for professional development. In Lebanon, teams from University College London and Lebanese American University worked with stakeholders in the community to identify key needs and priorities and then co-designed a MOOC, which incorporated local content by filming lessons of teachers working in area refugee camps. The completed course also included a blended component so that some teachers could receive two days of face-to-face training before they started the MOOC; two days of training during the course; and two days of training at the end. Participants were also given access to supplemental materials that they could download, such as lesson plans and models of good practice. Given that the teachers were not able to regularly travel to the university campus, having the virtual component made the course much more accessible to a wide range of teachers. At the same time, the face-to-face component turned out to be particularly helpful in clarifying teachers’ misconceptions around the digital tools, while the digital component allowed for greater flexibility and enabled them to learn from their peers who were undergoing similar challenges. 

Excerpts of MOOC from A Co-designed Blended Approach for Teacher Professional Development in Contexts of Mass Displacement

In Rwanda, teachers have been able to deepen their understanding of their subjects and related instructional practices through self-paced online learning modules and tailored in-person sessions that build upon teachers’ performance in the online components. The program includes an in-person orientation; online modules, with school-based mentors reviewing teachers progress through the modules; a bridging activity where teachers and school-based mentors complete a professional development needs assessment for their school; and a final in-person session where teachers come together with their peers and school-based mentors to build a professional development plan for their schools. In what the partners from the University of Rwanda and Education for Development (VVOB) describe as a staggered, flipped classroom model, in-person meetings help to cultivate community among participants and provide opportunities for practice. The flexibility of the virtual approach also allowed participants to focus more on the specific context of their own schools.

Figure 1: Model for Blended Learning CPD Program in Rwanda

Innovations in professional learning? The role of AI in coaching and feedback for teachers 

In addition to trying to take advantage of the possibilities for mobile and online learning that have emerged, several more recent initiatives are attempting to harness AI to provide feedback for teachers as districts seek alternatives to traditional coaching models (for previous IEN coverage of AI, see: ChatGPT on ChatGPT in education: Clear summaries and fake citations, Ban It or Use It? Scanning the Headlines: The Chat GPT six month anniversary edition, Scanning the headlines for international perspectives on ChatGPT in schools, What difference will AI make in schools?). Among those, TeachFX, is developing an AI platform where teachers can upload lesson recordings and receive quantified reports on their classroom interaction. In South Portland Maine, the platform provided teachers with personalized feedback on how often they talked, how many times they called on certain students, and how many times they used certain questioning techniques. For some teachers, the platform helped them to realize their implicit biases — for example, if they were disproportionately calling on white students who were fluent in English. Meanwhile, Urban Assembly, a network of 21 schools in NYC is working to develop AI coaching tools for its teachers. Similar to the TeachFX technology, these tools are expected to use natural language processing to identify trends in classroom interactions, including “positive,” “respectful” or “insulting” language. According to Urban Assembly CEO David Adams, the benefits of this kind of approach are clear: “It can take the instructional coaches hours to review a single video. That means teachers aren’t getting enough feedback, and they’re getting it less often than they should be.” 

Recent research on AI coaching models (also referred to as M-Powered Learning or machine-powered learning) includes two randomized controlled trials with tutoring programs. Results suggested that “students taught by instructors or tutors who accessed the feedback more frequently had more favorable perceptions of their learning experience” compared to students taught by those who did not engage with machine powered feedback. 

Concerns about the uses of AI for feedback for teachers often revolve around worries that it will replace in-person coaching, but AI proponents argue that this kind of technology could work in tandem with human coaches, allowing them to evaluate videos more efficiently. Other critiques center around the level of nuance these platforms will be able to provide and some question whether teachers will really take advantage of these services. Julie York, a teacher who uses TeachFX, shared the sign-up link with 80 of her colleagues and received zero interest. York believes that teachers may not want feedback on their instruction or may fear that districts could use the recordings punitively. Furthermore, the new technology raises concerns around data privacy and how the audio transcripts will be used beyond the coaching programs. 

Next week: Reimaging Coaching and Teachers’ Time: Scanning the News for Innovations in Teachers’ Professional Learning and Management (Part 2)