2024 – Page 3 – Education & Teacher Conferences

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Attention Contagion in the “Real World”: Plato was Right!

Andrew Watson

September-08-2024

Attention Contagion in the “Real World”: Plato was Right!

I’m always grateful to have research guidance for my classroom work, but I have to admit: it can take A LONG TIME.

For instance, I’ve got an upcoming blog post about reseach into figdet spinners — and those little guys were a thing back in 2017. It took (can it be?) SEVEN years to look into their benefits/harms for students with ADHD.

However, I have to say that attention contagion is moving quickly.

I first heard about attention contagion — the idea that students can “catch” attentiveness, and inattentiveness, from each other — this summer. Back in that blog post, I noted that we’ve got only two recent studies on the topic. We need more research — and research in conditions that look like real classrooms — before we make too much of this concept.

Well, this research team (led by Noah Forrin) must have heard my request — they ALREADY have another study out. And, this one looks at students in a classroom-like setting. SO COOL.

The Setup

Team Forrin set up a fairly typical lecture hall scenario: rows of desks facing a large screen, where a video tape of lecture played.

60 students attended this “lecture,” and took notes as they did so. Afterwards they took a quiz on the lecture content and filled out a survey about the experience.

Here’s the key: fifteen of those 60 students were — basically — college-age actors. (The technical word is “confederates.”)

For half of the lectures, these actors were trained to be attentive: they took notes, sat upright, focused on the lecture video, and looked intersted.

For the other half, they were trained to be inattentive: they took no notes, slouched, looked around, and looked bored.

Notice — this detail will be important — the inattentive students were not distracting. They didn’t fidget or stretch or yawn or tap their pens or play games on laptops. (In fact, laptops and cell phones were not allowed.)

Importantly, the seating was carefully arranged. The non-actors were seated either…

… between actors, or

…behind or in front of actors, or

… far away from actors.

So, here are the questions:

Did the students catch attentiveness from the actors? Or, did they catch INattentiveness from actors?

And: did the seating location matter? Specifically, did the in between students or the in front/behind students react differently than the far away students?

The Payoff

Forrin and his colleagues had A LOT of data to sort, and I won’t go through it all. The results, in my view, aren’t terribly surprising — but they are very interesting. And, helpful.

First: yes, students could catch inattention from the actors.

Researchers know this because, when seated near inattentive actors:

On their surveys, the students rated themselves as more inattentive.

The took fewer notes.

They scored lower on the post-lecture quiz.

Second: students catch inattention when sitting next to or between inattentive actors.

I am — honestly — not surprised that students seated far away didn’t catch inattentiveness. (If you check out the seating diagram on page 4 of the study, you’ll see why.)

I am — and the researchers were — surprised that students DIDN’T catch inattentiveness when sitting behind or in front of inattentive actors.

By the way, you remember the important detail from above: the actors were trained to be inattentive but not distracting. Sure enough, those end-of-lecture surveys showed that the students were not distracted by classmates.

This point merits focus because we can have some confidence that the problem was actual inattentiveness — not distraction. The researchers, in other words, effectively isolated a variable — even though it’s a difficult one to isolate.

Practical Implications

Teachers since Plato have known to sit the distractible students between focused students. Well, this research suggests that we’ve been right all along.

More surprising, sitting students in front of or behind attentive peers doesn’t (in this study) have the same effect.

And, completely unsurprisingly, students sitting far away from attentive peers do not “catch” their focus.

Forrin’s team concludes by suggesting that further research be done in actual classrooms. Here’s hoping they publish that study soon!

Forrin, N. D., Kudsi, N., Cyr, E. N., Sana, F., Davidesco, I., & Kim, J. A. (2024). Investigating attention contagion between students in a lecture hall. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology.

Thanks to professor Mike Hobbiss for drawing my attention to this study.

Retrieval Practice “In the Wild”: Lots of Good News

Andrew Watson

September-01-2024

Retrieval Practice “In the Wild”: Lots of Good News

Last year at this time, I summarized an ENORMOUS meta-analysis about retrieval practice.

The reassuring headlines:

Retrieval practice helps students of all ages in all disciplines.

Feedback after RP helps, but isn’t necessary to get the benefits.

The mode — online, clickers, pen and paper — doesn’t matter.

The meta also includes some useful limitations:

“Brain Dumps” help less than other kinds of RP.

Sadly, retrieval practice might make it harder for students to recall un-retrieved material.

So, researchers have kicked these tires A LOT. We know retrieval practice works, and we know how to avoid its (relatively infrequent) pitfalls.

What more could research tell us?

From “Lab” to “Classroom”

Psychology researchers typically start studying cognitive functions — like “memory” or “attention” — by doing experiments in their psychology labs, usually on college campuses.

These labs, of course, control circumstances very carfully to “isolate the variable.”

But let’s be honest, classrooms aren’t labs. Teachers don’t isolate variables; teachers combine variables.

So we’d love to know: what happens to retrieval practice when we move it outside of the psych lab into the classroom?

One recent survey study by Bates and Shea, tries to answer this question.

In their research, Bates and Shea sent out a survey to teachers in English K-12 schools to find out what is happening “in the wild.”

Do teachers use retrieval practice?

If yes, how often?

When?

What kind of retrieval practice exercise do they prefer?

What do they do with the results of RP?

And so forth.

Once again, this study brings us LOTS of good news.

First: teachers — or, at least the teachers who responded to this survey — use retrieval practice a lot.

Second: they use a variety of retrieval practice strategies — short quizzes, do nows, even (less frequently) “brain dumps.”

Third: teachers use retrieval practice at different times during class: some at the beginning, some at the end, others throughout the lesson.

In other words: retrieval practice hasn’t simply turned into a precise set of rigid instructions: “you must do five mintues of retrieval practice by asking multiple choice questions at the beginning of every other class.” Instead, it’s a teachnique that teachers use as they see fit in their work.

Better and Better

For me, some of the best news from this survey comes from a surprising finding — well, “surprising” to me at least.

Where did teachers learn about retrieval practice?

Fully 84% learned about RP from their colleagues; 63% from internal staff training; 57% from books. Relatively few — just 20% — heard about it from training outside of school.

You might think that — as someone who blogs for a conference organization — I would want teachers to hear about RP from us.

And, of course, I’m delighted when teachers attend our conferences and hear about all the research on retrieval practice.

But the Bates and Shea data suggest that retrieval practice has in fact escaped the bounds of conference breakout rooms and really is living out there “in the wild.” Teachers hear about it not only from scholars and PowerPoint slides, but from one another.

This development strikes me as enormously good news. After all: I didn’t hear much of anything about RP when I got my graduate degree in 2012. A mere 12 years later, it’s now common knowledge even outside academia.

An Intriguing Question

One finding in the Bates and Shea study raised an interesting set of questions for me: what should teachers do after retrieval practice? In particular, what should teachers do when students get RP questions wrong?

We do have research to guide us here.

We know that students benefit when we correct their incorrect RP answers.

We also know that they learn more from RP than from simple review — even if they don’t get corrective feedback.

So, what do teachers “in the wild” actually do?

Some — 46% — reteach the lesson.

Some — 15% — give corrective feedback.

Some — 10% — use this information to shape homework assignments.

Of course, some teachers choose more than one of these strategies — or others as well (e.g.: use RP answers to guide small group formation).

At present, I don’t know that we have good research-based guidance on which strategy to use when. To me, these numbers suggest that teachers are responding flexibly to the specific circumstances that they face: minute by minute, class by class.

If you read this blog regularly, you know my mantra: “Don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

If I’m reading this survey study correctly, teachers have

a) heard about retrieval practice from colleagues and school leaders,

b) adapted it to their classroom circumstances in a variety of ways, and

c) respond to RP struggles with an equally flexible variey.

No doubt we can fine tune some of these responses along the way, but these headlines strike me as immensely encouraging.

Bates, G., & Shea, J. (2024). Retrieval Practice “in the Wild”: Teachers’ Reported Use of Retrieval Practice in the Classroom. Mind, Brain, and Education.

Graphic Disorganizers; or, When Should Teachers Decorate Handouts?

Andrew Watson

August-25-2024

Graphic Disorganizers; or, When Should Teachers Decorate Handouts?

Recent research has raised questions about classroom decoration. In this post, our blogger wonders about decorating HANDOUTS:

Teachers regularly face competing goals. For instance:

On the one hand — obviously — we want our students to learn.

And, on the other hand, we equally obviously want them to feel safe, comfortable, at home.

To accomplish that second goal, we might decorate our classrooms. The more adorable cat photos, inspirational posters, and familiar art work, the homier the classroom will feel.

But here’s the problem: what if all that decoration (in pursuit of goal #2) interferes with goal #1?

What if decorations inhibit learning?

The Story so Far

I’ve written about this topic a fair amount, and the story so far gives us reason to concentrate on that question.

So: do decorations get in the way of learning? According to this study: yes.

Is this a problem for all age groups? Research done by this team suggests: yes.

When I showed teachers all this research, they often raised a perfectly plausible doubt:

Don’t students get used to the decorations? According to this recent study: nope.

Given these studies (and many others), I think we’ve got a compelling narrative encouraging our profession to rethink decoration. While I don’t think that classrooms should be sterile fields … I do worry we’ve gone substantially too far down the “let’s decorate!” road.

“I’ve Still Got Questions”

Even with this research pool, I think teachers can reasonably ask for more information. Specifically: “what counts as a decoration?”

I mean: is an anchor chart decration?

How about a graphic organizer?

A striking picture added to a handout? (If they’re answering questions about weather, why would it be bad to have a picture of a thunderstorm on the handout?)

An anchor chart might be “decorative.” But, if students use it to get their math work done, doesn’t it count as something other than a “decoration”?

In other words: if I take down an anchor chart, won’t my students learn less?

Because practically everything in the world can be made prettier, we’ve got an almost infinite number of things that might be decorated. (I’ve done some work at a primary school that has arrows embedded in the floor: arrows pointing to, say, Beijing or Cairo or Los Angeles. Does that count as “decoration”?)

For this reason, research to explore this question gets super detailed. But if we find enough detailed examples that more-or-less resemble our own classroom specifics, we can start to credit a “research-informed” answer.

Graphic Disorganizer?

A friend recently pointed me to a study about reading bar graphs.

This research team wanted to know if “decorated” bar graphs make learning harder for students in kindergarten, and in 1st and 2nd grade.

So, if a bar graph shows the number of gloves in the lost and found box each week, should the bar representing that number…

Be decorated with little glove icons?

Or, should it be filled in with stripes?

How about dots?

This study in fact incorporates four separate experiments; the researchers keep repeating their basic paradigm and modifying a variable or two. For this reason, they can measure quite precisely the problems and the factors that cause them.

And — as you remember — they’re working with students in three different grades. So: they’ve got LOTS of data to report…

The Headlines, Please…

Rather than over-decorate this blog post with a granular description, I’ll hit a few telling highlights.

First: iconic decorations inhibit learning.

That is: little gloves on the bar graph made it harder for students to learn to read those graphs correctly.

Honestly, this result doesn’t surprise me. Gloves are concrete and familiar, whereas bar graphs represent more abstract concepts. No wonder the little tykes get confused.

Second: stripes and dots also inhibit learning.

Once again, the students tend to count the objects contained within the bar — even little dots! — instead of the observing the height of the bar

This finding did surprise me a bit more. I wasn’t surprised that young learners focus on concrete objects (gloves, trees), but am intrigued to discover they also want to count abstract objects (lines, dots) within the bar.

Third: age matters.

That is: 1st graders did better than kindergarteners. And, 2nd graders better than first graders.

On the one hand, this result makes good sense. As we get older, we get better at understanding more abstract concepts, and at controlling attention.

On the other hand, this finding points to an unfortunate irony. Our profession tends to emphasize decoration in classrooms for younger students.

In other words: we decorate most where decoration might do the most harm! (As a high-school teacher, I never got any instructions about decoration, and was never evaluated on it.)

In Brief

We teachers certainly might be tempted to make our environments as welcoming — even festive! — as possible.

And yet, we’ve got a larger (and larger) pool of research pointing out the distraction in all that decoration.

This concern goes beyond — say — adorable dolphin photos on the wall, or uplifting quotations on waterfall posters.

In this one study, something as seemingly-harmless as dots in a bar graph can interfere with our students learning.

When it comes to decorating — even worksheets and handouts — we should keep the focus on the learning.

Fisher, A. V., Godwin, K. E., & Seltman, H. (2014). Visual environment, attention allocation, and learning in young children: When too much of a good thing may be bad. Psychological science, 25(7), 1362-1370.

Godwin, K. E., Leroux, A. J., Seltman, H., Scupelli, P., & Fisher, A. V. (2022). Effect of Repeated Exposure to the Visual Environment on Young Children’s Attention. Cognitive Science, 46(2), e13093.

Kaminski, J. A., & Sloutsky, V. M. (2013). Extraneous perceptual information interferes with children’s acquisition of mathematical knowledge. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(2), 351.

Erik Jahner, PhD

August-22-2024

The End of Trauma by George Bonanno

When faced with extreme adversity—like violent incidents or life-threatening situations—we often assume that trauma is inevitable and that PTSD will follow. We then may discuss trauma as a chronic and permanent condition: “I am a traumatized individual.” But how likely is it that we’ll actually develop PTSD? And what makes some people able to withstand such events more effectively than others? How often do we have the capacity to build resilience?

In The End of Trauma, internationally recognized psychologist George A. Bonanno challenges the conventional wisdom on trauma, offering a necessary change in how we discuss trauma, understand, and treat it. Especially in the aftermath of events like 9/11 and now the global pandemic, Bonanno argues that trauma isn’t as prevalent as we often believe, and that most people are surprisingly resilient when faced with life’s toughest challenges. This fresh perspective shifts the focus from inevitable trauma to the remarkable capacity for recovery that most of us possess.

What we too often label as PTSD might be a missed opportunity to respect the natural process of adapting to difficult situations. Bonanno, a leading expert in the field, draws on decades of groundbreaking research, balancing personal stories of resilience with cutting-edge findings from psychology and neuroscience. Through this lens, he explains what helps us bounce back, why some people struggle more than others, and how we can all better manage stress when life gets difficult.

Personally, as a university instructor and researcher in Educational Psychology and Neuroscience, I found this to be one I wish I could add to my students’ ever-expanding reading list. Many students enter psychology with the idea that they will label a struggle as a feature or trait of the individual that needs to be respected as if it is a permanent feature of who they are. And when I work with teachers, they often see trauma as a useful label to dismiss student capacity for learning. Both groups are well-meaning, trying to be compassionate but they miss the compassionate and hopeful point that Bonanno is making here. They are reflecting societies potential misunderstandings. Some degree of struggle is natural, and resilience is learned. Yes, there are still extreme situations, but what is often called PTSD or Trauma is often a stage in adapting. This perspective puts teachers and therapists in the supportive role of helping and scaffolding the learner during this developmentally important process. And it puts you in the driver’s seat of your own struggles.

One of the book’s most innovative contributions is the introduction of the flexibility sequence—a model that outlines the mental steps we take to navigate challenges. Flexibility, as Bonanno reveals, isn’t a fixed trait but a natural function of the human mind, one that needs exercise and practice like all skills. By understanding and harnessing this flexibility, we can better understand the roots of trauma and build greater resilience for the future.

Bonanno’s narrative is not just scientifically rigorous; it’s also deeply engaging, gripping your imagination with artful narrative while honoring the impeccable science of resilience. This makes The End of Trauma not only a valuable read for professionals in the field but also for anyone interested in understanding how they and those they support can overcome extraordinary challenges. It prepares you to build resilience with the potential opportunities that struggle presents. Ultimately, the book provides an optimistic, compassionate, and agentic framework for reexamining our approach to trauma, urging us to appreciate our own mind’s capacity for resilience and to use it to navigate life’s toughest moments. Understand, appreciate, build strategies, and prepare to grow.

Overwhelmed Teachers: The Working-Memory Story

Andrew Watson

August-18-2024

Overwhelmed Teachers: The Working-Memory Story

We spend A LOT of time working to prevent student working memory overload. In this post, our blogger asks about the dangers of TEACHER working memory overload.

If I could pick one topic from cognitive science for ALL TEACHERS to study, that topic would be working memory.

This small mental capacity allows us to select, hold, reorganize, and combine bits of information (and other things).

So, if you try to put the five days of the work week in alphabetical order, you’re using your working memory.

Alas, because working memory is so small, it gets easily overwhelmed.

Quick: try to put the twelve months of the year in alphabetical order.

Unless you’re writing words down, you almost certainly can’t do it.

Why does this cognitive insight matter?

Because our students have to select, hold, reorganize, and combine bits of information ALL THE TIME. We call that “learning.”

And the situation gets even scarier: when working memory is all-too-easily overloaded, learning stops.

Do you know a scarier sentence than “learning stops”?

For these reasons, I spend much of my professional life talking with teachers about working memory.

Given that I’ve even written a book on the topic, you’d think I’d run out of things to say. But…

More Things To Say

One working memory topic that gets relatively little attention: the teacher’s working memory.

That is: as teachers, we also must – at every second – select, hold, reorganize, and combine bits of information:

The lesson plan

The correctness of this student’s answer

The brewing argument between those two over there

The possibility of an un-announced fire-drill

The page number of the example I want to include

The insightful point I want to bring up at the department meeting next period

Oh, wait! I need to get orange juice on the way home…

This list could easily go on for pages.

In other words: students face the potential for working memory overload all the time. And: TEACHERS DO TOO.

When students’ working memory is overloaded, “learning stops.” When teachers’ working memory is overloaded, our effective functioning also stops. Cognitively, we bonk.

What to Do?

To manange student working memory, I encourage teachers to try a 3-part approach:

Try to ANTICIPATE working-memory overload. (If a lesson plan has lots of instructions, I can predict students’ working memory will crash.)

Try to IDENTIFY overload. (That face the student is making — that’s a sign!)

Try to SOLVE overload. (Using, say, dual coding, or powerful knowledge, or stress reduction…)

If we can do these three things, we’re likely to help students stay within a working-memory comfort zone.

I think that these same three categories might be useful in managing our own working memory.

So: can I ANTICIPATE when my working memory will be threatened in class?

Honestly, that’s easy!

When I have especially important or stressful obligations outside outside of school (say, a trip to the hospital after work).

When I’m teaching a new/complex topic.

When I didn’t get much sleep, and/or am sick.

When I’m managing multiple school roles: teacher AND dean AND coach AND adviser AND…

When I’m trying out a new kind of technology. (Remember your first weeks of zoom teaching?)

Of course, your list will differ from mine — because you and I are two different people. But I suspect you can, fairly easily, come up with your own version of this checklist: “if THIS is happening today, my working memory might really struggle.”

Good news: if you can anticipate when your own working memory might buckle, you know when to start shoring it up…

Check Your Mirrors

Once we have anticipated the times when our own working memory might be overloaded, we should then learn to IDENTIFY the experience of overload.

In my own work, I’ve learned to rely on three key indicators.

First: word salad.

Because I talk about complex and technical topics, I often talk in complex sentences with lots of technical vocabulary.

When my working memory gets overloaded, I find that my sentences fall apart. The subordinate clauses fight with the appositives, and I can no longer remember the subject of my verb.

Instead of trying to “identify” working memory overload, I might tell teachers to “redentify” it. (I don’t think “redentify” is a word.)

When I experience this word chaos, I know my working memory is in trouble.

Second: third of three

When I discuss working memory with teachers, they — of course! — ask questions.

I often say: “well, there are three answers to your question.”

But … you know where this is going … by the time I’m done with my second answer, I can’t even remember the question (much less the third part of the answer).

Yup: that’s working memory overload.

Third: emotional barometer

My own cultural background isn’t big on emotions. (Growing up, I was allowed to have mildly positive feelings, but everything else was discouraged. Mildly.)

For that reason, I’m not great at monitoring my own emotional state.

But I have learned: when I start feeling penned in and frustrated — when my chest is a little tight and breathing, a bit of a chore — that feeling almost always results from working memory overload.

My body is saying: “I just can’t handle this mental load right now!”

When that happens, I know: it’s time to break out my working-memory solutions!

Here again, your list might not look like my list: you’ll discover your own ways to identify working memory stress. But, that list might be a useful place to start…

The Last Step

If I can anticipate that my working memory will be overloaded (because, say, I’m explaining the differences between direct objects and subject complements)…

…and I can recognize that my working memory IS overloaded (because, say, I can’t coherently answer my student’s question)…

…then it’s time to SOLVE my working memory problems?

How do I do that?

Well: I don’t want to overwhelm the reader’s working memory — so I’ll write about that in next week’s blog post.

Summer Plans: How Best to Use the Next Few Weeks [Repost]

Andrew Watson

August-10-2024

Summer Plans: How Best to Use the Next Few Weeks [Repost]

Our blogger is on vacation. While he’s away, this post — which first appeared in June — seemed timely:

The summer stretches before you like a beach of relaxing joy. With a guilty-pleasure novel in one hand and an umbrella drink in the other, how should you best plan for the upcoming school year?

Let’s be honest:

You might want to give yourself a break. School is STRESSFUL. Some down time with your best friends — perhaps a refreshing walk in the woods — getting back into a fitness routine … all these sound like excellent ideas to me.

If, however, you’re the sort of person who reads education blogs in the summer, well, you might be looking for some ideas on refreshing your teaching life.

Since you asked…

The Essential Specifics Within the Big Picture

The good news about research-based teaching advice?

We have LOTS and LOTS of helpful suggestions!

The bad news about research-based teaching advice?

Well: we have LOTS and LOTS of helpful suggestions!! Probably too many suggestions to keep track of.

If only someone would organize all those suggestions into a handy checklist, then you might strategically choose just a few of those topics that merit your attention. If this approach sounds appealing to you, I’ve got even more good news:

You can check out Sherrington and Caviglioli’s EXCELLENT book Walkthrus. This book digests substantial research into dozens of specific classroom topics (how to value and maintain silence; how to create a “no opt out” culture). It then offers 5-step strategies to put each one into practice.

In a similar vein, Teaching and Learning Illuminated, by Busch, Watson*, and Bogatchek, captures all sorts of teaching advice in handy visuals. Each one repays close study — in the same way you might closely study a Walkthru.

With these books, you can do a deep dive into as many — or as few — topics as you choose.

School Policy

The hot topics in education policy world are a) cell phones and b) AI.

As everyone knows, Jonathan Haidt’s recent book has made a strong case for heavily restricting cell phone usage for children.

I think it’s equally important to know that LOTS of wise people worry that Haidt is misinterpreting complex data.

Schools and teachers no doubt benefit from reading up on this debate. My own view, however, is that we should focus on the effects that phones (and other kinds of technology) have in our own schools and classrooms. Create policies based on the realities you see in front of you — not abtract data about people who might (but might not) resemble your students.

As for Artificial Intelligence: I think the field is too new — and evolving too rapidly — for anyone to have a broadly useful take on the topic.

In my brief experience, AI-generated results are too often flukily wrong for me to rely on them in my own work. (Every word of this blog is written by me; it’s a 100% AI-free zone.)

Even worse: the mistakes that AI makes are often quite plausible — so you need to be a topic expert to see through them.

My wise friend Maya Bialik — one-time blogger on this site, and founder of QuestionWell AI — knows MUCH more about AI than I do. She recommends this resource list, curated by Eric Curts, for teachers who want to be in the know.

A Pod for You

I’m more a reader than a pod-er, but:

If you’re in the mood for lively podcasts, I have two recommendations:

First, the Learning Scientists routinely do an EXCELLENT job translating cognitive science reseach for classroom teachers.

Unsurprisingly, their wise podcast is still going strong after many years.

Second, Dr. Zach Groshell’s podcast — Progressively Incorrect — explores instructional coaching, math and reading instruction, current debates in education, and other essential topics.

You might start with his interview with fan favorite Dan Willingham.

(Full disclosure: I have appeared on both podcasts, and am friends with the people who run them.)

The Journey Ends at Its Beginning

But, seriously, give yourself a break. You’ve worked hard. Take the summer off. I bet you’ve got A LOT of shows to binge-watch in your queue…

* A different “Watson”: EDWARD Watson. As far as I know, we’re not related.

The Jigsaw Advantage: Should Students Puzzle It Out? [Repost]

Andrew Watson

August-02-2024

The Jigsaw Advantage: Should Students Puzzle It Out? [Repost]

This post got a LOT of attention when our blogger first wrote it back in February:

The “jigsaw” method sounds really appealing, doesn’t it?

Imagine that I’m teaching a complex topic: say, the digestive system.

Asking students to understand all those pieces — pancreas here, stomach there, liver yon — might get overwhelming quickly.

So, I could break that big picture down into smaller pieces: puzzle pieces, even. And, I assign different pieces to subgroups of students.

Group A studies the liver.

Group B, they’ve got the small intestine.

Group C focuses on the duodenum.

Once each group understands its organ — its “piece of the puzzle” — they can explain it to their peers. That is: they re-assemble the larger puzzle from the small, understandable bits.

This strategy has at least two potential advantages:

First, by breaking the task down into smaller steps, it reduces working memory load. (Blog readers know that I’m a BIG advocate for managing working memory load.)

Second, by inviting students to work together, it potentially increases engagement.

Sadly, both those advantages have potential downsides.

First: the jigsaw method could reduce working memory demands initially. But: it also increases working memory demands in other ways:

… students must figure out their organ themselves, and

… they have to explain their organ (that’s really complicated!), and

… they have to understand other students’ explanations of several other organs!

Second: “engagement” is a notoriously squishy term. It sounds good — who can object to “engagement”? — but how do we define or measure it?

After all, it’s entirely possible that students are “engaged” in the process of teaching one another, but that doesn’t mean they’re helpfully focused on understanding the core ideas I want them to learn.

They could be engaged in, say, making their presentation as funny as possible — as a way of flirting with that student right there. (Can you tell I teach high school?)

In other words: it’s easy to spot ways that the jigsaw method could help students learn, or could interfere with their learning.

If only we had research on the subject…

Research on the Subject

A good friend of mine recently sent me a meta-analysis puporting to answer this question. (This blog post, in fact, springs from his email.)

It seems that this meta-analysis looks at 37 studies and finds that — YUP — jigsaw teaching helps students learn.

I’m always happy to get a research-based answer…and I always check out the research.

In this case, that “research-based” claim falls apart almost immediately.

The meta-analysis crunches the results of several studies, and claims that jigsaw teaching has a HUGE effect. (Stats people: it claims a Cohen’s d of 1.20 — that’s ENORMOUS.)

You’ve probably heard Carl Sagan’s rule that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” What evidence does this meta-analysis use to make its extraordinary claim?

Well:

… it doesn’t look at 37 studies, but at SIX (plus five student dissertations), and

… it’s published in a journal that doesn’t focus on education or psychology research, and

… as far as I can tell, the text of the meta-analysis isn’t available online — a very rare limitation.

For that reason, we know nothing about the included studies.

Do they include a control condition?

Were they studying 4th graders or college students?

Were they looking at science or history or chess?

We just don’t know.

So, unless I can find a copy of this meta-analysis online (I looked!), I don’t think we can accept it as extraordinary evidence of its extraordinary claim.

Next Steps

Of course, just because this meta-analysis bonked doesn’t mean we have no evidence at all. Let’s keep looking!

I next went to my go-to source: elicit.com. I asked it to look for research answering this question:

Does “jigsaw” teaching help K-12 students learn?

The results weren’t promising.

Several studies focus on college and graduate school. I’m glad to have that information, but college and graduate students…

… already know a great deal,

… are especially committed to education,

… and have higher degrees of cognitive self-control than younger students.

So, they’re not the most persuasive source of information for K-12 teachers.

One study from the Phillipines showed that, yes, students who used the jigsaw method did learn. But it didn’t have a control condition, so we don’t know if they would have learned more doing something else.

After all, it’s hardly a shocking claim to say “the students studied something, and they learned something.” We want to know which teaching strategy helps them learn the most!

Still others report that “the jigsaw method works” because “students reported higher levels of engagement.”

Again, it’s good that they did so. But unless they learned more, the “self-reports of higher engagement” argument doesn’t carry much weight.

Recent News

Elicit.com did point me to a highly relevant and useful study, published in 2022.

This study focused on 6th graders — so, it’s probably more relevant to K-12 teachers.

It also included control conditions — so we can ask “is jigsaw teaching more effective than something else?” (Rather than the almost useless question: “did students in a jigsaw classroom know more afterwards than they did before?” I mean: of course they did…)

This study, in fact, encompases five separate experiments. For that reason, it’s much too complex to summarize in detail. But the headlines are:

The study begins with a helpful summary of the research so far. (Tl;dr : lots of contradictory findings!)

The researchers worked carefully to provide appropriate control conditions.

They tried different approaches to jigsaw teaching — and different control conditions — to reduce the possibility that they’re getting flukey results.

It has all the signs of a study where the researchers earnestly try to doubt and double-check their own findings.

Their conclusions? How much extra learning did the jigsaw method produce?

Exactly none.

Over the course of five experiments (some of which lasted an entire school term), students in the jigsaw method group learned ever-so-slightly-more, or ever-so-slightly-less, than their control group peers.

The whole process averaged out to no difference in learning whatsoever.

The Last Word?

So, does this recent study finish the debate? Should we cancel all our jigsaw plans?

Based on my reading of this research, I do NOT think you have to stop jigsawing — or, for that matter — start jigsawing. Here’s why:

First: we’ve got research on both sides of the question. Some studies show that it benefits learning; others don’t. I don’t want to get all bossy based on such a contradictory research picture.

Second: I suspect that further research will help us use this technique more effectively.

That is: jigsaw learning probably helps these students learn this material at this point in the learning process. But it doesn’t help other students in other circumstances.

When we know more about those boundary conditions, we will know if and when to jigsaw with our students.

I myself suspect that we need to focus on a key, under-discussed step in the process: when and how the teacher ensures that each subgroup understands their topic correctly before they “explain” it to the next group. If they misunderstand their topic, after all, they won’t explain it correctly!

Third: let’s assume that this recent study is correct; jigsaw teaching results in no extra learning. Note, however, that it doesn’t result in LESS learning — according to these results, it’s exactly the same.

For that reason, we can focus on the other potential benefits of jigsaw learning. If it DOES help students learn how to cooperate, or foster motivation — and it DOESN’T reduce their learning — then it’s a net benefit.

In sum:

If you’re aware of the potential pitfalls of the jigsaw method (working memory overload, distraction, misunderstanding) and you have plans to overcome them, and

If you really like its potential other benefits (cooperation, motivation),

then you can make an informed decision about using this technique well.

At the same time, I certainly don’t think we have enough research to make jigsaw teaching a requirement.

As far as I know, we just don’t have a clear research picture on how to do it well.

By the way, after he wrote this post, our blogger then FOUND the missing online meta-analysis. His discussion of that discovery is here.

Stanczak, A., Darnon, C., Robert, A., Demolliens, M., Sanrey, C., Bressoux, P., … & Butera, F. (2022). Do jigsaw classrooms improve learning outcomes? Five experiments and an internal meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 114(6), 1461.

“Students Simply Cannot Improve”: Handwritten Notes vs. Laptop Notes

Andrew Watson

July-28-2024

“Students Simply Cannot Improve”: Handwritten Notes vs. Laptop Notes

I disagree with the title of this blog post. I believe students CAN improve at taking notes. This post is my attempt to convince you that they can, and that we teachers can help them.

Over the years, I’ve written about the Laptop-Notes vs. Handwritten-Notes Debate several times.

I’ve tried to persuade readers that although people really like the idea that handwritten notes are superior, the research behind that claim isn’t really persuasive:

I’ve argued that the well-known study with a clever name (“The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard“) is based on a bizarre assumption: “students cannot learn how to do new things.” (If they can’t, why do schools exist?)

I’ve also argued that that the recent study about neural differences between the two note-taking strategies doesn’t allow us to draw strong conclusions, for two reasons:

First: we can’t use it to say that handwriting helps students remember more than keyboarding because the researchers didn’t measure how much students remembered. (No, honestly.)

Second: the students who typed did so in a really unnatural way — one-finger hunt-n-peck. Comparing a normal thing (handwriting) to an abnormal thing (hunt-n-peck) doesn’t allow for strong claims.

So, I’ve been fighting this fight for years.

Both of these research approaches described above overlook the most straightforward research strategy of all: let’s measure who learns more in real classrooms — handwriters or keyboarders!!

A group of researchers recently asked this sensible question, and did a meta-analysis of the studies they found.

The results:

Students who use laptops write more words;

Students who take handwritten notes score higher on tests and exams.

So: there you have it. Handwritten notes REALLY DO result in more learning than laptop notes. I REALLY HAVE BEEN WRONG all this time.

Case closed.

One More Thing…

Like the TV detective Columbo, however, I have just a few more questions I want to explore.

First: I think the case-closing meta-analysis shows persuasively that handwritten notes as students currently take them are better than laptop notes as students currently take them.

But it doesn’t answer this vital question: can students learn to take notes better?

After all, we focus SO MUCH of our energy on teaching better; perhaps students could also do good things better.

If the answer to that vital question is “no” — students CAN’T take better notes — then obviously they should stick with handwriting. This meta-analysis shows that that’s currently the better strategy.

But if the answer is “yes” — students CAN take better notes than they currently do — then that’s really important news, and we should focus on it.

I myself suspect the answer to that question is “yes.” Here’s why:

The 2014 study — “The Pen is Mightier than the Keyboard” — argues that students benefit from taking notes when they do two things:

First: when they write more words. In their research, students who wrote more words remembered more information later on.

Second: when they reword what the teacher said. Students who copied the teacher’s words more-or-less verbatim remembered LESS than those who put the teacher’s ideas into their own words.

This second finding, by the way, makes lots of sense. Rewording must result from thinking; unsurprisingly, students who think more remember more.

1 + 1 > 1

Let’s assume for a moment that these research findings are true; students benefit from writing more words, and they benefit from rethinking and rewording as they write.

At this point, it simply makes sense to suspect that students who do BOTH will remember even more than students who do only one or the other.

In other words:

“Writing more words” + “rewording as I write”

will be better than

only “writing more words” or

only “rewording as I write.”

Yes, this is a hypothesis — but it’s a plausible one, no?

Alas, in the current reality, students do one or the other.

Handwriters can’t write more words — it’s physically impossible — but they do lots of rewording. (They have to; because they can’t write as fast as the teacher speaks, they have to reword the concepts to write them down.)

Keyborders write more words that handwriters (because typing is faster than handwriting). But they don’t have to reword — because they can write as fast as the teacher says important things.

But — wait just a minute!

Keyboarders DON’T reword…but they could learn to do so.

If keyboarders write more words (which they’re already doing) and put the teacher’s idea into their own words (which they’re not currently doing), then they would get BOTH BENEFITS.

That is: if we teach keyboarders to reword, they will probably get both benefits…and ultimately learn more.

In brief: it seems likely to me that laptop notes — if correctly taken — will result in more learning than handwritten notes. If that hypothesis (untested, but plausible) is true, then we should teach students how to take laptop notes well.

I should say: we have specific reason to suspect that students can learn to use both strategies (more words + rewording) at the same time: because students can learn new things! In fact: schools exist to help them do so.

Contrary to my blog post’s title, students really can improve if we help them do so.

Optimism and Realism

I hear you asking: “Okay, what’s your actual suggestion? Get specific.” That’s a fair question.

I – optimistically – think schools should teach two skills:

First: keyboarding. If students can touch type, they’ll be able to type MANY more words than untrained keyboarders, or handwriters.

Remember, the recent meta-analysis shows that students who keyboard – even if they aren’t touch typists – write more words than hand-writers. Imagine the improvement if they don’t have to hunt-n-peck to find the letter “j,” or the “;”.

Second: explicitly teach students the skill of rewording as they type. This skill – like all new and counter-intuitive skills – will require lots of explanation and lots of practice. Our students won’t change their behavior based on one lesson or one night’s homework.

However, if we teach the skill, and let them practice over a year (or multiple years) students will gradually develop this cognitive habit.

The result of these two steps: students will touch-type LOTS more words, and they will reword their notes as they go. Because they get BOTH benefits, they will learn more than the students who do only one or the other.

Now, I can hear this realistic rejoinder: “Oh come on: we simply don’t have time to add anything to the curriculum. You want us to teach two more things? Not gonna happen.”

I have two responses:

First: “developing these two skills will probably help students learn other curricular topics better. Extra effort up front will probably speed up learning (in some cases/ disciplines/grades) later on.”

If my untested hypothesis is correct, the progress of learning will look something like this:

Second: “I accept the argument that perhaps we can’t add anything to the curriculum. However, we should admit that handwriting is the second best option. Keyboarding – correctly done — is probably better than handwriting for notes; handwriting is the fallback position because we prioritize other skills.

In brief:

The title of this blog post is incorrect. Students CAN learn how to do new things – like take better notes by keyboarding well. We might choose not to teach them how to do so, but we should be honest with ourselves that the limitation is in our curriculum, not in our students’ abilities.

Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological science, 25(6), 1159-1168.

Van der Weel, F. R., & Van der Meer, A. L. (2024). Handwriting but not typewriting leads to widespread brain connectivity: a high-density EEG study with implications for the classroom. Frontiers in Psychology, 14, 1219945.

Flanigan, A. E., Wheeler, J., Colliot, T., Lu, J., & Kiewra, K. A. (2024). Typed Versus Handwritten Lecture Notes and College Student Achievement: A Meta-Analysis. Educational Psychology Review, 36(3), 78.

A Skeptic Converted? The Benefits of Narrative

Andrew Watson

July-21-2024

A Skeptic Converted? The Benefits of Narrative

Let’s imagine that I tell you about a cool new research finding: singing helps students learn!

On the one hand, I suspect you’d be really excited. After all, learning is really difficult. Almost ANYTHING that helps students learn is worth a teacher’s attention.

On the other hand…you probably have some important questions:

Who is doing the singing? The teacher, or the students? Or, are they singing together? Or, are they listening to a recording of someone else singing?

What are they singing? A song about the material they’re about to learn (say, the periodic table)? Or, can they sing any old song? (Sondheim’s “Moments in the Woods” is worth endless singing!)

How many times should the students sing to get the learning benefits?

And so forth.

If we don’t know the answers to these questions, how will we make this singing technique work?

On this note: Several months ago, I asked this same set of questions about the common statement that “narrative is psychologically privileged…”

Promising Steps

A thoughtful writer in this field recently highlighted this study: one that looks at the benefits of narrative for helping students learn.

Bingo! (Or, at least, potential bingo.)

This reseach offered at least two obvious benefits.

First: it provides at least an initial definition of narrative.

A narrative, according to Table 2, has a narrator; it takes place in the past; its events have a three-act structure: with a setup, a confrontation, and a resolution; it centers on humans who act and react; and so forth.

Second: it compares several options.

Students in Group A read a textbook-like, logically-structured explanation of stochastic molecular motion. Let’s call this “exposition only”:

The thermal energy leads not only to rotations or vibrations, whereby covalently bonded atoms move back and forth relative to each other, but also to translational movements, which move molecules from one location to another…

Students in Group B read a narrative version of that information, where the scientists who discovered the relevant information were the protagonists of a three-act story. Let’s call this “narrative only”:

Maud Menten quickly realized that the thermal motion of particles that Robert Brown had seen in his light microscope also resembled the random motion of molecules in cells…

Students in Group C got a combined approach. A narrative passage introduced the ideas and the problem; a subsequent passage — more expository — went into the technical details. We’ll call this strategy “narrative-then-exposition.”

In my thinking, this example provides a crucial detail. Notice that the narrative is NOT about the particles themselves. (“The particle got excited by the thing, and so did something cool!”) Instead, the narrative focuses on the scientists who made the relevant discoveries.

In other words, we might have some additional latitude when putting our narratives together. The story doesn’t have to be about the content itself.

However, that optimistic finding holds true only if these stories helped the students learn. So, did they?

PLOT TWIST

The narrative benefit depended on the students’ prior knowledge.

That is: students who knew relatively less about stochastic movement benefitted from the “narrative only” version.

Students who knew relatively more benefitted from the “narrative-then-exposition” version.

Now, the researchers have plausible theories about this finding. (Check out the “Coda” below if you’re curious.)

But to me, the more important news is that we can start to put together a framework for converting exposition (traditional textbook explanations) into narrative (story).

Step one: we’ve got a checklist of elements that make up a narrative; Table 2 in this study. If you want to translate exposition to narrative, you can start there.

Step two: you do NOT have to make the story about the contect itself (“The poor green finch couldn’t break open the seeds. It was very sad that its genes would not be passed on…”).

Instead, you can focus on the PEOPLE who figured out the content (“Then Darwin realized that the finches with the thicker beak had an advantage over the ones with the narrower beak, so their genes were likelier to be passed on to the next generation…”).

Step three: prior knowledge matters. The more your students already know about a subject, the less important it is to recast it as a story.

Although initially skeptical, I’m starting to hope we might develop comprehensive guidelines for the exposition-to-narrative converstion process.

Don’t Stop Now

Of course, these initial guidelines need A LOT MORE WORK.

Some unanswered questions:

Does this psychological privilege apply in pre-college learning? (The studies I’ve found focus on adults.)

Does it hold true in all disciplines? I see how history and literature and theology (and even science) might be translated to narrative. But LOTS of math and foreign language and art instruction might defy this strategy. (How, exactly, would we make noun declensions into a story?)

When will narrative (potentially good!) spill over into “seductive details” (potentially bad!)?

And so forth.

Yes, I’m more optimistic than I was before I read this study. And: as far as I know, we’re only in early stages of understanding how best to use narratives to enhance learning.

Coda

I promised I’d explain the researchers’ theories about the differing benefits of “narrative” (for relative beginners) or “narative-then-exposition” (for relative experts).

Here goes:

Students who knew relatively less, the researchers suspect, benefitted from the working-memory reduction created by the familiarity of a story structure. (Remember those 3 acts…)

Students who knew relatively more, in turn, didn’t need the WM reduction, but benefitted from the reactivation of prior knowledge prompted by the initial narrative. With that prior knowledge reactivated, they could then concentrate on the factual additions to their schema.

Interesting!

Tobler, S., Sinha, T., Köhler, K., & Kapur, M. (2024). Telling stories as preparation for learning: A Bayesian analysis of transfer performance and investigation of learning mechanisms. Learning and Instruction, 92, 101944.

Erik Jahner, PhD

July-18-2024

Visual Thinking by Temple Grandin

Many of us think with words, solving problems and imagining scenarios by coding information verbally. Our culture is designed to select and promote people who do this well, but this is not the only way of processing the world. To think so neglects the significant neurodiversity that makes humans (and the animal kingdom) amazing. Temple Grandin’s Visual Thinking: The Hidden Gifts of People Who Think in Pictures, Patterns, and Abstractions invites readers into this neglected side of reality, drawing on her personal experiences and extensive research to explore the unique cognitive styles that shape our understanding and interaction with the world through visual thinking. As a prominent advocate for autism awareness and a leading figure in animal science, Grandin offers a compelling examination of visual thinking’s profound impact.

The journey begins with Grandin’s realization that not everyone shares her ability to think in pictures. She distinguishes between visual and verbal thinkers and introduces two types of visual thinkers: object visualizers and spatial visualizers. Object visualizers, like Grandin, think in detailed images, while spatial visualizers think in patterns and abstractions. The visual learner may struggle to understand what thinking verbally is and struggle to understand why they are seeing the world differently from society’s expectations. She helps you identify ways you might think with some surveys and questions that encourage you to pause and reflect. Surveys that were gleaned from her own research as an intensely curious and scientifically minded individual.

She shows that although the system has selected verbal learning as the gateway to academic success, visual thinking can be a significant asset in fields such as art, design, engineering, and architecture among others. However, she also addresses the challenges visual thinkers face in a society that often prioritizes verbal thinking, especially within the education system. The decline of hands-on learning and the emphasis on standardized testing have marginalized many visual thinkers, hindering their potential and depriving society of their innovative contributions.

Blending personal anecdotes, historical examples, and scientific research, Grandin highlights the importance of nurturing visual thinkers. She introduces a number of historical figures whose stores impacted her development, how she saw herself, and the heights she could reach. She emphasizes the value of diverse cognitive styles and neurodiversity in fostering creativity and problem-solving. Furthermore, Grandin explores the broader implications of neglecting visual thinkers, such as the impact on national innovation and the potential for preventing disasters through their keen attention to detail. She also showcases visual thinkers who have bucked the trend and benefited society, despite not always being valued as they grew up.

Grandin’s writing is both engaging and informative, making complex ideas accessible to a broad audience. Her ability to combine personal experiences with scientific insights creates a compelling narrative that underscores the importance of understanding and valuing different cognitive styles.

Grandin not only identifies problems but also offers solutions, advocating for educational reforms and societal changes that could better accommodate and utilize the strengths of visual thinkers. Her call for a more inclusive approach to education and the workforce is both timely and necessary, urging readers to rethink current systems.

Of course, Grandin weaves in her personal passion for animals. The question of animal consciousness has been debated for a long time, with some scientists and philosophers historically viewing animals as simply reacting on instinct, without the emotional depth of humans. This idea often comes from a bias toward verbal thinking, where language is seen as the key to consciousness. Because animals can’t communicate like humans, they’ve been unfairly dismissed as not having feelings or emotions, leading to their mistreatment and use in harmful experiments.

In the past, studying animal behavior through tests and observations in captivity reinforced this limited view. However, recent studies observing animals in their natural environments have shown they are incredible visual thinkers. They can navigate, communicate, solve problems, and even mourn, proving they have rich emotional lives. This new approach helps us see animals not just as instinct-driven beings but as creatures with deep emotional and cognitive capabilities.

Visual Thinking is a thought-provoking and essential read for educators, parents, and anyone interested in cognitive diversity. Temple Grandin’s unique perspective and deep understanding of visual thinking provide a valuable lens through which to view the world. By championing the strengths of visual thinkers, Grandin makes a compelling case for a more inclusive and innovative society, encouraging us to embrace and cultivate diverse ways of thinking for the betterment of all.

Older posts

Newer posts

The Setup

The Payoff

Practical Implications

From “Lab” to “Classroom”

Better and Better

An Intriguing Question

The Story so Far

“I’ve Still Got Questions”

Graphic Disorganizer?

The Headlines, Please…

In Brief

More Things To Say

What to Do?

Check Your Mirrors

The Last Step

The Essential Specifics Within the Big Picture

School Policy

A Pod for You

The Journey Ends at Its Beginning

Research on the Subject

Next Steps

Recent News

The Last Word?

One More Thing…

1 + 1 > 1

Optimism and Realism

More Questions

Promising Steps

PLOT TWIST

Don’t Stop Now

Coda

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