Andrew began his classroom life as a high-school English teacher in 1988, and has been working in or near schools ever since. In 2008, Andrew began exploring the practical application of psychology and neuroscience in his classroom. In 2011, he earned his M. Ed. from the “Mind, Brain, Education” program at Harvard University. As President of “Translate the Brain,” Andrew now works with teachers, students, administrators, and parents to make learning easier and teaching more effective. He has presented at schools and workshops across the country; he also serves as an adviser to several organizations, including “The People’s Science.”
Andrew is the author of "Learning Begins: The Science of Working Memory and Attention for the Classroom Teacher."
Research findings that support later high-school start times have been more and more common in recent years. (See also here.) And teachers I know are increasingly vocal about letting teens sleep later.
And yet, when I talk with high school leaders, they ruefully cite sports schedules to explain the impossibility of making serious changes.
(I’ve also read that bus schedules get in the way.)
Here’s another–quite surprising–reason that this change might be hard to accomplish: parental uncertainty. According to this recent study, published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, half of parents whose teens start school before 8:30 don’t support a later start time.
The study concludes that we need to do a better job educating parents about the biological changes in adolescent sleep patterns.
The more that parents understand how melatonin onset–and, hence, sleepiness–changes with adolescence, the more they might understand that their awake-at-midnight teens aren’t simply being willful. They are instead responding to powerful chemical signals.
Given all we know about adolescent sleep, and the effect of sleep on learning, teachers and parents should be champions of reasonable high school start times.
Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a skeptic about gender differences in learning. Although they certainly do exist–I think particularly about differences in 3d mental rotation–I often think they’re overstated or overemphasized.
At the same time, my emphasis on this point might obscure the fact that at the population level, gender differences in learning do sometimes exist. Two articles are, I think, particularly helpful in understanding these ideas.
First, this weighty research review considers the number of women in STEM fields and reaches three broad conclusions:
“Males are more variable [than females] on most measures of quantitative and visuospatial ability, which necessarily results in more males at both high- and low-ability extremes; the reasons why males are often more variable remain elusive.”
“Females tend to excel in verbal abilities, with large differences between females and males found when assessments include writing samples. “
“We conclude that early experience, biological factors, educational policy, and cultural context affect the number of women and men who pursue advanced study in science and math and that these effects add and interact in complex ways. There are no single or simple answers to the complex questions about sex differences in science and mathematics.”
The article stands out to me not only for its thoroughness, but for its all-star list of authors. Janet Shibley Hyde, for example, is well known for her skepticism about gender differences; in fact, she authored a widely-cited article called The Gender Similarities Hypothesis. If a known skeptic is on board with these conclusions, then I’m comfortable being there too.
(Another author, Diana Halpern, by the way, is a former president of the American Psychological Association.)
Second, Hyde has published an exploration of the first argument above: that men show greater variability in quantitative and visual abilities. This hypothesis suggests that–although large populations of men and women will have the same average math scores–we would expect to see more men who are very good at math (say, the top 5%) and also who are very bad at math (say, the bottom 5%).
Hyde’s article shows the complexity of this hypothesis. In particular, given that these variations differ from country to country, and can change over time, we have to recognize the social and historical context of any data set.
My prediction would have been that if I have a glass of wine before I learn some new vocabulary words, I won’t learn those words as well as I would have fully sober.
That prediction, it turns out, is correct. New learning that takes place post-alcohol just doesn’t consolidate very well. It seems that alcohol inhibits long-term potentiation.
I also would have predicted that if I have a glass of wine just after I learn some new vocabulary words, that wine would muddle my memory of those new words as well.
That prediction, however, is just wrong. My post-study wine–surprise!–improves my recall of those words the next morning.
In fact, a recent study shows that this effect holds true not only in the psychology lab, but also at home. When participants (not just college students, by the way) went home after they learned new words and raised a pint or two, they remembered more of those words than their fully-sober counterparts.
Even more remarkable, they did better than their alcohol-free peers not because they forgot less, but because they remembered even more. That is, their recall score in the evening was in the mid 30% range; the next morning, it was in the low 40% range.
Theories, theories
The standard hypothesis to explain such a result goes like this: when we drink alcohol, the brain forms fewer new memories. The hippocampus takes advantage of this pause to consolidate previous memories.
In other words: since the brain has some alcohol-induced down time, it uses that time to firm up what it already knows.
The authors of this study suggest an alternate explanation: sleep. As they explain, alcohol increases the proportion of slow-wave sleep compared to rapid-eye-movement sleep. Because slow-wave sleep is good for the formation of factual memories, this SWS increase benefits factual learning.
(An implication of this hypothesis is that alcohol might be bad for other kinds of memory formation–such as procedural memory–which require more rapid-eye-movement sleep. That is: alcohol might help you learn more facts, but fewer skills.)
Some Caveats, and an Invitation
Needless to say, I’m not encouraging you to drink heavily to promote learning.
And, I wouldn’t share these results with my 2nd graders.
However, after a long evening of study, I just might feel a bit less guilty about relaxing with a cozy Cabernet.
And, when you come to this fall’s Learning and the Brain conference, you should definitely join us at the wine and cheese reception.
Over at Newsweek, Alexander Nazaryan wants to vex you. Here’s a sample:
Only someone who has uncritically mastered the intricacies of Shakespeare’s verse, the social subtexts of Elizabethan society and the historical background of Hamlet is going to have any original or even interesting thoughts about the play. Everything else is just uninformed opinion lacking intellectual valence.
If you’d like a more nuanced version of this argument, check out Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School.
In particular, you might read…
Chapter 2: “Factual knowledge must precede skill”
Chapter 4: “We understand things in the context of what we already know, and most of what we know is concrete”
Chapter 5: “It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended practice”
and chapter 6: “Cognition early in training is different from cognition late in training”
From another vantage point: my own book Learning Begins discusses the dangers of working memory overload lurking in efforts to teach critical thinking.
Whether you prefer Nazaryan’s emphatic declamations, or Willingham’s and my more research-focused commentary, take some time to think critically about all the cognitive legwork that must precede real critical thought.
You’d like an 8 page summary of Cognitive Load Theory, written in plain English for teachers? You’d like three pages of pertinent sources?
Click here for a handy report from the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. (That’s not a typo; the Centre is in New South Wales, Australia.)
For example: you might check out the “expertise reversal effect” described on page 7; you’ll gain a whole new perspective on worked examples.
Should young children count on their fingers when learning math?
You can find strong opinions on both sides of this question. (This blog post uses 4 “No’s” and 5 exclamation points to discourage parents from allowing finger counting.)
Recent research from the University of Bristol, however, suggests that finger counting–when combined with other math exercises–improves quantitative skills more than either intervention by itself.
The study design is quite complex; check the link above if you’d like the details. But, the headline is clear: for 6- and 7-year-olds, a taboo against finger counting may well hinder the development of math skills.
You’ve surely heard about students being left-brained or right-brained. And: you’ve probably heard that this belief is a myth.
The folks over at Ted Ed have made a helpful video explaining the genesis of this belief, and the ways that we know it’s not true.
An important note in this controversy: it is certainly true that some people are more creative than others. It’s also certainly true that some are more logical than others. After all–to summarize psychology in three words–people are different.
Also, the phrase “left-brained” may be useful shorthand for “rather more logical,” and “right-brained” for “more creative than most.”
After all, we can use the phrase “heart-broken” without believing that this lovelorn person’s heart is–you know–actually broken.
But, we should be quite clear that creativity and logical thought aren’t “happening” on different sides of the brain. In fact, we should also recognize that a sharp distinction between creativity and logical thought doesn’t even make much sense.
So: you might be left-handed or right-handed, but you aren’t left-brained or right-brained–except in a rather creative way of speaking.
(By the way, if you’d like to learn about AMAZING research into people who literally have only half a brain, click here.)
The school year is beginning, and so you’re certainly seeing many (MANY) articles about the debate over laptop notes vs. handwritten notes.
If your research stream is anything like mine, most of the articles you see assert that handwriting is superior to laptops for note-taking.
And, most of those articles cite Mueller and Oppenheimer’s blockbuster study, arguing–as its witty title avers–“the pen is mightier than the keyboard.”
Here’s my advice: don’t believe it.
More substantively: it’s possible that the pen is mightier than the keyboard. However, Mueller and Oppenheimer’s study supports that conclusion only if you believe that students can’t learn new things.
(Of course, that would be a very odd belief for a teacher to have.)
If you believe that students can learn new things, then this widely cited study suggests that laptop notes ought to lead to more learning than handwritten notes.
After all, a student who has practiced correct laptop note-taking can a) write more words than a student who takes notes by hand, and b) take notes in her own words just as well as a student who takes notes by hand.
Mueller and Oppenheimer’s research clearly suggests that a) + b) ought to lead to more learning.
The details of this argument get tricky; I lay them out in this post.
TWO CAVEATS
FIRST: I am not saying that I know laptop notes to be superior to handwritten notes.
I am saying that the study most often used to champion handwritten notes simply does not support its own conclusion. If you believe students can learn new things, then Mueller and Oppenheimer’s research suggests that laptop notes ought to lead to more learning.
A study testing my hypothesis has not–as far as I know–been done.
SECOND: you might reasonably say that students taking notes on laptops will be distracted by the interwebs. For that reason, handwritten notes will be superior.
I very much share this concern. (In fact, Faria Sana’s research shows that laptop multitasking distracts not only the multitasker, but also the person sitting behind the multitasker–a serious problem in lecture halls.)
However, multitasking is a separate question–not one addressed by Mueller and Oppenheimer.
The narrow question is: do non-multitasking laptop note-takers learn more than non-multitasking handwritten note-takers?
If the answer to that question is “yes,” then we should train laptop note-takers a) to reword the teacher’s lecture–not simply to write it down verbatim, and b) to unplug from the interwebs.
This combination will certainly be difficult to achieve. But, it might be the very best combination for learning.
A FINAL POINT
The laptops-vs.-handwriting debate stirs up a remarkable degree of fervor–more than I would expect from a fairly narrow and technical question.
I suspect that this debate is in fact a proxy war between those who think we should use more technology in schools (who favor laptop notes) and those who think we already use too much technology in schools (who favor handwriting). That is: we’re not so much concerned with note-taking specifically as we are with technology in general.
That’s an important conversation to have. In fact, it’s central to the November Learning and the Brain Conference.
At the same time, let’s be sure that our general views on technology don’t obscure the answer to a precise, researchable question. If students learn more by taking notes on laptops, let’s find that out with well-designed research studies and then guide them well.
About Andrew Watson 
