Why Academic Experts Don't Understand the Moral Ecologies of Schools
How acceptance of the social fact of schooling-as-it-is prevents understanding
The education establishment - academic schools of education, leading think tanks, etc. - focus their research on the premise of government schools staffed by academically trained teachers as an unquestionable “social fact.” While there are a handful of individual departments of education with individual professors interested in school choice, no academic education department, with the exception of the University of Arkansas School Choice Demonstration Project, has a focus on school choice. That program has eight professors associated with it, as contrasted with the fifty-six in the curriculum and instruction portion of the program. Thus out of many thousands of education professors in the US, other than a handful of isolated individuals, eight are concentrated in the one program researching school choice. They are primarily focused on outcomes from school choice rather than on pedagogical innovation in school choice. Only one (more later) has written on the moral ecologies of schools.
Meanwhile, the establishment does have well-developed research programs in character education, soft skills, and “social and emotional learning.” But all of these programs are stuck on “How do we teach these skills?” with the public school framework and the existing grammar of schooling taken for granted as a social fact.
It is worth examining one comprehensive summary document in some depth to see exactly why I think they are lost on a hopeless path. In 2012, the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research published “Noncognitive Skills,” a comprehensive review of the existing academic literature on the subject. After summarizing the extensive research showing that noncognitive factors matter, they state:
Unfortunately, knowing that noncognitive factors matter is not the same as knowing how to develop them in students.
They go on to survey the literature in five categories of noncognitive skills believed to be relevant to academic performance:
academic behaviors,
academic perseverance,
academic mindsets,
learning strategies, and
social skills.
For each of the five, they ask:
How is this factor related to academic performance?
Is this factor malleable?
What is the role of classroom context in shaping this factor?
Are there clear, actionable strategies for classroom practice?
Would changing this factor significantly narrow existing gaps in achievement by gender or race/ethnicity?
It is an entirely honorable approach. Unfortunately the summaries are largely discouraging for those stuck within the social fact of government schooling.
Before surveying some of the challenges, note from the outset that framing such as “what is the role of classroom context?” and “Are there clear, actionable strategies for classroom practice?” reveal their implicit expectation that the framework within which these noncognitive skills are to be cultivated is “the classroom.” That expectation, that it is possible to cultivate noncognitive skills in a substantial manner within the boundaries of existing K12 classrooms (without a focus on the kinds of human beings, the kinds of institutions, the kinds of activities, etc. fundamental to culture creation) is the fundamental obstacle to making progress in these domains. These people just don’t realize it yet.
To take one example, they summarize research showing that there are four academic mindsets that contribute to academic performance (stated from the perspective of the student):
I belong in this academic community;
My ability and competence grow with my effort;
I can succeed at this; and
This work has value for me.
They note that each of these four mindsets is positively related to persistence on academic tasks and, of course, that if students persist on academic tasks they tend to do better academically.
Ultimately they conclude,
“While numerous studies have identified specific aspects of classroom context that contribute to strong academic mindsets, a gap persists between research findings and teachers’ intentional use of strategies to promote positive student mindsets. Because academic mindsets are so critical to strong student performance, figuring out how to bridge this research/practice gap seems to be a prudent avenue for future work.”
When I read the unsurprising conclusion that “a gap persists between research findings and teachers’ intentional use of strategies to promote positive student mindsets,” I immediately think, how might we cultivate these traits if we did not limit ourselves to the social fact of the public school classroom?
First of all, consider immediately the difference between “I belong in this community” in the context of voluntary, freely chosen communities of learning, on the one hand, and the framework of compulsory education in zoned district schools, on the other. Guess what? When people voluntarily choose their community, “I belong in this community” becomes the de facto default. If people don’t feel as if they belong, they can switch to a community in which they do feel as if they belong.
I expect that if we were to do research on virtual communities in which teens had opted in, and then remained active in those communities, we would see much higher levels of “I belong in this community” than we do in the average public school classroom. This is so screamingly obvious that no one has done research on it. Imagine asking the Gates Foundation for a grant to determine if teens who choose their own communities experience more of a sense of belonging than do teens who are forced into random groups of strangers. But instead, these researchers will continue to look for actionable strategies for teachers to foster a sense of inclusion within the forced congregations of public school classrooms.
Of course most educators want the students in their class to feel as if they belong, at least most of the time. But sometimes a student doesn’t want to take math, or language arts. Or they don’t want to read those books in language arts. Or they are not at the same level academically. Or they have different moral, religious, or spiritual beliefs. Or there may be a thousand other reasons why they don’t feel as if they belong in a particular community. Fortunately, with the internet, everyone can find a community in which they feel as if they belong. Simply opening up the solutions set from a teacher trying to develop “instructional strategies” to address, “How can I ensure my 8th grade class, 70% of whom don’t want to be here, all feel a sense of belonging?” to a parent being able to ask, “Does this community care about my child and will he feel a sense of love and belonging in this community?” simplifies everything.
Or we could jump to another one, “This work has value for me.” As someone who has mentored hundreds of young people who don’t believe school work has value for them, I start by asking them about their passions, interests, and long term goals. Depending on their passions and interests (creative, entrepreneurial, intellectual, manual/physical, etc.) and long term goals (income, leisure, family, meaning, travel, etc.) some academic activities are valuable and others not. And then I work with them to craft the straightest line to their destination. If they want to own a business (as a creative professional or entrepreneur) mastering spreadsheets and financial models is far more valuable than is the standard high school sequence (Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II, Trig/Pre-Calc, Calc). I support them in skipping irrelevant content and focusing monomaniacally on things that actually will matter. And mirabile visu, they become motivated and work to master material that is actually relevant to their lives!
In a certain sense, this is trivial and obvious - once one is outside the social fact of schooling. But relatively few academic researchers advocate eliminating standard secondary school requirements - and even if they do, few policy makers will do as suggested. Thus the standard classroom teacher is stuck in the unenviable position of forcing students to “learn” content that the student correctly knows is NOT going to be valuable for him.
Meanwhile these earnest academics can only say, “Because academic mindsets are so critical to strong student performance, figuring out how to bridge this research/practice gap seems to be a prudent avenue for future work.” A more prudent avenue for future work would be to drop the assumption that government schooling is the only legitimate framework for developing noncognitive skills.
They conclude their summary of the research literature stating,
Throughout this review, we argue that if research and initiatives around noncognitive factors are to be useable, we need to move beyond evidence from isolated studies to a broader framework that situates the discussion within classrooms and schools. Making the research actionable requires addressing three problems. First, we need to be much more specific about what matters and why, which means understanding what noncognitive factors most shape school performance during adolescence and how these factors interact. Second, we need to understand when noncognitive skills matter, which means situating the research evidence within a framework of the cognitive, social, and academic development of adolescents. Are there key developmental points of intervention? When in students’ school careers is the development of specific skills, behaviors, attitudes, or strategies most critical in shaping academic performance? And, third, we need to understand how critical noncognitive factors can be taught or developed.”
First, note that they basically acknowledge that as of 2012, they simply don’t have much that is actionable regarding the development of noncognitive skills despite decades of research focus on these issues. Things have not significantly improved since then - they are all still stuck within the social fact of conventional public schools.
Second, note the overall mental model within which they are working: They believe (as do almost all education researchers) that there exist “skills” that may be “taught” in classrooms by teachers. They also believe that if only academic research can specify these skills clearly enough, then “we” as a society will somehow be able to develop these skills within the parameters of existing schools. At no point along the way do they ever ask, “Might our entire schooling framework be inadequate or inappropriate for the deep development of noncognitive skills?”
But a few people are beginning to wonder if another model might be better. Paul Tough, author of How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, begins to think along the right lines here:
Perhaps we’ve been thinking about this new category of competencies all wrong. Maybe it’s less useful to consider them as akin to academic skills that can be taught and measured and incentivized in predictable ways and more useful to think of them as being like psychological conditions — the product of a complex matrix of personal and environmental factors. And perhaps what students need more than anything for these positive academic habits to flourish is to spend as much time as possible in environments where they feel a sense of belonging, independence, and growth — or, to use some of the language of Deci and Ryan, where they experience relatedness, autonomy, and competence.
This insight does not lead Tough to question the social fact of schooling, but at least he admits that the real development context for character is “a complex matrix of personal and environmental factors” rather than skills that can be taught in a classroom.
The one education policy expert who understands the salient issues for developing noncognitive skills is Albert Cheng, from the aforementioned University of Arkansas school choice program. In the 2021 AEI publication, “Minding the Workforce: The Role of Noncognitive Skills in Career Success,” Cheng writes on “The Moral Architecture of Social Emotional Skills,”
“ . . . any conception of socioemotional skills must articulate three components. It must first establish a telos, or an ultimate aim. Second, it delineates a set of practices associated with the skills. Third, it outlines standards of excellence. These aspects of socioemotional skills can be framed as three respective questions: (1) What are socioemotional skills for? (2) How are socioemotional skills embodied? (3) When does one become an exemplar of socioemotional skills?”
Cheng concludes his analysis of the “moral architecture” (a brilliant expression) of social emotional skills:
Distinctive moral communities, on the other hand, have the stories, art, histories, liturgies, and practices—that is, the traditions—to make sense of the world in which they inhabit, answer questions about the good life, and understand the socioemotional skills constitutive of attaining that vision. It seems these resources would be necessary to grasp the complexities about socioemotional skills, understand what they are, and come to some level of consensus about what they are. Unless policymakers immerse themselves in these distinctive communities, embrace their telos, engage in their practices, and adopt their standards of excellence, these communities might be better served if policymakers gave due deference to these communities to generate an understanding of socioemotional skills rather than coming up with and imposing something based on an ostensibly pure reason or data.
Cheng is unique in arguing that “communities might be better served if policymakers gave due deference to these communities.” This is a not so subtle endorsement of school choice. But the mainstream will never get there as long as they are stuck in government schools and the grammar of schooling as a necessary social fact.
The technocratic, engineering approach to developing non-cognitive skills will never be very effective. Humans are above all meaning-making creatures, embedded in webs of other meaning-making creatures, imitating, seeking approval from, and being motivated by these other human meaning-making creatures.
Both “character education” and “social and emotional learning” have been an abject failure in the public school context because the “grammar of schooling,” which dictates that state-certified teachers cover content contained in didactic lessons, does not allow for the creation of the necessary moral ecologies.
Yet moral formation (e.g. “character education”) and social and emotional nurturing and development (e.g. “social and emotional learning”) ARE critical elements in the development of young people. As cultural erosion deepens, as technological addictions accelerate, and as new cultural models become necessary to form the hearts, minds, and souls of young human beings, we need to allow for the creation of new educational models focused on these human elements. From there we will gradually create magical learning communities for all children, based on connection, community, meaning, and purpose.
