A prediction I didn’t take seriously enough

I once read an article on a train that seemed so radical and so ahead of its time that it influenced the way I saw academic work. Back then, the prospect of ‘Big Data Analytics’ was a speck on the horizon galloping towards us. The logical possibility that we’d no longer need to build a theory, test it and analyse the data for statistical significance in educational research seemed inevitable. Instead, big data would tell us in real time what was happening, the proviso being that the research question was well-structured. Under these conditions, I expected the proliferation of data would overtake the thoughtful processes of academic work.

More intriguing still was the prediction that algorithms would compete for human attention as a commodity. It seemed far-fetched and I struggled to imagine that people could lose control of their attention to such an extent. Looking back now, I had underestimated the situation.

The interesting aspect is our freedom to choose. If our curiosity is nudged on repeat, resistance gives way and we seek the answer to the provocation. The other side to this is that people pay to watch a film in a cinema and have our attention, our emotions, our memories, our empathy ‘entertained’ and we emerge from the darkened room a little disoriented for a short while, but with plenty to discuss.

In my opinion, there are many differences, but in both situations, once our curiosity is activated it’s difficult to deny the ‘need to know’ as a basic impulse. Perhaps our curiosity helps to keep us healthy and sharpens our discernment. The ‘need to know’ is only one form of learning and it usually involves a very short term span of attention, and is more intense when experienced with urgency, for example when we’ve misplaced something important.

Two types of attention in a primary classroom

Inside a primary classroom, where children are engaged in early reading, quick fire responses are effective. The children respond with sounds and hand signals in multi sensory teaching. Embodied learning helps young children encode the association between each phoneme and grapheme. It’s systematic and fast-paced with more than 40 sounds. The goal is automatisation so that the children can respond accurately without even needing to think about it when they decode and recognise words on the page. This approach is repeated with older children if they are not reading well. I have visited secondary schools where Year 8 students received targeted phonics support.

A rhythm-based view of reading extends and supplements phonics because sensitivity to rhythmic precision can bring sensitivity to phonological awareness. Both rhythm and phonemes are heard and spoken. We must use our voices and our hearing and perhaps gestures too. Of course we are discussing our communication system here and when we are reading, our vision is also involved - ears, eyes and voices.

We know that communication between people is complex, nuanced and often vibrant and energised. A person using informal language at a phonemic level of a vowel digraph and a vowel sound to attract the attention of another is communicating emphasis: “Oy You!”

We’d read this as part of a story but not on its own. Indeed, phonemes are very short. In terms of early reading development, the ‘end’ must justify the ‘means’, even though the children’s attention has been trained to respond to the smallest units of language in a fast-paced sequence.

In day to day interactions, phrases, sentences, dialogues, stories, songs, rhymes and jokes bring variety to the way we socialise. If we think about our attention it’s quite effortless, and serves us as we follow another’s line of thought, as we interact, listen, respond and reciprocate. The timing of a conversation is flexible but also instinctual, with a structure that maintains a predictable rhythmic to and fro between people. Our attention flows with the structure and helps to keep the flow of the conversation moving along.

When children learn to read, the print on the page, set out in horizontal lines appears linear. But language isn’t linear. It’s wavelike and flows in cycles. Natural phrases that people utter differ in their shape and length, and when printed on the page, a fluent reader is guided by their natural language instinct to follow these curves, as supported and guided by their attention.

This brings me back to watching the movie in the cinema. The characters command our empathy as we follow their conversations and complex experiences until it is as if they were taking place in a real life close encounter. This takes place to such an extent that we are willing to suspend our own reality and submit to the experience of the movie for its entire duration. If our attention is captured for nearly two hours by a narrative that does not resolve until the end, this is very different to two hours of clickbait in which our attention supports disconnected short-lived moments of humour or, fear or shock in varying sequences that seem to make the ‘need to know’ stronger than ever.

When cinemas were designed, the movie makers knew that they needed the audience to feel centred, steady and calm. The wait in the darkness for the film to start helps us to let go of everything else in our lives so that we are ready to engage with the movie. Something similar happens when a child reads. The lines of print begin to flow when attention settles and the reader is no longer bracing for the next word. This type of attention supports the way we engage with the ‘big picture’, the narrative arc, the overarching structure, the unfolding plot whether of movies or fiction. In day to day life the plot is our own story and the stories of those closest to us, but reading allows us to engage with the author so closely, that their story can become our story for a while.

Short bursts and sustained spans: a continuum

I’ve described shorter and longer attention spans. Both can be trained at any stage of life as our behaviour can become a habit if its repeated. Behaviour involving a short burst of attention can be repeated more easily and compulsively than behaviour involving more sustained bursts of attention.

Habits involving sustained attention include not being able to put a book down because it is so enthralling, not being able to stop gardening because it is so centring, not being able to stop playing an instrument because it is so satisfying. Getting ‘lost’ in these activities is pleasurable because reading, gardening and playing an instrument are habits involving skill, experience and confidence. Habits involving short bursts of attention are different in kind. They are quick to establish, easy to repeat, and they ask very little of us each time.

As we can see from these contrasts, attention supports both sustained behaviour and bursts of repeated behaviour in short spans. These are extremes of a continuum. Attention can be trained to be flexible and to respond to complex, dynamic situations and varying demands, just as it can be trained to respond to simple behaviours on repeat.

Reading well is a feat of flexible responsive attention, requiring delicate coordination between the reader’s eyes, ears and mind in a social alignment with the voice of the author. Rhythm carries much of the grammatical structure of a sentence. The reader who can anticipate the shape of a sentence has a head start on its meaning.

Lower-attaining readers who need targeted support often receive more of the short-span work and less of the sustained kind. In my professional judgement, they need both.

Vigilant attention and rhythmic attention

Repeated, short spans of attention are associated with vigilance, bracing for a threat, and checking that everything is okay. Flexible, responsive spans of attention that anticipate what is coming up next are associated with rhythmic attention. In my experience, children can begin to move from vigilant to rhythmic attention. This is what the rhythm-based reading intervention, Rhythm for Reading, was built to support. Its resources provide structures that support longer attention spans, anticipation and flexibility.

Digital technology shapes the attention many children bring with them to school. Knowing the difference between vigilant and rhythmic attention gives teachers something concrete to work with, and gives children a way to recognise what their own attention is doing.

What to listen for when a child reads aloud

When children read single words, they only need a short attention span, but when they read connected text, it’s possible to hear how well they are coping with varied lengths and shapes of phrases and sentences, and the extent to which they understand what they read.

In only five minutes per pupil, a teacher can record fluency using the Reading Fluency Tracker. We are not only listening for words. We are listening for phrases and sentences, the rise and fall of the voice, the expression that shows that meaning has landed and that the child anticipates each sentence as it unfolds and resolves.

Download the reading fluency tracker here. and get a free training