November 2017 – Education & Teacher Conferences

Andrew Watson

November-29-2017

Welcome to “the Messiness”

In a recent interview on this blog, Dr. Pooja K. Agarwal spoke about the benefits of retrieval practice: a study technique that–in her words–focuses on pulling information OUT of students’ brains rather than getting it back IN.

For example: if I begin today’s class by having my students write down three things they remember from yesterday’s lesson on the Han dynasty, that’s retrieval practice. After all, they’re going back into their memories and drawing OUT facts and ideas we discussed.

If, however, I begin by briefly summarizing yesterday’s class, well, then I’m trying to put information back IN. That’s not retrieval practice.

Dr. Agarwal summarizes the benefits of retrieval practice thus: “it works for all students in all subjects, all the time.”

Sounds tempting, no?

Pushing Boundaries

In one part of our conversation, Dr. Aragwal notes that she likes doing research in actual classrooms with actual students–rather than in psychology labs in highly controlled conditions–because “I really like the messiness of of doing scientific research in classrooms. The fire alarms, and school assemblies, and kids who are out sick, I really enjoy it because it pushes boundaries.”

In the spirit of messiness, here’s a recent post from the Learning Scientists about using retrieval practice in elementary school to learn vocabulary.

The good news about this study:

First: it took place in a real school with real students, not in a psychology lab. That means its results are likelier to be meaningful to teachers.

Second: the participants were 9-year-olds, not college students. So, we can be more confident that retrieval practice works with…say…4th graders.

Third: the study took place in the Netherlands, so we’ve got reason to believe that the benefits go beyond a North American cultural context.

So far, so good.

Let the Messiness Begin

At the same time, this particular study revealed a few muddles as well.

Muddle #1: the size of the benefit was relatively small. Retrieval practice produced more learning than simple restudy, and more than “elaborative retrieval,” but statistically speaking that difference was harder to find than in a psychology lab.

Muddle #2: Dr. Agarwal’s research shows that fill-in-the-blank retrieval practice and multiple-choice retrieval practice are equally effective. This study, however, contradicts that finding; multiple-choice retrieval didn’t produce more learning than pure restudy.

Muddle #3: believe it or not, muddle #3 contradicts muddle #2. Because of the study design, the authors acknowledge that their own findings about multiple-choice tests aren’t fully persuasive. For example: because the average score on the multiple-choice tests was above a 90%, there wasn’t enough difference among the students’ scores to calculate meaningful effects.

What should teachers do with all this contradictory information?

My advice: Embrace the muddle.

Teachers should expect that different studies produce muddled–and occasionally contradictory–results.

No one study tells us everything we need to know about retrieval practice. Instead, we’re looking for patterns of findings.

If we do ten studies, and eight of them show that retrieval practice helps learning, that’s impressive. We don’t need to be thrown off by one study that shows no effect–or, as in this case, a relatively smaller effect than in a psych lab.

The Quiet Finding

Although the authors don’t dwell on this point, one finding jumped out at me.

In one of the restudy conditions, students were asked to “elaborate” on the meaning of the word. For example, as they tried to remember “compost pile,” they were asked to circle the words relating to a compost pile on this list: manure, plastic, delicious, orange-peels, mailbox, dead leaves.

My teacherly instincts tell me that this restudy condition ought to help students. After all, to circle the correct words, they have to think a bit harder about the meaning of the phrase “compost pile.” That additional thought strikes me as a desirable difficulty, and ought to produce more learning.

But–at least in this one study–it didn’t. Students who “elaboratively restudied” scored between the “pure restudy” group and the “retrieval practice” group–and their scores weren’t significantly different from either.

The Take-Aways…

I myself reach three conclusions based on this research:

A) Yup: retrieval practice still works, even with 4th graders, even with vocabulary learning, even in the Netherlands.

B) My instincts about elaborative restudy might be off. I should keep my eyes peeled for further research.

C) The muddle isn’t disheartening, it’s enjoyable. Jump in–the water’s warm!

The Benefits of Prediction; the Dangers of Vocabulary

Andrew Watson

November-27-2017

The Benefits of Prediction; the Dangers of Vocabulary

What’s the best way to study complex material?

Working with Charles Atwood at the University of Utah, Brock Casselman tried an idea:

He had students in a general chemistry class do weekly online problems and practice tests; after completing that work, the students received detailed feedback.

In addition to this online practice, half of the students also predicted their scores before they took the tests; they then made study plans after they received the feedback.

Did this additional work help?

Indeed it did. On average, it raised grades on the final exam by 4%.

Even more impressively, those in the bottom quartile of the class raised their exam grade by 10%.

Especially for those who struggled with the material, making predictions and updating study plans boosted learning.

Reasons to Celebrate; Reasons to Pause

Of course, this research is quite helpful in giving us specific teaching advice. The more we can encourage our students to stop and predict their success, the more we can prompt them to make thoughtful study plans, the more that they’re likely to learn.

So far, so good.

However, I do see two reasons to add a note of caution.

First, this study was done in a difficult college class; according to this interview, only 2/3 of the students who take the class ever pass it.

A study technique that helps in such a difficult class might be beneficial to students in less rigorous classes…but, we can’t be sure based on this research.

Second, I do worry about the broad vocabulary used to describe this study technique: “metacognition.”

No doubt you’ve heard of metacognition: it means “thinking about thinking.” When I stop and ask myself, “now, why did I get that problem wrong? What patterns do I notice with other mistakes I made?” I’ve engaged in metacognition.

Here’s the potential danger. While it is true that Casselman’s particular set of metacognitive strategies helped these students, that doesn’t mean that ALL metacognitive strategies will help ALL students.

For instance, you might read that “using context clues” is a metcognitive strategy. It certainly is. And, of course, using context clues might well help students to important discoveries.

However: that’s not the metacognitive strategy that was used in this case. So, this study doesn’t show that using context clues would help students in this chemistry class.

Or that it would help your students.

Boundaries Matter

In a recent post, I encouraged teachers to look for boundary conditions. In other words: we’re interested in researchers’ general findings, but we want to be sure that they apply specifically to our students.

To do so, check out the “participants” section of the research you’re reading. If the students who participated in the research resemble your students, then you’re good to go. If not, use your own best judgment about the applicability of that research.

Equally important: be sure that the specific techniques described as “metacognition” are in fact the ones that you’re using. If not, you should look for more research to be sure you’re on the right track.

After all, my predictions about the benefits of metacognition might be correct–but if my results show that a particular metacognitive strategy didn’t work, I need to develop a new study plan.

Andrew Watson

November-26-2017

Now Even the New York Times Has It Wrong

Here’s a hypothetical situation:

Let’s say that psychology researchers clearly demonstrate that retrieval practice helps students form long-term memories better than rereading the textbook does.

However, despite this clear evidence, these researchers nonetheless emphatically recommend that students avoid retrieval practice and instead reread the textbook. These researchers have two justifications for their perverse recommendation:

First: students aren’t currently doing retrieval practice, and

Second: they can’t possibly learn how to do so.

Because we are teachers, we are likely to respond this way: “Wait a minute! Students learn how to do new things all the time. If retrieval practice is better, we should teach them how to do it, and then they’ll learn more. This solution is perfectly obvious.”

Of course it is. It’s PERFECTLY OBVIOUS.

Believe It Or Not…

This hypothetical situation is, in fact, all too real.

In 2014, Pam Mueller and Dan Oppenheimer did a blockbuster study comparing the learning advantages of handwritten notes to laptop notes.

Their data clearly suggest that laptop notes ought to be superior to handwritten notes as long as students learn to take notes the correct way.

(The correct way is: students should reword the professor’s lecture, rather than simply copy the words down verbatim.)

However–amazingly–the study concludes

First: students aren’t currently rewording their professor’s lecture, and

Second: they can’t possibly learn how to do so.

Because of these two beliefs, Mueller and Oppenheimer argue that–in the witty title of their article–“The Pen is Mightier than the Laptop.”

But, as we’ve seen in the hypothetical above, this conclusion is PERFECTLY OBVIOUSLY incorrect.

Students can learn how to do new things. They do so all the time. Learning to do new things is the point of school.

If students can learn to reword the professor’s lecture when taking notes on a laptop, then Mueller and Oppenheimer’s own data suggest that they’ll learn more. And yes, I do mean “learn more than people who take handwritten notes.”

(Why? Because laptop note-takers can write more words than handwriters, and in M&O’s research, more words lead to more learning.)

And yet, despite the self-evident logic of this argument, the belief that handwritten notes are superior to laptop notes has won the day.

That argument is commonplace is the field of psychology. (Here‘s a recent example.)

Even the New York Times has embraced it.

The Fine Print

I do need to be clear about the limits of my argument:

First: I do NOT argue that a study has been done supporting my specific hypothesis. That is: as far as I know, no one has trained students to take reworded laptop notes, and found a learning benefit over reworded handwritten notes. That conclusion is the logical hypothesis based on Mueller and Oppenheimer’s research, but we have no explicit research support yet.

Second: I do NOT discount the importance of internet distractions. Of course students using laptops might be easily distracted by Twinsta-face-gram-book. (Like everyone else, I cite Faria Sana’s research to emphasize this point.)

However, that’s not the argument that Mueller and Oppenheimer are making. Their research isn’t about internet distractions; it’s about the importance of reworded notes vs. verbatim notes.

Third: I often hear the argument that the physical act of writing helps encode learning more richly than the physical act of typing. When I ask for research supporting that contention, people send me articles about 1st and 2nd graders learning to write.

It is, I suppose, possible that this research about 1st graders applies to college students taking notes. But, that’s a very substantial extrapolation–much grander than my own modest extrapolation of Mueller and Oppenheimer’s research.

And, again, it’s NOT the argument that M&O are making.

To believe that the kinesthetics of handwriting make an essential difference to learning, I want to find a study showing that the physical act of writing helps high school/college students who are taking handwritten notes learn more. Absent that research, this argument is even more hypothetical than my own.

Hopeful Conclusion

The field of Mind, Brain, & Education promises that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts.

That is: if psychologists and neuroscientists and teachers work together, we can all help each other understand how to do our work better.

Frequently, advice from the world of psychology gives teachers wise guidance. (For example–retrieval practice.)

In this case, we teachers can give psychology wise guidance. The founding assumption of the Mueller and Oppenheimer study–that students can’t learn to do new things–simply isn’t true. No one knows that better than teachers do.

If we can keep this essential truth at the front of psychology and neuroscience research, we can benefit the work that they do, and improve the advice that they give.

Andrew Watson

November-25-2017

Good News about Concept Mapping

This meta-analysis, which looks at studies including almost 12,000 students, concludes that creating concept maps does indeed promote learning.

Specifically, it’s better than simply looking at concept maps, or listening to lectures, or participating in discussions, or even writing summaries.

The article summarizes several hypotheses to explain the benefits of concept mapping: it reduces working memory load by using both visual and verbal channels, it requires greater cognitive elaboration, and so forth.

So, let’s hear it: how do you get your students to map concepts? What successes have you had? Let me know in the comments…

(h/t IQ’s Corner)

Andrew Watson

November-21-2017

The Benefits of Forgetting

As teachers, we earnestly want our students to REMEMBER what they learned; their habit of FORGETTING leave us glum and frustrated.

(In truth, our own forgetting often leaves us glum and frustrated. If you could tell me where I put my to-do list, I’d be grateful.)

In this article at Neuron, authors Blake Richards and Paul Frankland argue that our teacherly priorities don’t quite align with our neurobiology.

In their account, we remember information not simply to have that information, but in order to make good decisions.

In some cases, of course, having more information benefits our decisions, and so our brains are designed to recall that information.

In other cases, however, some kinds of information might well interfere with good decision making.

Specifically, if we forget correctly, we are a) less likely to make decisions based on outdated information, and b) better able to form useful generalizations.

In other words: forgetting is a feature, not a bug.

Andrew Watson

November-19-2017

Neuroplasticity in Rural India

You hear so much about “neuroplasticity” at Learning and the Brain conferences that you already know its meaning: brains have the ability to change.

In fact, you hear about neuroplasticity so often that you might start to lose interest. You say to yourself: “Brains can change: blah, blah, blah. Tell me something I don’t already know.”

And then you read this study about adult women in rural India. They had never learned to read; heck, they had never even been to school.

And, sure enough, when they were taught to read, their brains started changing. After only six months, their brains looked measurably different–all because they had started to read.

On the one hand, this result is perfectly straightforward: if their brains hadn’t changed, how would they have learned anything? And yet, unlike most “doing X causes your brain to change!” stories, this one struck me as quite poignant.

Consider this your feel-good-about-neuroscience story of the day.

Andrew Watson

November-18-2017

Correlation Isn’t Causation, Is It?

(Image source)

The ever provocative Freddie deBoer explores the relationship between correlation and causation.

You know, of course, that the one does not imply the other.

DeBoer, however, wants to push your certainty on this point.

Are there circumstances under which proving causation would be immoral, and therefore correlation is a useful placeholder? (Do you really want to run the double-blind study about smoking cigarettes?)

Are there circumstances under which the causal chain is wildly complicated, and so correlation is an important clue?

In other words: while correlation doesn’t prove causation, common sense tells us that it’s an interesting starting point. And: we often face circumstances where causal proof is hard to come by, and so correlation gets our attention as a useful indicator of potential causation.

As long as we’re careful about these subtleties, we can allow ourselves to notice correlation, and speculate (humbly) about causation.

Here’s how deBoer concludes his article:

What we need, I think, is to contribute to a communal understanding of research methods and statistics, including healthy skepticism. […] Reasonable skepticism, not unthinking rejection; a critical utilization, not a thoughtless embrace.

That’s a hard logical place to find; here’s hoping we can find it together.

____________________

Update: I wrote the piece above on 11/8. Today (11/16), Greg Ashman posted a thoughtful piece making very similar arguments. I wonder what coincidence implies about causation…

The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik

Rebecca Gotlieb

November-16-2017

The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children by Alison Gopnik

Parents—a noun, something an individual may be—have existed for as long as there have been children. The idea of “parenting” as a verb, something one does, is a new, odd, and problematic cultural change for parents and children alike. Alison Gopnik, a self-described “bubbe at Berkeley” or mother and grandmother, and University of California, Berkeley professor of psychology and philosophy, argues that parents can aspire to love their children better without thinking of their role as making their child into a certain kind of adult. Her most recent book, The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship Between Parents and Children, references the idea that parents should act like a gardener, providing a rich and safe environment in which flowers (or people) can grow into the best version of themselves and thrive. Gopnik advises that Parents should not mold children into a particular and unchanging kind of being the way a carpenter molds furniture into its specific form. tThroughout the book Gopnik explores parenting paradoxes and the implications for how to support children. These paradoxes include the fact that children must transform from complete dependence to complete autonomy; children must transform from people who mostly play to people who mostly work; parents need both to pass on knowledge and traditions and to allow kids to innovate and differentiate; and parents’ love is specific to their individual children, which can conflict with the job of supporting positive development for a community’s children.

The verb of “parenting” only emerged towards the end of the 1950s and then spiked in popular usage in the 1970s. Rather than parenting, we need to let kids learn and grow by providing them a safe and protected period to do so. Tragically, even though the U.S. is the richest nation, we do not do a good job as a society of protecting children (e.g., 1 out of 5 kids lives in poverty, we do not have guaranteed paid leave for parents to care for kids).

Gopnik argues that an evolutionary perspective on the parent-child relationship can help us understand how to be parents today. We are unique among species in our long period of childhood, and across species longer average childhoods are associated with greater parental involvement, fewer children per mother, longer lives of offspring, higher survival rates of offspring, more intelligence, and larger brains. The tendency of our species to form long-term bonds with a co-parent, invest significantly in raising children, live long enough to become grandparents, and rely on other adults to assist with child care have all contributed to our longer childhoods.

Our longer childhoods provide a protected period of observation, learning, and play, which contributes to our ability to become flexible, innovative adults. Children learn from observing actions and intentions of other people, especially individuals similar to them, who have proven themselves to be good teachers, and who convey confidence. Apprenticeships, in which students see skills modeled and in which their learning process and production of products are entwined, is an effective way to learn. Children learn from what adults say and from answers to the questions children ask adults. Play helps kids engage in counterfactual thinking, develop theory of mind, and develop cognitive flexibility, but kids must feel safe to engage in play. We do not need to formally instruct in order to support young children in learning; rather, we should involve them in the activities of our daily lives and make them feel secure. Gopnik argues that wealthy children often have overly scheduled and controlled environments, while poor children often have chaotic lives in which they are neglected. Few children have the ideal environment that feels both safe and free.

Very young children show tremendous versatility in their learning and plasticity in their brain. By about school age kids become a bit less flexible but more efficient, both in how they learn and in how their brain is connected within itself. Adolescence brings a reemergence of neural plasticity and a desire to innovate. During this period of innovation, parents serve as a bridge to the past as they watch their teens enter into the future.

Parents who are turned off by the pressure to prepare kids for the Ivy League before they have started Little League, educators who are concerned by a school culture or the broader culture of overly involved parenting, policy makers interested in creating scientifically informed policies to support the next generation’s development, and anyone interested in how the relationship between parents and children make us uniquely human will find Gopnik’s book informative and compelling.

Gopnik, A. (2016). The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us About the Relationship Between Parents and Children. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Macmillan.

The 2017 Transforming Education Through Neuroscience Award Was Presented on Sunday at the Learning & the Brain® Educational Conference in Boston

landb

November-15-2017

The 2017 Transforming Education Through Neuroscience Award Was Presented on Sunday at the Learning & the Brain® Educational Conference in Boston

Dr. Daniel T. Willingham from the University of Virginia was presented with the “2017 Transforming Education Through Neuroscience Award” for his contributions to the field of Mind, Brain, and Education during the Learning & the Brain® educational conference in Boston, MA.

A groundbreaking researcher whose work lies at the intersection of education and cognitive neuroscience was awarded the tenth annual prize for “Transforming Education Through Neuroscience.” The award was established to honor individuals who represent excellence in bridging neuroscience and education and is funded by the Learning & the Brain® Foundation. The $2,500 award will be used to support translational efforts bridging scientific findings and classroom practice.

Dr. Willingham is being honored for his work on learning and memory and the applications of cognitive psychology to education. He has devoted much of his career leveraging scientific findings to address important educational issues. Dr. Willingham received his BA from Duke and his PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Harvard University and is now a Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia. He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine. Dr. Willingham is also the author of the following books Why Don’t Students Like School?, When Can You Trust the Experts?, Raising Kids Who Read, and The Reading Mind. His writing on education has appeared in fifteen languages.

David B. Daniel, PhD, Professor of Psychology at James Madison University and the 2013 winner of the award, had praise for the new recipient. “Dr. Willingham is one of the nation’s most responsible and effective translators of psychological science to educational practice. He is adept at synthesizing seemingly divergent literatures and working across multiple levels-of-analysis to construct evidence-based, usable knowledge for educational practices. Dr. Willingham’s impact across the field, from the classroom to policy, is both important and influential.”

According to John D.E. Gabrieli, PhD, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Daniel Willingham has been the leader in communicating concepts and advances in the science of learning to a broad community of educators and parents. He has created a bridge between the best of science and the most important challenges that teachers and students face in the classroom.”

Dr. Daniel presented the prize to Dr. Willingham at the Learning & the Brain® educational conference in Boston, MA on Sunday, November 12, held at the Westin Copley Hotel. The Learning & the Brain® Foundation wishes Dr. Willingham our heartiest congratulations.

Andrew Watson

November-15-2017

Home News

In the excitement of this weekend’s Learning and the Brain conference, I overlooked my own one-year anniversary as editor of this blog.

I’ve enjoyed the chance to think aloud with you about teaching, psychology, neuroscience, research–and all the odd topics that come across my desk. (Squirrels, anyone?)

I’ve particularly enjoyed the chance to interact with so many of you. Please keep your emails, questions, suggestions, criticisms, and experiences coming: [email protected].

Here’s to another year!

Cheers,

Andrew

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