Jennie Grammer: Supporting California’s Diverse Learners

Jennie Grammer’s work examines how experiences in school shape students’ cognitive development and learning, drawing on methods from developmental psychology, education, and neuroscience. An associate professor in the SEIS division of Human Development and Psychology, Grammer focuses her research on the processes –  including executive functions (EF), self-regulation, attention, memory, and metacognition – that play an important role in academic growth and social interactions in school.

For the past decade, Professor Grammer has been conducting neuroscientific research in schools and classrooms to explore the complex interactions between students and their environments that propel developmental change, and to identify classroom-based strategies for teachers to develop more equitable learning opportunities for their students. As faculty director of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning, she brings this expertise to answer some of the most pressing questions around teaching diverse learners in California’s schools.

Before returning to UCLA, Grammer was the Stern Bicentennial Professor of Education Neuroscience at the University of Virginia, where she was a part of an initiative to integrate neuroscience research in UVA’s School of Education and Human Development and across grounds. Her most recent publications include “Informing the Development of School-Based Strategies to Promote Children's Executive Function Skills: Considerations, Challenges, and Future Directions,” and “Opportunities and limitations of using portable brain technology in educational neuroscience,” for the journal, Mind, Brain, and Education; and “Effects of context on the neural correlates of attention in a college classroom,”  for the journal, npj Science of Learning. Professor Grammer is currently the president-elect for the International Mind, Brain and Education Society.

Grammer achieved her Ph.D. in developmental psychology with a concentration in quantitative psychology at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and her B.A. in psychology with a minor in arts studies at North Carolina State University. 

What are the main goals of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning?

All young people, regardless of learning needs, deserve access to educational experiences that promote their growth and development. There is extensive knowledge - from researchers and practitioners - about how to create conditions in schools that  provide the support students need. We also know that to impact academic outcomes we have to consider the whole child, or other factors, including cognition, motivation, challenges that a student might be facing that impacts their ability to engage in the classroom. But this information is not always accessible to educators, and educators' capacity to do the best work for their students is shaped by the larger context of their school, and is impacted - if indirectly - by local and state policy. If we want to have a positive impact on the experiences of students, we have to reach everyone who influences what is happening in the classroom - teachers, administrators, policy makers, and others. 

The UC/CSU Collaborative is focused on bringing research from developmental science, education, and neuroscience to inform how we can best support diverse learners in our classrooms. We recognize that to do this systemic change is needed, so our goal is to reach preservice and inservice educators as well as education leaders and policymakers.

There is amazing work happening across the state to support children and youth. Our effort is a part of a broader investment by the state of California, and another goal we have is to foster collaboration across related state-funded initiatives so we can maximize this investment.

What are some common threads in your work with teachers?

In my research, I am very interested in the expertise of teachers, and learning from them. My graduate students and I are working to understand what they think about cognitive development and how they see their daily work with children supporting this. In our conversations with teachers, when we ask about things like EF or student attention, we end up talking with them about student behavior - mostly behavioral challenges. That’s reasonable, because that's what you see in the day-to-day, and a lot of the discussion around EF and attention converges with to manage behavior in the classroom. That is something that intuitively makes a lot of sense if you have spent time in a classroom, but isn’t necessarily reflective of the research perspective. There is a disconnect between researchers’ definitions of terms like EF or attention and the concerns or questions teachers have. 

In practical terms, if a teacher is concerned about a child, it’s because they're up out of their seat, they’re distracting other students. Some teachers may see this as behavior that's disruptive in their classroom, which has implications for student learning opportunities - they might be seen as a bad kid. If I feel like you are being disruptive, I might also think you are not ready to learn. However, in our interviews with teachers many have a very nuanced perspective on these same behaviors. They might see the student up and out of their seat, moving around, but question what the cause of that behavior is, not that it necessarily reflects their engagement or cognitive ability. Either way, how teachers perceive behavior - and their sense of efficacy about how to support students who have difficulty with executive functions and attention - matter for what happens to that student in the classroom. We are very interested in understanding what leads a teacher to frame this observation as a question - wondering why a student is behaving in a particular way and what changes in the activity, classroom setup or expectations, might lead to changes in student behavior. 

We are also interested in understanding how the experiences students have in the classroom shape their cognitive and academic development, particularly for students who have ADHD and lower executive function skills. If you are a student who has significant difficulties with attention, your experience in the classroom may be fundamentally different from that of your peers. You are likely also struggling to follow some of the basics of instruction, because the difficulty with attention is impeding your ability to follow teacher-led activities and complete independent work. Imagine now that you are a student who struggles with attention and reading. You may be missing content that other students are accessing by reading independently … during instruction you are having difficulty being engaged. Over weeks and weeks, it is hard not to think, “I'm not good at this. I don't do it the same way that other kids do.” 

It creates this cycle, and sometimes leads to changes in children’s behavior. If I'm a child who is having difficulty with reading, for whatever reason, and my class is engaged in a reading activity that I can't do, what can I do? Maybe I can avoid the negative feelings associated with the task at hand by getting up out of my seat, wandering around, talking to my neighbor. These things are all related to one another, so teachers aren't wrong in seeing links between behavior, difficulties with attention, and learning. Conducting research that helps inform how we identify and prevent this cycle - using our understanding of the connections between behavior and cognition - is the goal.

Have you been able to track the same students over time to find that cycle has been disrupted?  

We study student EF and attention using multiple methods - observing their behavior, collecting neuroscientific data while they are engaged in learning. This has allowed us to link what is happening in the classroom to their behavior and related neural measures. But we have not yet been able to focus on developmental changes, which we hope to do next.  

We have worked with children in early and late elementary school, high school, and college. There is this interesting thing that happens as students gain more experience in school - we become socialized into what being a student looks like. My college students know what it looks like to pay attention, that if they sit there, occasionally make eye contact and nod at me, they've got it. That happens as students have more and more experience with school, including middle and high school. We begin to realize that expectations of a good student are that they sit there, do the work, and appear to be engaged. You don't see as much of that in early elementary school because they can't mask it as well. 

The interesting flip of that is not just how you mask your behavior and play it up but also the strategies you adapt to when you get older, once you've discovered them or someone has helped you discover strategies that work best for you. For example, I have mentored many successful undergraduate and graduate students with ADHD. They have a whole series of strategies that help support their learning. They are really successful academically, but this success reflects well-developed skills, often attained through trial and error and from working with supportive adults. Similar themes have emerged from conversations with highschoolers with ADHD - part of their success comes down to knowing themselves as learners in such an important and intuitive way that they have developed a toolkit to be successful independently as they move out of high school. 

So, we want to understand: how do we also help students do well in the classroom and have those independent tools that they need as they get older? That's part of the interesting developmental trajectory: How do you get that sense of what we call the metacognitive awareness that you would need to know in a particular moment or in a particular type of learning experience? And how we help educators have the tools they need to create conditions for student development.

Have you developed some strategies yet for teachers to use in their classrooms? 

This is the ultimate goal. Doing neuroscience in classrooms or real-world settings is one thing, but then figuring out how we build a strong enough evidence base that we can translate this work into meaningful recommendation to educators is another. We want to make sure that any recommendations we make - especially those resulting from neuroscientific research - are based on solid evidence. We’re creating that foundation of evidence, but we are also learning from educators who are showing results in their classrooms already.  

Will some of these findings improve learning outcomes for students who don't necessarily need these tools?

When I was in graduate school, I studied the way elementary school teachers introduced information in the classroom, and the extent to which they were including metacognitive thinking and questions in their instruction. Some teachers do this pretty regularly - for example, making their thought processes of problem solving very clear for students, asking students to share the same. Some students need less of this – perhaps they have this knowledge already, and maybe they have even gained it intuitively. But other students - including those with less developed self-regulation skills - seem to really benefit from that discussion. They need to hear the think-aloud from the teacher or their peers, “Oh yeah, I should try and solve the problem that way or try and organize my thinking that way.” 

We found that having that kind of discourse in your classroom doesn’t hinder anybody, but benefited the kids who needed it most. It is a good example of a strategy that supports everyone, or at least not hinder anyone's progress.

While spaces like the Lab School or UCLA Community Schools provide a conducive environment for studies like these, how can the Collaborative’s solutions be implemented at public schools that may be underresourced, with teachers who are already taking on too much?

That’s the broader goal as well, which brings us back to the work of the new Collaborative. In the Lab School or UCLA Community Schools, the connections between research and practice require a great deal of work but also support for facilitating this effort. But the goal of the Collaborative is to realize this connection statewide and focus on preparation and service, professional development – all of the settings where educators might be. 

Alison Yoshimoto-Towery (executive director of the UC/CSU Collaborative for Neuroscience, Diversity, and Learning) is leading the way in thinking about how we can support educators across the state. We’re starting with the development of a set of resources, through the creation of an online hub of information and learning management system - which will include learning modules designed for different audiences and related resources - that's accessible for everyone. We’re also identifying other services and resources that are already available in California, recognizing that we have a lot of amazing things already that are all located in different places. For this to be effective, it has to be connected with work happening across the statewide system of support. 

The statewide hub of information will be research-forward, reflecting the knowledge and expertise of the UC, CSU, and other institutes of higher education, but also centered on the voices of educators, practitioners, and students. So, if you are an educator interested in learning more about a particular topic, here's a place where you can come and get started, from a quick skim to a deep dive. You know that it's a trusted source of information that's been vetted by experts from the UC and the CSU, but it is also reflecting the work of your peers in districts where you are or from across the state. 

The goal of this work is to be as responsive to the needs and interests of educators. To do this, we are also surveying preservice and in-service teachers across the state and conducting focus groups and interviews with educators, faculty in teacher education, and decision makers.

There are so many exciting things happening in the state of California to support students, families, and practitioners. We have such an abundance of resources - not only state investment, but  motivated educators and researchers and the political will to transform opportunities for our young people. Coming back to California, and being involved in the work of the UC/CSU Collaborative, I have gained a new appreciation for what this could mean for students and educators - through the Collaborative we have an opportunity to elevate existing work, leverage the expertise across the UC, CSU and beyond, and create the synergy needed to realize this potential.