The Harvard EdCast

The field of out-of-school learning time is vast and supports 10 million children a year. Despite this, the programs are often viewed as glorified babysitting and tremendously undervalued. Harvard Sociologist Bianca Baldridge began studying these programs many years ago, citing the impact they had on her own life and how little was known about them."I do think it is important for people to understand that as a society, we really depend on the sector in ways that we may not realize. So it's not only supporting the education system, the school system, because schools can't do everything. They never have. They never will," she says. "When parents are working, working late, young people have a place to go. That really supports the economy and thinking about parents having more time and space to work. And it provides young people with an opportunity to explore what they love, hone in on particular skills, engage with their peers, and also engage in relationships with youth work professionals."In this episode, she shares insight into the out-of-school learning sector, its unique impact on children's lives, the challenges it faces,  and ways the sectors can work together.  

When the pandemic hit, Stanford Economist Thomas Dee knew it was important to track enrollment as a means of understanding what children are experiencing. He discovered that 1.2 million students didn't enroll in public school. Dee's data indicates not only where these children went but also a significant number of children unaccounted for. A closer look at this data provides some insight into aspects of academic recovery that might also be missing."So much of our academic recovery discourse is focused on the kids still in public schools, and particularly those older kids who are in the kinds of testing windows that draw our attention," he says. "But the enrollment data are telling us really that some of the most substantial reductions in enrollment are among younger students, who to this day haven't yet aged into testing windows and won't until we hit the fiscal cliff, when the federal resources available to school districts run out."The implications for such significant enrollment changes range from challenges in instruction, how to distribute funding properly, to possible layoffs and school closures.   

John Silvanus Wilson Jr. believes higher education institutions have something to learn from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) that can change the future of democracy. “What's in their DNA, what's in their history, and what remains on many of the campuses is a model for what needs to happen in this country and in this world now if we are going to save a democracy and save the planet in that order, by the way, which is unfortunate because a broken democracy cannot save a broken planet,” Wilson says.Wilson, currently the executive director of the Millennium Leadership Initiative for Aspiring Presidents, has a long history with HBCUs as a graduate and later president of Morehouse College, and also the leader of the White House Initiative on HBCUs under the Obama Administration. While HBCUs have long been viewed through a lens of deficiency and survival, Wilson notes that these institutions actually are preeminent in character – something that is missing from many institutions nationwide. He calls on higher education to focus more on producing citizens who aspire to common good rather than personal gain. “I think all of American higher education has to heed what John Dewey said and begin to deliberately shape people who will leave and not just be selfishly concerned about their own well-being but about the well-being of society, the shape and condition of democracy,” he says. “This is critical.”In this episode of the EdCast, Wilson reflects on HBCU history and how it can inform the future of higher education and democracy.

The pandemic challenged literacy development and outcomes for many students but that doesn’t mean America is currently in a literacy crisis. Harvard Professor Catherine Snow, a pioneer with decades of research in language and literacy development, says she’s puzzled by the public discourse about a literacy crisis.“I am...struck by the degree to which people are willing to invoke a literacy crisis, when the data do not support anything like a literacy crisis,” Snow says. “NAEP scores, aside from the pandemic then—but NAEP scores, over the last 10, 15 years have grown-- slowly, but they have gotten better in literacy.” There are many districts that weathered the storm of COVID. Snow cautions that it’s important to remember the negative impacts on children’s reading test scores is not evenly distributed, and in time we will have a better understanding of its impact on literacy development. In the meantime, Snow reminds educators to remain steadfast with balanced literacy instruction.“What worries me about the post-pandemic instruction is that people are particularly under the influence of these worries about phonics are retreating to a stance of, ‘Oh my gosh. They've missed the phonics instruction. We've got to do that more and more and better and better,’” she says. “And the fact of the matter is that yes, they need phonics instruction. But they don't need an hour and a half a day of phonics instruction. Fifteen minutes a day, in the context of opportunities to read and practice and play with language, is probably more effective than overloading literacy instruction with phonics in order to repair the ravages of the pandemic.”In this episode of the EdCast, Snow discusses the current state of American literacy, and how despite knowing what works, we continue to misinterpret modes of instruction and the science of reading. 

Melinda Mangin stresses the importance of creating welcoming gender inclusive environments -- regardless of whether anyone in your school identifies as transgender.  “If you imagine a quarter of your students somehow see themselves as gender nonconforming-- they like something that's not stereotypically appropriate for their assigned gender-- then we're talking about a lot of kids,” says Mangin, a professor at Rutgers University who is an expert in inclusive schools for transgender people. “I think it's really incumbent upon us to move away from seeing gender as a problem, and waiting to fix a problem, and trying to reframe it as this is an opportunity to be more expansive in how we understand a concept, and to create space for that expansiveness to present itself, and really just shifting our mindset about the work that we're doing. We're not fixing a problem. We're creating opportunities for genuine authenticity for kids.” Many educators struggle to understand how best to do this work, and it comes with many fears, she says. Given the current climate of hate and laws against transgender people, she hopes educators will still do their best to affirm student’s identify and work on developing gender neutral school cultures.  In this episode, she discusses steps educators can make to develop more trans inclusive schools and efforts all schools should take toward building more gender inclusive school climates. 

When it comes to navigating a child’s digital life, there are many challenges facing today’s parent, says Katie Davis. While an overemphasis is often placed on screen time limits, Davis says this is often a simplistic approach to managing children’s digital media use and families  need to go deeper. Davis, an associate professor at the University of Washington, has long researched the impact of digital technologies on young people. In her latest work, she explores a wide range of technology and its impact on children at multiple stages of development – from toddler to twenty-something. She reflects on her own experience as a parent, and encourages families  not to stress about the challenges of raising children in the age of digital media. “We do our best as parents to steer our children towards positive technology experiences, and we do our best to monitor what they're doing, ultimately, the challenges are bigger than what we can solve within our family, and it really takes more than individual families to address these challenges,” Davis says. “It takes government regulation, and it takes technology companies changing their practices.”In this episode of the EdCast, Davis talks about how children engage with technology at each stage of development and how they can best be supported.

Social psychologist Geoff Cohen says a crisis of belonging is destroying us. One in five Americans suffers from chronic loneliness. Young people are struggling with high levels of anxiety and mental health issues at times when they desperately need a sense of connection and belonging. Although most of us know what it feels like to be excluded or question our belonging, Cohen says we don't do the greatest job of recognizing that feeling when it happens to others. In fact, we often threaten other people's sense of belonging, he says. It's having a serious effect on our wellbeing. The good news is there are small ways we can change and even nurture belonging as educators, parents, and citizens. In this episode, he shares what we need to do to truly create places of belonging.

Educators need to do more to address the basic social emotional needs of immigrant children if they are to advance in learning, says Harvard Professor Carola Suárez-Orozco. She is the director of the Immigration Initiative at Harvard, where she's focused on the practices that can change immigrant children’s lives in the classroom. Immigrant children make up 27 percent of US student population. Immigrant children face many challenges and also have many strengths and resiliences. However, those qualities often go unnoticed in the quest to learn English. Suárez-Orozco doesn't dismiss learning English as important, rather she wants educators to gain a better understanding of who immigrant children really are in order to succeed.   

Parental rights movements have gained much momentum in recent years with huge potential to impact the future of public education. University of Massachusetts (Lowell) Associate Professor Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berkshire, also hosts of the education policy podcast "Have You Heard," say there's more happening with these movements than meets the eye. For the past few years, parents and schools have been embroiled in controversy on everything from banned books to curriculum choices to mental health clinics on campuses. This isn't the first time in education history where we've seen such movements, but Berkshire and Schneider say we need to pay closer attention to the political agendas behind them, and what this means for public education. In this episode, they reflect on the history of parental rights movements, the political agendas at play, and how these movements impact educators and students.     

Despite growing concerns about generative artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, in education, Harvard's Chris Dede isn't overly worried. As a researcher on emerging technologies, he's seen many decades where new technologies promised to upend education. Instead, Dede knows artificial intelligence requires educators to tweak how they teach in order to truly take advantage of what AI has to offer. As the associate director of research for the National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education, Dede says AI raises the bar and it has the power to significantly impact learning in powerful ways. In this episode of the EdCast, Dede talks about how education needs to get smarter to work with artificial intelligence.