A Conversation with Peter Afflerbach

Dr. Peter Afflerbach talks to us about classroom assessment, self-efficacy, motivation and engagement, and kids as individuals. Peter is known for his work in reading assessment, reading comprehension strategies, and verbal reporting research methodologies. Dr. Afflerbach is Professor of Reading in the Department of Teaching and Learning, Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland.

To cite this episode:
Persohn, L. (Host). (2021, Feb. 23). A conversation with Peter Afflerbach. (Season 1, No. 15) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests. DOI: 10.5240/EB6A-8924-F39B-A69D-BC92-B

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Transcript

Lindsay Persohn: 0:11

Education Research has a problem. The work of brilliant education researchers often doesn't reach the practice of brilliant teachers. Classroom caffeine is here to help. Each week, I invite a top education researcher to sit down and talk with teachers about what they have learned from years of study. This week, Dr. Peter Afflerbach talks to us about classroom assessment, self efficacy, motivation and engagement and kids as individuals. Peter is known for his work and reading assessment, reading comprehension strategies, and verbal reporting research methodologies. For more about our guest, stay tuned to the end of this episode. So pour a cup of your favorite morning drink. And join me your host, Lindsay Persohn. For classroom caffeine research to energize your teaching practice. Peter, thank you for joining me. Welcome to the show. Thanks. I have just a couple questions for you today, from your own experiences in education. Will you share with us one or two moments that inform your thinking now?

Peter Afflerbach: 1:23

Yeah, sure, I guess some of the most important things that shaped my thinking happened in between getting a degree in teacher education and actually teaching. And I think about my first year as such an important year where I learned about the value of what I had learned in my elementary education program. And I also learned about the limits of what I'd learned in my elementary education program. And throughout my career, as a researcher, and a sort of a policy influencer, I've really I focused a lot on assessment. And what I learned that first year was the limits of what I would say are the more, you know, commercially produced formal assessments, and learned about the value and wonder of classroom based assessments, especially the two that involve listening to children and, and observing children. And from that sort of brutal awakening my first month in a school and I should tell you, I worked in a tiny school in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York, where my reading room I was a reading teacher for grades K through six was, it was next to the furnace in the basement. And it was really good in middle of the Adirondack winters. But it was a little, little toasty, a little too toasty in the beginning of the school year in the end of the school year. But I learned I learned from my my kids, some really good things about assessment. And I've always gone back to those first years experiences, to think about how do we get to know kids best. And part of that experience has ended up being a cautionary tale where, you know, we really depend so much on commercially produced high stakes tests, which I think are of minimal value to the, to the daily use in the classroom. When I write, and when I give presentations, one of the things that I always come back to is we call up tests, high stakes assessments. But I think the most high stakes assessments are the ones that we do every day in a classroom. And an example of that would be if we're familiar with the notion of zones of proximal development, then what we want our classroom assessment to do is to help us identify exactly where an individual student is. And if we're able to do that through good assessment on a daily or regular basis, that optimizes our teaching. And if we optimize our teaching, it seems to me that these product measures, the high stakes tests will take care of themselves. So I I like to think of the real high stakes assessments being the ones that happen every day in the classroom, in the hands of talented teachers. So I would say you know that that was one of the first things I've learned and it stayed with me a very long, long time. A second thing would also take me back to my my first year up in the mountains teaching and I had some first graders who I loved instantly, they were just the greatest kids. And I had a few who were really struggling. And one in particular, and I will call this student Dougie. Let's call him Dougie. I couldn't figure him out because some days he'd be so attentive and so willing to work, give effort participate, and in other days he would just be out to lunch really I just couldn't figure out what was going on. And it was about, I don't know, a month or two into the this first year of my teaching. And I used to run in the back roads of this little town where I was teaching. And I ran past a trailer which I had done a number of times a trailer home. And I heard I heard a commotion inside the trailer. And all of a sudden, my student Dougie comes running out and his father's chasing him and, you know, yelling obscenities and eventually hitting Dougie. And, you know, it was it was a horrible thing to, to experience. But it was also a lesson for me, that reminded me that kids are not just about learning strategies and skills, and they, they don't always come to school with the same learning set, you know, with an anticipation to learn sometimes, like adults, their lives are fully involved in things other than academic learning. And that has ended up being a big influence on the way that I think about things because I focus a lot on individual differences and learners. And, you know, again, if we go back to the, the profiles that come out of testing, the individual differences get portrayed as stanine differences, percentile differences, whether or not a kid gets all of his consonant blends correct or answers, inferential and the literal questions the same way or differently. And it reminds me continually that kids are complex beings, and that if we don't pay attention to their lives outside of things like strategy and skill instruction, we probably are not doing the best job that we can. Those are kind of that last one is kind of depressing. But I, you know, Dougie ended up not having to live with his abusive father later that year. And I wish I knew what he was doing now. But I know his life was was was rough. And it got a little better. And it certainly taught me a lesson about being a good teacher,

Lindsay Persohn: 7:04

I would venture to say that most of us who have been teaching for any any amount of time probably have a Dougie story, right, we probably all have have worked with the kid, we thought, I just don't know what's going on. And until you get a glimpse of maybe what family life is like, or, or you understand the context there that that student is living in. And honestly, as you were telling that story, it is it is very sad. And unfortunately, I think it's all too common. But I actually see quite a bit of hope in that also, because I know you've done a lot of work on some prominent panels where I think in the trenches, we often think that the people who do that work are so far removed from what kids actually do. But I think that's simply not true. I think that there there are often things that are lost in translation. Of course, I'm thinking here about common core and PISA numbers and things like that. To hear you talk about focusing on individual differences of students, and knowing that you've done such influential work with organizations like that, I find that to be a very heartening message, honestly. Oh, well.

Peter Afflerbach: 8:12

Well, I'm glad that's That's nice to hear. I believe that things like affect, inclination, or in I think more accessible terms, motivation and engagement and a kid's self efficacy, are too frequently they're ignored, or they're underplayed. And they're given sort of supporting role designation. But I like to ask the questions like this, like if, if we had to make a decision about what's most important in a kid's literacy development, would we say that improvement and fluency, or improvement to the point where a child who doesn't believe that he or she or they can succeed, turns a corner. So this is a series of success experienced is that a teacher has helped craft. I don't know how you can argue against that, and not to pick on the National Reading Panel. But you know, that that work, did did some really nice work about identifying the cognitive strategies and skills that children need to become good readers. But it was silent in relation to the role of motivation and engagement play, and the role of self efficacy and kids attributions for their performance play. And in the more than 20 years now, since the national reading panel report was published, we have a wealth of research that's helped fill in what a lot of people who study that stuff exclusively motivation self efficacy, have known forever. And as it turns out, of course, classroom teachers have known forever that a child with low self efficacy and little or no motivation is is a student who will not respond to the best planned lesson. that we can come up with, and that they're not with us from the get go. So, um, yeah. And just to get back to your earlier comment, you know, I have to say that in all of the panels that I've ever served on it, you know, state and governmental, national and international panels, I've been struck by how caring and knowledgeable people are not just about like these little niche expertise areas, but about child development in general. And, you know, I wouldn't discount just the role of politicians and publishers in, in why our curricula look the way they do. I think a lot of politicians are pretty simple minded when they come at, you know, how do we get kids to be better in reading, and an example of that would be in states where a child who might be failing in second or third grade is retained. And, you know, when I think about theories of self efficacy and motivation, how, how would a child become self efficacious when being put back in the environment in which he she or they just failed for an entire year? It just, it's, it's, it's not really counter intuitive. It's just, it's mind bogglingly short sighted I would say,

Lindsay Persohn: 11:15

Yeah, I would agree with that I, I am in one of those states where students get held back in third grade. And thinking back to some of the conversations around student success, when I taught kindergarten, we were already talking about whether or not the student would be able to pass the third grade test. And that often weighed in on the decision as to whether or not that student would go on to first grade. And not always in a positive or productive way. So

Peter Afflerbach: 11:44

the way I think about it is, like when I try to imagine what what place in my life do, I feel most not in control. And this is might be something that people can relate to. It's the Department of Motor Vehicles, and I've lived in Maryland, New York, Georgia, and California. And each state, you know, I'll go into these buildings, thank goodness. Now, you can do a lot of this online. But but sometimes you have to show up at the actual Department of Motor Vehicles. And it seems they seem designed to confuse me and, you know, wait in line, to be told what line to stand in, and then I'll get a form and I'll fill it out wrong, but I won't know that I filled it out wrong, until I show up after waiting online for an hour. And I think about a child who is not experiencing success in reading or any other school subject. And that's the closest I can come to thinking I don't, I don't want to be here, I just I have not experienced success. And I don't feel any personal agency where I don't feel in control of my life. And human beings generally don't like to be in that position. So that's another way that I, I try to have empathy, and compassion for my students.

Lindsay Persohn: 12:59

I think that's a great analogy. Nobody ever gives you a mapped out plan of how to navigate the DMV. And I think that often kids feel that way about school, they they don't have the roadmap that shows them how to get to success without a supportive and caring teacher who really looks deeply and thoroughly into what's going on with that student, and then helps them to develop a plan for their learning.

Peter Afflerbach: 13:25

Right, right. And as adults, you know, we have a lot of privileges like we can opt out of, if we're, if we're playing basketball, and there's some pickup games in on the next court or people who are clearly better, you can always decline an invitation to join. Or if you're at a party or a gathering, and there's a conversation that you know little about you can you can just stand there and listen or disengage because opening your mouth might demonstrate your level of knowledge in a bad way.

Lindsay Persohn: 13:54

Yeah. And kids don't don't get that option at school or if they do. It's it's further to their detriment. Yeah, exactly. Well, Peter, what would you like teachers to know about your research? I'm sure that's a that's a tough question with a such a large body of research to pull from.

Peter Afflerbach: 14:11

Yeah, well, I'll try this. So I started out actually in the late 70s and early 80s, with a research methodology that's called verbal protocols or think aloud research where I asked really talented readers to sit down and read really hard text and ask them to talk about the strategies that they were using to comprehend text. And the the reasoning there is that a lot of what we do as really talented readers, is automatic, or pretty much automatic because we're so practiced, and so accomplished as readers. And when you get really good readers but gives them really difficult text, you sort of muck up the process and you slow it down and in slowing it down. You can make it available for for good readers to be conscious of it and to report it through a think aloud protocol. And so that research through the early 80s helped identify a lot of the reading strategies that are taught now in, you know, in, in whatever reading program, whether it's homegrown or commercially published. And so I feel like that made a good contribution, that part of my research to reading instruction, but something that came up and was pretty much unexpected, was even though I asked my subjects, and research participants to talk about the strategies that they were using, they they consistently talked about motivation and engagement. And they talked about how secure insecure they felt as readers reading really challenging text. And, you know, us subjects were like college professors, and doctoral students and people who are really accomplished in their field. And when I heard bouts of insecurity coming out, and as I was transcribing the tapes, it drove home, this idea which I've talked about previously, about how important self efficacy and motivation and engagement, about how how a really accomplished reader can start a difficult reading task and power through it, or in the middle, just say, you know, I'm not that invested in this. So I'm just going to go for surface level understanding. And that that has really influenced my thinking not only about what research I do, but theoretical models of reading and development, and how, you know, a single instance of reading achievement is about what the reader brings, like, how good are you scattered strategies and skills? And how much background knowledge do you have for this topic and in the text, but it's also like, what's your buy in? And what's your incentive to do this? And, and, again, if we think about our students every day, coming with that set of questions like, What do I know, that's going to help me get the gist of this text? But also, why do I want to do this in the first place, and how is my teacher, you know, set up in an environment where there's some sort of reward for for doing well, and reading and it, it might not be only comprehending the text in front of us. But it might also be that we've got wonderful follow up exercises where kids are asked to apply what they've learned in a real meaningful task, or what I love is, you know, when we get kids in the role of critiquing, and evaluating, we not only contribute to their engagement, we put them in a epistemic stance that could be different for a lot of kids, you know, that, I think, when we get to the point where we know that we can critique authors, you know, like, the fourth grader who knows everything about dinosaurs, and reads a book about velociraptors, and says, This author really doesn't know what the heck is going on here. You know, that's, that is such a powerful moment, in a lot of areas that influence reading development. This is not so much research, but the work that I do with government agencies and assessment, I'm always pushing for the idea that assessment of kids reading development and reading achievement should have a part focus on motivation and engagement and self efficacy. And, and also if we can develop assessments that, that develop them, these are already out there. That's the shame that we don't use what's already there. But you think about kids attributions for their reading performances, even we have, we have kids who make the attributions to all the wrong places for their performance. And if we can help kids understand that efforts, really central to reading achievement and and get away from the teacher doesn't like me, or I'm always unlucky, or the text is always too hard, then we can we can help kids start to get back on track, as developing leaders.

Lindsay Persohn: 19:00

So Peter, you've talked a bit about engagement. And I actually want to ask you a question that stems from some work some of my students are doing right now. So my students through zoom are working with elementary aged children and early literacy learners. And they're recording their sessions with those students. And one of the points that we ask them to think about is the students engagement and what they're doing. And I find that so often my students reflect on the praise they've given, right, which is not the same thing as engagement. Right? So can you talk a little bit more about engagement and what that means in an authentic kind of way, not this just sort of, you know, pasted on to make it look like everything's okay. But how do we actually get learners engaged?

Peter Afflerbach: 19:51

Well, you know, I think a simple big picture response to that question would be kids, kids use language becaus it's meaningful, you know, and and they learn early on before they can read, that language can entertain them, it can get their needs met, like kid who cries milk might get milk as a result. And so when meaningfulness stays at the sort of the center of our use of language in the classroom, and the assignments that we we give and that we expect kids to partake of, there will be a degree of natural engagement is there another take on engagement is if you take cognitive strategies and skills, and you add this, like a math equation, cognitive strategies and skills plus motivation, is what you get as engagement. So it's, the motivation helps optimize the use of cognitive strategies and skills or motivation is a catalyst for the use of strategies and skills. And I mentioned this earlier, that if we ended up asking questions that focus just on kids comprehension of text, across a school year, or across an entire school experience, I can understand why some kids are low to no engagement, because they have been taught that the reason we read is to answer questions at the end of reading. And that's actually only something that happens in school, you know, like, when's the last time you read something? And the neighbor walked down the block and said, What was the main idea of that novel you were reading? Or know what? What was that Popular Mechanics? Just you know, it, it just doesn't happen that way. And I think one of the keys there, again, is if we go back to the idea that kids know that language is meaningful and useful, then focus on use, like, how can we take reading assignments, and then turn them into kids applications synthesis analysis of what they've read in a meaningful way. And I'm not I, you know, I would resist trying to paint the rosy picture where every day in school is going to be totally 100% engaging for every kid, because life isn't like that. So I wouldn't expect school to be that way. But But I think we can certainly up the percentage of reading opportunities for kids that have an inherent appeal. And it's, it's not just the reading, as I said, it's the the after life of the reading what, you know, what do we do, after we've comprehended, and I would note that the current definition of reading that's used by the National Assessment of Educational Progress is, it's three bullet points. And the first is sort of like, understanding, the second is interpreting. And the third bullet is using that which we have comprehended. And I think that's a very strong aspect of the reading definition. And related to have a nice, full conceptualization of both reading and why we read

Lindsay Persohn: 22:57

A word that keeps coming to mind, as you're describing this as authenticity, I think there's got to be authenticity of the the task, and also, of course, the motivation for completing the task. So I think in my mind, engagement, and Authenticity will be forever linked. But it also makes me think about how hard it is to get to authenticity, when in so many instances, I think teachers are driven by this kind of canned programming in schools, you know, you can't you can't be authentic when you're reading someone else's script or trying to kind of regurgitate somebody else's words. So that actually leads me to think a bit more about Think alouds that you that you mentioned earlier, and I know that this is some of your groundbreaking work. And I'm wondering if there are any specific tips that you can pass along to teachers around Think alouds? Because I'm afraid that this may also be something that's been a bit lost in translation over the years, you know, if the think aloud is printed, in the teachers edition of the book, is that really thinking aloud?

Peter Afflerbach: 24:06

Yeah, well, I think you'd get low marks for spontaneity in that situation, right. But I think what what you're talking about, if I'm making the right inference here is you're thinking a lot about how strategy works, for example, you know, so let's say we want to model the comprehension strategy of making a prediction, which, which also is a wonderful component of metacognition, because once we make a prediction, we want kids to monitor it and revise it or hold on to it if it was accurate. But in making a prediction, you might say, Well, I always look at, I always look at the cover, and I was looking at the title of something that I'm going to read and if I know something about it, then I feel a little more comfortable making predictions out of that. And that that gives some sense of the prediction process or strategy that an accomplished reader might use. But if it's being read, then it gets It gets too predictable, it gets to Cam. And in I imagine, eventually kids won't even be paying attention to it. But you know, we can think aloud about our enthusiasm. And we can think about aloud about our motivation. We can think aloud about self efficacy, for example, you know, when we pick up a text, and we read the title or like, I, what, it's just like, what is that? You know, we can share that with kids. And then we can share how we go about dealing with the what question like if we pick up a text, and it's totally alien? What do we go about doing? Well, we might search for a little bit of background knowledge that helps us you know, make the bridge from the the known to the new even though the known isn't quite there yet. And, and then the motivation and engagement, like being an honest think aloud, or you can talk about, you know, I'm just, I'm not really motivated to read this. But, you know, then if you put the purpose in there in the mix and talk about purpose, and how sometimes we might be a little more enthusiastic than others about having to do something, I think that brings sort of a gloss of reality to the think aloud and takes it out of the screen on the side of the teacher's manual to, to something that is more relatable to students,

Lindsay Persohn: 26:17

which in my mind would also increase students engagement, if they're hearing an honest think aloud, you know, here's what my teacher is thinking as, as as they navigate a text. You know, it is it's that insight into the cognitive process that makes all the difference, not like you said, reading, reading the sidebar and the teacher's manual, it just doesn't have the same, the same kind of pizzazz.

Peter Afflerbach: 26:41

Right, right. And it's, um, it just reminds me like this semester, I'm teaching two undergraduate elementary education courses. And one is with first semester seniors, you know, so they would normally be in the classrooms Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and then taking college, the College courses on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and now they're remotely looking at their mentor teacher remotely working with individual students remotely. And it's like these just degrees of separation from the reality of a classroom that are, they're upsetting to me, you know, I just feel like if it's just a bit of shortchanging that our student teachers are getting right now, but something, I do this thing called critical questions every week where the assigned readings are read, hopefully, but I actually guarantee that they're read by my students, because they have to answer ask a critical question of each and every assigned reading. And I then get their critical questions two days before class and respond to them personally. And a lot of my seniors who will be full time student teaching next semester, ask questions that you know, about, or about classroom environment, and about, you know, what if kids don't really trust you, or believe you, and so a lot of what I focus on is just building that trust. Because when kids trust you they are, they're willing to give more effort that they can confide in you, and you can learn more about their individual realities. And it goes back to what you were saying that a teacher who is real, is a teacher who is recognized and appreciated almost immediately by students, and that the reality of something like a think aloud could be one facet of how kids come to know you as someone who's in their corner and someone who, who gets it. And I think that overall just increases motivation and engagement.

Lindsay Persohn: 28:41

Yeah, absolutely. I would totally agree with that. So Peter, given the challenges of today's educational climate, and we've certainly touched on a few of them, what message would you want teachers to hear?

Peter Afflerbach: 28:54

Well, one is that and this is this is especially for less experienced teachers that I you know, I think is if you reflect on your career as a reader, you know, like things were not always so easy as a reader, you know, sampling out words and doing consonant blends and long and short vowels and then building up your sight word vocabulary, becoming fluent, growing your vocabulary, learning strategies and applying them that that takes time. But it does lead to this thing that we value called fluency. And I, I think about the teaching profession as one as we should always aspire towards fluency. And that means, you know, whatever we learn before we really teach and what we learn through student teaching and what we continue to learn everyday in our classroom should be pointed in the direction of I am, I am managing a ton of information every day, and I am somehow such a good information processor, and so in tune with each of my students and I so know my curriculum, and I so know good pedagogy that I'm able to combine all of these elements and put them together in a fluid series of instructions and interactions with kids that helps them grow. And so, you know, I guess Practice Makes Perfect is one thing that I would say. And then, as I've mentioned a number of times, maybe too frequently in this little get together is we, if we don't pay attention to the full child, the, the effect, the self efficacy, the attributions that they make the epistemic stances that they, they take, then we miss opportunities for them to grow. And we also miss the places that we can connect most effectively with each student. And I know that this is it's monumental, everyday, it's monumental, you got 25 Kids, I know. That's about average, where where I live in Maryland, I know in other states, it's over 30, which increases the task. I know that in many of the schools where my student teachers work, they're huge. English language learner populations. So my teachers are like, I don't speak all these languages. How am I supposed to do this? And it is overwhelming. But, you know, hopefully, we have schools where there are enough instructional aides, and there are people who do speak the L1 of the students in the school. Yeah, so I think it's a it's a consistent challenge. I think, you know, the reward for all of the time and effort. And all of the challenges met, is, you're happy when those kids walk out the door the last time in June, or, you know, whatever your school year ends, but you're sad, you're sad that they're leaving, but you're happy with all the progress that has happened.

Lindsay Persohn: 31:49

I think that brings us right back to that idea of engagement and being authentic, because teachers have got to be engaged also. Right. And in order to understand what students need, and to see the whole picture, at least, at least to the best of our ability, and I think to come back, refreshed and energized and ready to work day after day. It is a challenge. But but there is a wonderful reward at the end of the school year when you see those students succeed.

Peter Afflerbach: 32:16

Yeah, and I always advise my undergraduates, you know, when they're interviewing is look for community where you feel comfortable. I mean, it's sometimes really hard to get that, especially if you're doing a two hour interview with the district office, but I don't know how you can go solo for your entire career as a teacher and and accomplish what you might if you're if you got wonderful colleagues and that you, you talk about students in a productive way. And the teachers are, you know, and you get together and you strategize about particular kids, and about connecting content areas across grade four, grade two, that sort of thing. super valuable.

Lindsay Persohn: 32:56

Yep. Every every interview for a teaching position is also an interview for the school to is and that's what I share with my students as well. You can really tell what kind of climate a school has going on. And pretty quickly, I believe. Yeah. Well, Peter, I can't thank you enough for your time and for your message for teachers and certainly for your contributions to education. Oh, sure. Thank you for being a part of the show.

Peter Afflerbach: 33:22

My pleasure got me away from writing that I had to do for a book I'm writing and I need a break because it's getting too much.

Lindsay Persohn: 33:29

I'm glad to be that break. Thank You so much

Peter Afflerbach: 33:32

My pleasure. Have a great rest of your day.

Lindsay Persohn: 33:34

You too. Dr. Peter Afflerbach research interests focus on reading assessment, reading comprehension strategies, and the verbal reporting methodology. Most recently, His work focuses on individual differences in reading development that are sometimes neglected in reading Theory and Practice, including motivation and engagement, metacognition, student's self efficacy and self concept and epistemic beliefs. Dr. Afflerbach has served for many years on the standing reading Committee of the National Assessment of Educational Progress. He is a member of the NAACP 2025 Reading framework committee, and was a member of the feedback committee for the Common Core State Standards in English language arts. He is a co author of the National Academy of Education publication reading for understanding. He has served on numerous committees and panels for the Program for International Student Assessment Pisa, National Assessment of Adult Literacy and the National accessible reading assessment project. Dr. Afflerbach has won numerous awards. His dissertation won both the National Reading Association's Outstanding Dissertation Award and the literacy research Association's Outstanding Student Research Award. Dr. Afflerbach has earned awards from the American Educational Research Association for his classroom assessment research and his reviewing in educational researcher Peter was elected to the international reading Association's reading Hall of Fame in 2009. Peter has published in many research and practitioner journals, including the reading teacher, Journal of reading, Journal of adolescent and adult literacy, Journal of Educational Psychology, language arts, elementary school journal, Journal of literacy research, reading Research Quarterly, and cognition and instruction. He's also published dozens of book chapters, policy briefs, technical reports and position papers. Dr. Afflerbach most recent book understanding and using reading assessment K through 12 is now in its third edition. He is CO editor of the handbook of reading research, fourth and fifth editions. Dr. Afflerbach is professor of reading in the department of Teaching and Learning Policy and Leadership at the University of Maryland. For the good of all students, good research should inform good practice and vice versa. listeners are invited to connect with the show through the website at classroom caffeine.com. If you've learned something today, or just enjoyed listening, please subscribe, like and share this podcast. I raised my mug to you teachers. Thanks for joining me