Author Archives: Andrew Watson

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.

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…”

More Questions

I regularly hear that students learn material better if it’s presented as a story than as exposition.

On the one hand, it seems clear that stories are easy to remember — they are “psychologically privileged.”

But this claim helps teachers if and only if teachers know what “a narrative” is, and can easily translate our content into a narrative.

If I want my 10th graders to know the difference between a gerund and a participle, how can I make that distinction into a story?

Or…wait a minute…can I just have my students read a story and point out the gerunds and the participles within it? Does that count?

Or…wait a minute…can a math teacher read a story that says “Gretel told Hansel that 3 + 3 = 6”? Does that count?

If we teachers don’t know exactly what counts as a story, and how to translate exposition into stories, then the “psychological privilege” of narrative is interesting but not helpful. (SO MUCH of education research is interesting but not helpful…)

In my earlier blog post, I asked people for guidance on that question — preferably research-informed guidance showing how to define narrative, and/or translate exposition into narrative.

Honestly, I didn’t get much.

But recently I found a research study that just might provide these essential insights.

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.

A few years ago, I visited an English Department meeting at a well-known high school. The topic under discussion: a recently published “English Department Guide to Annotation.”

After the meeting, one of the authors asked me what I thought of the guide and the research behind it.

I asked: “Well, what IS the research behind it?”

The teacher answered: “Oh, ALL the research says this.”

Although this answer (“ALL the research shows…”) is quite common, it always makes me nervous.

In the first place, it sounds like a dodge, doesn’t it? It’s the sort of answer I might give if I didn’t actually know much about the research.

In the second place: it’s never true. Because teaching and psychology and research are all so complicated, researchers NEVER get the precisely same answer when they study interesting, complex, and important questions about teaching.

Even retrieval practice — one of the most research-supported teaching strategies we have! — doesn’t have unanimous support in the research literature.

So: what does research say about annotating texts? I recently stumbled across a study that explores this question…

A Promising Start

A recently published study looks quite specifically at the benefits of teaching annotation. In this study, 125 8th grade students in a social studies class learned a specific method for annotation; another 125 served as the control group.

The students who learned this new method got LOTS of practice: at least 100 minutes over 6 weeks. The study used a “business as usual” control group, which means that the teachers just taught as they usually do for the students who didn’t learn about annotation.

The result: impressive!

In brief, the students who annotated thought the method was relatively easy to use. And, they scored higher on a reading-comprehension test.

If you speak stats, you’ll be impressed to see that the Cohen’s d was 0.46: an attention-getting number for a 6-week intervention.

So far, this study gives us reason to focus on teaching annotation.

Subsequent Concerns

And yet, I do have concerns: some specific to this study, and some more generally about applying research to classrooms.

SPECIFIC concern:

As you can see in the image above, the annotating method includes highlighting. Alas, researchers have looked at highlighting specifically, and found it to be largely unhelpful.

For instance, when John Dunlosky et al. evaluated the efficacy of various study strategies, they didn’t find much to recommend highlighting:

On the basis of the available evidence, we rate highlighting and underlining as having low utility. In most situations that have been examined and with most participants, highlighting does little to boost performance.

It may help when students have the knowledge needed to highlight more effectively, or when texts are difficult, but it may actually hurt performance on higher level tasks that require inference making. (Emphasis added.)

If this annotating method includes a widely-discredited strategy, I worry about the research behind it.

GENERAL concerns

As I’ve written before, I want to offer “research based teaching advice” only if LOTS of research supports the advice. You know your school, curriculum, and students better than I do — so I need SUBSTANTIAL reason to say “do this, not that.”

Alas, we have precious little research into the question of annotation.

I’ve used my go-to resources (scite.ai, connectedpapers.com, elicit.org), and found almost no research pointing one way or the other. (The study described above does mention other experiments … but as far as I can discover none of them focuses precisely on annotation.)

So, yes: we have ONE study saying that this annotation method helped 8th graders learn more in a social studies class. But I don’t think we should be very sure of that narrow finding…much less confident about extrapolating.

That is: do these results tell us anything about annotating in a high-school English class? I don’t think so.

Niche-y, But Important

A final concern merits a brief discussion here.

As noted above, the study uses a “business as usual” control group. That is: some students got A SHINY NEW THING (for 100 minutes!). And some students got … nothing special.

As you can imagine, we might easily conclude that the SHINY NOVELTY — not the annotation specifics — helped the students.

The study would have been more persuasive if the control group had learned a different reading comprehension strategy instead of annotation. In this case, we would have more confidence about the benefits (or lack of benefits) of annotation.

Generally speaking: when a study compares Something to Something Else, not Something to Nothing, it gives us greater reason to rely on its findings.

In Brief

When our students read, we want them to think about the text they’re reading.

We want them to …

… learn the ideas in the text,

… associate it with their prior knowledege,

… update their schema on the topic,

… consider weaknesses, questions, and omissions,

and so forth.

Is annotating the best way to ensure they do so? I’m not yet persuaded.

If you know of good research on the topic, I hope you’ll let me know!

Lloyd, Z. T., Kim, D., Cox, J. T., Doepker, G. M., & Downey, S. E. (2022). Using the annotating strategy to improve students’ academic achievement in social studies. Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching & Learning, 15(2), 218-231.

Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques: Promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public interest, 14(1), 4-58.

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.

In recent years, our field has seen a great increase in ‘one-pagers’: handy summaries of research topics and suggestions — complete with headings and friendly graphics.

Given their rising popularity, I thought it would be helpful to offer guidance on using them well.

So: what strategies will help you (and through you, your students) benefit the most from one pagers?

Strategy #1: Make Your Own

No, seriously.

The person who learns the most from a one-pager is the person who makes the one pager.

For instance: to make a 1-pager on retrieval practice, you first need to …

… learn a lot about retrieval practice;

… organize all your findings, preferably with lively and helpful graphics;

… understand its boundary conditions and best uses;

… summarize your findings in clear, consistent, understandable language;

… decide what information to include, and what to leave out…

In other words, you need to do all those generative learning activities that are most likely to ensure that you learn and remember new ideas. (Click here for a brisk review of the Ensers’ excellent book on generative learning.)

So, my most emphatic recommendation for 1-pagers: make ’em.

Strategy #2: Edit a 1-Pager

Let’s say I find a 1-pager on taking good classroom notes.

Because I know this research pool fairly well, I can both read the 1-pager and have a conversation with it.

That is: I can comment on the passages where I agree (“I’m so glad someone else has found this study helpful!”) and also note those passages where I don’t (“No, the Mueller and Oppenheimer study really does not support that claim.”).

I could re-prioritize its suggestions, reword a sentence or two, even sketch in a quick graphic that better encapsulates the ideas.

In effect, this editing strategy simply riffs on the first one above (“Make Your Own 1-Pager”). By collaborating or arguing with another 1-pager, I’m getting many of the same cognitive benefits.

Notice one key point here:

To succeed at strategies 1 and 2, I need to know a fair amount about the topic.

That is, relatively speaking I’m an expert.

If I were a novice on the topics of retrieval practice and note-taking, I couldn’t really create or respond to a 1-pager very substantively.

Strategy #3: Use a Single 1-Pager Intensively Over Time

A few recent books have focused on 1-pager summaries of cognitive science in the classroom.

For instance, consider Walkthrus by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli. This book chooses several dozen specific classroom topics — cold calling, seating charts — and offers precise 5-step guidelines for examining, honing, and reviewing our practice.

Each of these Walkthrus is, in effect, a 1-pager; each one invites us to spend several days steeping in its advice.

So, if you choose the Walkthru on … say … “scaffolding,” you’ll start by reviewing all five steps. Then you’ll focus on step one: “map out the components of a task”.

This step will take at least a day or two, and during those 48 hours you’ll spend a lot of time thinking about that step.

So too with step 2 (“provide supports at a detailed level”), and then again with step 3 (“provide supports at an overview level”).

As you can easily see, this strategy means you’ll spend a lot of time — days and days! — thinking about the information, ideas, and suggestions on this particular 1-pager. The result: you’ll learn a lot about this topic.

Notice the key here: focused work over time. We don’t get the benefit of walkthrus by reading Walkthrus. We get the benefit by choosing one of them and dwelling on it for meaningful periods of time.

Less Productive 1-pager Strategies

I’m offering the list above because I worry that the most common use of a 1-pager is also  the least effective use.

Here’s the commom, ineffective use:

Step 1: I don’t know much about (for example) worked examples.

Step 2: I come across a 1-pager on worked examples.

Step 3: I read it, and think “wow, that makes so much sense!”

Step 4: I go on about my day.

This process creates the illusion of understanding; I believe that I have learned something about worked examples.

Alas, as we well know, learning almost never happens this way. I don’t learn about worked examples by reading a 1-pager about them, but by grappling substantively with the concept over time.

In other words, I fear a 1-pager paradox:

They DO benefit the people who create them (strategy #1);

They DO benefit people who already know a great deal about a topic (strategy #2);

They DO benefit novices who devote days to intensive study and practice (strategy #3);

But they DON’T benefit beginners who use them as their form invites us to use them: a quick read.

If teachers wants to learn about any meaningful educational topic (working memory, entry routines, growth mindset, turn-n-talk, spacing and interleaving) we can’t do so simply by reading a 1-pager. We have to read a book, attend a workshop, take a class…and then think and practice and fail and start over.

We know that students learn by this interative process of engaging, grappling, struggling, and transforming. Teachers learn this way too.

Adam Boxer (on ex/Twitter @AdamBoxer1) is one of the few people who also worries about this trend in public. Here’s a brief recent thread.

When was the last time you changed your mind about something important?

Perhaps you rethought a core political belief: gun control, or abortion, or a stance on international relations.

Maybe you gave up on one teaching practice to adopt a once-unthinkable alternative.

Just possibly, after a lifetime aversion to vegetables, you realized they’re delicious. (Wrap pencil-thin aspargus in proscuitto, give it a glug of olive oil and a sprinkle of parmesan, pop it on the grill…heaven.)

Now think back: what led you to change your mind? How did you stop believing one thing and start believing a contradictory position? What made the magic happen?

This broad question has specific importance here at Learning and the Brain.

After all: if we’re doing our job right, teachers will often leave our conferences and workshops thinking:

“Wow, I should really try this new way. Now that I know more about psychology and neuroscience research, I’ve got LOTS of ideas for improving my work, my classroom, and my school!”

To say the same thing in reverse: if everyone leaves a LatB event thinking EXACTLY what they believed before the event … well … why have the conference? What good did it serve?

Understandable Passion

To be fair, we at LatB have it relatively easy.

Most people come to our conferences wanting to get new ideas. Attendees are — for the most part — hoping that they’ll have new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Mind-changing is a feature, not a bug.

In many (most?) educational spheres, however, our profession often prefers sturdy conviction over openness to new ideas.

Whether we’re debating the best approach for reading instruction, or high- vs. low- structure pedagogy, or the right way to use technology in schools, we have strong opinions.

And, because we have strong opinions, we want others to share those opinions.

This desire for others to share my opinions simply makes sense. For example:

If I know for certain that my approach to reading instruction is better than my colleague Lloyd’s approach, I want Lloyd to change his approach! Because mine is better!!

Everyone — from the individual student to society at large — suffers because of Lloyd’s wrongness. He MUST BE STOPPED. Even better, he must be CONVERTED.

You can understand my passion here…

The Problem with Passion

Although this passion is understandable, it also creates problems of its own.

Specifically, my passion might prompt me to say:

“Lloyd, listen up. You’re obviously wrong. I’m obviously right. So, do it my way. Pronto.”

Now, in my defense, it’s entirely possible that I am right and Lloyd is wrong. So, this statement could be factually accurate.

However, whether or not the statement is true, it creates real problems.

At the beginning of this blog post, I asked you to recall a time when you did in fact change your mind.

Did you do so because someone said: “I’m right, you’re wrong, so do it my way?”

I’m guessing the your answer is “no.”

It might be “heck no.”

The answer, I suspect, is rarely “heck yes.”

In other words: although “I’m right, you’re wrong” might be a TRUE statement, it is almost certainly a WILDLY INEFFECTIVE statement…because it doesn’t accomplish the goal: changing someone’s mind.

If I passionately want to persuade Lloyd to change his mind, and I knowingly adopt a strategy that almost certainly won’t change his mind…well, my passion has in fact defeated my purpose.

Beyond Hypotheticals

I’m writing this blog post because of a poster I’ve seen several times recently (where else?) on eX-Twitter.

It says, basically:

Because we’re talking about education, beliefs don’t matter; evidence matters.

Now, on the one hand, I typically agree with the research-based conclusions of the people who highlight this poster.

That is: to the degree I’m on a team in the world of cognitive science, my team-mates are likeliest to make this statement.

On the other hand, I wince every time I see it. I do so because I think this statement makes it conspicuously less likely that my team will convince anyone to do anything.

To me, the poster sounds — more or less — like it’s saying this:

Your beliefs don’t matter to me; my evidence must matter to you.

And yet, who will listen to me after I’ve said “your beliefs don’t matter to me”? Who should listen to me after I’ve said such a thing? Why would someone who experiences my open contempt listen to and trust me?

I just don’t think people work that way.

Alternative Strategy, Take 1

If I’m going to object to the “you’re wrong; I’m right” strategy, I should probably propose an alternative. I will, in fact, propose two.

When I go to do PD work at a school or conference, I usually begin by saying something like this:

“I’m not here to tell you what to do. I don’t know enough about teaching 6th grade history — or 1st grade math, or soccer coaching — to be able to do that.

Honestly, I don’t think cognitive science can tell teachers what to do.

Instead, I’m here with some ideas about how to think about what you do.

Once you hear these new cognitive-science ways of thinking, you will have wise discussions on how to apply them to you work. That is: you will figure out what to do.

Cognitive science is, I think, really good at helping this way.”

This introduction has, I believe at least two benefits.

First: it’s true. No cognitive scientist knows enough to tell me how to teach grammar well. But, many can help me think about teaching it well. (E.g.: “having too many choices might overwhelm a student’s working memory, so design practice exercises to align with their prior knowledge!”)

Second: this introduction sets a tone. I am, in effect, saying:

“We all bring kinds of expertise to this day.

I know a lot about, say, Posner and Rothbart’s theory of attention.

You know your curriculum, and your students, and your school culture, and your society’s culture.

When we pool all that expertise, we’re likelier to get to good answers. Let’s work together.”

Rather than tell people to abandon their beliefs in favor of my evidence, I invite them to find the best ways to combine both.

I’m not certain that they’ll do exactly what I think they should do.

But I think they’re MUCH LIKELIER to take small steps in a good direction than if I start by dismissing everything they’ve believed up until now.

Alternative Strategy, Take 2

An alternative to my strategy is: I could be completely wrong.

No, really.

Although I doubt that telling people “my evidence trumps your beliefs” does much good, others might have found this strategy to be highly effective.

Heck: you might know of research showing that insisting on evidence (and dismissing prior belief) does cause teachers to change their minds and adopt better teaching practices.

If you have that experience — or know of such research — please share it with me! I would LOVE to be able to try this approach with confidence.

After all, as XKCD has told us, people are often wrong. I’m hoping to be better at changing minds…including my own.

Sadly, we’ve been having lots of troubles with the “comments” feature on this blog. We get dozens (hundreds) of spammy comments, wanting to advertise all sorts of sketchy products. And the comment filter just might prevent you from responding to this post.

So: if you have reason to advocate for the “my evidence > your belief” strategy, please reach out to me at my first name (Andrew) and then the “at” sign and then the name of my own company (TranslateTheBrain) and then “.com”

Because, I really do hope you will change my mind. Please!