{"id":7299,"date":"2023-10-22T08:00:29","date_gmt":"2023-10-22T13:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=7299"},"modified":"2023-10-27T10:20:08","modified_gmt":"2023-10-27T15:20:08","slug":"the-cold-calling-debate-potential-perils-potential-successes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/the-cold-calling-debate-potential-perils-potential-successes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cold-Calling Debate: Potential Perils, Potential Successes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some education debates focus on BIG questions:<\/p>\n

high structure vs. low structure pedagogy?<\/p>\n

technology: good or bad?<\/p>\n

how much should teachers focus on emotions?<\/p>\n

Other debatess focus on narrower topics. For instance: cold calling. (“Cold calling” means “calling on student who haven’t raised their hands.”)<\/p>\n

Proponents generally\u00a0see several benefits:<\/p>\n

Cold calling helps broaden check-for-understanding strategies. That is: it lets teachers know that MANY students understand, not just those who raise their hands.<\/p>\n

It increases accountability.<\/p>\n

It adds classroom variety.<\/p>\n

And so forth.<\/p>\n

Opponents likewise raise several concerns. Primarily:<\/p>\n

Cold-calling could\u00a0stress students out<\/em> — even the ones not being cold called. That is: even the possibility that I might be called on could addle me.<\/p>\n

Also, cold calling signals a particular power dynamic — one that runs contrary to many school philosophies.<\/p>\n

Because both sides focus on different measures of success or peril, this debate can be difficult to resolve.<\/p>\n

The Story So Far<\/h2>\n

Back in 2020, a friend asked about the cold calling debate. I looked for research, and –honestly — didn’t find much. The result of that search was this blog post<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Kindergarten<\/a><\/p>\n

In brief, the only study I found (focusing on college sophmores) found more benefits and fewer perils.<\/p>\n

Students who had been cold-called a) asked more questions later on, and b) felt less stress.<\/p>\n

But, one study is just one study. And, if you don’t teach college sophomores, you might not want to rely on research with that age group.<\/p>\n

Today’s News<\/h2>\n

Research might offer teachers useful guidance, but we shouldn’t accept all research without asking a few questions.<\/p>\n

One way to ensure we’re getting GOOD research-based advice is to look for wide ranges<\/em> of evidence: evidence from…<\/p>\n

… primary school AND high school<\/p>\n

… science class AND history class<\/p>\n

… small AND large school<\/p>\n

… Stockholm AND Johannesburg<\/p>\n

And so forth.<\/p>\n

Similarly, teachers should feel especially confident when reseachers use\u00a0different methodologies<\/strong> to explore their questions.<\/p>\n

For this reason, I was especially pleased to find a cold-calling study<\/a> published just last year.<\/p>\n

This study doesn’t go in for random distribution or control groups (staples of other research paradigms). Instead, it uses a technique called “multimodal interaction analysis.”<\/p>\n

I haven’t run into this technique before, so I’m honestly a newbie here. But the headline is: researchers used videotapes to study 86 cold-calling interactions.<\/p>\n

In their analysis, the break the interaction down into a second-by-second record — noting the spoken words, the hand gestures, the length of pauses, the direction of the teacher’s gaze. (In some ways, it reminds me of Nuthall’s The Hidden Lives of Learners<\/a><\/i>.)<\/p>\n

Heck, they even keep track of the teacher’s use of modal verbs. (No, I’m not entirely sure what modal verbs are in German.)<\/p>\n

By tracking the interactions with such extraordinary precision, they’re able to look for nuances and patterns that go beyond simply: “the teacher did or didn’t cold call.”<\/p>\n

Conclusions?<\/h2>\n

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the study’s broad conclusion sounds like this:\u00a0details matter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The researchers offer a detailed analysis of one cold call, showing how the teacher’s build up to the moment created just the right support, and just the right tone, for the student to succeed.<\/p>\n

They likewise detailed another cold call where the teacher’s body language and borderline insulting framing (“do you dare to answer?”) seem to have alarmed a shy student in monosyllables.<\/p>\n

By implication, this research suggests that\u00a0both opponents and proponents are missing a key point.<\/p>\n

We needn’t ask: “is cold calling good or bad?”<\/p>\n

Instead, we should ask: “what precise actions — what words, what gestures, what habits — set the student up for a positive interaction? Which precise actions do the opposite?”<\/p>\n

Once we get good answers, we can focus and practice! Let’s do more of the good stuff, and less of the harmful stuff.<\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/h2>\n

“Is cold calling good or bad?” is probably the wrong question.<\/p>\n

Recent research focusing on nuances of technique<\/em> suggests that teachers\u00a0can reduce the perils of cold calling to foster participation and enhance learning.<\/p>\n

\n

Morek, M., Heller, V., & Kinalzik, N. (2022). Engaging \u2018silent\u2019students in classroom discussions: a micro-analytic view on teachers\u2019 embodied enactments of cold-calling practices.\u00a0Language and Education<\/i>, 1-19.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some education debates focus on BIG questions: high structure vs. low structure pedagogy? technology: good or bad? how much should teachers focus on emotions? Other debatess focus on narrower topics. For instance: cold calling. (“Cold calling” means “calling on student who haven’t raised their hands.”) Proponents generally\u00a0see several benefits: Cold calling helps broaden check-for-understanding strategies. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-7299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7299"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7299\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7310,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7299\/revisions\/7310"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}