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There are many reasons why students get distracted so easily and frequently. It's a combination of biological, psychological and environmental factors that all play a role. Understanding why and how your students get distracted can allow you to adopt strategies to minimise distractions and their impact on your students' learning.

Let's break down why this happens and how to combat it by looking at:

What causes distraction in students

3 factors that influence attention span

The impact of distractions on learning

4 strategies for teachers to help students focus

What causes distraction in students?

Students' distractibility can be attributed to the brain region responsible for focus and attention which is still developing at that age. Immature cognitive control makes children more susceptible to distractions, as their brains are in the process of acquiring the necessary skills to maintain sustained focus.

Attention is a key aspect in understanding focus and concentration within the classroom, broken into two types:

1. Voluntary attention - Where you are able to perform a task by selecting relevant information and filtering out irrelevant information.

2. Involuntary attention - Processing unexpected stimuli within your environment, leading to distractions.

Research found that distractibility changes as we age due to a shift in balance between voluntary and involuntary attention. As children grow older, their brain matures and their attention span increases. However, it does not reach full maturity until around 25 years of age.

Considering this, research has suggested that distractibility is an "attention state" where the likelihood of interference of attention is determined by the ability to filter out irrelevant stimuli and information.

However, age and neural connections are not the only factors that influence attention span. Others include:

- Chaotic, noisy environments can cause sensory overload, leading to distraction. children who spend more time outside are less anxious and better at paying attention when they return back to their learning environment.Research suggests that

The impact of distractions on learning

A short attention span can have a significant impact on the learning process. When children struggle to maintain focus, they may find it challenging to comprehend new concepts, resulting in reduced self-confidence. Research also found that visual attention span can significantly affect students' reading performance.

This can ultimately lead to a negative attitude towards education, perceiving it as a stressful and unenjoyable process, which can further hinder their learning journey. Addressing and supporting students with short attention spans can help them fully engage with their education and develop a more positive learning experience.

4 strategies to help your students focus

So, how does understanding the causes and impact of student distractibility translate into practice?

This is something we explore a lot in our Concentration Training student workshop. Here is a flavour of some tips that can help reduce distractions and increase your students' attention:

, eat a healthy breakfast before the school day and engage in regular physical activity.Promote healthy habits - Encourage students to get enough quality sleep

Final thoughts

Students' distractibility is a complex issue that poses many challenges. However, understanding its causes and effects can equip you with effective strategies to combat it and ultimately enhance your students' learning experience. This can even make the learning process more enjoyable for both you and your students.

However, every child is unique. What may work for one might not work for another. So, keep experimenting and searching for methods that best suit you and your students.

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Students may be easily distracted, which can negatively impact their learning. We explore the causes plus give four strategies to help students concentrate

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Having watched the keynote presentation for researchED Surrey by Mark Enser, one of the key points that was made, was in relation to Mike Hobbiss' post ​'Pay attention! Why I think it is important to study attention in school children'. Before reading on, please read Hobbiss' post in its entirety.

The phrase that stood out was ​' Attention is the gateway to cognition'. Hobbiss wasn't the first to coin the phrase, and it appears that the first mention of this phrase was in a paper titled ​'The role of attention in creating a cognitive system. An International Workshop on Attention in Cognitive Systems' (Taylor, J.G; 2007). The phrase makes concrete what is is actually somewhat obvious: that if students aren't concentrating and are not giving learning their full attention, then their ability to understand the content will be impacted.

Hobbiss makes the following summary points with regards to student attention:

1. Attention is the gateway to memory... and everything else!

2. Attention directly impacts school attainment across the whole spectrum - not just at the lowest end

3. Attention may mediate other key variables which contribute to school success

4. Attention skills likely impact on our happiness

For cognition to be effective, students need to be paying attention to instructions, explanations, questioning phases, live modelling and scaffolding opportunities to have the level of understanding of the content to allow them to do the best they can in lessons. It reads quite simply, but getting students to focus their attention on the learning for the entirety of a lesson is complex, and requires a knowledge and understanding of effective expert teaching. From student reports, the three highest factors that cause inattention in the classroom are: (Hobbiss, 2019)

It is therefore pivotal to minimise students having opportunities to be distracted by other students, students need to be challenged to participate and think continuously to stop the mind wandering, and learning conditions in classrooms need to be managed carefully. Indeed, in the recent ​'Great Teaching Evidence Review' by Best Evidence in Education, two of the core areas for teachers to put their efforts into to maximise improvement in teacher effectiveness are; ​maximising opportunity to learn' and ​'activating hard thinking'.

The rest of this post looks at potential strategies that can we use in the classroom to ensure that students are paying attention. It is obligatory that we focus on aspects of classroom practice that we as teachers can control. Whilst we cannot control external factors that could lead to mind wandering, we can put in place strategies that make this less likely to occur.

Routines that have been taught to students and practised until they are always followed allow students to know what is expected of them and can focus on content, allowing their thought process to be on the learning, than having to think about what is expected of them/​what they should be doing. When students have a strong understanding of what is expected of them throughout aspects of the lesson, lesson time and therefore learning time is maximised.

Teachers can build routines for many aspects of classroom practice:

● How students enter the classroom

● Under what conditions the first task is carried out

● How a teacher gains whole-class attention

● How students should participate in paired discussion

● How students should work during independent practice

● How students should listen during question and answer phases

● How a teacher transitions from the instructional phase to students working

● Using questioning strategies such as ​cold call', ​no opt out' and ​'right is right'

● How students exit the classroom

Do students enter your classroom with purpose, with sole attention on the first task? To ensure that inattention isn't an issue at the very start of lessons, students need to be taught, how you as the teacher, expect them to enter and expect them to undertake the first task. Is there a consistent approach to the first task, that allows students to focus their attention on learning, rather than having to think about what the task is asking of them? When students have had the methodology and reasoning behind a similar first task explained to them, perhaps in relation to theory on retrieval practice, through interleaving and spaced practice, there is a shared understanding within the room as to why the first task is set as it is. Students know that they are challenging themselves to remember learning that has happened, and will be referred to during the lesson, and therefore there is a collective understanding of the importance of the task being carried out under silent conditions, to allow individual students to check their understanding of content. A simple strategy to put in place is a ​Do Now' activity, that is retrieval based. The more complex task is to explain to students the reasoning behind this, and to then practice and insist upon the conditions being conducive to students checking their understanding. A consistent ​'Do Now' methodology that students are expecting upon entry supports the strategy to reduce inattention.

Inattention is further reduced if there is a slick method for gaining whole-class attention. I have written more about a potential strategy (STAR) here. If the three highest factors for students being inattentive are the interaction with other people, mind wandering and background noise, then an approach to gaining whole-class attention that works quickly is critical. However, for it to work it has to have been explained to students why it is important and it has to have been practised to the point where students always get it right. With this in place all transitions between a teacher talking and students working are slick, maximising learning opportunities and reducing the likelihood of inattention.

Inattention is further reduced if teachers focus on their instructional phase and explanation phase of lessons. Explanation needs to be clear, concise and build upon student's prior understanding or schema. If we are to reduce the likelihood of students' minds wandering, it is critical that any explanations are planned to allow students to focus their attention solely on what the teacher needs them to focus upon. Too easily teachers go off at tangents, or add in excess information, that in all probability will lead to some students losing their attention. The rest of this post could be written on how to explain clearly and concisely to support student's cognitive load, but to read more widely on the subject, please find more information here. Alongside great explanations, teachers must have a strong understanding of their subject, ensuring that common misconceptions are planned for, and that content is sequenced in a manner that supports students' schema. Inattention is reduced if students clearly understand the content, and avoiding the curse of knowledge. This is when a teacher forgets how challenging the content was to learn as a novice the first time around, and assumes a level of knowledge from the students, rather than finding out the level of knowledge and breaking it down and sequencing accordingly.

Slick transitions that explicitly set expectations of the work and of the learning environment during the task also reduce the likelihood of students losing attention. Too often the transitions between a teacher-led part of a lesson and students working aren't explicit enough. This leads to chances of student's mind's wandering, and for background noise to creep up. A strategy that supports teachers being more explicit with their transitions is a ​Teach Like a Champion' technique known as ​'Brighten Lines'. Transitions need to be visible and crisp. I use the COTS acronym to ensure that transitions are crisp and explicit.

● Conditions

● Outcome

● Time

● Support

1. Explicitly state the conditions you expect students to be working in. Is the task an independent task, a paired discussion, a group task? It is important to mention at this point that as a teacher we should never assume that students understand how to work independently in silence, how to have a paired discussion and how to work as a group, and that all three options should be explicitly modelled to students and practised so that students know exactly what is expected of them for each type of task, allowing students the chance to focus on the learning, rather than what is expected of them. This minimises inattention opportunity from background noise, mind wandering and other people.

2. Clearly show/​state the outcome of the task. Provide written cues or chunked instructions that go alongside a verbal instruction/​explanation for students to refer back to. Outcomes could be as simple as ​'after the paired discussion I expect three written bullet points' ready for any of you to feedback. Explicitly stating the outcome allows students to focus solely on what they need to do to meet that, rather than trying to work out what is expected of them, perhaps leading to inattention. through discussion with others.

3. Time-bonding the task not only sets high expectations, but reduces the chances of students going off task. Setting tasks for a shorter period of time than expected allows the teacher to manage any issues with inattention, and ensures there isn't a period of time when some students have completed a task and are waiting. This is especially true for paired-discussion.

4. Support/​struggle - make it clear what students are to do if they need support.

Finally, before setting the students off, check the students understanding of the task through a cold call question on each of the aspects from the acronym, and then have a clear ​'go' signal that is rehearsed and planned to again create a crisp and visible start to the task. Through checking that all students have understood the task, the conditions, the time, the outcome and what to do if they are struggling, inattention during the task is reduced, as the task has been set in a manner that supports students' cognitive load.

Lastly, one of the most important strategies a teacher can work on to reduce inattention in lessons is increasing ratio: specifically the ratio at which students are participating and thinking hard in lessons. If the ratio of both of these aspects is very high, then we as teachers can have strong confidence that attention is focused upon the learning. Building ratio can be done through several strategies:

1. Cold call/​wait time - is when a teacher asks a question and then pauses before saying the name of the student they wish to answer the question. This increases thinking ratio as it stops students switching off or zoning out and not listening to the question when they hear the name first, before the question. Providing wait time prior to saying the name of the student you wish to answer the question allows students to think about their answer, increasing thinking ratio.

2. No Opt Out - is when a teacher doesn't accept an answer such as ​I don't know' and will hold the student accountable to coming to the correct answer through providing cues or listening to the correct answer as it is teased out of fellow students. For the latter, through returning to the original student who said ​I don't know' and asking them to repeat the answer or develop the answer further, there is accountability on the student to continue to participate and think during the questioning phase, thus reducing inattention and mind-wandering that can happen when a student simply states ​'I don't know' or similar to a question.

3. Everybody writes - is when a teachers asks all students to write down an answer at the same time, and then can use cold call to get a response. This ensures that all students are participating with the question and have an answer to hand if needed. Again this increases participation ratio and thinking ratio, reducing the likelihood of inattention.

4. Write/​think/​pair/​share - similar to above and a little different to the well known think/​pair/​share, is to get students to commit an answer in writing first, before then going into the think/​pair/​share discussion, thus ensuring that all students participate and think, again increasing the ratio of both

5. Mini whiteboards - using mini whiteboards and asking students to show their responses as a class ensures that students all participate with the questions. A minor challenge here is to create a routine that ensures that students aren't checking what their peers have written and they are solely focusing on their answer. Again this raises participation and thinking ratio. put together a fantastic presentation for researchED Norwich on ​'ratio' and this is a must watch to reduce inattention through other people, mind wandering and background noise. The video can be found here.

Whilst there are aspects of students' inattention that we cannot control due to external factors, the strategies above show that there are lots of aspects of effective classroom practice that allow us to control the likelihood of students becoming inattentive in lessons and what we can do to minimise this, maximising opportunities to learn and activate hard thinking.
Jack Tavassoly-Marsh
ELE, Durrington Research School

Deputy Headteacher, Farnham Heath End School

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Durrington Research School, part of the Research School Network

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Abstract

Attention is thought to be the gateway between information and learning, yet there is much we do not understand about how students pay attention in the classroom. Leveraging ideas from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, we explore a framework for understanding attention in the classroom, organized along two key dimensions: internal/external attention and on-topic/off-topic attention. This framework helps us to build new theories for why active-learning strategies are effective teaching tools and how synchronized brain activity across students in a classroom may support learning. These ideas suggest new ways of thinking about how attention functions in the classroom and how different approaches to the same active-learning strategy may vary in how effectively they direct students' attention. We hypothesize that some teaching approaches are more effective than others because they leverage natural fluctuations in students' attention. We conclude by discussing implications for teaching and opportunities for future research.

INTRODUCTION

Imagine a spotlight on a large stage that represents your attention. Not everything on the crowded stage can fit within your spotlight of attention at all times, so some selection must be made for what is most important. If we move beyond simply asking whether that spotlight is turned on or turned off, we can start to think about what that spotlight is focused on at a given moment and ask questions about how the spotlight came to be focused where it is. In fact, the possibility still remains open that the spotlight never really "turns off" anyway; our attention is always somewhere, though it may not always be on the text we are staring at (take note of how many times your attention shifts away while reading this article). In fact, shifts of attention toward off-task internal thoughts, known as mind-wandering, are estimated to occur during 10-60% of waking hours ( Seli et al., 2018), comprising a substantial portion of our conscious experience.

How do you know whether your students are "paying attention" in class? Although it may seem obvious in some cases (e.g., you see a sleeping student), it may be much more challenging to tell in other cases. When students stare off into space, are they considering the material you just presented? Are they thinking of questions or applying the concepts you described to new scenarios? Are they considering what to have for lunch? Thinking back to your own experience as a student, what was going through your mind during class? Was it challenging for you to focus on an instructor during a lecture?

Many types of attention are occurring in classrooms all the time, and fluctuations between external attention (e.g., on the instructor's voice) and internal attention (e.g., connecting new material to prior knowledge) may be more beneficial for learning than we might have assumed. Here, we describe a framework for categorizing and understanding different types of attention in the classroom, formulated across two key dimensions: external/internal and on-topic/off-topic. These dimensions are described in greater detail in the following sections. Anchored in this framework, we can hypothesize about why active-learning strategies may be effective, and how different active-learning approaches may differ in how they guide students' attention. Given that attention is essential for learning and memory ( Baddeley et al., 1984; Craik et al., 1996; Muzzio et al., 2009), it follows that a more nuanced understanding of attention in the classroom could help us better characterize the many ways that students learn or become distracted. Specifically, we hypothesize that teaching strategies that leverage the natural fluctuations of attention described here may yield better learning outcomes.

HOW MIGHT DIFFERENT TEACHING STRATEGIES LEVERAGE STUDENTS' ATTENTION?

There is ample evidence that teaching methods that include some form of active learning (e.g., think-pair-share, group discussions) can produce superior learning gains compared with lecture-only teaching methods (e.g., Freeman , 2014). But how? And why does the impact of active learning appear to vary across classrooms and instructors? Although there has been relatively little research investigating the mechanisms leading to active-learning outcomes, some potential hypotheses have been offered. One possibility is that instructors act as "cognitive coaches" during active learning, structuring opportunities for exploration, confusion, and resolution that directly lead to more student learning in class. Another possibility is that active-learning classrooms provide more opportunities for social interaction among students that could result in increased social networks among students and indirectly more out-of-class learning. Like most complex phenomena, the underlying mechanisms of the positive effects of active-learning strategies are likely multiple, involving both of these ideas and many more.

An alternative hypothesis for why active-learning strategies are more effective than lecturing is that they leverage natural fluctuations in students' attention. Throughout this feature, we will explore the idea that teaching strategies that actively guide shifts in students' attention yield better learning outcomes than those that ignore attentional fluctuations.

Consider the following four scenarios and notice the subtly different ways in which a clicker question-a commonly used active-learning strategy-might be implemented in a classroom. Take note of where and how students' attention may be directed at each point in time.

Scenario 1: Prioritized Lecturing

The instructor lectures for 40 minutes, then shows a clicker question at the end of class to check students' comprehension of the material. Because time is short, the instructor simply reads the question and asks students to think about it before the next class.

Scenario 2: Multiple Demands on Attention

The instructor shows a clicker question and asks students to turn to a neighbor to discuss which answer they would choose and why. The classroom is briefly quiet and a slow rise in noise occurs as pairs and groups of students begin talking. As students are discussing, the instructor shouts to them that they should click in as they talk and projects the graphic results live on the screen. Some students hear this instruction, while others do not. Some students notice the changing graph on the screen and appear to be shifting their answers in response. Upon seeing that half the class has weighed in, the instructor begins analyzing the results for the class.

Scenario 3: Focusing on the Grade

The instructor shows a clicker question and asks the class to be silent for 2 minutes to read the question, consider their own ideas, and click in a response. The instructor reminds students that correct responses will receive full credit and incorrect responses partial credit. As the quiet passes and the number of student responses is maximized, the instructor proceeds to share the correct answer with students along with an explanation about why each of the other answer choices is wrong.

Scenario 4: Orchestrated Attention

The instructor shows a clicker question and asks the class to be silent for 2 minutes to read the question, consider their own ideas, and click in a response. As the quiet passes and the number of student responses is maximized, the instructor observes the classroom. After students have clicked in, the instructor asks students to turn to a neighbor to discuss which answer they would choose and why, instructing the student with the longest hair to speak first and for each student to spend ∼30 seconds explaining his or her answer choice. Just before students begin to talk, the instructor assures the class that getting the correct answer is not important, but rather hearing a colleague's explanation and sharing one's own is the point. After pair discussions have wrapped up and the instructor has offered some additional information relevant to the question at hand, students are invited to reconsider the question and click in an answer again.

As we describe the following framework for conceptualizing attention in the classroom, keep these example scenarios in mind. We will return to these scenarios later to unpack how each one might direct students' attention in different ways.

A FRAMEWORK FOR UNDERSTANDING ATTENTION IN THE CLASSROOM

For decades, researchers have tried to understand exactly what attention is, and how to categorize its various subtypes. Some researchers categorize attention as either top-down (i.e., endogenous, volitional) or bottom-up (i.e., exogenous, automatic; Posner and Cohen, 1984), while others think about goal-directed attention as being selective, sustained, or divided ( McDowd, 2007). Others make use of Posner's tripartite model of attention, which emphasizes distinctions among alerting, orienting, and executive attention ( Posner and Petersen, 1990). Chun et al. (2011) put forward one such taxonomy of attention that may be particularly useful for understanding attention in the classroom; it is rooted in the distinction between internally focused and externally focused attention. Acknowledging the many possible ways to consider different types of attention, our goal here is to understand classroom learning. As such, we have chosen to focus on two key dimensions that readily delineate attention in the classroom: 1) internal/external attention ( Chun et al., 2011), and 2) on-topic/off-topic attention, each of which is described below (see Figure 1 ).

External attention, often referred to as perceptual attention, is described by Chun et al. (2011) as the selection and modulation of sensory information. When you stare out into a crowded city street looking for a taxi, your brain is able to filter out irrelevant information and heighten your focus on large, yellow, moving objects to reach your goal. Research on external attention has shown that the brain has methods of both boosting signals representing relevant information and suppressing signals representing irrelevant information, functions that are critical for navigating our crowded, complex environments. Only a tiny portion of what our eyes see in the world is actually consciously perceived by our brains, and without this ability to filter sensory information, we may be unable to focus on what is important amid sensory overload.

In contrast to external attention, internal attention is described as the selection and modulation of internally generated information, such as the contents of memory. While external attention allows us to sample new sensory information from the environment, internal attention lets us process information even in the absence of sensory stimuli. For example, even without looking at the text on this page, you could be thinking about this new concept of internal attention, perhaps recalling memories of your own experiences in the classroom or coming up with a mnemonic device to help you remember this taxonomy.

Additionally, in the context of classrooms, attention can be directed toward course-relevant (on-topic) information or not-course-relevant (off-topic) information. In most cases, the distinction between on-topic and off-topic attention is relatively clear. For example, examining a diagram on a handout would be considered on-topic attention, while making a mental list of groceries would be considered off-topic attention. However, there may be other scenarios in which the distinction between on- and off-topic attention is less clear, such as when a student recalls information learned in another course that might lead to the realization of important cross-disciplinary connections. Moreover, defining a particular internal thought or external stimulus as on- or off-topic may depend on one's perspective as student or instructor. For our purposes, we will consider more overt examples of on-topic attention that are directly tied to content learning, while acknowledging that many forms of non-content related attention may still be important and in the service of student learning (e.g., an instructor talking about his or her pathway into science).

By considering external/internal attention and on-topic/off-topic attention as two orthogonal dimensions, we propose that classroom attention can be categorized into four quadrants (see Figure 1 ). Using this framework, we move beyond the assumption that on-topic attention is necessarily external and provide insight into the types of internally focused experiences that may facilitate learning. In the following sections, we describe what attention looks like in each of the four quadrants of Figure 1 and provide connections between active areas of research and the classroom.

On-Topic External Attention

When you notice a student with eye gaze locked on your PowerPoint slides, nodding occasionally, posture maintained, you may feel a sense of relief and assume that this student is clearly "paying attention" in the colloquial sense. One might assume that this student is the most engaged and the most likely to retain the information being conveyed, as he or she portrays the ways we have been socialized to show that we are engaged. Certainly, by focusing eye gaze on slides and listening actively to an instructor's voice, one might maximize the brain's ability to take in new information. But is it always the case that this is most beneficial for learning? Perhaps our assumption that eye contact is a natural and comfortable way to engage attentively does not hold for all students equally.

Cognitive science research on memory and attention suggests that diligently going through lecture slides and rereading material over and over the night before an exam may allow for short-term recall but does not foster long-term memory or understanding ( Capeda et al., 2006). Instead, deeper processing of the material, tying new material to prior knowledge, and actively retrieving information from memory seem to be more effective for long-term learning. Perhaps, then, external on-topic attention in the classroom is necessary but not sufficient for effective learning. This may provide some explanation for why lecture yields inferior learning compared with even the most modest active-learning approaches ( Freeman et al., 2014). If so, then it makes sense to balance out pedagogical techniques that emphasize external attention (lecture slides, videos, etc.) with other techniques, as discussed in the section On-Topic Internal Attention.

On-Topic Internal Attention

Thinking beyond the idea of "paying attention" and trying to understand, in particular, what students are "paying attention to" may allow us to better conceptualize what is happening in students' brains during a class session as they form complex networks of understanding. When a student's gaze drifts away from the lecture slides, it is not necessarily the case that the students' attention is now off-topic. On the contrary, it seems likely that moments of prompted quiet thinking time are beneficial for learning ( Owens et al., 2017).

Evidence supporting this idea comes readily from research demonstrating the utility of active-learning practices in the classroom ( Tanner, 2013; Johnson et al., 1991, 1998; Goodwin et al., 1991), particularly those that allow students a chance to think, digest new information, identify their confusions, or connect new concepts with what is already known. For example, the "think" phase of a think-pair-share activity is likely crucial to allow students to contemplate the question at hand before discussing with their colleagues. These forms of on-topic, internally focused attention are perhaps just as important for learning as on-topic, externally focused attention. Additionally, on-topic internal attention can allow students the chance to practice metacognition, that is, reflecting on their own thinking and learning ( Tanner, 2012).

Off-Topic External Attention

A clock ticks, a pencil taps, a truck starts blaring its backup signal outside. All sorts of external stimuli can grab our attention automatically, often beyond our ability to control it. Amid so many possible distractions, it is actually astonishing that our brains are able to maintain focus on goal-relevant information (e.g., listening to an instructor's voice). Usefully, this ability to focus does not prevent us from noticing the sudden appearance of potentially threatening information. The classic example used is that of a hunter-gatherer searching for tiny berries in a bush. To survive effectively, the searcher must maintain sharp focus on the goal-relevant information (round red objects) but not so focused that they do not notice the preying tiger. For students in a classroom, the threat of tigers may not be so dire, but sudden noises or changes in environmental stimuli could be indicative of useful information that is worth a shift in attention.

Recent work shows that four times every second our brains shift between a state of sharp focus and a state of broad awareness of our surroundings ( Fiebelkorn et al., 2018; Fiebelkorn and Kastner, 2019). We obviously do not consciously switch our attention to new external stimuli that frequently, but our brains do seem to give us the option to switch attention that often, a capability that likely evolved under evolutionary pressures to stay alert while maintaining what feels to us like continuous, steady focus. In the classroom, there may be ways that we can optimize on-topic attention by continuously drawing attention back to the material when distractions arise (for more on shifting attention, see How Instructors May Leverage Attention).

Off-Topic Internal Attention

Similarly to how loud noises can draw our attention externally, salient internal experiences can draw attention internally. Suppose a student has a family member in the hospital for surgery today. As much as the student tries to volitionally direct attention toward a lecture slide or worksheet, the student's attention may be drawn back to the topic of his or her family member repeatedly over the course of the class session. Sometimes, off-topic thoughts, worries, or ruminations take priority over on-topic information, and our brains are well adapted to redirect our focus toward those high-priority thoughts. Maybe the student who appears to be "zoning out" is actually rehearsing material for another course, or stressed about an exam next period. Off-topic, internal attention can come from many sources and can be difficult to identify or act upon.

As noted before, mind-wandering makes up a substantial part of our day-to-day lives. Off-topic mind-wandering may sometimes be distracting, resulting in poorer task performance, decreased learning, lower grade point average, poorer memory for lecture material, and less motivation to learn ( Risko et al., 2012; Randall et al., 2014; Wammes et al., 2016; Unsworth and McMillan, 2017). However, off-topic mind-wandering could potentially provide a useful source of material for more creative thinking and reflection, perhaps allowing students to bring new ideas and perspectives to the topic at hand. It is important to note that studies have investigated both intentional and unintentional mind-wandering ( Robison et al., 2020), because these off-topic thoughts may not always be under conscious control. By understanding the ubiquity of mind-wandering in the classroom, one can think more carefully about the many possible ways to guide students' attention in the classroom, as discussed in How Instructors May Leverage Attention.

One well-documented source of impaired performance in the classroom ( Shih et al., 1999) is stereotype threat, which occurs when one is at risk of confirming a negative stereotype about one's social group ( Steele and Aronson, 1995). Recent theories have posited that stereotype threat yields under performance by sapping working memory resources. Put another way, stereotype threat may redirect internal attention from on-topic (considering the material) to off-topic (considering one's identity, abilities, and social environment), making it more challenging to perform the task at hand ( Pennington et al., 2016). By understanding the ways that implicit or explicit biases can affect students' attention, we can develop better strategies for reducing these influences.

HOW MIGHT DIFFERENT PEDAGOGICAL APPROACHES AFFECT ATTENTION?

Having explored a framework for understanding attention in the classroom along the dimensions of external/internal and on-topic/off-topic, we now return to the clicker question scenarios described earlier. Our goal is to better understand how different approaches to the same teaching method (in this set of scenarios, asking a clicker question) might differentially affect students' attention. In Figure 2 , we depict each example scenario, diagramming how students' attention might be allocated from moment to moment in each scenario. Understanding that students' attention is heterogeneous, we note that, in these scenarios, we have streamlined our depictions to reflect the expected area of focus for the majority of students at each moment. While at any moment, a particular student's attention may be drawn toward off-topic stimuli (e.g., noticing a distracting pencil tapping sound or realizing that one is hungry), we focus here on the fluctuations of attention that we posit may be most related to the variability in learning outcomes with the use of active-learning techniques such as clicker questions.

In scenario 1, "Prioritized Lecturing" ( Figure 2 A), the instructor focuses on lecturing, with no attempts to guide students' attention in a directed manner. The instructor in this scenario may assume that students' attention remains external and on-topic at all times. However, as anyone who has ever attended a lecture-style class can attest, it is obvious that this is not the case 100% of the time, especially with increasing lecture duration. Research on attention in the classroom suggests that students' attention veers away from the material as early as within the first 30 seconds of a lecture, with increasing frequency of attentional lapses as the lecture goes on ( Bunce et al., 2010). In Figure 2 A, we depict this pattern of drifting attention between internal and external focus during a long lecture, including dashed black lines to indicate times when demands on attention might be split between external (lecture) and internal (on-topic consideration of the material or off-topic mind-wandering). We hypothesize that, in this scenario, the emphasis on continuous external attention over long time periods may be hindered by the natural tendency for attention to fluctuate. This could result in variability in where students' attention is allocated at a given moment, potentially leading to more variability in learning outcomes.

In scenario 2, "Multiple Demands on Attention" ( Figure 2 B), there are several instances when the instructor presents students with multiple demands on attention simultaneously. In this example, students are not given a set time for quiet thinking before discussing the clicker question with a partner, so attention may either be external (to the pair discussion) or internal (as they think about the question). Next, as the instructor shouts for students to click in their questions while they talk, the number of demands on attention increases further. Some students' attention may still be internal to think about the question, while the attention of others may be external, listening to the instructor shouting or watching other students' answers stream in. With more available distractions and greater variability in how each student may be allocating attention, we hypothesize that there may be a wider distribution of learning outcomes across students.

In scenario 3, "Focusing on Grade" ( Figure 2 C), the instructor reminds students about the grading policy while they are considering the clicker question. This approach may create a distraction of internal attention, with students caught between focusing their internal attention on-topic (on the question at hand) and off-topic (thinking about their grade). One testable hypothesis is that students who are already underperforming or worried about their grade are at an even greater disadvantage in this scenario, while students who are confidently excelling in the class are given a further advantage, widening the gap in student performance.

In the final example, scenario 4, "Orchestrated Attention" ( Figure 2 D), students are first given two minutes of silence to think about the question, followed by guided pair discussion with turn-taking. By allocating dedicated time for internal and external attention, the instructor provides structure for the exercise that takes advantage of the natural fluctuations between internal and external attention. The instructor in this scenario also provides guidance about how to take turns in the pair discussion, further streamlining switches of attention so that students' attention is more coordinated. This instructor also explicitly reminds students of the goal of the exercise, encouraging them to focus their attention on hearing a colleague's explanation and sharing their own reasoning rather than focusing on getting the correct answer. Following pair discussions, the instructor provides some additional material and redirects students' attention internally again to reconsider their answers to the question. We hypothesize that the instructor's scaffolding for how to allocate attention back and forth between internal and external attention effectively orchestrates these shifts of attention and keeps students' focus on-topic in a more streamlined manner, which could potentially lead to improved learning outcomes.

From these examples, we can develop a testable hypothesis for why these different approaches to the same clicker question strategy might differ in the learning outcomes they yield. We hypothesize that one mechanism underlying the educational gains associated with active-learning strategies could be that they take advantage of natural fluctuations between external and internal attention. While standard lecture format may ignore fluctuating attention, active-learning strategies entertain the idea that attention fluctuates and these fluctuations may be leveraged to optimize learning. Moreover, there is substantial variability in how beneficial active-learning strategies can be and quite a lot of room to improve. It is possible that implementations of active learning are most beneficial when they make room for multiple types of attention (e.g., internal and external) and guide shifts of attention deliberately. Indeed, the instructor's role in guiding attention in the classroom need not be limited to orienting students to external content, but could also be leveraged to direct students' attention toward their own ideas and reflections, as well as to embrace the right to direct one's own attention and learning to meet one's individual goals (an idea that is central to active learning).

HOW INSTRUCTORS MAY LEVERAGE ATTENTION

There are many ways that instructors could use our proposed framework to consider attention in their classrooms. Simply by recognizing that attention fluctuates naturally and by considering how and when students' attention might be directed internally/externally and on-topic/off-topic during a particular class session, instructors may design teaching moments more thoughtfully. As described in prior sections, we hypothesize that active-learning strategies may benefit student learning by coordinating fluctuations between internal and external attention across students, allowing students the time to focus externally on the information presented and internally to consider new information more deeply and connect it with their prior knowledge. Instructors may explore this idea in their own classrooms by comparing the effectiveness of class sessions with more deliberate attention switches to those in which students' attention is expected to be entirely external/on-topic or entirely internal/on-topic for the duration of class time.

Some additional approaches to considering attention in the classroom are as follows. First, we hypothesize that, when multiple demands are placed on students' attention at once (e.g., listening to an instructor emphasize grading policies for a given prompt while attempting to think internally about said prompt), this may make it more challenging for students to learn. In contrast, we anticipate that teaching strategies that direct students' attention to one area of focus at a time will yield better learning outcomes. Second, we hypothesize that quiet moments of directed internal attention are critical for the learning process, allowing students to mull over new ideas and connect new information to prior knowledge. Although it may be intimidating from the instructor's perspective to have stretches of silent thinking built into class time, as evidenced by the relative lack of silence in recordings of classroom sound ( Owens et al., 2017), we predict that moments of internal attention interspersed throughout a class session may benefit student learning. Any of the aforementioned suggestions for instructors-guiding fluctuations of attention, reducing multiple demands on attention, and leveraging moments of internal attention-may help to explain the variability in effectiveness of different implementations of the same teaching strategy. For example, the "think" part of the think-pair-share activity might sometimes be conducted without explicit attentional guidance, at other times conducted amid multiple demands on attention, and sometimes even left out entirely, jumping straight into the "pair" and "share" portions. It may be the case that these subtle variations on the same technique could yield dramatically different learning outcomes.

How might one effectively guide students' attention in the classroom amid perpetual external or internal distractions? There may be some contexts in which attentional redirecting is straightforward (e.g., ringing a bell to indicate that the class should focus back together after group discussions have veered off-topic), while in other contexts it may be quite challenging (e.g., knowing whether a student who is looking directly at the slides is actually thinking about something else). Mindfulness meditation has been shown to improve this ability to refocus attention on goal-relevant (aka on-topic) information ( Chiesa et al., 2011) accompanied by changes in brain oscillations ( Kerr et al., 2011). This is achieved by actively rehearsing this skill (e.g., focusing on one's breath, nonjudgmentally acknowledging distracting thoughts when they arise, and refocusing attention on breath). This suggests that the ability to refocus on on-topic information when off-topic information captures attention automatically is malleable rather than fixed. This understanding may help us as instructors to nonjudgmentally encourage students to practice refocusing attention, rather than assuming that certain students are inattentive due fixed personality traits; adopting this approach means we are essentially adopting a growth mindset ( Dweck, 2008) around attention abilities.

Additionally, knowing what to pay attention to can be challenging. Students who are new to a college classroom environment may not be as adept as more senior, experienced students at knowing what information is important and should be paid attention to during a class. Instructors can use a number of possible strategies to guide attention in a more directed manner, such as through the use of active-learning strategies, to make where students ought to allocate attention in the classroom more explicit. By signaling to students when key concepts are presented, highlighting critical links among different concepts, and providing clear instruction about when and how internal attention is to be engaged with specific prompts, one could ease this burden and help students learn how to guide their spotlight of attention optimally in the classroom. This use of language to provide explicit instruction about where to allocate attention is a common form of "instructor talk," or noncontent language used by instructors in classrooms ( Seidel et al., 2015; Harrison et al., 2018), that may facilitate student learning.

HOW DO RESEARCHERS MEASURE ATTENTION IN THE CLASSROOM?

The framework we have described gives rise to many open research questions: How often do students switch between external/internal and on-/off-topic attention? How do these switches relate to student learning? How do active-learning pedagogies affect or leverage attentional fluctuations? What factors explain student variability in classroom attention? And how does the use of technology (e.g., cell phones) affect students' attention? To address these and related questions, education researchers need tools for measuring various types of attention in the classroom. In the next sections, we review various self-report and physiological measures of attention that can be readily implemented in a classroom setting.

Self-Report Measures of Attention

Traditionally, students' attention has been assessed using self-report and classroom observations. Early studies using note-taking and classroom observations to assess students' attention (e.g., Johnstone and Percival, 1976) seemed to suggest that students' attention declines 10-15 minutes into a lecture. However, the empirical basis supporting this claim is extremely limited ( Bradbury, 2016), perhaps due to limitations in how attention was assessed. For example, the amount of note-taking each student engages in is confounded by motivation and learning strategies, and observer-reported measures of attention are limited to explicit student behaviors (a student might appear engaged by staring at the instructor while contemplating lunch options).

To try to get a more direct measure of attention, some researchers have asked students to report on their own attention. Bunce et al. (2010) had students use clickers to report attentional lapses throughout a class session and to indicate the duration of these lapses. in this study, students reported attentional lapses as early as 30 seconds into the lecture (much faster than had been previously reported), and this pattern continued throughout the entire lecture at shorter and shorter cycles. Critically, students reported fewer attention lapses during demonstrations and clicker questions and during lecture periods immediately after these activities than during continuous lecture. However, self-reported attention also has its limitations. Students might be unaware of their own attention lapses, and their reports can be biased. Further, asking students to report how attentive they are throughout a lesson is artificial and can even take their attention away from the material at hand ( Smallwood and Schooler, 2015; Seli et al., 2018; Weinstein, 2018; Robison et al., 2020). A more objective measure of attention might be retention of class content, but retention is confounded by many other factors (e.g., students' prior knowledge). It is also very challenging to capture the dynamic nature of students' attention using an achievement test.

Physiological Measures of Attention

More modern approaches have leveraged biological measurements of attention. Once restricted to laboratory settings, measurements such as eye tracking and electroencephalography (EEG) have more recently been developed for use in classroom settings. Here, we briefly review the use of these two techniques to measure attention in the classroom.

Eye tracking has revealed that eye movements play an integral part in the management and allocation of attention (e.g., Rizzolatti et al., 1994). Because gaze shifts are tightly linked to attention shifts, gaze is widely used experimentally as a proxy for the locus of attention ( Chelazzi et al., 1995). Recent research suggests that looking away from a speaker in a multispeaker environment negatively impacts speech comprehension ( Shavit-Cohen and Zion Golumbic, 2019). Thus, in a classroom setting, looking away from the instructor or the student speaking in a group discussion could indicate an attention shift (e.g., from external to internal attention), though as described previously, eye gaze alone is not a perfect measure of students' attention and may be a biased form of evaluation. Most eye-tracking research is currently confined to laboratory settings, but recent developments in portable eye-tracking technology allow measuring students' eye gaze in real-world classrooms ( Fuhl et al., 2016). Future research could explore how students' gaze shifts in classrooms relate to other measures of attention and to learning outcomes.

EEG measures the brain's electrical activity from electrodes placed on the scalp. Even through the skull, EEG can be used to pick up oscillatory voltage signals that can be decomposed into different frequency bands. Prior research suggests that EEG activity in one particular frequency band, known as the alpha band (8-13 Hz) is associated with attention shifts ( Payne and Sekuler, 2014; Van Diepen et al., 2019). For example, in a recent study, EEG was measured while people listened to long stories. Power within the alpha band was found to be higher in periods that people subjectively reported being "zoned-out," and these periods of the story were later poorly recalled ( Boudewyn and Carter, 2018). As with eye tracking, until recently, EEG was confined to laboratory settings due to its cost, limited portability, and the time-consuming preparation process. However, recent advances in low-cost, portable, wireless, and dry (i.e., gel-free) EEG technology now allow for the collection of brain data outside the laboratory in real-world classrooms ( Debener et al., 2012; Dikker et al., 2017; Poulsen et al., 2017; Bevilacqua et al., 2019).

What have measurement tools like EEG revealed so far about teaching and learning in the classroom? Recent findings have demonstrated that learning may be maximized when the brain activity of students in the class becomes synchronized ( Cohen et al., 2018; Davidesco et al., 2019). When students' patterns of brain activity look alike, they demonstrate better memory for the material than when each brain is doing something different. Most prominently, these findings were observed when there was synchrony in students' brain activity in the alpha band, which, as mentioned earlier, is associated with attentional processes ( Davidesco et al., 2019). It has been postulated that brain synchrony across students may be important, because it reflects shared attention (i.e., all students are focusing on the same thing; Dikker et al., 2017). Future research in this domain may further inform us about how brain synchrony differs depending on the teaching strategy implemented (see Davidesco, 2020, in this issue).

Expanding on this research, we propose that shifts between internal and external attention may underlie brain synchrony across students. In other words, when students are engaged, their fluctuations between internal and external attention are in sync, potentially leading to higher brain synchrony and better learning. On the other hand, if students independently fluctuate between external and internal attention at different times, brain synchrony will be lower, potentially correlating with suboptimal learning. Teaching strategies may differ in how well they synchronize students' brain activity in the classroom by differing in how they guide switches between internal and external attention across students. Future research may investigate our hypothesis that the positive impact of active-learning strategies on student learning may be partially mediated by synchronizing attention, and thus brain oscillations, across students.

CONCLUSION

How many times did your attention shift away while reading this article? Even with strong motivation to focus, it is natural that many types of attention are occurring in the classroom all the time, including fluctuations between internal and external attention, as well as on-topic and off-topic attention. Considering attention from this perspective may help us better understand the variety of ways in which students pay attention in the classroom and the ways in which different teaching strategies can guide students' attention. Importantly, by guiding attention in the classroom, instructors can both orient students to external content and direct students' attention internally toward their own ideas and reflections. We hypothesize that purposefully structuring attentional shifts may be beneficial for learning, an idea that may be tested in future studies. We hope that this research will provide a better understanding of the mechanisms underlying active-learning benefits and shed light on why active-learning is more successful in some implementations than others.

Acknowledgments

We express our gratitude to the following individuals for their thoughtful comments on our article: Manasi Iyer, Mallory Rice, Dax Ovid, Cynthia Bauerle, and Trace Jordan. We thank the Latin American School for Education, Cognitive, and Neural Sciences for bringing together Ido Davidesco and Kimberly Tanner as collaborators. We also thank the Stanford University Preparing Future Professors program for bringing together Arielle Keller and Kimberly Tanner as collaborators.

REFERENCES

Davidesco, I., Laurent, E., Valk, H., West, T., Dikker, S., Milne, C., & Poeppel, D. (2019). Brain-to-brain synchrony between students and teachers predicts learning outcomes. [bioRxiv, 644047. 10.1073/pnas.1319030111 [CrossRef] Google Scholar]

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Articles from CBE Life Sciences Education are provided here courtesy of American Society for Cell Biology

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Attention Matters: How Orchestrating Attention May Relate to Classroom Learning

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Attention is thought to be the gateway between information and learning, yet there is much we do not understand about how students pay attention in the classroom. Leveraging ideas from cognitive neuroscience and psychology, we explore a framework for ...

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“Good behaviour ” is often used in colloquial speech without a clear definition. Sometimes people fall back on the maxim: “It’ s hard to define, but I know it when I see it.” Instead, this eBook offers a definition for good behaviour and what it entails, as well a strategy that any teacher can consider to encourage good behaviour in their students.

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Tried-and-tested strategies to get your students focused and learning

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Helping students learn more with less

Hope your experiments in taking the shortest path have been going well. This week's big idea combines two of my favourite topics: attention and routines. Let's go.

Big Idea 🍉

Routines enable our students to learn more with less. How so? Let's dive in:

First up, a routine (aka habit) is essentially a chain of actions that gets executed on a cue (or prompt), all of which happens with minimal cognitive effort or conscious control. They achieve this cognitive efficiency by stripping out decision costs, reducing the amount of novel information that needs to be processed, and exploiting our ability to think less about the things we repeatedly do.

When your alarm goes off in the morning, you get up, shower, dress and have breakfast-all without really thinking about it. The cognitive efficiency of this flow is insane...

Routines are particularly powerful because human attention is so heavily limited-we can really only attend to one thing at a time. As a result, when a routine is in place, students end up needing to think less about the process of their learning, and so can think more about the content of their learning- the substance of our teaching.

In short, routines redeploy attention.

This is important, because what our students attend to is what they end up thinking about. And what they think about is ultimately what they end up learning. Routines hack the attention economy of the classroom to help our students learn more with less.

"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations we can perform without thinking about them."

Fine, so what can we do about it? Well, routines fall into 2 broad camps:

1. Instructional routines

2. Behavioural routines

Instructional routines involve activities such as whole-class discussion or independent practice. These make the most of the time we have available for learning. Behavioural routines involve activities such as classroom entry or resource management. These enable us to free up even more time and space for learning. It's worth investing in both.

Now, routines are often painted as boredom-brokers and creativity-killers, but I'm not sure this is quite accurate. Effective routines can secure success and so act as an antidote to boredom. Also, they tend to increase confidence and feelings of safety for students (particularly those with SEND). And they free up the precious mental capacity needed for creativity to flourish. In general, routines are net positive for students. And they can also help us teachers, by:

In short, routines are powerful tools for learning and teaching.

Caveat → I'm not saying that lessons should be formulaic. Instead, it's probably more useful to think about having a strong 'repertoire of routines' to draw upon. This ensures that teaching can be both efficient and responsive, in meeting the diverse needs of our students and curricula.

So there you have it. A brief tour of the mechanics of routines and how they link with learning. What routines do you lean most heavily in your teaching? Are there any aspects of your work which might benefit from being 'routinised' further?

Summary
* A routine is a chain of actions that gets executed on a cue, with minimal cognitive effort or conscious control

* When a routine is established, students think less about the how of their learning, and so can think more about the what of your teaching

* This is powerful because human attention is limited, and attention leads to learning

Little Updates 🥕

*As far as possible, I try to signpost papers which are open-access (🔓). This limits the range of stuff I can share, but I reckon the trade-off in 'actionability' is worth it. Shout if you disagree.

Hope this week's Snack has tickled your tastebuds. Now go hone those routines.

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