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Monthly Archives: October 2019

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Getting Research to Work in Schools
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-30-2019

Getting Research to Work in Schools

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Teachers work one classroom at a time.

If I learn how to teach better, I can help this group of students right here in front of me for as long as they’re here.

My devotion to Learning and the Brain conferences began when I saw how much better I taught when psychology research informed my teaching.

But what if we have bigger aspirations? What if we’d like to help whole grades of students? What if we’d like to help the entire school?

Scaling It Up

One idea has become increasingly popular in recent years: the “research lead.”

In this model, one teacher (or, perhaps, a group) becomes an expert in the magic of teaching+research.

That teacher, the research lead, then works with colleagues and administrators to shape practice and policy.

The research lead can coach other teachers. Inform discussions about school start times. Participate in hiring committees. Shape in-school professional development.

In general, this person spreads the good research word.

This model has several potential strengths. Primarily, it builds a research perspective into the structure of the school, rather than having it be an occasional add-on.

I know of several schools in the US that are adopting this model. The question is: does it work?

“No.” Or, Better Said, “Not Yet.”

The Educational Endowment Fund (EEF) in Great Britain wanted to know the answer to that question, so they commissioned a substantial study.

40 schools added research leads, and the EEF compared their students’ progress to students at schools that didn’t have research leads. They measured national exam results one and two years later.

The effect: basically nothing. There were differences, but they weren’t statistically significant.

This research isn’t encouraging, but I don’t think it’s as discouraging as it seems at first. Here’s why…

I worked as an academic administrator for several years, and I know from hard experience that change takes time.

Remember: the “research lead” model works–if it works–by coaxing. One colleague encourages another. She sits on a committee and adds an opinion to the mix. He steers people in one direction over another.

How long will it take for that coaxing to influence learning? Especially “learning” as measured by a standardized national test? I’m thinking the answer is: longer than two years.

After all: the teachers at these schools who wanted to follow research-based teaching suggestions may well have been doing so already. The research lead has to work with the less-than-all-in colleagues. And if you work in a school, you know that such work doesn’t produce immediate results.

My Suggestions

First: set reasonable expectations. I don’t know what the right amount of time is. But 1 or 2 years is too little.

Second: the model will probably have more success if the research leads have more power. Colleagues can coax colleagues, but leaders can do more than coax. (I know of at least one school where the head said: “if you’re going to work at this school, you’re going to base your teaching on research. If you don’t want to do that, we’ll help you find another job.” Now, THAT lead to change.)

Third: the model will certainly be more effective if the leads stay in their roles a long time. In the EEF study, fully 40% of them stopped after one year. That turnover both highlights and compounds the difficulty of the position.

Of course, I don’t know that the “research lead” model will work. And, I certainly hope that research-based teaching becomes a broad interest: not one narrowly limited to a few people in a school.

Until that happens, I certainly think the research lead model deserves a longer test-drive.

 

If you’d like to learn more about research leads, and this EEF study, check out this article at Blog on Learning & Development.

Prior Knowledge: Building the Right Floor
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-27-2019

Prior Knowledge: Building the Right Floor

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Take a gander at this passage from Michael Jones’s recent biography of The Black Prince:

“In the fourteenth century England used a silver standard of currency. The unit of account was the pound sterling (£) which was equal to one and a half marks of silver. The pound was divided into twenty shillings (s), each of twelve pence (d). There was also, from 1344, a gold coinage based on the noble, which was conventionally worth 6s 8d, but was rarely used. It would, however, be significant in the calculation of the ransom of King John II and also in the introduction of gold coinage into Gascony and then the principality of Aquitaine by the Black Prince.”

Many readers, I suspect, felt tempted to give up relatively quickly. (Don’t blame yourself if you did.) Unless you’re really up to speed on 14th century English currency–both silver and gold!–the paragraph quickly becomes overwhelming.

The vocabulary in this passage probably doesn’t strain our cognition. Except for the phrase “marks of silver,” I know what all those words mean. (And, I can guess from context that a “mark” is some unit of measurement.)

However, the passage does place several mental demands on the reader.

First, it invites you to undertake several rapid mathematical calculations. (Quick: how many shillings in a mark?)

Second, it requires you to learn abbreviations as you go. To understand the fourth sentence, you need to remember the (wildly counter-intuitive) abbreviation of “pence” as “d” from the third sentence.

Third, it assumes you recall several events and places unfamiliar–I suspect–to most Americans. Who was King John II? Why was he ransomed…was he kidnapped? Where are Gascony and Aquitaine? They don’t sound very English — why did an English prince introduce coinage to them? Actually: why is a prince empowered to introduce new currency?

Essential Background Knowledge

I thought of this paragraph when I read a recent article by Robert Pondiscio. In it, Pondiscio summarizes a study trying to determine how much background knowledge is necessary for comprehension.

In this study, students who scored higher than a 59% on a background knowledge test understood a reading passage substantially better than those who scored below 59%.

As summarized by Pondiscio, the study’s authors see some clear teaching implications here.

First, we can meaningfully measure our students’ relevant background knowledge.

Second, students who fall short on that measure will benefit A LOT if we provide them with the essentials.

For instance, students who understood that “habitat,” “species,” and “ecosystems” were relevant vocabulary for the study of ecology understood the reading passage more deeply. (The study included 3500 students, so I believe they controlled for various confounds. I haven’t read the study itself–it’s behind a paywall.)

I think those conclusions point to another:

Third: models of teaching that focus on “pure discovery” will create substantial challenges for students who lack background knowledge. Students who don’t know the basics of a topic simply can’t understand the field of inquiry within which they’re meant to discover.

And, they won’t feel motivated by curiosity to find out. They’ll feel discouraged by their confusion. (Few readers, I suspect, were motivated by the paragraph above to learn more about medieval English currency.)

A Final Thought

This study finds that 59% was the essential tipping point. Students who scored lower than 59% on the prior knowledge test found themselves in a different cognitive category than those who scored above.

However, that percentage does not necessarily apply to all circumstances.

In other words: we shouldn’t give our students prior-knowledge tests, and focus only on those who score 58% and below.

Instead, we should plan our lessons and units knowing that some floor-level of knowledge will be crucial for learning most things.

In every case–as you hear me say so often–we’ll have to rely on the teacher’s judgment to discover that level.

Researchers can remind us that the floor exists. But they can’t identify it for every teacher in every classroom. Ultimately, with that research guidance in mind, we’ll find the right place for the floor. And, we’ll build it.

Faster Learners Remember Better (Perhaps)
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-25-2019

Faster Learners Remember Better (Perhaps)

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As a society, we often conflate speed with cognitive skill. People who learn faster seem smarter, somehow.

As a teacher, it took me years to get past that belief. (The short version of the story: I had a student who got 100% extra time on tests because her processing speed percentile was in the single digits. When I read her first essay I thought: you could have given any of my other students 100% extra time–they never would have come up with this analysis. She wasn’t fast, but good heavens she was insightful.)

I’ve recently found research suggesting NOT that speed = smarts, but that speedy learning  = better memory.

Here’s the story.

The Study

Researchers had adults learn 45 pairs of English and Lithuanian nouns. (Relatively few people speak Lithuanian, and so it’s a good test language.)

Basically, they used computer-based flashcards to study the word pairs. Then, they went through the pairs and tried to fill in blanks correctly.

If the adults got the right answer, the card was dropped from the deck. If they got it wrong, they could study the correct answer, so they could get it right the next time.

Researchers wanted to know, first, how long did it take them to get all the words in the deck right? That is: how many times did they cycle through the deck before they finished the task?

In other words: how quickly did they learn?

And, second, how well did they do on a test of those word pairs the following day?

In other words: how well did they learn?

The Findings

As you can see in the graph, the fast learners remembered better. Check out the bottom half of the image below.

Zerr, C. L., Berg, J. J., Nelson, S. M., Fishell, A. K., Savalia, N. K., & McDermott, K. B. (2018). Learning efficiency: Identifying individual differences in learning rate and retention in healthy adults. Psychological Science, 29(9), 1436-1450.

The top 25% learned the words in about 7 cycles through the deck. And, the next day, they remember about 89% of the word pairs. (I’m eyeballing these numbers from the graph.)

The bottom 25% learned the words in about 16 cycles. And, they next day, they remembered about 56%.

If you want to predict how well these adults would remember the word pairs the next day, the best question you could ask would be: “how quickly did they learn those word pairs today?”

And, here’s the crazy part:

4 of these researchers had used the Lithuanian word-pair method in a different study about 3 years before.

They recontacted those participants, and many of them agreed to be retested.

Sure enough, the people who learned relatively quickly (and remembered well) 3 years ago still did so. The people who learned relatively slowly (and didn’t remember so well) 3 years ago showed the same pattern again.

In other words: this is a relatively stable finding. It lasts not from day to day, but over months and years.

Big Questions

First, of course, we’d like to know why this is true? The study’s authors speculate that the fast learners might be better at attentional control. Or, they might have higher working memory capacity. Or, they might come up with better memory strategies.

At present, we just don’t know.

Second, would this finding hold true for other kinds of learning? After all, we rarely want our students to learn foreign-language word pairs relatively quickly. (Even foreign language teachers let students learn vocabulary over time.)

So: do people who learn letters quickly remember them better? Do people who learn science formulas quickly remember them better?

Does this finding matter for other kinds of learning?

We don’t know.

Third, is this true if we test students’ memories more than a day later. In both halves of this research, participants learned words one day, and the final test was the next day.

What would we find if the final test was two weeks later?

Once again: we just don’t know.

What Should Teachers Do?

For the time being, I don’t think this research creates emphatic teaching guidelines. We simply have too many important questions to let our practice change much based on this study.

We should, of course, keep our eyes out for further exploration of this topic.

If anything, I’d suggest this strategy. If you have a student or two who take an unusually long time to learn something, you might check in with them the next day to see how well those memories have consolidated.

They just might need an extra boost.

This suggestion is, of course, speculation; I’m not insisting that all readers adopt it. However, it seems to me the most plausible application of potentially important research.

Motivation = “Self-Determination” + Common Sense
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-23-2019

Motivation = “Self-Determination” + Common Sense

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Self-Determination Theory, one of the most important theories of motivation, tends to operate behind the scenes.

That is: researchers often use self-determination theory to explain why something else works.

The theory itself argues that humans are motivated by a desire for three basic things.

Autonomy

Relatedness

Competence

Unlike many terms in psychology, those three mean exactly what you think they mean. So, “competence” means, basically, the feeling that I’m skillful at whatever I’m doing. “Relatedness” means, basically, “connected with others.” And so forth.

When giving teachers advice, researchers often turn to self-determination theory to explain why a particular set of suggestions might help students learn.

Goals and Feedback

Common sense tells teachers that we should make goals clear to our students. And, we should offer them specific feedback.

But, why might those two things help? Specifically, why might they promote motivation?

Researchers in Belgium and The Netherlands hypothesized that clear goals and specific feedback might encourage self-determination.

Specifically:

If I, as a student, know what the goals are, I can work more independently to achieve them. That will make me feel autonomous, and competent.

Likewise, specific feedback will allow me to work effectively–that is, competently.

And, of course, goals and (especially) feedback will increase my sense of relatedness with my teacher.

To test this hypothesis, the researchers worked with 500+ high school students taking PE classes. They surveyed them 6 times about their classes, asking about clarity of goals and feedback, and measuring their feelings of autonomy, relatedness, and competence.

What did they find?

(Too Much Of) A Good Thing

Sure enough, they found that clear goals and precise feedback helped students feel “in charge of their learning processes”: that is, autonomous.

They also felt more competent, and more connected and cared for.

In brief: goals and feedback can help students in a number of ways. In the world of motivation theory, they boost the three key components of self-determination theory.

Perhaps the most interesting part of this research puts an asterisk on that finding. While feedback helps, lots and lots of feedback reduces feelings of both competence and relatedness.

In fact, these findings make sense. If my teacher has to give me lots of feedback, the implication is that I’m not very good at what I’m doing–that is, not very competent.

And, that hovering might well feel irritating–reducing rather than increasing relatedness.

In other words, as is so often true, teachers have to apply research-based advice skillfully. We want to have clear goals and helpful feedback. And, we want to ensure that “helpful feedback” doesn’t tip over into excessive feedback.

Paradoxically, too much of a good thing can convert motivation into demotivation.

What if a Research-Supported Educational Idea is Unconstitutional?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-21-2019

What if a Research-Supported Educational Idea is Unconstitutional?

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As a reader of this blog, you know we’ve got lots (and LOTS) of research showing that sleep benefits learning.

A good night’s sleep consolidates memories. Naps improve learning. Heck: sleep even helps us forget things we want to forget.

What if it turned out that—for some reason—giving students time to nap were unconstitutional? What if lawyers argued we can’t delay high-school start times to allow for more sleep, because the constitution requires school to begin before 8:00 am?

Although this hypothetical example is obviously silly—why would naps be unconstitutional?—the deeper question matters. We are, after all, a country of laws. If a particular educational practice—like, say, “separate but equal”—is unconstitutional, we don’t do it.

Obviously.

A Current Example

The Tricycle is a magazine that promotes Buddhism, and for that reason takes real interest in mindfulness. You can, for instance, read about “The Buddha’s Original Teachings on Mindfulness” here.

Back in May, Tricycle editor James Shaheen posted a surprising interview on their website.

In this conversation, Shaheen talks with Dr. Candy Gunther Brown: a religious studies professor who argues that mindfulness can’t be separated from its religious origins.

For that reason, requiring mindfulness is—in fact—requiring a kind of religious activity: a requirement that, in Brown’s view, violates the US Constitution.

Digging Deeper

Shaheen’s conversation with Brown lasts almost an hour, and so can’t be summarized in a brief blog post. I encourage you to listen to the whole thing.

To give a flavor of her argument, I’ll briefly mention a few of her points.

First: mindfulness often encourages participants to adopt a detached view of the events around them, and their emotional responses to those events. Rather than respond, we should “take a mental step back” and simply notice our bodily response to our feelings.

Brown notes that this seemingly “neutral stance” might well spill over into a religious perspective. After all, many religions ask their adherents not to notice their internal responses, but to go into the world and do something about those events.

For that reason, mindfulness isn’t a religiously neutral practice.

Second: Brown quotes research suggesting that people who practice mindfulness have religious experiences at a higher rate than those who don’t. And, people who have those often end up moving away from a monotheistic perspective.

Which is to say, mindfulness might in fact change the religious views of the people participating in it.

If we know that to be true (and, to be clear, I haven’t reviewed the research Brown cites), then requiring students to practice mindfulness might both have all the school and health benefits we like and indirectly encourage a particular religious framework within schools.

Of course, Brown discusses other concerns as well. Some are explicitly legal. Others focus on the motives of (some) people and organizations that promote mindfulness: phrases like “stealth Buddhism” make her suspicions amply clear.

You can read her own summary of her argument here.

What Should We Do?

Brown doesn’t want to banish or forbid mindful practices from schools. Instead, she wants schools that have them ensure such programs are voluntary.

They should not even be “opt-out” programs that students must decline—risking their relationships with peers and teachers.

Instead, they should be “opt-in” programs that students sign up for and attend when they choose to.

In her view, this framework—especially if it offers appropriate alternatives—would both provide the good stuff that mindfulness allows and pass constitutional muster.

Another important point stands out in this debate.

Note the source of this anti-mindfulness interview: a magazine and website devoted to Buddhism and mindfulness. (Okay, it’s not exactly an anti-mindfulness interview, but I suspect some people will see it that way.)

You might think that this magazine would be hostile to Brown’s position. You might think it would try to ignore her work, or shout it down.

Instead, editor Shaheen interviews Brown sympathetically and politely and knowledgeably. (He’s clearly read her book.)

So, the second thing we should do is emulate Shaheen’s example. As I’ve written elsewhere: when we hear about evidence that contradicts our beliefs, we should not ignore it or decry it.

We should, instead, learn as much as we can from it.

Whatever you think about the constitutionality of mindfulness, I hope you admire, and follow, Shaheen’s example.

When Introverts Act Like Extraverts (and Vice Versa)
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-19-2019

When Introverts Act Like Extraverts (and Vice Versa)

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Susan Cain’s 2013 book Quiet focused teacherly attention on students’ introversion.

In Cain’s telling, schools valorize extraversion over introversion.

We praise and reward the outspoken student. We worry over the quiet student. Often we champion group discussion and teamwork, and look askance at soft-spoken, individual effort.

Whatever the truth of these concerns, this framework rests on the unspoken assumption that introverts and extroverts remain constant in their identities. Introverts act introverted most (or all) of the time. Extraverts are the life of every party.

What if that weren’t true? What if we could deliberately act more one way other the other?

But, Why Are You Asking?

Before we investigate those questions, we should ask a more basic one: why bother? Why encourage extraverts to act like introverts?

It turns out that, on average, extraverts feel happier than introverts do. (Psychologists typically speak of “well being” more than happiness. And, they’ve got fancy terms to define and measure it. But, at the end of the day, extraverts experience more of the good stuff than the introverts do.)

So, if we could help introverts be more extraverted, would they feel happier?

And, by the way, happy people get other benefits. In Csikszentmihalyi’s terminology, they experience flow state more often. In Deci and Ryan’s terminology, they experience connectedness, autonomy, and competence more often.

And so, researchers ask this question as a way to promote happiness, and all the good things that come with it.

The Research, the Results

Seth Margolis and Sonja Lyubomirsky asked 130 college students to act more extraverted for a week, and then more introverted for a week. (Half went in that order; the other half went in the reverse order.)

They did all the things you’d want researchers to do. For instance: they took care to describe introverted and extraverted behavior equally positively. (That’s hard to do, in a culture that valorizes extraversion.)

What did they find?

Margolis and Lyubomirsky kept track of roughly 2 dozen variables, and so they’ve got LOTS of results to report. The headlines:

When these students acted more extraverted, they experienced more positive affect. When they acted more introverted, they experienced less.

Also, back to Csikszentmihalyi: they experienced flow more often when acting extraverted, and less often when acting introverted.

Back to Deci & Ryan: they experienced connectedness more often when extraverted.

Extraversion, however, had weak or inconsistent effects on life satisfaction, and Deci & Ryan’s competence.

But basically, extraversion–even forced extraversion–produced lots of benefits over the week.

Lots of Caveats

Margolis and Lyubomirsky have done unusual work here. For one thing, psychology studies rarely last two full weeks.

For that reason, we’ll want to look out for follow-up studies to see if other researchers arrive at similar conclusions.

Also, they emphasize that their data come from self-report–a kind of measurement that’s inherently less reliable than other kinds.

Those caveats (and many others) acknowledged, I think this study highlights encouraging possibilities.

First: people can successfully change their behavior. Even though I might incline to introversion, I can push myself to act extraverted. And when I do, I get the happiness benefits that extraverts get.

Second: in highlighting extraversion, schools might not be harming introverts as much as Cain worried. If, in fact, extraverts feel happy (and experience flow; and feel greater connectedness) more often than introverts, we might not be harming introverts by nudging them out of their comfort zones.

I should emphasize, this second point is my own: neither stated nor implied by Margolis and Lyubomirsky. And, I could be entirely wrong. Perhaps a week-long experiment in extraversion is beneficial for introverts, but more than a week is draining. Or, perhaps voluntary extraversion produces these benefits, but school-required extraversion doesn’t.

In any case, I think we can usefully rethink questions about introverts and extraverts in school.

Admitting My Bias

As you read this post–which seems to champion extraversion–you might wonder where I myself fall in this dichotomy. That is: am I promoting extraversion simply because I’m an extravert?

The answer is: I am a little bit of both.

If you meet me as a presenter at a Learning and the Brain conference, you’ll see my extraverted side. In that professional setting, I’m comfortable putting on my loud-in-public persona.

If you meet me at a cocktail party, you’ll definitely see my introverted side. I’ll be in the corner having a deep conversation with one person. I certainly won’t be introducing myself to strangers, and telling raucous jokes to a room of on-lookers. (Who am I kidding? I rarely go to cocktail parties, because my introverted side doesn’t like small talk.)

In brief: I’m not championing extraversion because I’m an extravert.

I’m inviting readers to rethink the very belief that extraverts and introverts are two different species. I think we’re all a bit of both.

And, if we can help our students (and ourselves) by encouraging extraversion, then schools and teachers should know the good we can do.

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversities by Nadine Burke Harris
Rebecca Gotlieb
Rebecca Gotlieb
October-17-2019

The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversities by Nadine Burke Harris

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Nadine Burke Harris explains that she wrote The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversities to help parent and caregivers provide their children with the best opportunity in life, even when they face difficulties. This book is a critical, and eye-opening read for those invested in supporting the health and education of young people. As Harris chronicles her own career as a researcher, pediatric clinician, and founder and CEO of the Center for Youth Wellness in San Francisco, she leads the reader through her process of discovering that childhood adversities cause profound and lasting changes in the body and that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are widespread and transmitted from one generation to the next. Using her own successes at the Center for Youth Wellness as an example and with suggestions for future efforts, she advocates for a public health response that includes prevention of adverse childhood experiences and quick and sensitive screenings for ACEs in conjunction with a medical and mental health response for treating the psychological and physical effects of trauma. While we need to learn more about how to recover from adversities, six factors we know to be helpful are sleep, mental health, healthy relationships, exercise, nutrition, and mindfulness.

Early in her career, Harris researched the biochemical basis of stress in tadpoles, finding that exposure to stress-related corticosterone early in development inhibited growth and decreased health. Later, when she was served as a pediatrician in a community facing poverty, discrimination, and other hardships, she noticed a similar pattern in her young patients. She explains that the stress response can be beneficial, even lifesaving, in instances that call for acute stress. However, when the stress response is activated intensely for a prolonged period, it damages health. A study conducted in 1985 showed that the more exposure adults had before they were 18 to emotional, physical, or sexual abuse and violence, physical ,or emotional neglect, substance abuse or mental illness, divorce, or criminal behavior, the worse their immune system, heart health, and cancer risk. ACEs have neurological, hormonal, and immunological consequences. People who have experienced six or more of these ACEs have a life expectancy that is 20 years shorter than people who have experienced none. Among kids, exposure to four or more of the ACEs is associated with 32 times increased likelihood of being diagnosed with a learning or behavioral problem. Indeed, ACEs are at the root of many issues in public education.

Harris carefully and deliberately explains that toxic stress can be experienced by anyone. Communities of color and communities facing poverty are more likely to be in a constant state of arousal resulting in more trauma symptoms. What biological research shows, however, is that everyone is equally susceptible to the health effects of trauma when adversity strikes, and everyone is equally in need of help when that happens.

What does Harris propose can be done to prevent and mitigate the ill effects of ACEs? When children have safe, stable, and nurturing caregivers, even if the children are exposed to stressful or dangerous communities, these caregivers can act as an epigenetic force buffering against cellular aging and other adverse effects of trauma. A focus on prevention through caring adults is much more effective than treating the effects of trauma after it has occurred. Nonetheless, treatment is important. While talking about ACEs may feel taboo, universally screening all patients for the number of ACEs they have suffered should be standard practice. Mental health services should be available as part of the primary care clinicians’ practice to make receiving these services easy. Exercise and nutrition can help improve brain functioning and the immune system. Sleep and mindfulness promote the healing of a dysregulate stress response.

Today 39 states and the District of Columbia collect data about ACEs. These data have revealed that more than half of the population has at least one ACE and at least thirteen percent have four or more. Harris notes that many have experienced positive effects of adversity—e.g., developing greater empathy or the ability to persevere.  While she accepts that this is true, and has even experienced that in her own life, she reminds the reader that we should not make character judgments of people who react poorly in the face of adversity. Given the prevalence of ACEs, Harris makes a compelling case for continuing to pursue more advanced ways to treat the health sequela of them. This powerful book concludes with the ACE questionnaire, so that readers can determine their own ACE score or that of the children for whom they care.

Harris, N. B. (2018). The deepest well: Healing the long-term effects of childhood adversity. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Advice: It Is Better to Give than Receive
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-16-2019

Advice: It Is Better to Give than Receive

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When students struggle, we typically offer them advice. It seems obvious to think that receiving advice might help them learn.

What if we tried a different approach? What would happen if we thought that giving advice might help students learn?

Several researchers–including Angela Duckworth–recently tried this approach in a large high-school study. Almost 2000 students participated.

Working at a computer, students offered advice to “an anonymous younger students who was hoping to do better in school.” Specifically, they answered 14 questions on how and where to study.

They also wrote a brief motivational letter.

The Theory Behind The Practice

Duckworth & Co. hypothesized that this brief advice session might help advice-giving students for three reasons:

First: they might actually believe the advice they offer. (Psychologists call this the “saying is believing” effect.)

Second: when they offer this advice, they might come up with specific plans to apply it to their own studying.

Third: “giving advice, unlike receiving advice, can increase confidence.”

So, what happened?

When Small Effects Aren’t Small

The researchers kept track of grades in two courses: a) math, and b) a course that students themselves identified as one in which they particularly wanted to improve.

The students completed the advice exercise at the beginning of the 3rd quarter. Would that make a difference, compared to the control group, at the end of the 3rd quarter?

The short answer: yes, a little bit.

On the graphs, the 3rd quarter grades in the advice group look about 1 point higher than those in the control groups. In stats terminology, Cohen’s d was 0.12 for the class the students chose, and 0.10 in math class.

Did those effects last? Not really. By the end of the 4th quarter, the differences were no longer statistically significant.

At first, these data seem quite discouraging. The intervention didn’t make much of a difference, and didn’t make a lasting difference.

Duckworth’s team, however, feels much more optimistic.

First, most interventions have no effect at all. A small effect is better than none.

And, second, most interventions cost a lot. This one cost … [does quick calculation on back of envelope] … practically nothing. Even the opportunity cost is small: the whole exercise lasted eight minutes!

What’s Next?

I suspect that other researchers will pick up on this approach, and we’ll see other studies exploring it. (Joshua Aronson tried a similar strategy to combat stereotype threat back in 2002, and had similarly good results.)

In the meantime, what should teachers do?

First, I think we can adapt this approach to our own work. If our schools have a mentoring program, or a buddy system–or, heck, if our students have younger siblings, we’ve got a natural opportunity for this confidence-building approach.

Second, I think we ought to offer students some guidance about the advice they give. If the “saying is believing” effect consolidates beliefs about learning styles, for example, that would be counter-productive. A small menu of suggestions might be good for everyone involved.

Third: if an eight-minute intervention had an effect that lasted a few months, surely we could create more than one opportunity to give advice. Repeated doses of this educational medicine might be lots more helpful than just one.

If you try this approach in your classrooms, I hope you’ll let me know about your results.

What Students Want to Know about Brains and Learning, Part II
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-14-2019

What Students Want to Know about Brains and Learning, Part II

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I recently wrote about a conversation I had with high school students in Japan. What questions did they have about brains and learning? What answers did they have?

In that last post, I wrote about the more school-centric questions that students asked: “what is the optimal amount of time to study?” I also noted their welcome skepticism: “does studying the night before a test really do nothing?”

Of course, lots of their questions pushed the boundaries of our knowledge. Several, in fact, pushed the boundaries of the plausible.

What Can We Know? What Can We Do?

How many signals does the brain send throughout the body in a second?

Well, there’s a question you don’t hear every day.

The answer is: I have no idea. In fact, I can’t imagine how we’d start answering that question. We’ve got BILLIONS of neurons (say, 85 billion for a round number guess). Each one makes something like 10,000 connections with other neurons.

How many signals do they send to each other? How many signals do they send to the body? The mind delights in (and boggles at) the calculations.

How much of your brain can you lose and survive?

Hard to say, precisely.

Here’s an article that will blow your mind: a man whose ventricles were so enlarged that he barely had a brain left. And, he more-or-less did just fine.

If you don’t believe me, check out the images. I mean: WOW.

Does your gut health/what you eat have a significant effect on your brain?

Every day I see more research on this topic. In brief: YES.

You’ll often hear the gut called “the second brain.” I suspect we’ll see lots more news in this field over the next decade.

Can I transfer my brain into a computer?

I have yet to meet the neuroscientist who thinks so. Given that the brain is roughly as complex as the universe, I suspect it will take a while for us to so.

Unless, of course, students keep asking high-quality questions like these. In which case, we’ll have the job done by next Thursday.

Study Advice for Students: Getting the Specifics Just Right
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October-11-2019

Study Advice for Students: Getting the Specifics Just Right

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If you follow research-based teaching advice, you’ve heard a lot about retrieval practice in recent months.

The headline: if students want to remember information, they shouldn’t review it. That is: they shouldn’t just look it over. (“Ah, yes, the book says here that the Ideal Gas law is PV=nRT.”)

Instead, they should try to remember it first. That is: they should try a mini mental quiz. (“Hmm. What is the Ideal Gas law again? PV = something…let me think for a moment.”)

One great benefit of this research finding: students can do it themselves. All those online testing programs (most famously, Quizlet) can help students self-test rather than simply review.

Timing is Everything

Two days ago, I presented this research to (quite splendid) teachers in Fukuoka, Japan. As they pondered this guidance, one teacher asked a question I’d never heard before. Here’s a paraphrase:

I understand that retrieval practice might promote learning. But, it also might be really discouraging.

If students keep testing themselves, and keep getting the answers wrong, they’ll feel helpless and frustrated.

So: this strategy might increase learning for some students, but paradoxically for other students it might decrease motivation to study.

At the time, my response was: that’s an entirely plausible hypothesis, but I haven’t seen any research into that question. If you the teacher see that retrieval practice is demotivating, you’ll know best when (and how) to switch to something else.

Entirely by coincidence, I found research that addresses that question the very next day.

Kalif Vaughn and Nate Kornell wondered: how does retrieval practice influence motivation? Specifically, does a student’s fear of getting the answer wrong discourage her from relying on retrieval practice?

If yes, can we redirect those motivational processes? And, crucially, can we redirect motivation without sacrificing the benefits of retrieval practice?

The Power of Hints

Vaughn and Kornell started researching the effect of hints. Here’s their thought process:

If I’m nervous about getting a retrieval-practice answer wrong, I might choose simply to review the material instead. (Rather that struggling to remember that PV=something something something, I’ll just look in the book.)

But if I know I’ll get a hint, then I might be willing to try retrieval practice. That is: the hint makes retrieval practice less scary, and so increases my motivation to try it out.

Sure enough, people who had to choose between straight-up retrieval practice and simple review strongly preferred the review. Something like 80% of the time, they reviewed the correct answer. Only 20% of the time did they dare retrieval practice.

However, when they could get a hint, they reviewed only 30% of the time. The other 70%, they tried some form of hint-informed retrieval practice.

That is: by including the hint option, teachers can more than triple the likelihood that students will try retrieval practice. Hints reduce the likelihood of failure, and thereby increase motivation.

The Danger of Hints?

But wait just a minute here.

Past research shows that pure retrieval practice helps students learn and remember. We should admit that hints just might undermine that effect.

In other words, hints could entice students to try self-quizzing, but could reduce the effectiveness of the technique. Ugh.

Happily, Vaughn and Kornell spotted that potential problem, and investigated it.

Their findings: hints didn’t hurt.

In other words: students who did pure retrieval practice, and those who got small hints, and those who got big hints all remembered new information better that students who simply reviewed information.

Based on these findings, the researchers write:

We recommend giving students the option to get hints when they are testing themselves. It will make them choose [retrieval practice] more often, which should increase their learning, and it will also make learning more fun, which might increase their motivation to study. We envision instructors making more use of hints in worksheets, questions at the end of textbook chapters, flashcards, and a variety of digital study aides that resemble Quizlet. The students themselves might also benefit by finding ways to give themselves hints as they test themselves.

Vaugh and Kornell also suggest that the hint option will be more beneficial early in the review process. After a while, students shouldn’t need them anymore to feel confident enough to try retrieval practice.

A final note: the word “hint” here should be interpreted quite broadly. Vaughn & Kornell let students see a few letters of the correct answer; that was their version of “hint.” As teachers, we’ll adapt that general concept to the specifics of our classroom work.

As I say so often: teachers needn’t do what researchers do. Instead, we should think the way they think. That thought process will bring us to our own version of the right answer in our classrooms.

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