The Harvard EdCast

Edward Clapp, a principal investigator at Harvard’s Project Zero and co-author of "The Participatory Creativity Guide for Educators," advocates for redefining creativity as a collective experience. He discusses the pitfalls of viewing creativity as an individual trait and explores the crises individualism brings to education. Clapp emphasizes the importance of social dynamics and cultural backgrounds in fostering creativity, promoting a participatory approach where every student can engage meaningfully. He also highlights how a growth mindset can unlock diverse creative potentials.

Sexual misconduct by school employees is more prevalent than many of us want to believe, according to Charol Shakeshaft, a distinguished professor in the School of Education at Virginia Commonwealth University. Many times, school culture gets in the way of stopping this abuse from happening. “What I find is that teachers see things, kids see things, administrators see things, parents see things. And what they see are what I call red flags of possible problems, but certainly what they see are boundary crossings,” Shakeshaft says. “Teachers are crossing a professional boundary, and they don't report it. And they don't report it for lots of reasons. The foremost reason they don't report it is because they don't realize they're supposed to report it. Nobody's taught them or helped them understand that these are signs that a child might be being targeted for sexual misconduct.”For decades, Shakeshaft has studied sexual misconduct by school employees and served as a lead expert witness in hundreds of cases. In her book, “Organizational Betrayal: How Schools Enable Sexual Misconduct and How to Stop It,” she unveils a problem that is deeply entrenched in our schools and calls for greater awareness and action to protect students.Recent studies estimate about 17% of students report being the target of sexual misconduct by a school employee. “We expect our schools to be places that are looking out for our kids, and the people there are kind and good. And in fact, most of them are. Most of them are people who care about kids, who care about people, who are honest, who have good ethics. That's the good part,” Shakeshaft says. “But as in every profession, there are those who aren't. That's the sad part.”In this episode, Shakeshaft stresses how educators are responsible for reporting suspicious actions without having to determine whether the behavior is truly harmful and shares strategies for educators and families to recognize, report, and prevent these incidents from happening in their schools.

Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow at Capita and author focused on America's childcare crisis, discusses the urgent need for universal childcare in the U.S. He argues that childcare should be seen as a public good, akin to education and parks. Haspel reflects on historical policy failures and the necessity of bipartisan support for comprehensive reform. He identifies inclusivity and funding as key obstacles, emphasizing that functional childcare requires robust public investment. Haspel envisions a future where childcare is recognized as a societal right.

Drawing from her research and interviews with boys over the past three decades, Niobe Way, a professor of developmental psychology at New York University, reveals how boys in early adolescence express a strong desire for close, emotionally intimate friendships, but as they grow older, societal pressures cause them to suppress these feelings. She calls this a crisis of connection and it’s affecting all of us. “This crisis of connection is not just for boys and young men. It's with everybody where we're starting to disconnect from our emotional sensitivity, our need for relationships, our need for intimate relationships, not just with a romantic partner, but with friends, as we grow older…” Way says. “Even our notions of maturity, it's the same notions as manhood. It's about being independent, self-sufficient, autonomous, stoic. It's not about being emotional, being sensitive, being able to be mutually supportive with another person.”This loss of connection along with a culture steeped in toxic masculinity leads to emotional isolation, and contributes to rising rates of anxiety, depression, loneliness, and even mass violence. Often times society blames mental illness for the latter, but Way contends that our need to individualize these problems, rather than seeing them as cultural issues creates a cycle of not listening and blame. “The point that we're not asking is, why are they having mental health problems? I mean, what's leading them to be that mentally ill? What is leading them to do that? What's causing that? And why are so many young men at this point-- because the numbers are almost every day that we have a mass shooting-- why are there so many high numbers of young men, white, privileged young boys have mental illness? Why?,” Way says. “Once you start asking why, then you start seeing a cultural story of the way we're raising our children. And I'm going to implicate everybody, including me. We are absolutely raising our children to go against their nature by only valuing one side, by valuing academic achievement over kindness.”In the episode, Way advocates for a rethinking of not only how we raise boys, but all children, stressing the value of fostering emotional intelligence, empathy, and deep connections with others.

Ying Xu, an assistant professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, dives into the intriguing intersection of AI and children's development. She discusses how AI can enhance learning, especially when designed with educational principles, noting improvements in children's reading skills. However, Xu warns that while AI provides personalized learning, it cannot replace the critical human connections vital for social and language growth. She also emphasizes the need for AI literacy among children to navigate information effectively and encourages a balanced approach to integrating technology in education.

Eric Soto-Shed, a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, argues for the importance of teaching about the election in today’s classrooms. He emphasizes the alarming decline in public satisfaction with democracy and believes schools should be a safe space for civic engagement. Soto-Shed discusses the challenges teachers face from community backlash and restrictive policies but insists that avoiding such topics only fosters ignorance. Instead, he advocates for meaningful discussions that prepare students for active participation in democracy.

As millions of students prepare for summer vacation, many parents may worry about endless time spent on the screen. Michael Rich, pediatrician and Director of the Digital Wellness Lab at Boston Children's Hospital, says children spend more time on the screen during the summer but that the real challenge is balance between screen time and offline activities.“Now, the issue with screen time also should not be that the time you spend on screen is toxic, but that it is displacing something else. And if it is displacing something that is arguably a richer, more positive experience, then one should be thoughtful about that and make that choice,” he says. “The problem with screens as we use them is that we use them in such an open-ended way, such a way that it's a default behavior.”He discusses the challenges of setting screen time limits in today's digital environment and offers practical strategies for structuring days with both screen and non-screen activities. One of the best ways, he says, is for parents to set good examples. “When we get home, we should put down our devices and focus on them, really look at them, listen to them, be silent with them, but not be distracted by our phones. Work is over ostensibly, although we don't remember that most of the time, and it's a time when you can actually enjoy them,” he says. “They're not going to be this old forever. They are constantly changing before us. So, in some ways, we need to value that time with them even more. And by doing so, we are modeling for them valuing time with us.”In this episode, Rich shares insights on navigating screen time in children's lives, and addresses concerns about the impact of screens on mental health, advocating for a nuanced approach that considers individual readiness and understanding.

With looming threats of high teacher turnover rates during COVID-19, Olivia Chi, an assistant professor at Boston University, wanted to study how the pandemic shaped who decided to become a teacher.Many states foresaw serious disruptions to the teacher pipeline as testing centers and schools closed around the county. While teacher requirements differ by state, many require a bachelor’s or master’s teacher education program, student teaching, state teaching exams, or some type of alternative certification program. Massachusetts sought innovative solutions to sustain their teaching workforce by issuing emergency teaching licenses. “In order to prevent a stopgap essentially in the teacher pipeline, Massachusetts issued what they called emergency teaching licenses. And these began in June of 2020, in response to all of the closures during the pandemic,” Chi says. “And the emergency teaching license is different from the others because it only requires a bachelor's degree to be eligible for the license. In other words, you did not have to complete and pass these teacher licensure exams in order to get the license. So if you have a bachelor's degree and you went through the typical checks, you could get that license and be eligible to be a Massachusetts classroom teacher in a public school.”Chi's research, conducted in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, demonstrates how emergency licenses influenced the demographics and effectiveness of the teaching workforce.“I think our results would put forth to consider more flexibility, particularly for those who have already engaged in the teacher pipeline or may already have lots of experience working in public schools as paraprofessionals or in other staff positions,” Chi says. “That being said, I don't necessarily think our results suggest we should just do away with all of the requirements and let anybody in.”In this episode of the EdCast, we discuss the study’s findings and what emergency teaching licenses can tell us about teacher requirements given the current state of the teaching workforce today. 

While most schools in the United States do not report using corporal punishment – the use of pain as punishment -- it still impacts tens of thousands of students annually, particularly in states where it remains legal. Jaime Peterson, a pediatrician and assistant professor at Oregon Health and Science University, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, issued a call this fall to end such practices in school. “As pediatricians, we don't recommend corporal punishment. We know it's not an effective form of discipline. Spanking and hitting a child might help a behavior in the short term. They might be fearful and obedient,” she says. “But in the long term it has a lot of negative consequences. But if it's how you discipline your child at home, parents are often teachers, and school personnel, and school board members that that's a practice in their community at home that seems acceptable. It may be hard to change it.”It also disproportionately impacts certain demographics such as Black students and students with disabilities. With 17 states remaining where corporal punishment is still legal today, Peterson urges parents, educators and policymakers to mobilize and push for abolition of this practice. Calling this form of punishment ineffective, she urges parents and schools to adopt more supportive and positive disciplinary practices that work. “Saying that it's not allowed isn't going to change a school culture entirely. We don't know what other forms of discipline will come in,” she says. “I think really in the simplest forms when I talk with families, I remind them that our goal is no pain-- so that's corporal punishment-- no shame, and no blame when we discipline children. No pain, no shame, no blame.” In this episode of the EdCast, we discuss the prevalence and effects of corporal punishment in schools, and what it’s going to take to end it for good.

Family engagement plays a pivotal role in combatting chronic absenteeism.The number of students who are chronically absent – missing 10% or more of the school year – has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Eyal Bergman, senior vice president at Learning Heroes, studied this issue and was surprised to discover how schools with robust family engagement had significantly lower rates of chronic absenteeism. “It shows that the strength of a school's family engagement is actually more predictive of a school's chronic absenteeism than their rates of poverty,” he says. But fostering strong home-school partnerships has been a challenge for many school districts. “What we find is that schools often, despite really good intentions, have not really been designed to promote really strong partnerships with families,” he says. “This is why families are often treated as spectators to the work of schools. This is why their cultural wisdom and their expertise about their children aren't necessarily woven into the fabric of schooling. It's why we see that schools often apply assimilationist practices.”Bergman emphasizes the need for trust-building between educators and families, personalized approaches to student learning, and systemic infrastructural support to enhance family engagement. In future work, Bergman will dig deeper into the data and try to gather more information about what certain school districts with strong family engagement did to keep chronic absenteeism down and a possible tool down the line to help schools with family engagement. In this episode, he explains the soaring numbers of chronic absenteeism while underscoring the transformative potential of prioritizing family engagement in ensuring student well-being and academic success.