Alexander Sarlin: 0:00
Welcome to EdTech insiders where we speak with founders, operators investors and thought leaders in the education technology industry and report on cutting edge news in this fast evolving field from around the globe. From AI to xr to K 12 to l&d, you'll find everything you need here on edtech insiders. And if you liked the podcast, please give us a rating and a review so others can find it more easily. Kimberly Nix Berens PhD, is a scientist, educator and founder of fit learning. She co created a system of instruction based in behavioral science and the technology of teaching, which has transformed the learning abilities of 1000s of children worldwide. Fit learning programs use virtual instruction to target a wide range of skills, early learning skills, basic classroom readiness, phonemic awareness, reading, fluency, comprehension, inferential language, Basic and Advanced Math, problem solving grammar and writing. From her early beginnings in a broom closet at the University of Nevada Reno with her co founders, Dr. Berens has helped grow fit learning to an organization with more than 30 locations worldwide. She recently published her first book, blind spots why students fail in the science that can save them. Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens Welcome to EdTech. Insiders.
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 3:24
Thanks so much for having me.
Alexander Sarlin: 3:25
It's really interesting, what you are doing with fit learning, it is something that I have not heard of before, and I'm very curious about how it came about. So tell our listeners about your entrepreneurial journey. You started in a broom closet at the University of Nevada at Reno. And now there's 30 Plus, I believe, fit learning locations worldwide. You're doing lots of virtual delivery. Give us a little overview of your story.
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 3:50
Yeah. So when I was, you know, getting my doctorate or PhD in behavior science, you know, I was working in the area of profound disabilities, that was kind of where I started, my career was particularly in the area of autism. And unfortunately, behavior analysis or behavior science is most kind of known in that world. So when it comes to the science behind human behavior, and learning, it is widely adopted in the treatment of people with profound disabilities. But unfortunately, it's less adopted in the instruction of mainstream learners, which I always found to be weird, because, you know, to be honest with you, behavior science is the science of learning, which is you know, how the environment interacts with behavior and neurology to produce a learning outcome. And that's how we've evolved to learn as a species. And it applies to any learner, not just people with disabilities. So all human learners learn better when science is applied to instruction and to measuring the learning process, but it unfortunately, isn't included and colleges of education and teacher training programs. So that was always my passion, to be quite frank was working with mainstream kids in rapidly accelerating academic and cognitive skills to produce experts in various areas. Me and two other graduate students, we kind of got together who also have that interest. And we volunteered and we started a project for, you know, as an after school program, and we were really doing applied science on you know, applying our science to instruction in those kinds of areas. It started out as this small kind of side gig, you know, we did it on campus, and the only space they would give us at that point was a broom closet that we turned into a session room, which is kind of weird, but parents brought their kids even with a closet. But as we obviously produced outcomes because when you have science on your side, that is the natural byproduct. We started producing really pretty remarkable gains with kids and so the university kept giving us bigger and bigger spaces to use and you know, lecture hall polls and, and then eventually my husband and I ended up privatizing the program off campus and maintaining a university affiliation. So that was years ago. I mean, we started in 1998. And then we moved off campus in 2003. So yes, since that time, now we have over 30 physical locations. But then we also provide virtual instruction to kids who can't access a location, we've worked with more than 4000 Kids and produced really remarkable outcomes with more than 4000 kids for more than 25 years. So it's been pretty great.
Alexander Sarlin: 6:25
We've talked to a handful of entrepreneurs that came out of the sort of academia or doctoral programs in the past, and I always really admire it, because I think that you mentioned sort of Applied Science, right? Often, you know, academic learning, sometimes sort of steers people into theory or into into research. But obviously, you and your co founders were already applying, you know, while you were in your doctorate program, you're already applying it to help our listeners understand what it really looks like to apply behavioral science in fit learning. What does that mean? And how does it differ from from other education models? What what would that actually look like in a classroom closet or a classroom for?
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 7:06
Well, I love this question. So, you know, in order to answer the question, I should just put out in brass tacks what behavior science has discovered about how learning actually occurs. And so learning occurs through the repeated reinforcement of a skill or behavior, same word skill behaviors, same thing over time. So as a behavior occurs, and comes into contact with a reinforcing consequence in the environment, that reinforcing consequence is what we call selects that behavior makes it more likely to occur, and it strengthens. And so although we know that behavioral process very well, now that neuroscience has caught up to us, you know, because neuroscience is a newer science, the behavior science because of the technology required. Now, neuroscience actually understands the neurological counterpoint, you know, what's happening neurologically when that reinforcement process is happening. So it's a real symbiotic relationship between a behavior, a reinforcing consequence in the environment and a neurological response in the brain, which is what produces permanent neural pathways. So that's how human behavior becomes organized and learned throughout the process of development. You know, when an infant is born, they're born engaging in reflexive behavior, right? Like it, but they're constantly moving. And that constant movement is reflexive crying is reflexive, but very quickly, it becomes what we call a behavior science operant, because it immediately comes into contact with an environment, which then provides a consequence, whether or not reinforcing or punishing, and if it's reinforcing, then those behaviors that come into contact with reinforcing consequences, will strengthen through that behavioral and neurological process. And that's how learning occurs throughout the lifespan of a human being. And so when behavior science is applied intentionally, it's happening, whether you like it or not, reinforcement is shaping our behavior all day long. You know, when you open a door, there's a reason when you turn the door and you open it, and you go outside. Well, we've learned to do that because we get out the door. I mean, we're learning from our environments continuously throughout the day. But when you understand that process, then you can harness that, and the intentional instruction of skills. And so how it applies to academics would be that we understand how essential it is for a learner to repeatedly practice an essential skill until it reaches a level of neurological permanence. And that's what we call fluency in behavior science. And in neuroscience, it's also known as fluency. But there's, you know, that's more of a permanent neural outcome. But that permanent neural outcome doesn't happen because someone's talented, or someone has a high IQ, or all the other made up mythological things, people think it happens because that learner has explicitly practice that skill and received reinforcement for that skill over and over and over again, such that that skill is now permanent, automatic and habitual. And so we at FIT learning, understand how to design explicit practice opportunities for core components skills, and provide the kind of reinforcement for those skills along with precise measurement of them, such that we can engage in an objective analysis of when mastery has occurred or fluency has been produced. And if we're not getting that we can see that we can see that we're not producing the outcome we want and make a systematic change in that instructional environment and evaluate whether or not that systematic change has enhanced that learners performance of that skill towards mastery. So when you apply science to instruction and it gives you access to be extremely powerful. Because it's not a guessing game. You know, we're not following arbitrary timelines that happen in education where the Oh, today we're supposed to talk about fit 17 fractions concepts. And then by Friday, my learner's have to take a test on those, and they have to move on to the next 17 concepts on Monday, regardless of how any of those individual kids performed. Well, I hate to say this, but behavior science and neuroscience indicate that that's absolutely not how learning and mastery works at all. Which is why if you will get anyone who's unbelievably competent in the world at anything, and I would point you to look at athletes and musicians, that's not how they get good at stuff, they don't get good at stuff by watching a video on how to play the violin and then taking a test on it. Five days later, they get proficient at the violin by practicing explicitly designed components skill drills for the violin a lot over a long period of time. And the same thing applies when you're learning to read or do math or write or think critically engage in comprehension, all of those things,
Alexander Sarlin: 12:00
when I hear you describe this process, I'd love to hear you sort of unpack this idea of components, skill drills, and repeated practice and you know, getting those neural pathways myelinated or whatever it is, like really, really lining it all up makes total sense. I think sometimes there's a push back in some education circles, because you know, a famous phrase like drill and kill, there's this feeling of students may be less engaged, when if they're just doing repeated practice. And I'm curious how you square the definite proven results of if you do the same type of, you know, math problem, or grammar exercise or anything, you know, 1000 times you're gonna get amazing at it with kids don't always want to do it 1000 times, I'm curious how you make it engaging as well as effective?
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 12:49
Well, first of all respond to the very unfortunate misunderstanding about drilling kill. So there's a lot of conceptions in the education world that are ideologically based, rather than empirically based. And so, you know, education is actually an ideological institution, not a scientific or pragmatic institution, unfortunately, I mean, I've written an entire book about this. So if anybody wants to read the book, they can. It's called blind spots, why students fail on the science that can save them. And it's out, you can find it anywhere. But I wrote a whole book on this, but I'll tell you that, you know, the education system in America evolved as an ideological institution, meaning it's based on belief systems, rather than a system guided by science. And so when you're in a belief based system, you have an opinion about how learning goes or what kids should learn, or how kids should be instructed. And your opinion, or your belief is what is the be all and end all. And so you tend to either look for evidence that proves your belief system, and then ignore or provide some type of counter argument to evidence that contradicts your belief system, which is unbelievably dogmatic. And to be honest with you. It's why education is largely intractable in the United States, and really has not evolved since the beginning of the public education system. I mean, I will tell you that that is true. If you look at our national assessment scores, they have not improved in more than 80 years, the first broad scale evaluation of academic outcomes was done in the 1940s. And our outcomes are about the same today as they were back then. And I think that if you look at any other field that's guided by science, medicine, technology, engineering, agriculture, I think you will see a light years difference between what's happening now and what was happening in 1948. That's not the case in education, because it's all arguments based on opinions. It's debates based on opinions, rather than what guides scientists is that we collect evidence, we evaluate the evidence, we determine whether or not that evidence matches the goals we're trying to achieve, such as dramatically increasing academic outcomes for us at FIT learning. That's our goal. And if we're not dramatically increasing academic outcomes, then we're going to change something systematically see if that change improved the outcome or not. So we're constantly evolving based on our science. So that's what I'll tell you the drilling kill. There's no scientific basis to that whatsoever. And it's actually contra indicated by not only behavior science, but neuroscience fundamentally incorrect. Number one. So number two, when you're talking about student engagement, here's what happens when you're doing instruction the right way. So when you're doing instruction the right way, you're always thinking about motivational systems, because you know, to be honest with you at FIT learning, a majority of the learners we work with, come to us after a history of academic failure, meaning they have had a long history of like a very aversive experience in school because they've been failed. So they have a long history. We have avoidance, and a long history of punishment around engaging in academics. So not only do we have kids who are disfluent, and academic skills, but we also have kids who now have a really unfortunate history around working in academics at all. So their natural inclination is to avoid and try to escape an academic task. So motivation is the number one most important thing to think about as an educator, because number one, kids aren't naturally inclined to want to sit in learn to read, they want to do other things, especially kids who've been failed, they really don't want to learn to read. So everything we do at fit is designed around positive reinforcement. Because, you know, I'll also tell you intrinsic motivation is an absolute myth. The belief that kids are born that human beings are born intrinsically motivated, and some are not is also incorrect, there's actually no scientific evidence to suggest that's the case. What does happen is that as a learner receives programmed reinforcement in the form of access to points, access to privileges, praise, attention, all the wonderful things that should accompany a well designed instructional interaction with a child, once that bridges the gap, when a kid starts reaching fluency on a skill and I mean, for instance, kids that fit, they can solve 60 math facts a minute. That's their goal for fluency at FIT learning. So that means they're doing math facts, like sight words, right? They're saying one a second, there's no thinking there's no finger, there's no counting on your hands. When kids reach 60 per minute on math facts, that is a naturally reinforcing task. Because being fluent when something is effortless, and automatic, is really, really fun, and enjoyable to do. So the whole point is when you bridge the gap, because getting fluent is hard work, man, ask any musician, ask any athlete, as anyone who's ever practiced anything to try to get good at it, it's a lot of effort, it takes an amazing amount of focus and amazing amount of concentration. So you got to have some kind of programmed reinforcement, while kids are getting through the grind. But once kids get to the other side of the grind, and all the awesome stuff automatically starts happening for them around being really good at math. The program reinforcement becomes unnecessary because now you've you've actually produced intrinsic motivation. But that was actually produced by how you trained that kid to fluency. So positive reinforcement is a must. It is an absolute necessity in education. And unfortunately, more often than not, it's expected kids will follow the rules do what they're supposed to do, do their homework, participate in class answer questions. And if they don't, there's punitive consequences. When they do engage. There's not programmed reinforcement, which is actually again, scientifically contra indicated like, that's not how you build repertoires, you build repertoires, you strengthen repertoires with reinforcement, not with punishment,
Alexander Sarlin: 18:52
it's really fascinating to hear you talk about learning in this way. I don't know how to even start, it feels like a model of learning, as you say that extremely aligned with the science, and sort of actively throws out some of the sort of, I imagine you'd say pseudo scientific ideas like like integration, you know, intrinsic of extrinsic motivation. And people being having to be intrinsically motivated to do things first, or the idea that students don't like to get to the point where they can do 16 math facts a minute, and obviously demands a huge amount of deliberate practice of really intense practice. When I envision that it feels like just a whole different world of education, it reminds me a little bit of what we usually associate with East Asian education, this like hyper focused, or like spelling bee training. And it's interesting, because you're going at it from such a different angle, you're saying, Hey, it works, and then actually makes students like learning better, even if they come at it from having negative experiences. And you've seen results, you know, you stated that students in good learning or you know, have experienced up to a year's worth of academic growth in just 40 hours of training. So you're getting great results. And you're doing it with this model that I think feels so foreign to most us and you know, Western educators tell us a little bit more about how this accelerated learning is possible and what it looks like to be in a fit classroom.
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 20:18
So another benefit, you know, to having science behind you is we understand a very profound principle and behavior science is the principle of shaping and so shaping is interesting because it's a principle but also a procedure. It's something you can actually design and use and instruction but it is a principle of how learning happens. And so, when I talk about shaping what I mean is successive approximations to a target skill. So for instance, one of the reasons why kids love fit and they do tined and everything we do at FIT learning is timed. Why? Because of how we measure behavior and Learning. So everything we do at fit with a learner is measured, every single practice of every single skill is measured in, its charted on a very specific tool we use to evaluate learning. So the basic measure in behavior science is something called rate of response, also known as count per time. It's just like physics. It's like frequency in physics, but in behavior science, it's count per time, just like it is in physics. So for us, it would be 60 math facts per minute, 150 words read per minute, you know, 20, algebraic problems solved per minute, 15, multi step word problems solved per minute, whatever it is, we're measuring it as count per minute. And we're measuring count, correct per minute count incorrect per minute. So we have to time everything to get that core measure. And then those measures go on to very specific tool, a chart or a graph. And over time, those counts per minutes over the course of days, gives us a slope of a line, you know, a line of best fit through those data points, which gives us our index of learning, which is something called celebration. So celebration, akin to the acceleration or deceleration of moving objects, it's the same thing in human behavior, because human behavior multiplies in device as it grows, and divide. So as it gets faster, it multiplies. So human behavior doesn't change by adding it changes by multiplying as everything does in the natural world, moving objects, cancer cells, unfortunately, everything multiplies, so does human behavior. So if you have an understanding of this, you can harness instruction, which is why we move kids so fast at fit, because we're moving kids exponentially, we're multiplying their correct responding, and we're dividing their error for responding very rapidly. So we understand that so shaping is something we use because we understand this, if we're talking about a complex repertoire, for instance, solving a long division problem, which is an extremely complex repertoire behavior. So if I take solving a long division problem, I can break that long division problem down into essential components skills required to solve the problem. You know, for instance, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, understanding how you have to know place value, you have to understand how to use placeholders, you have to understand the fundamental steps of how to solve that kind of a problem. There's lots of steps. So shaping applies to number one, breaking a complex skill down into pieces into the essential components and then training those essential components separately, such that their fluency is possible, which is what we do at fit, we produce fluency and all those steps and in the concepts of solving a problem like that, before we would ever say okay, now here you go, go solve this long division problem, because what's really cool is that the kind of instruction we use is also known as generative instruction, which is why I will also say the drill and kill ideology is absolutely false. Because when you produce fluency and core skills, and you're shaping repertoires, two more and more complex skills as they become fluent at the bottom, you start getting what we call generativity or curriculum leaping, which means kids start on their own, being able to combine components skills in novel ways and solve more complex operations or perform more complex tasks with very little training and instruction. Why? Because the foundational skills are so proficient that they don't even have to think about them. They all combine automatically, but that's only possible through understanding shaping. Like for instance, schools try to go after the complex repertoire first. I have kids myself, not only do I do this professionally, my kindergartener was coming home expected to write in a journal every day. The kid couldn't hold a pencil didn't know his letters, couldn't spell words, but he's supposed to write in a journal. Why? I don't know, I have no idea. But it was a big fat waste of time. So that's when you don't understand shaping like the kids aren't going to write a sentence until they can hold a pencil for basic strokes, write letters, read and spell, okay, then maybe you can expect them to write a sentence. So when you don't understand shaping, unfortunately, there's a belief that this stuff just magically starts happening for kids is a process of their development. No, it doesn't. It happens as a process of as a function of their learning history, and of their mastering of the fundamental skills included in those complex skills. So shaping repertoires, and also shaping what we call endurance. So another reason why our kids at FIT love fit sessions is because if I have a disfluent kid, who like most of my kids, unfortunately, that come in, can only solve at best six to 10 math problems a minute and they're counting on their fingers and making errors. That is a painful repertoire. So I would never ever expect that kid to try to reach fluency and even a one minute timing. So we know how to even break our timings down into what we call sprints. So kids start at 15 seconds. So they're trying to like we're trying to aim Improve their fluency in a 15 second timing, then once we get fluency in 15 seconds, then we would gradually increase the timing leak to 30 seconds, then a minute, then we're going to give them more complex problems in like two to five minute timings. But that requires shaping those repertoires, which is why the static assignments like Oh, read 20 minutes a night, that's like this, coral desk, fluid reader 20 minutes, you might as well give them a root canal, because that's more fun than having to read for 20 minutes when you can't read
Alexander Sarlin: 26:24
it so interesting. I feel like there's something extraordinarily clarifying about this approach. And I think it makes a lot of sense in so many different ways, and really is very scientific. Let me ask a question, because you mentioned that you started your career working with autistic students. And, you know, when I think about the argument that you're making here of people can get incredibly fast, everything is timed. I hear a little bit of a voice in my head from from other educators that say, well, students with special needs get extra time on exams and the time, I almost feel like the idea of timing responses has really gone out of fashion, specifically in response to Special Needs learning. And you are coming from a background of special needs and autistic learners and saying, time, everything rate of response is incredibly important. How do you put those together, I just I'd love to hear how you think about it.
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 27:22
We do have enrollment of kids on the spectrum at FIT learning. Still, I mean, those kids have been through early intervention, they're ready for academic training and school transitioning. So the kids who come into fit who were on the spectrum, but they've been through early intervention, so we don't do early intervention, but we provide a nice transition for those kids into academic instruction. And guess what all of those kids are also timed. And so again, remember, timing is our unit. Like if you went to the doctor, and they took your vitals, they're going to take your vitals, your vitals, give them information about your overall health. And so they're going to take your heart rate per minute, your blood pressure, your respiration per minute, those are vital measures of health. So whenever we're timing a kid, we're taking a measure, we're taking measurements of the skill we are training, such that we can evaluate their progress. It's ongoing progress monitoring, because we know from our science and this goes back to the 1930s, that rate of response is the most sensitive and predictive measure of behavior available in our field. So rate of response is how we measure behavior. And acceleration, which is changing rate over time is how we measure learning. And if we're not timing behavior, if we're not timing skills, then we don't have our measurement tool number one. So there's that. My second comment about this is, there is an unbelievably devastating view that a learner with a diagnosis and we don't just have kids on the spectrum, I have kids with every type of diagnosis mythological or real. And there's plenty of mythological ones, I promise you that. Under the sun fit learning we have every type of learner. So the most unbelievably devastating thing for me to witness is when a learner has received a diagnosis of some sort, which, by the way, is unmeasurable dyslexia. dysgraphia, dis calcula. All the diseases have never been directly measured. And again, remember, I'm a natural scientist behavior. Science is a natural science. And I'll tell you, there's a scientific literacy about that and out there in the universe. Because when a kid gets diagnosed with dyslexia, Dyslexia has never been directly measured or observed ever, never, not once. The only way a learner is diagnosed with dyslexia is based on their reading behavior, and their behavior on assessments, which is a measure of performance. So they're doing various reading assessments or other types of assessments, that then the psychologist suggests, capture dyslexia. But that's not true. All those assessments do is measure a skill. And then why the child performed the skill, the way they did is added on as an inference like, oh, it's big, but Dyslexia has never been directly measured. Those are constructs. They're not measurable. If they were there'd be a blood test, or some type of genetic test or some type of errors. That doesn't exist. The only tests for those learning disabilities are behavioral ones. And the only recommendations ever made are behavioral ones because it's like tutoring, right? Of course it is. Because these are behavioral issues. These are skills deficits. So anyway, my point is, when a kid has a diagnosis, that diagnosis starts becoming the reason for everything. Why can't this child read dyslexia? Why can't this kid sit in his seat, ADHD? Why can't this kid speak Autism. So that becomes an explanation rather than really evaluating what the actual underlying causes for their skills deficits are, and identifying how to build those skills. So any child on the spectrum, you can see our outcome data with autistic kids, they're the same within two percentile ranks of our non diagnosed kids. When it comes to the type of fluency we're able to achieve with those learners. If you're using effective instruction, if you're using shaping, if you're breaking skills down into components and individualizing instruction and taking measurements of that actual learner over time and making instructional decisions based on those measures, guess what? Every kid can master stuff, even the most. I've worked with the most severe Down Syndrome kids that fit and you'd be shocked. It's surprising now, is every kid going to be a physicist or a mathematician? Or no? Can they master core skills and have a massively improved quality of life? Yes, they can. They absolutely can.
Alexander Sarlin: 31:51
Fascinating, a quick, short tangent, but I hope it will be relevant here. As we get into the next question, which is going to be about your book, the NBA Draft recently happened. And you mentioned sort of athletics is a world in which this type of learning is very, very well accepted, you know, people take 10,000 foul shots to get good at it. The number one draft pick is this French teenager and Victor Wenbin, Yama, and one of the things that separates him, he's seven foot five. So he's enormous, but he's been taught the fundamentals that passing the dribbling the every, in exactly the same way as every other player, which is not how they used to do it, they used to teach bigger players totally different skills, because they figured they could never get very good at three point shooting or anything like that. It sounds like I'm a basketball fan. I'm not a big basketball fan at all, but very professional. I'm not I'm not I don't very little, but I just happen to have seen something about this. And it's so interesting that you're you're really focusing in on this idea of fundamental skills and fluency, and building that sort of foundation. And it just feels like it is something you very rarely hear in American education and your book that just came out, I think, in 2020, blind spots, why students fail, and the science that can save them is all about some of the things you're talking about today. I know you've already been talking about some of them. But can you share a couple of insights from the book about how students can really succeed with this tech science based learning?
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 33:15
Well, you know, when I wrote my book, it came from a, I reached a breaking point in my career as a professional, I had just had enough of, you know, the same conversation with the same devastated parents, who had been told that their child will never learn to read because of their dyslexia, or that their child would never learn to do math, because they clearly have some type of math disability, you know, the same garbage. And it literally makes not only the parent, the parent and family feel helpless, but as the most disempowering way to view the world. And unfortunately, I don't blame teachers, I don't blame educators. I'm heartbroken that that's why I wrote my book and titled it blind spots. Because what it really is, is that the culture at large has glaring blind spots about how learning actually works, the role of the environment, and how people learn to behave, and the role that everyone plays in that environment. So you know, parents who have kids who engage in behavior that drives them absolutely crazy. Well, guess what? I hate to break it to you, you're most likely reinforcing that behavior that's driving you nuts. A lot of people will say, Are you saying it's the mother's fault? No, I'm saying that we all play an amazing role in how our children behave. And when we understand that, then we can actually harness that to our benefit and design our kids environments in ways that produce kids we want to hang out with and that are enjoyable adult like people that they're not little money, Jami many dictators. I see on a daily basis, these two and three year olds, who are just dictators, man, they're just running the show. They don't even know how to go to the bathroom or the toilet, but they're running the household. It's like, how does this make any sense? So I'll tell you, it's not just in education, it's across the culture is that we're really obsessed with magic, and mysticism, and mythology, like we want to believe in talent, we want to believe that people are born like there's just certain people who are born and they're just amazing superheroes. And those are the people who get good at stuff. And then the people who aren't good and stuff are just dumb or they're just not lucky. We want to believe this stuff, which is just shocking. The somehow that's more appealing than the actual acknowledging the unbelievable evidence from behavior science and neuroscience, that that's actually not how it works, that even genes don't act on their own, like epigenetics is now the gold standard in genes. But we know that genes don't just automatically dictate what we do in our lives. It's, you know, epogen, netic says that genes are only occasioned and activated by the behaving organism in their environment in a very specific type of environment. So what we've known forever in behavior, science is only getting verified, and all these other sciences that it's about the whole organism, their biology, their neurology, their genes, their behavior, and their environment all work together to create who a human being becomes through the learning process, which is amazing. And that we can actually harness that process and do it better. And make sure that every single kid becomes proficient in reading and mathematics and critical thinking skills, and actually understands history and civics so that they can be informed members of a democracy, like we can actually intentionally design the world of education, from a scientific perspective, such that right now 70% of American schoolchildren are below proficiency across the board and every subject, and that's up from 60%. Before COVID. Now we're closer to 70%. So I gotta tell you, I think the people's opinions about you know, education, well, your opinion is obviously kind of flawed, because if it was right, I don't think we'd be in this mess. So I just feel like maybe they should turn to the scientists, like the people who actually know how to cure what was used to be incurable cancer,
Alexander Sarlin: 37:14
we're seeing some of that shift in the science of reading, you know, finally, after decades, people are starting moving towards the theories of onyx instruction that we've sort of known and other countries have known for a decade have worked scientifically, hopefully, there is a little bit of a shift. Now, you mentioned COVID, I just wanted to jump in and ask you about it. Because, you know, this is an ed tech podcast, we've been talking about education and learning practices, but you teach virtually many of your learners at FIT learning are learning online. And I think, personally, when I'm envisioning this sort of timed, practice these components skills and being able to get to, you know, so many math facts, or everything omitted, I'm sort of picturing a coach standing over a student with a stopwatch, in fact,
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 37:56
but now, they're on their timer on their golf counter, we all we are, I should have brought those over. But the critical components of a fit learning session are a timer, a golf counter in our chart, how that we measure behavior, but that's like the most important thing to us. So we absolutely do virtual instruction. And what's really great. I mean, this was lucky for us is that we had been doing virtual sessions before COVID, New York did the first virtual session, and that was in 2014. And we did it with Skype. That was when Skype was like the thing. And this was when we had kids who wanted sessions from Greenwich, Connecticut. And they were having to commute into New York City, which is a complete nightmare. And so we piloted Skype with those kids to see if it would be an alternative rather than having to drive across a bridge to get to sessions and deal with traffic. And so we've been piloting virtual sessions for since 2014. But I'll tell you that when COVID hit, you know, we had already been doing a lot of innovative work around making all of our data collection digital, because before that point, we had paper binders with paper charts, and people were charting with pencils, and drawing celebrations with pencils, and session. So coach had to be physically present with a learner's binder. So when we had been piloting digital binders using notability, and PDF experts, iPads with Apple pencils in a pilot phase, but as soon as COVID hit and I knew that New York was shutting down, we launched organization wide, the digital binder, which has been remarkable. So now all of our kids, you know, records, their digital charts are on box. And there we use PDF Expert on an iPad, and they can open a chart and they use their Apple Pencil and they drop their data points. And then once they close that file, what's amazing is I have a coach in Massachusetts, who works with a learner for an hour. And then they have a 10 minute break. They have two hour session than the second hour, their next coach is in New York City, running that virtual session. And guess what all the data that Amy takes on that kid from Massachusetts for the first hour is immediately synced, so that the coach, the second hour in New York just opens PDF Expert, and it's already there. So we really had to figure that stuff out. And it's been remarkable. So we have we did a big broad scale analysis of our outcomes after COVID. And we had about we did an applied study with about 375 kids who are live. And I think it was about 274 kids who were virtual. If you see our outcomes there on our website, they are identical. 30 percentile ranks in 40 hours of instruction on norm referenced assessments. They look like they're fake data, but they're not. They're the same outcomes. Because again, it doesn't matter if you know how to use the science of instance ruction if you know how to measure learning and make instructional decisions, if you know how to use reinforcement, like all of our kids in virtual sessions, they get a fit kit. So they get a little kit in the mail. And it has their own clicker, their golf clicker. And guess what that is what they put their points on. So when they hit certain performance goals and sessions, they hit what we call the personal best, or the PD, that's the big thing. That's how we shape behavior. Every time they have a PD goal, what's your personal best. So if you got 22 math facts, during this time yesterday, well guess what your PD today is 23. And if you get 23, you're getting what we call crazy clicks, which means I started a timer and you can hit the jackpot, and you click as many points as you can on your clicker. And then eventually, you can trade those in for cool prizes. And we send stuff to their house, from Amazon, and whatever. So that's why virtual works, because we know how to make it engaging. It's more similar to a sports coaching session as what you'd think. But I want to say one thing about the science of reading. And here's a look, I've been in a documentary about this. And I'm very proud that finally, I mean, it's like, I can't believe this is breaking news and 2023. You know, give me a break, man. I mean, I encourage all of your listeners to look up a study called Project follow through, which was, you know, from 1968 to 1977 was like the largest federally funded study of educational methods ever conducted in America. And the results were presented to Congress in the late 70s. As a result of that study, it was very clear that one method outperform outperformed all the other ones by multiple standard deviations. And that was something called direct instruction. And so direct instruction is not just what to teach, but it's how to teach it. It's how to present instruction and require choral responding, active participation, immediate reinforcement, immediate feedback and loss of practice. So project follow through showed that direct instruction, the methodology was unbelievably better. And guess what happened in direct instruction reading, phonics, phonemic, awareness, decoding phonetic strategies. The data were clear on this in the late 1960s. And it was presented to Congress and what happened? Nothing. Direct Instruction wasn't adopted as the standard methodology for instruction, which it should be because it's the number one evidence based approach number one, and number two, somehow phonics went out of fashion, which is what is wrong when you don't have ScienceBase institutions? You can you imagine in cancer treatment, if something just went out of fashion? Because I don't know. It just doesn't seem cool anymore. I guess I'm sick of looking at our mRNA because it's just not cool. I mean, it's ridiculous. That's just not how it works in your in science. And not that it's, that's where fads fads come from ideology and belief systems, not from science. So yay, who I guess the science of breeding, but it's ridiculous to me, because none of this is new information. I mean, this is like, Give me a break Hooked on Phonics was like happened in the 80s. I mean, so that's one thing. The other problem with the science of reading is that it's all about curriculum, rather than the Science of Instruction, and the science of learning. So sure, you know, what kids learn matters, the fact that phonics is how kids most rapidly can engage in generative reading skills, because they actually know they need phonics, they need to understand how words are decodable. And when they have those two strategies, then they can decode unknown words. That's amazing. That's important. The problem is, if you don't know how to effectively teach phonics, if you don't know how to effectively measure, if a kid is actually acquiring mastery of them, it doesn't matter. So what I really hope to dry was in this documentary, I really try to have the community understand the difference between curriculum and instruction. There are two very different things like I can teach a kid to read with a pencil and a piece of paper because I understand what I need to teach. And I understand how to teach it. I don't need anything fancy, right? But you have to understand the how of instruction, which is what behavior science gives you is the how, you know, for us, it's ridiculous that phonics is a debate. Because from a behavior science perspective, every complex skill evolves from components skills that are fundamental to the repertoire and reading involves phonics. That's all it involves. There's lots of other things that but if you're talking about decoding, and you're talking about actually fluidly reading words, will phonics helps you a lot, because a lot of words follow the same patterns. And so you can learn strategies. The science of reading annoys me in a number of ways because it's not new. It's we've known this for a long time, like give me a break. How are we not past this? We have a lot to teach these kids. How are we still having these arguments? And it's not about how those things should be instructed, which is The most important thing?
Alexander Sarlin: 45:55
Yeah, it's a really interesting distinction between the, you know, the science of reading acceptance in that the curricula are going to be science of reading based and all these states are passing laws versus how do you actually in a classroom reinforce and, you know, support students at all levels, from all backgrounds in actually acquiring those phonics and assessing them real time? Really interesting point, I haven't heard anybody make that point before. And that's a lot to chew on here. I have one more question for you, before we go to our final ones, you know, listeners may have noticed terms like reinforcement and line of best fit and, you know, shaping and some terms that are often neural networks, of course, often associated with artificial intelligence. And a lot of the sort of theory of intelligence that you're talking about here is also the, the origin of artificial intelligence, how neural networks theory came about. So what is next for fit learning generally? And, specifically, do you see AI playing a role in the future of what you're doing?
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 46:55
So you know, we've been working in tech development, we landed a National Science Foundation grant, I believe that was back in 20. Oh, God, I want to say 14 or 15. So we've been working on an app that simulates a fit learning session, a learning experience, that's typically human interface, right? Like we've been piloting, you know, a model that removes the human, we can scale this, because here's what I'll tell you, you know, what frustrates us at FIT learning is that we're basically have the cure for cancer, it'd be like in the medical worlds, we have the cure for cancer, and no one wants it, and no one cares. That's how it feels. Because we literally are like, it's that effective, that rapidly we move kids, we don't fail. We're doing science with every single learner. And that's a really important thing. I actually also want to add to what you just said about the science of reading and bringing evidence based curriculum into schools. Another distinction I want to create for you and your listeners is the difference between evidence based to people in social science and evidence base to people in natural science. So evidence base for people in social science, or like the education world is that it begins studies been done with some type of instructional approach or curriculum, and they got some type of statistical difference between two groups. And so that means that that method is good, or that that curriculum works. And then guess what happens that curriculum just gets applied to everywhere in a classroom. And that's it, end of story, because it's evidence based, right? Well, that is not evidence based to a natural scientist. So we're a natural scientist of which we are that at FIT learning because we are behavior scientists and behavior scientists are natural scientists, which means we measure every single individual that we are working with over time, such that we are collecting evidence with every single learner we work with about the effectiveness of what we're doing, we don't just blanketly apply approaches that have evidence behind them that we've acquired with other kids to a learner and expect it to work. Because that's not how human behavior works. Human behavior is what we call IDEO graphic, which means it's not normative. Even though social scientists want to make it more money, they want to put everything in norms, they want to average stuff. Unfortunately, that's not how it works, because human behavior is so variable because of how we all respond randomly. And our random responses are reinforced, like two identical twins in the same room, are actually in completely different environments. Because it depends on how they're behaving. And what their behavior is coming into contact with is what's going to shape up that behavior for the kid who's in this bassinet versus the kid in this bassinet. Human behavior is unbelievably what we call IDEO graphic. So that means that these blanket large scale studies of curriculum, and approaches are irrelevant at the human individual level. Because statistics, factor out sources of variance, that's their job. But sources of variance are the whole problem in human behavior. It's unlimited sources of variance, you have to do individual science with every single kid, which is what behavior science gives you. So it's not just like, you as the fit learning model, it's, we're going to train you how to be a scientist educator, because that's the only way to actually be effective with every kid is to be a scientist with every kit, and measure behavior over time and make decisions based on those measurements with every learner. So there's that part, okay? So now, because of our understanding of science, because of our understanding of behavior, because of our how we know how to measure these things, because of how we know how to quantify these things, all of that is translatable into code. It's all translatable into algorithms. So what that allows us to do, which is what we've been working on for years, and now we're just really needing a lot of money, we need some big tech investor to be psyched about this is, you know, look, I've never want human beings to be obsolete ever, like a human being is always going to be better at working with especially certain types of learners than a machine. But I'm going to tell you this right now, the behavior science of instruction and learning is absolutely 100% creatable as an artificially intelligent experience, which means that every kid in the world could access it easily, quickly, effectively, it can be built in as part of the school day, because they're interacting, you know, their their teachers are doing concept instruction as a group, and then learners are going back to their desk, putting on their headphones and having an artificially intelligent fluency practice session in that experience with that app, or that application, which is really our long term vision at FIT. Because I'll tell you, we have a very intensive training program, we have a formal certification in all of our curriculum lines, you have to be certified in fit reading, you have to be certified at that map. It's not based on ours, it's based on a measurable level of proficiency that produces an outcome with a learner that is our hallmark for gain. So it's what we call a functional level of proficiency or mastery. It's hard. It's really hard to train people to do this really well and to train enough people because help us Lord, millions of children need fluency based instruction in core academic skills, millions. And so we are sitting on a goldmine of codable data, and algorithms based on we dropped 1 million dots a month. And when I mean dropped dots, I mean, we're charting a million measures a month, that fit learning 1 million, and we're looking at 1000s of celebrations a week, which means that change, you know, the learning trajectories, the slopes, that doesn't even include our assessment data that were our norm referenced assessments that we're conducting a benchmarks of which we have 1000s and 1000s, and 1000s of pieces of data on that we are we have a treasure trove of data from which to design code, and create an artificially intelligent guided instructional interaction for learners, such that teachers can focus on doing the conceptual work, the group discussion work, the creative work, the project based learning, and an artificially intelligent experience can get kids super fluid at their core skills. It really is the answer, it is the answer.
Alexander Sarlin: 53:37
I'm sure you know, knowing that some of my listeners, I'm sure a lot of people's minds are going really quickly as they think about, you know, this combination of things and how the sort of vision you just outlined of fluency automaticity practice run through an AI where every buddy has a personalized trajectory. It's not about there's a lot in there. And I agree with you, that does not sound fanciful. That sounds very doable. That sounds like something we could really we could really do, especially as a community. Yeah,
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 54:08
yes. What is that, like? We're experts in the behavior science aspects. And we're experts in instructional design, we're not experts in AI and coding, we need a really great partnership, we need a really great partnership is what we need to make that a reality. You heard it here
Alexander Sarlin: 54:26
first. Send me an email, it is incredibly clarifying. On some level, when I hear you talk about behavioral science in this way, I get a sort of like a shadow of all of the educators and all of the people who have sort of base their careers on very different models of learning very different models of what learning is, and how you accelerate reading and math. It's like I almost hear this Greek chorus of descent in the background at the same time, everything you're saying makes incredible sense. And it's incredibly clarified, you know, just feels like really seeing learning that way as pure reinforcement. And you have all the pieces work together and how you actually, you know, we teach the multiplication tables. And it's one of the only things that I can think of in elementary school that universally is taught in the way you just said,
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 55:18
but it's not actually it's not universally taught in that way. That's the one of the more disfluent repertoires of learners. I see. Because here's what happens all the sudden, it's an expectation. And, you know, oftentimes, it'll be an email that's sent out to parents. You know, by the end of April, your learners are expected to know their multiplication facts through nine 981. And guess whose responsibility it is to make that happen? The parents because they're not practicing their math facts in the classroom. They're not doing drills on math facts in the classroom. I mean, there was the era of the Mad minute and that was in the 90s in the 90s. And you To do mad minutes, which was like hallelujah, but somehow that went out of fashion, because of the ideology of, it's all about exploration and creativity and discovery. And, you know, I always say to the discovery people, the constructivists out there who, who believe that learning is all discovery based, and what universe should a third grader be able to discover what it's taken human beings 10s of 1000s of years to discover about fractions. Kids need explicit instruction, we have a lot to teach, we have very little time to teach it, they're not going to discover fractions on their own, and discovering them on their own doesn't make it better. What they need to do is they need to learn what we already know. They need to learn that well, so that they can be fluid enough to make the new discoveries of stuff we don't know. Why do we need them to rediscover what we already know, we need to tell them that we need to tell them, they need to practice it until we they can do it without us tell them so that then all of these very competent, fluid kids who are fluid in what we've already discovered, as human beings can go out and discover what we have not discovered. The whole belief that somehow directly and explicitly teaching kids something devalues that is tragic, not and also it's scientifically contraindicated. It's a tragedy. Every one like I am a classical guitarist. And by the way, I apply this science to my classical guitar practice. I record my practice sessions daily, I measure and I go in, I score my practices for count correct per minute, count errors per minute, and I make decisions about my practice. From my learning charts. I apply behavior science to my practice of classical guitar. So I also practice what I preach. I have mentors, I have coaches telling me how to do stuff, telling me I learned from the greats I learned from the best I learned from the already proficient people. Am I supposed to figure out how to play the classical guitar on my own? And if I did it, there's that devalues my experience as a classical guitarist. Are you kidding me? No, I don't want to figure that out. People have already figured out really cool ways of like sliding from one chord to the next better. I want to learn how they what they figured out and I'm going to do that. I mean, it just makes no sense that somehow explicitly constructing stuff devalues it, it's wrong. And if it was right, we will be doing a lot better as an educational. And we're not. I mean, 70% of kids can't read or do math is not is not working. It's not working.
Alexander Sarlin: 58:24
I hear you. I hear you. It's great to hear such a full throated defense. No, I like it. So we always end with two questions. We're coming on the end of our time, I'm going to add a resource that I love to your resource recommendations that some of the things we're seeing remind me of. But first off, what is the most exciting trend that you see in the education technology landscape, right now that you think our listeners should keep an eye on?
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 58:48
Well, I mean, unfortunately, I really kind of hate all the trends, because it's all a lot of fads. It's all a lot of the same stuff that doesn't work in classrooms done in fancy techy ways. But I will say, you know, the move to virtual instruction, I think is unbelievably powerful. Because, as we know, more than 80% of American children need or have received tutoring. And we know that high quality tutoring is the number one way to remediate learning loss from COVID. And from poor instruction in the classroom. Not saying it's all tutoring, there's a lot of tutoring, that doesn't work. But high quality evidence based tutoring is unbelievably effective. And the fact that now there are virtual platforms happening so that kids can access that easily. It's really amazing. I have to say, anyone listening? Are you familiar with pearl? Tutoring? No. So Pearl is a platform. And I just love these people. They aren't a tutoring company, per se. They provide the most amazing platform for virtual tutors. So it's really tutors can become Perl users. So they're really a tech platform. It's really like a step above zoom, more than one step above zoom. But it's like an unbelievable platform where you can do classrooms, groups, whiteboards, you can it's just all so much easier than that Zoom. And I think it's really a great benefit for schools and for tutors. Because look, you know, unfortunately, with climate change and where we're heading, there's likely we're gonna have more situations where schools are closed, and kids are going to have to be on virtual instruction. So schools need to be able to access really innovative platforms that work and that are effective and so I love companies like Perl who are putting together really effective virtual platforms for tutoring. So I have to say, you know, I would say pearls kind of my crush right now on on the Ed Tech side?
Alexander Sarlin: 1:00:54
No, that's fantastic. And I'm doing some live research as you talk about this. And I should know about Perl I connected to the sea. And some of the companies that use them I'm very familiar with. But yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm always interested in new at tech tools, especially really amazing ones. And then the last question is, what is a book or newsletter podcast, any kind of resource that you would recommend for people to go deeper? And we'll definitely include a link to that project follow through historic document. That's really interesting. But what else would you recommend?
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 1:01:25
So my book, but besides my book, I cannot I cannot emphasize enough that everyone should read a book called Peak. So peak was written by one of my mentors, and unfortunately, he passed away right around COVID, not from COVID. But peak is about how to build expert performers. So it's Anders Ericsson. And then he also partners up with Robert pool, who's a science writer, and Anders Ericsson, his entire career was based on studying expertise and debunking the myth of talent, which is so my bag. Now he didn't come from the behavioral science perspective, he came from it from a different perspective, but it's irrelevant to me because his book is so perfect around understanding the importance of what he calls deliberate, purposeful practice. And that's, you know, deliberate, purposeful practice is literally what we are, like, amazing at learning. And so I really cannot emphasize enough how amazing that book is. Everyone should read that book. It's,
Alexander Sarlin: 1:02:30
it is amazing. And it's actually funny. The resource I was going to recommend is a very closely related it's the book talent is overrated. Oh, yes. Yeah, it's a great one. Exactly, which is all about Anders Ericsson research. It's all about deliberate practice. It actually came out before peak and it was about music and athletics and some of the domains you've talked about here. And it was sort of an attempted like a Malcolm Gladwell ish attempt to make Anders Erickson's research more accessible. And then he wrote his own book. So yeah, we're definitely, we're definitely chasing the same rainbow here. It is really, really exciting to hear this stuff being put into action in such a deliberate and thoughtful way. And I hope that, you know, coming out of this academy out of this conversation, you get a whole bunch of incoming partners and suggestions and ideas and ways to collaborate with fit learning. And with all the things that you've discovered, it is really interesting. And of course, we will put a link to not only peek by Anders Ericsson, but also blind spots, by Kimberly Nix Berens, it's called blind spots, why students fail and the science that can save them, it's been a real pleasure talking to you, I love your passion for learning and learning science, unparalleled.
Dr. Kimberly Nix Berens: 1:03:41
Oh, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And look, I'm going to say one more thing. You know, we are, as I say, in my book, you know, we are facing a pretty bleak future right now with the way education is going with our political system with our climate. You know, if there's ever been a time for us to come together and agree that science is the answer to solving major problems, Now is that time and education is the area where that is really important. And understanding what that means, again, evidence based from the social science perspective versus evidence based from the natural science perspective, where every single learner is having that opportunity to have their behavior measured and be evaluated from the scientific perspective. And technology can help teachers be able to do that so that we can be more precise with our instruction with the help of technology. I mean, that's the key. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.
Alexander Sarlin: 1:04:41
It's an exciting vision of the future and AI, I think can make it really, really possible. Thanks so much for being here with us. Dr. Kimbrough the next barons, blind spots the science of learning why students fail and why the science that can save them is out now. Thanks so much for being here with us on edtech insiders. Thank you. Thanks for listening to this episode of edtech insiders. If you liked the podcast, remember to rate it and share it with others in the EdTech community. For those who want even more and Tech Insider, subscribe to the free edtech insiders newsletter on substack.