In movies and on television, chess skill symbolizes “pure intelligence.” Characters who can outwit others on the chessboard are–obviously–just smarter than everyone else. (On The West Wing, President Bartlet routinely schools his staff on the nuances of the game.)
By implication, people who get better at chess seem to be getting smarter. So, if I can give you a drug that improves your chess score, you might conclude that this drug is making you more intelligent.
This approach, of course, has a controversial history. We have developed drugs (such as methylphenidate and modafinil) that benefit people who struggle during cognitive tasks. Will those same drugs benefit those who don’t typically struggle? If they do, is that benefit somehow unfair?
The Study: Setup
German researchers worked with 40 mid-level chess players. Following a remarkably detailed and precise research regimen, these players spent 4 days playing games against a chess program that had been matched to play at their level.
On each day, these chess players took either methylphenidate (Ritalin/Concerta), modafinil (Provigil), caffeine (yum), or a placebo. The schedule of these 4 drugs was varied among the group, to be sure that the order didn’t matter.
The Study: Results
How did they do? It’s bit complicated…
Compared to the games when they took a placebo, they players slowed down when they took all three drugs. On average, they added nearly 2 minutes to the time they took (9:13 vs 7:17 per game); that’s a slowdown of 25%.
When they took more time, these players often ran up against the time limit that had been set for each game. As a result, they lost lots of games by running out of time.
But, what happens when we look at the games when they didn’t run out of time?
They got better. It’s a little tricky to describe improvement in chess terms. You might say they had a 5% increased chance of winning. Or, you might say–as the lead researcher said:
If we correct for the slowest players, then the effect would be the equivalent of moving a player from say, number 5000 in the world ranking, to number 3500 in the world ranking. In a single game, the effect is the equivalent of having the white pieces, every time.
That’s quite the improvement.
The Study: Implications
So, what do we do with this information? Should we all rush right out and add some methylphenidate to our daily vitamins?
In my view, not yet.
First, this study looked at people playing chess. Although we associate chess with “intelligence in general,” we can’t be sure–based on this study alone–that the effects of these drugs will generalize to other cognitive activities.
Second, the study worked with an unusual subgroup of the population: the average IQ among the players was 125. (Of course, IQ isn’t the only–or necessarily the best–way to measure human cognitive capacity. But, it’s not meaningless.)
An IQ of 125 is more than 1 standard deviation above average. This is, in other words, a select–even atypical–group of thinkers.
For these reasons, I wouldn’t do anything differently just yet.
And third: I stumbled across this study after I had completed this blog entry. The headline is that non-prescription use of Ritalin can muddle the dopamine system–at least in rats.
When I say “muddle,” I’m summarizing the following passage:
These changes in brain chemistry were associated with serious concerns such as risk-taking behaviors, disruptions in the sleep/wake cycle and problematic weight loss, as well as resulting in increased activity and anti-anxiety and antidepressive effects.
In other words, if these effects are true for humans as well as rats, that’s some serious muddling right there.
At the same time, I must tell you that this chess study gives me pause. In grad school, the orthodoxy about these drugs was that “they help people who struggle think more like typical learners, but they don’t help typical learners think like more extraordinary learners.”
(You might think of them as a mental knee brace. The brace helps you if you’re injured, but isn’t particularly beneficial if you’re not.)
This study, however, suggests that–for this atypical group of people doing this atypical thing–such drugs do provide a cognitive benefit.
An alternate explanation
I’m intrigued by the fact that chess players taking methylphenidate, modafinil, and caffeine slowed down.
Perhaps the reason they played better is not that the drugs helped them think better, but that they gave the players more time to think.
Could we get the same benefit by deliberately forcing ourselves to take more time with our thoughts? This study doesn’t answer that question. But, the possibility seems worth exploring.
A final note, unrelated to the content of this study. In looking over the specifics of the research paradigm, I note that the team began work on this study in July of 2011, and that it was published only in 2017. That’s right: they’ve been working on this for over 6 years.
“Freedom in intellectual work is found to be the basis of internal discipline” (*Montessori, 1917/1965).
This quote highlights a notion which goes completely against our conventional wisdom. Internal discipline is to be instilled externally. Students develop discipline through following top-down instruction, no? They are told what to do and they do it.
Much of what Maria Montessori intuited about child development and education seems to fly in the face of the systems we have in place to educate our youngest citizens. There is no doubt that the insistence on obedience can create disciplined individuals; however, in regard to intellectual pursuits, if we desire individuals who are self-driven, allowing them a certain freedom in what they pursue enables them to develop this drive themselves.
Maria Montessori developed her approach to education, which contains eight principles, primarily through observation. In her book, Lillard (2005) outlines these eight principles and the scientific studies that have been carried out since which underscore that these principles are in fact in line with the way we learn and develop. These principles are:
movement and cognition are intertwined
students should have a sense of control
interest improves learning
extrinsic rewards hinder intrinsic motivation
learning from and with peers
learning should be contextualized
optimal adult-child interactions
order in the environment
In this post, we delve into principles five through eight, continuing from a previous post. While there are many examples of each of these principles in the Montessori classroom, I bring up one or two examples and just some of the science backing them up.
Learning from and with peers
In a primary Montessori classroom (children ages 3 to 5), younger children may often work side by side, though not collaborating. As children get to be 4 and 5 years old, they begin to work together. At this age, and especially at the elementary level, collaboration is suggested and encouraged by the teacher.
Further, the mixed-age classrooms, which are an essential part of the Montessori classroom, provide opportunities for younger students to learn from older students. As importantly, it also creates the opportunity for older students to teach younger students — teaching becomes an opportunity for the older students to learn and grow.
Developmental psychologist Jean Piaget, who was 26 years younger than Maria Montessori and was involved in and presumably inspired by her work, also notes the importance of learning from peers. He believed that peer interaction, and the presentation of different ideas that comes along with it, creates states of cognitive disequilibrium where children must then “accommodate” these new concepts, advancing their understanding.
Lev Vygotsky, another developmental psychologist, believed that children learn in what he called the “Zone of Proximal Development.” This “zone” consists of tasks that one cannot accomplish, or conceptual understanding that one cannot attain, alone. Older peers allow their younger counterparts to accomplish tasks and reach higher levels of understanding.
Research has confirmed the benefits of social learning. Young children may benefit the most from observation, rather than interaction (*Azmitia, 1988). Yet, as children grow older, and especially in the elementary years, they are able to make gains through collaboration (*Tomasello, et al., 1993). Once children are able to engage in a dialogue that contains explanations, inferences, strategies, etc., collaboration has been found to improve their cognitive performance, compared to children who work alongside peers but are discouraged from talking, much like in traditional schools (*Teasley, 1995).
Learning should be contextualized
As with the learning that takes place in traditional schools, “people are prepared for life by exclusion from it” (Montessori, 1967a). Investigation into some topic, void of the context of the topic, prevents the learner from engaging with it as deeply as she would be able to otherwise.
In the Primary Montessori Classroom, context is given via hands-on materials that are connected with the outside world. For example:
activities where children must button, tie, or zip fabric together, much the same way their clothes function
pouring (water, beads, etc.) from one container to another, just as they must pour water into their glass to drink
scooping items (small stones, beans, etc.) with a spoon from one container into another, just as they must spoon their own food into their mouths
In the elementary classroom and beyond, learning is also made contextual by physically going out to explore the place where the subject at hand is occurring. For a theme on entrepreneurship, for example, students may be encouraged to go out and speak with local business owners.
It is understood that learning is improved when new knowledge is connected with what we already know. Placing learning in a specific context is one way to facilitate that.
In a simple study, 10-year-old children were taught the basics of the LOGO graphics program language. One group was taught in an abstract context, where children had to move the cursor between five circles, touching each one. Other groups were taught in a meaningful context — they had to carry out the same task, though the circles were described as islands with treasure that must be collected at each one, for example.
Children who learned the language in a meaningful context, as opposed to an abstract one, better learned the programming language, and also reported to have better enjoyed the learning process. These children also showed a better mastery of following a series a steps towards the end of executing a plan — a skill set important to computer programming. Even further, and perhaps most importantly, two weeks later these children performed better on a geometry test of the underlying concepts and skills (*Papert, 1980; *Parker & Lepper 1992).
As highlighted in this study, placing learning in a specific context can allow an individual to enjoy learning the material, better learn the material, better retain the material learned, and better learn the meta-skills required to learn similar material. Is there anything else?
Optimal adult-child interactions
Through observation, Montessori described optimal adult-child interactions before there was a body of research on the topic. In few words, she outlined that adults are to set clear limits but allow children to operate freely within those limits, and to respond sensitively to children’s needs while maintaining high expectations.
One study found that children of authoritative/democratic parents (i.e. parents who are warm, make suggestions rather than demands, and expect maturity) were more well-liked by their peers, and were judged as more prosocial by their teachers. On the other hand, children of authoritarian/restrictive parents (i.e., parents who often prohibit, assert themselves, and provide directives) were viewed as less helpful by teachers and peers, and were often more disliked by their peers (*Dekovic & Jensen, 1992).
Another study also found that for two-year-olds, parents’ directiveness was positively associated with measures of cognition. As children grew older than two, however, parents’ directiveness was found to associate with lower levels of cognitive functioning (*Landry, et al., 2000). These findings suggest that adults must be sensitive to the degree to which children need direction and guidance. While it may be necessary, too much can hamper cognition.
Order in the environment
When I first learned of the degree to which the Montessori classroom was ordered and structured, admittedly, it struck me as strange. Learning must be messy, I thought. Now, having spent plenty of time in a Montessori classroom, I see that the meticulous organization of the materials and shelves, and the purposefully structured progression of the materials, help children learn.
The research currently available agrees with this notion. Studies have found, for example, that items to be memorized are better retained when presented in an organized and structured way, rather than at random (*Bower, Clark, Lesgold, & Winzenz, 1969). As a (perhaps overly) simple example, it is much easier for us, as adults, to memorize “A B C D E F G H I J K” than it is to memorize “D F J C I A H E G K B,” even though the contents of both lists are the same.
In the same way, when new information is presented to children in an organized way, they are better able to make sense of it. The manner in which information and materials are presented matters.
Studies have also found that orderly home environments are associated with better cognitive functioning, while less organized homes are associated with lower levels of cognition, language use, more difficult temperaments, and lower motivation to solve problems or master tasks (*Wachs, 2000). Bear in mind that these are associations, not causations.
The Montessori Approach in Real Life
As I have seen through my own experience, and as Montessori set out to do with her method over a century ago, this approach to education has the potential to develop self-motivated, well-regulated, prosocial learners who take ownership of their own education.
Old two- and young three-year-olds have entered our classroom at the beginning of the year with little to no focus, just bouncing around the room, going from one thing to the next. One parent even described his young child to me as a “threenager.”
By the end of the year, this very same child is able to choose, out of a room full of activities, the one that she wants to do. She very carefully picks it up and, walking around other people and their work, she carries it to an open desk. She uses the work for as long as she desires, and with great focus. When she’s done, she cleans up her work, stands up, pushes in her chair, and carries the work back to shelf from where she got it; both the spot where she did her work and the work itself are both ready for the next person to use.
This work cycle enables the child to build focus, order, concentration, coordination, and independence. Beyond these higher-order cognitive functions, these activities also encourage the development of skills necessary for everyday living, like fine motor skills and hand strength.
By the time this child turns four, a tremendous foundation has been laid for learning. Not only are children ready for more challenging work, they ask for it. One of my four-year-olds, after working very hard on learning letter sounds and writing them out over this past year, recently began reading consonant-vowel-consonant words (cat, hop, etc.). She wrote a list of the first words that she read, and upon reading me this list, she danced around with excitement. This is a child who has ownership of and loves learning.
By the time many children finish their third year at the primary level in our classroom, they are reading books. As someone who didn’t begin reading until second grade, I can unabashedly say that I am jealous. Bear in mind that this did not come at some great expense either; the students aren’t burnt out– just the opposite is true.
While above I mostly mention the literacy curriculum, I’m also envious of my students’ ability to add, subtract, (and sometimes) multiply and divide. They also walk away with other pieces of explicit knowledge, like, for example, the names of the continents of the world, the names of plant and animal parts, and the names of many 2D and 3D shapes (do you know the difference between an ellipsoid and an ovoid?!).
Even further, these children have a strong set of social/emotional skills. They, for example, are encouraged to consider the needs of others, and also to express their own needs. Students are also made aware of our school community’s collective needs, and most are eager to contribute via preparing food, rearranging the room for different activities, organizing the materials on the shelves, cleaning up after a meal, etc.
Conclusion
Montessori’s methods highlight basic truths about human learning. Through observation, she realized that early childhood presents a time of unique cognitive malleability, and that this can be leveraged through interactions the child has with the environment. Scientific support for her methods continues to come to light even in present day, over a century later.
Through quality implementation of the Montessori method, children become engaged and excited about learning. They develop into independent learners who seek out challenges. Even further, this approach can develop students who are as engaged in their learning and as they are in their community, and it’s a beautiful thing.
Reference
Lillard, A. S. (2005). Montessori: The science behind the genius. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Montessori, M. (1967a). The absorbent mind. New York, NY: Henry Holt.
*References marked with an asterisk are cited in Lillard, 2005.
Articles about learning styles theory–including my own–typically focus on debunking the theory.
This article, over at The Learning Scientists, takes a different approach: it chooses specific parts of learning styles theory, and shows how each small part derives from another–more useful–theory about learning.
The goal of this article, in other words, is not that you stop believing a false theory, but that you replace false beliefs with correct ones.
In my view, that’s a GREAT approach, and one that I plan to borrow.
Reading is a complex cognitive task. How is it that our minds are able to read? Daniel T. Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and acclaimed author, tackles that question in his book The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. He builds a cognitive model of reading to explain how people understand letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, and full texts. He discusses the critical role of motivation to read in gaining skill in reading. By concluding each chapter with bullet point summaries, implications, and discussion questions, The Reading Mind is easy-to-read. It provides good fodder for teachers, parents, education practioners, and policy-makers interested in thinking deeply about how we read and how we support people in reading more and with greater understanding.
Reading is important for individuals and societies because by writing ideas down we create permanent records of information and help ourselves expand what we are able to remember. While the advantages of reading and writing may be obvious, the process by which we read is less so. First, we must understand that letters correspond to speech sounds called phonemes. Being able to distinguish different sounds of speech is associated with success in reading. Unfortunately, distinguishing these sounds is difficult because people pronounce sounds differently, and the sounds can change depending on the other sounds that occur before or after. English has poor matching between letters and sounds. This slows down the process of learning to read English compared to languages with better matching.
Together letters make words. We do not typically read words letter-by-letter. Rather, we read words in letter clumps. Nearly every word has an associated sound, spelling, and meaning, each of which affects how we read. For example: (1) we read tongue twisters silently to ourselves more slowly than equivalent phrases with dissimilar sounding words; (2) instruction in spelling improves reading abilities; and (3) we are more ready to read words with meanings associate with the words we just read than words that are typically not related. Because students encounter about 85,000 unique words in school texts, vocabulary size matters for reading comprehension. Additionally, understanding deeply how words relate to one another and how to use them flexibly is valuable for developing skill in reading.
Willingham explains that an understanding of sentences requires an understanding of how one sentence relates to the next. As we read sentences we build a web of ideas. If readers cannot connect the ideas in sentences, then it is difficult to build such a web. Reading and understanding sentences is also aided by a rich understanding of knowledge about the world. A knowledgeable reader can fill in details a writer omits. Indeed, reading comprehension is much better the more background knowledge a reader has about the topic of the written material.
Beyond being able to read, Willingham argues that having the emotional motivation to do so is important. There is a virtuous cycle in which the more a person reads the better a reader he becomes. The better a reader he becomes the more he enjoys reading. The more he enjoys reading the more he reads. An individual’s past experiences in reading, her sense of herself as a reader, how valuable (e.g., enjoyable, informative) she expects reading to be, and the value of reading relative to other possible activities all impact the likelihood that an individual will read. Making reading materials easily accessible can help people read more. Although many well-meaning teachers and parents try to incentivize reading with rewards, Willingham warns that when the reward is removed the student may actually read even less than before the reward was introduced.
Willingham concludes with a timely discussion of the relationship between technology and the reading mind. He argues that more research is needed to parse out the particular feature of technological interventions that have the power to improve reading. Although there is much concern about technology making youth more distractible, Willingham argues that this concern is not well-supported. It may be the case, however, that students are less willing to tolerate boredom. While teens’ time spent with new technologies has not displaced time spent reading, Willingham still recommends limiting the amount of time youth spend on screens. Doing so may help make spending time reading a more appealing option.
As Willingham notes, it is difficult to translate science research about reading into recommendations for policy or practice. While being careful not to over-interpret research findings, The Reading Mind offers useful suggestions for how policy-makers and practioners can use cognitive psychological literature to inform their work. For additional insightful work by Willingham, see our review of his book Raising Kids Who Read.
Willingham, D.T. (2017). The Reading Mind: A Cognitive Approach to Understanding How the Mind Reads. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
How should we manage working memory limitations in the classroom?
Furtheredogogy has a handy post about Cognitive Load Theory, which is basically a fancy way of saying “taking care of our students’ working memory capacity.”
Notice, btw, that the author suggests worked examples as a working-memory friendly alternative to project-based learning–which can all to often overwhelm students’ cognitive resources.
Over at The Anova, Freddie deBoer has a knack for writing about statistical questions and making them not just readable but interesting.
Case in point: he recently explored the New York Times feature about school choice.
Although careful to praise the Times authors for their genuine concern and dedication, he thoughtfully explicates the numerous ways in which their article gets important questions wrong because it doesn’t think its way through statistics carefully enough.
For example: when we say we want students to do better, does that mean we want individual students to rise above the average, or that we want to raise the average for students overall?
As deBoer sees the field, we typically say we want the latter, but focus on (and tell stories about) the former.
DeBoer’s article doesn’t express an opinion about school choice (I’m sure he has one, but he doesn’t tip his hand here). But, it’s an excellent reminder that statistics can help us only so long as we are clear-minded about what they really measure.
As he glumly says in his final paragraph:
It’s not just that we can’t get what we want. It’s that nobody really knows what they’re trying to accomplish.
Maria Montessori described observing children in a traditional classroom as being tantamount to an entomologist observing dead insects pinned to a board, “where the spontaneous expression of a child’s personality is so suppressed that he is almost like a corpse, and where he is so fixed to his place at a desk that he resembles a butterfly mounted to a pin” (Montessori, 1967b).
Despite her observations taking place around the turn of the 20th century, they sound eerily familiar. Even over a century ago, she acknowledged that in order to best learn, children need a certain freedom in order to explore their interests and take ownership over what they are doing.
Presumably motivated by the discrepancy between reality and practice, she developed an approach to education. Initially working with children with learning difficulties, and later with children between the ages of 3 and 6, Maria Montessori–who first studied medicine–developed her approach almost completely through careful observation of the way in which children interacted with their environment.
Montessori’s insights about the way children learn and develop were not confirmed by science until many years later. In a book, Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius, Angeline Stoll Lillard (2005) outlines the eight principles incorporated into Montessori Education and provides the evidence base supporting each one. The principles are:
movement and cognition are intertwined
students should have a sense of control
interest improves learning
extrinsic rewards hinder intrinsic motivation
learning from and with peers
learning should be contextualized
optimal adult-child interactions
order in the environment
While there are many examples of each of these embedded in the Montessori classroom, and separately each one of these concepts now brings with it an immense amount of research, for each principle I cherry-pick just one or two examples from the classroom.
I also provide a brief mention of some supporting research to help give you a sense of the science that now reinforces the Montessori approach to education, developed over a century ago.
This blog post will address the first four principles listed above, part 2 will be posted at a later date and will address the latter four.
Movement and Cognition are Intertwined
Montessori activities and materials purposefully incorporate movement into learning activities. Let’s take the Sandpaper Letters, for example, used to introduce preschool-aged children to letter sounds. (Children are not taught the names of the letters nor the order of the alphabet at this point). The Sandpaper Letters are lowercase letters, about five inches in height, made out of sandpaper and affixed to thin piece of painted wood.
When introduced, children are simultaneously shown how to trace the letter and produce the sound that the letter makes. The child is then free to use the Sandpaper letters to practice producing the letter sounds and tracing the letters.
Research has since underscored many instances of the interconnected nature of movement and cognition, including the improvement of memory when movement is involved at the moment when something is learned. For example, students who acted out actions described by sentences remembered the sentences better than students who did not act them out (*Cohen, 1989; *Engelkamp, Zimmer, Mohr & Sellen, 1994).
In the same way, when children simultaneously trace a letter and produce its sound, they are better able to remember it.
Students should have a sense of control
In the Montessori classroom, this sense of control is brought about by giving children the choice of activities they wish to pursue, from among the options that have been laid out by the teacher; the Montessori m.o. is freedom within limits.
So if Thomas wants to pick up where he left off on a mathematics activity, he may do so. Or, if he wishes to take out the Knobbed Cylinder work from the Sensorial area (which, unbeknownst to him, will help him to develop his pincer grip necessary to later begin writing), he may do that as well. Thomas has a choice over what activity he wants to do, and how long he wants to do it for.
Researchers carried out a simple experiment which highlighted the importance of choice in activities. Children aged seven to nine years were presented with six categories of anagrams to work on. While all of the children in reality had the same choices, one group was told to choose from among the six categories, a second group was told that the experimenter chose the categories for them, and a third group was told that their mothers had made the choice of categories for them.
Children in the first group who “chose their own work” solved twice as many anagrams as the other two groups in the same amount of time. Additionally, during an optional free-play period after the time allotted to work on the anagrams, children in the first group elected to spend more time continuing to solve anagrams (*Iyengar & Lepper, 1999).
When children in a Montessori classroom have the freedom to choose, they have a sense of control, they take ownership over what they are doing, and their performance and their persistence improve. The freedom to choose also fosters independence in young children.
Interest improves learning
In a previous post, I talk about the importance of emotion in learning. The Montessori method is yet another approach to learning which capitalizes on this notion.
Making the most of student interest can be seen from many different levels in the Montessori approach:
the design of materials in which young children tend to be naturally interested,
the introduction of language activities at a time when, developmentally, children take an interest in learning their language,
allowing children to pursue activities that they find interesting at a given moment.
It only makes sense that people will better learn something in which they are interested. All else held constant, if two people are given piano lessons, one who has pined for professional instruction for some time, and the other whose parents forced it on him, the former will most certainly learn how to play better more quickly. Interest matters.
There are numerous studies that confirm this common sense conclusion. (I won’t delve into them here, but they’re out there.) Let me instead present you with the psychological definition of the word: being in a state of interest involves, “focused attention, increased cognitive functioning, persistence, and affective [emotional] involvement” (*Hidi, 2000, p. 311). In capitalizing on student interest, the Montessori approach encourages all of these things.
Extrinsic rewards hinder intrinsic motivation
Depending on the circumstances, extrinsic rewards can get fast (though not necessarily long-lasting) results. Extrinsic rewards have their place, though when it comes to one’s learning, the Montessori approach views extrinsic rewards as a hinderance to concentration and intrinsic drive: the characteristics that Montessori herself sought to instill in individuals.
Instead of extrinsic motivators, Montessori education relies on children’s natural curiosity for motivation, and does all that it can to get out of the way of children and their learning. By giving children extended time to pursue the activities that interest them, Montessori teachers let students focus on an activity for as long as they wish, in order to complete it as many times as desired. This freedom allows children to obtain for themselves a strong sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.
These feelings, not gold stars, provide the impetus and motivation for more challenging pursuits.
One study in particular (*Lepper, Greene & Nisbett, 1973) highlights particularly well the detrimental effect that extrinsic rewards can have on individuals–even with activities individuals otherwise would enjoy.
In this study, researchers put out markers available for use in classrooms of 3- to 5-year-old children. They noted which children were heavy marker users. One at a time, the heavy marker users were pulled aside and shown a “Good Player Award” (a card with a gold star and ribbon), and when asked, all the children said they would like to receive one. These children were told that all they had to do was draw with the markers.
In one condition, children were told they would receive a “Good Player Award” after drawing with the markers for six minutes. In another condition, the children were allowed to draw for six minutes and were unexpectedly given the award on the board. And in a third condition, the children drew for six minutes and no award was ever mentioned.
A panel of judges blind to each child’s condition rated the drawings of the children who expected the reward as being much lower in creative quality than those of the children in the two other conditions.
They researchers also found that a few weeks after the experiment, the children conditioned to expect a reward for using the markers used markers far less than the other children, and about half as much as the other children in the class.
In an activity that children otherwise enjoyed, the introduction of extrinsic rewards decreased children’s creativity, in addition to later decreasing their voluntary participation once the possibility of getting a reward was removed.
(For a recent LatB blog article about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, click here.)
Conclusion
Developing curricula around these four principles would be powerful. I wish that my own education had better leveraged these four insights, I’m sure I’d be all the better for it.
What I continue to find intriguing is that these were developed simply through the meticulous observation of young children over time, carried out by one person. No scientific experiments necessary.
More recent studies have revealed that these principles are in line with the way we learn. Designing her approach with the way children learn and develop better enables them to engage with and take ownership of their learning. This, I believe, is a major oversight with the way children are currently educated.
Look out for part two where I will delve into the other four principles, and discuss what this can look like in the classroom.
Reference
Lillard, A. S. (2005). Montessori: The science behind the genius. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Montessori, M. (1967b). The discovery of the child. New York, NY: Ballantine Books.
*References marked with an asterisk are cited in Lillard, 2005.
Oxytocin is often described as the “love hormone.” Apparently lots of oxtyocin is swirling around when mothers interact with their babies, and so its role in maternal affection is much trumpeted.
You may well hear people say that, in schools, we need to be sure that our students have more oxytocin in their lives.
However, folks giving this advice may be unsettled to hear that recent research describes oxytocin as “the relationship crisis hormone.”
Researchers in the US and Norway have found that, in romantic relationships, discrepancies in romantic interest lead to higher levels of oxytocin production.
In my mind, this news underlines an important general conclusion.
a) The study of psychology is complicated.
b) The study of neuroscience is really complicated.
c) The study of hormones is absurdly complicated. I mean, just, you cannot believe how complicated this stuff gets.
As a result, I encourage you to be wary when someone frames teaching advice within a simple hormonal framework. If you read teaching advice saying “your goal is to increase dopamine flow,” it’s highly likely that the person giving that advice doesn’t know enough about dopamine.
(BTW: it’s possible that the author’s teaching advice is sound, and that this teaching advice will result in more dopamine. But, dopamine is a result of the teaching practice–and of a thousand other variables–but not the goal of the teaching practice. The goal of the teaching is more learning. Adding the word “dopamine” to the advice doesn’t make it any better.)
In brief: if teaching advice comes to you dressed in the language of hormones, you’ll get a real dopamine rush by walking away…
