菠萝视频

Continued accolades might go to any institution鈥檚 collective head. Yet Peabody College鈥檚 place atop the rankings of education schools nationwide has made the school鈥檚 faculty and leadership anything but complacent. The forward-looking approach that helped to build the college continues to infuse its institutional culture: At Peabody, innovation has become standard operating procedure.

This can be seen in Peabody鈥檚 ongoing program development. In the last few years, the college has launched several new programs that cross disciplinary and organizational divides, both within 菠萝视频 and out in the wider Nashville community. Here is a sampling.

Synergistic 菠萝视频

This summer, Peabody College, in partnership with the 菠萝视频 Brain Institute, formally announced the nation鈥檚 first doctoral program in educational neuroscience. The school now is accepting applications for fall semester 2013.

鈥淓veryone involved in this has a sense that we鈥檙e pushing the envelope and creating something new that has a great deal of potential,鈥� says Peabody Senior Associate Dean Craig Kennedy. Kennedy, a professor of special education at Peabody as well as an investigator with the Center on Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience, 菠萝视频 Brain Institute, and 菠萝视频 Kennedy Center, is part of the team coordinating the program.

Educational neuroscience, still very much an emerging field, researches the complex interplay between learning and the brain鈥檚 chemistry, biology and activity. Its focuses include reading, math, language and psychosocial development.

鈥淧eople are starting to look at the intersection of genes and neurobiology鈥攈ow the brain is wired, before and after birth, through childhood, adolescence and into adulthood鈥攁nd how this affects learning,鈥� Kennedy says. 鈥淭his can potentially contribute to a new generation of educational approaches.鈥�

Kennedy says the idea for the program goes back about five years, to discussions among Dean Camilla Benbow, associate deans and department chairs about developing trends in education. Educational neuroscience, Kennedy says, is a perfect fit for a university with top programs in both educational research and neuroscience.

The school鈥檚 investment in this emerging field includes faculty recruitment. Peabody has hired three educationally focused neuroscientists within the last three years: Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Psychology Bruce McCandliss, Patricia and Rodes Hart Associate Professor of Special Education Laurie Cutting and Assistant Professor Gavin Price.

Cutting, who came to Peabody from the neurology faculty at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, played a large role in designing the program鈥檚 curriculum, which combines a neuroscience core with courses that teach students to apply it to educational issues such as reading and math development.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a new field, so I wouldn鈥檛 say the boundaries have been fully designed,鈥� Cutting says. 鈥淵ou take what you understand about the brain to help inform education, and the best approaches in education and vice versa. It鈥檚 a synergistic process.鈥�

Cutting鈥檚 research focuses on the connections between brain activity and reading development and disabilities. As an example of the field鈥檚 potential, she describes what has been learned about brain activity and dyslexia.

鈥淔or years, the diagnosis of dyslexia was operationalized by assessing the discrepancy between IQ level and reading level (with a high discrepancy indicating reading weaknesses and therefore a need for intervention),鈥� Cutting explains. 鈥淎 number of years ago, we began to see converging behavioral evidence that this IQ achievement discrepancy method was not working. Now this has been shown neurobiologically, and that is a very powerful message. The brain activation patterns associated with reading are not different between those with the discrepancy and those without. The implication鈥攖he policy and identification implication鈥攊s that all these people who were poor readers weren鈥檛 getting help in schools because they didn鈥檛 have a big discrepancy. They were excluded from access to potentially life-changing services.鈥�

Cutting adds, 鈥淣europrognosis, which means using neurobiology to predict responsiveness to intervention, is another area where educational neuroscience has great potential.鈥�

Kennedy鈥檚 work includes research on the connections among autism; sleep deprivation, which is associated with altered serotonin levels; and behavior.

鈥淲e discovered people with autism were showing many sleep problems, and that this was affecting their behavior, but we really didn鈥檛 understand why. So we used animal models to study the effects of sleep deprivation and assess what鈥檚 affected in the brain,鈥� Kennedy explains. This research is ongoing; its findings will have the potential to inform assessment and intervention strategies at the clinical level for students with autism.

Kennedy notes that educational interventions go beyond specific interventions in reading and math to
include social development and adjustment.

鈥淎 big component is psychosocial development, and how the brain changes,鈥� Kennedy says. 鈥淔or example, there鈥檚 been research on what happens in the brain when a teenager is rejected. It is similar to pain perception.鈥�

Kennedy is excited about 菠萝视频鈥檚 leadership role in this developing field of study.

鈥淔ive years ago, there were few, if any, positions in educational neuroscience nationally,鈥� Kennedy says. 鈥淗arvard and Johns Hopkins have master鈥檚 degree programs in educational neuroscience, but they鈥檙e often based on a small number of faculty. We鈥檙e really turning out a solid research foundation, along with new researchers to populate this emerging field. We鈥檙e hoping 菠萝视频 will become the go-to place for the first generation of educational neuroscience researchers.鈥�

Out in the Community

When Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools (MNPS) Director Jesse Register wanted to create a new master鈥檚 program that would attract the best and the brightest teachers to Nashville鈥檚 harder-to-staff middle schools, he didn鈥檛 hesitate to reach out to Peabody College.

鈥淎 goal of the program is to recruit very high-quality teachers, and to create longevity and stability, a situation where they stay for a while,鈥� Register says, describing the Teaching and Learning in Urban Schools (TLUS) program. TLUS welcomed its first students in 2010, less than a year after Register brought the idea to Peabody Dean Camilla Benbow. This fall, it placed teachers in five MNPS schools.

The program requires students to teach in Nashville鈥檚 public schools for five years. During the first two, they also take two courses per semester toward their degrees: a course in a content area along with a seminar in urban issues. MNPS places the students according to district needs in groups of at least three per school so that they have a built-in support system. Peabody faculty visit their classrooms once a week to mentor and coach. In return for the participants鈥� five-year commitment, Peabody discounts their tuition, and MNPS covers the difference.

鈥淚 learned about this program at a middle schools conference,鈥� says Clay Welch, who joined the program鈥檚 third cohort this July. This is his first year as a full-time teacher; he teaches language arts at Neely鈥檚 Bend Middle School. 鈥淚鈥檝e always had a heart for the kids who are being left behind, the at-risk kids. I always thought I would go to a low-performing school. But I was nervous doing that my first year.

鈥淎 lot of teachers jump in wanting to save the world, but don鈥檛 have support and get burned out,鈥� Welch says. 鈥淭he idea of having a professor come to my class, of being able to ask questions, of having a cohort and having that support, those things brought me here.鈥�

TLUS Director and Assistant Professor of the Practice Lanette Waddell also was impressed when Peabody recruited her in 2010 with the program鈥檚 well-designed combination of practical experience, professional mentoring and classroom instruction.

鈥淭he coaching aspect is incredibly important,鈥� Waddell says. 鈥淗aving an experienced person in your room every week to reflect with, and then connecting that with the classes you take, is really valuable.鈥�

Waddell says her close involvement with her students helps her, too.

鈥淚鈥檓 always in the schools,鈥� Waddell says. 鈥淚 get to see teachers teach, and then go back and think about what I saw. It really pushes my thinking and research. It鈥檚 a great mix of practice and theory.鈥�

So far, MNPS has funded its financial support for the program with federal Race to the Top money. As that runs out, the district must find money elsewhere. It is now working with Waddell to evaluate the program鈥檚 teacher longevity and student outcomes. Register says that, though the metrics aren鈥檛 in yet, he has been impressed with the quality of teachers and their commitment.

鈥淎 lot of times, people coming into the teaching profession are not from settings where you have high percentages of urban diversity and poverty,鈥� Register says. 鈥淵ou have to learn the cultures of the children you鈥檙e working with, and you need to want to be there. I think formal education鈥攖he content knowledge鈥攊s very important, and that has to be emphasized, but teachers also have to learn to live and work in a culture that is perhaps different than the one in which they grew up.鈥�

Register thinks a master鈥檚 program gives teachers the opportunity to gain critical skills, knowledge and experience.

鈥淵ou can鈥檛 learn everything that it takes to be a successful urban teacher in four years,鈥� Register says. 鈥淭he social and emotional component of teaching adolescents is really important. It takes a long time to get those skills.鈥�

Welch couldn鈥檛 agree more. He already sees how what he studies in his urban issues seminars will apply to his classrooms.

鈥淚t鈥檚 extremely challenging,鈥� Welch says. 鈥淭he shock is the number of students whose parents want us to teach them all the life skills as well. It goes way beyond teaching them content. It鈥檚 about teaching them how to be an adult, or I guess a teen.鈥�

Waddell says the program will help her teachers become the advocates that their students need. Part of that depends, she says, on understanding the community in which they live.

鈥淲e want our teachers to become leaders within their schools, to learn how to work with students as opposed to imposing learning on them,鈥� Waddell explains.

Welch aims to be that advocate.

鈥淚 want to be able to teach any student who comes into my classroom from an urban setting, and do so in a way that makes the student comfortable and allows them to enter into learning,鈥� Welch says. 鈥淪tudents in the same neighborhood can have very different circumstances. I want to help those who have the biggest deficits and those who have the least.鈥�

In his first months, Welch already has learned simple yet effective ways to reach out to students, from greeting them at the door to keeping snacks on hand for peckish stomachs.

鈥淓very day, when they come in, I stand at the door, shake their hands and welcome them,鈥� Welch says. 鈥淥ne day I was late, and one kid shouted, 鈥楳r. Welch! You鈥檙e not at the door! You鈥檙e not at the door!鈥� Consistency is so important.鈥�

More Tools for Undergraduate Success

鈥淨uantitative methods have always been a part of education and psychological research,鈥� notes Peabody Professor of Psychology and Human Development David Lubinski. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e just becoming more relevant and needed for evaluating what鈥檚 going on in the world today.鈥�

Peabody is responding to that need with a new undergraduate minor in quantitative methods. In addition to the two-course introductory statistics sequence already mandatory for all psychology majors, this minor will require four advanced courses. Choices include psychometrics, modeling, correlation and regression, and multivariate statistics.

鈥淭here were several factors behind creating this minor,鈥� Lubinski says. 鈥淥ne, on a more global level, if you think of the problems facing our culture鈥攕ocioeconomic problems, health care or even climate change and discovering oil-independent energy sources, you need quantitative reasoning, methods and tools to understand them, to understand the news and to be consumers of information. Simultaneously, if you look at the exceptional undergraduates coming to 菠萝视频, most are ready for a certain amount of graduate school coursework material during their undergraduate careers. They are ready for advanced courses.鈥�

Kristopher Preacher, assistant professor of quantitative methods, concurs. He raised the idea for the minor when he came to Peabody in 2011 and was met with an enthusiastic response.

鈥淪tudents just don鈥檛 know about these methods and basically entire areas of study,鈥� he says. 鈥淵et quantitative methods are critical for scientific research.鈥�

The minor, first offered this fall, is open to the entire university.