How do we measure joy?

Steve, a very smart high school math teacher I once worked with often reminded me of the statement above. For all my tales of how technology increased student engagement, enthusiasm, and excitement, he refused to be convinced of technology's efficacy unless I could provide him hard data. Stories were simply not enough.

I thought about Steve when listening to Dean Shareski at our state technology conference this past week. My friend Dean has authored the new book Embracing a Culture of Joy: How Educators Can Bring Joy to Their Classrooms Each Day and that was the topic of his keynote as well. It was a wonderful talk, full of humor and examples and pictures of happy children. A talk much needed by we dour technologists in the audience who tend to dwell on things like firewalls and E-rate and operating system upgrades. Who can argue against schools full of happy children?

But I think Steve would not have been particularly convinced that Dean's advice was really helping kids. And Steve represents a large segment of parents, politicians, and educational reformers. Those that need the numbers to make a case.

Any form of research that shows direct causation statistically in education is nearly impossible.  In an old column, A Trick Question, I suggested this as an answer to those asking how to show empirical evidence that a library program is having an impact on student achievement as measured by standardized test scores:

There is an empirical way of determining whether the library program is having an impact on such scores, but I don’t think you’d really want to run such a study. Here’s why:

Are you willing to have a significant portion of your students (and teachers) go without library services and resources as part of a control group?
Are you willing to wait 3-4 years for reliable longitudinal data?
Are you willing to measure only those students who are here their entire educational careers?
Are you willing to change nothing else in the school to eliminate all other factors that might influence test scores?
Will the groups we analyze be large enough to be considered statistically significant?
Are you willing to provide the statistical and research expertise needed to make the study valid?”

And I concluded that I know of no school willing to conduct such a study.

Substitute technology or engagement or joy or a new textbook series or new teaching method or new classroom furniture or ___________________ for library program in the quote above and you can make the same argument.

Educational leaders will continue to use both anecdotal and empirical evidence, probably more to make their cases for preconceived beliefs than in the spirit of true inquiry. That's life. Use both your head and your heart in making all your choices.

Comments

[Dean Shareski]

Hey Doug,

Thanks for the thoughts here. No doubt the data miners out there will question this sentiment and with good reason. What I didn't focus on much was something that the province in Ontario is doing. They are adding "student well-being" to their 3 big goals for students. This will certainly be a challenge to measure and we're already seeing some questionable efforts to turn this worthy goal into a bar graph. This article also has me concerned.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/10/21/how-schools-are-turning-joy-into-a-character-strength-and-why-its-an-awful-idea/

There are a few studies i also didn't mention such as this one. https://www.collaborativeclassroom.org/research-articles-and-papers-the-role-of-supportive-school-environments-in-promoting-academic-success

However, I hesitate to focus too much on that argument but rather the Alfie Kohn quote that suggests joy is an end to itself. Whether in the end it leads to increased test scores is less important to me. I realize it may be the end all for some folks but I'm going to continue to argue for joyful classrooms on their own merits.

People sometimes say, "We only measure what we value" or something along those lines. I argue that's false. We don't measure love and kindness. But if we value them we acknowledge when we see and feel them. I suppose that's what I'm trying to aruge.

I'd love to chat with Steve sometime. I suspect we might be closer in beliefs that it may appear.

[Doug Johnson]

Hi Dean,

Thanks for the great reply.

You know you are preaching to the choir about joy being a perfectly good end in itself. I always liked the quote "The primary purpose of a liberal education is to make one's mind a pleasant place in which to spend one's leisure." - Sydney J. Harris​. We are turning our high schools into vocational schools in the U.S. ​

​Again, great talk and keep up the important work you are doing!

Doug