Category Archives: L&B Blog

Here’s a little expert advice on nutrition:

Michael Phelps — the most decorated Olympic athelete in any sport ever — obviously had to take EXCELLENT care of his body. He thought A LOT about fitness and nutrition.

While he was training for the Olympics, he ate roughly 10,000 calories a day.

So: if I want to attain peak fitness, I too should eat 10,000 calories a day.

If it’s good enough for Olympic medals winners, it’s good enough for me.

Wait a minute. [insert sound of record scratch]

That’s terrible advice.

10,000 calories per day might have been a good idea for Phelps. However — physically speaking — he and I have very little in common.

During his Olympic career, Phelps was in his teens and 20s.  I’m 57.

He was in peak human physical condition. I am — well — in very average physical condition.

He (I assume) undertook ferociously vigorous physical exercise — and burned calories — most of the day. I spend much of my day sitting here writing blog posts.

Basing my nutritional plan on Phelps’s example just makes no sense.

Simply put: stories of extreme human performance fascinate us. Alas, they rarely produce useful models for everyday life — or for teaching.

Danger, Will Robinson

That last paragraph, sadly, creates real problems for popular science writers.

In my experience, their formula goes something like this:

“Here’s a fascinating story abouts something EXTRAORDINARY that happened.

Now that I’ve got your attention, notice this AMAZING X FACTOR in my story.

Here’s some wonky research roughly related to Amazing X.

You should enact Amazing X in your life, too.”

Whether the extraordinary story focuses on burning planes or impossible inventions or heroic feats, those stories — we’re asked to believe — all have something to tell us about improving our lives.

But if it’s true, as I wrote above, that “stories of extreme human performance rarely produce useful models for teaching,” then the narrative structure above invites — heck, demands — our skepticism.

Amazing X might benefit extraordinary folks in outlier conditions. But, by definition, few of us teach in outlier conditions. Amazing X just won’t help us much. It might, in fact, be a very bad idea in our classrooms. (10,000 calories, anyone?)

Don’t Start Here

You have, perhaps, heard the story of the Mann Gulch Fire. (If not, you should check it out. It’s an AMAZING story.)

In brief:

Back in 1949, a group of trained “smoke jumpers” battled a wildfire that was burning toward the Missouri river. The fire abruptly turned towards them, and they realized they were trapped … and likely doomed.

In an instant, the group’s leader — “Wag” Dodge — came up with an astonishing solution. He set his own fire, and then stepped into its”shadow”: the area that his fire had burned clear. The wildfire burned around him — but not over the area that his fire had scorched.

Sadly, none of his men followed him into the shadow. Two other men outran the fire; most died.

This story appears in more than one book I know. The message: we want our students to think the way Dodge thought. We want them to be creative thinkers, who can come up with novel solutions to important problems.

I agree with those goals. I want my students to be able to think for themselves, and think past the knowledge that I have.

However: Dodge’s example tells us exactly nothing about helping students develop that capacity.

Dodge was a highly experienced firejumper. And he was in immediate danger of his life.

Our students are not highly experienced in the topic we’re teaching them. (If they were, we wouldn’t need to be teaching them.) And — except in very rare circumstances — they don’t face immediate peril.

Dodge’s thought process, in other words, has almost nothing to do with our students’ thinking. Until they know as much as Dodge knew, and have roughly as much experience as he had, we should have no expectation that they can “think the way he thought.”

We shouldn’t use his example to inform our work — even if it’s a great story.

Familiar Problems

Another example, from another popular science book:

Dr. K reads X-rays for a living. He found that he got bored and tired as the day progressed. He worried — reasonably enough — that he was getting sloppy as the day progressed.

So, he installed a “walking desk” in his office. He walked at a moderate pace as he read the X-rays, and felt much more alert and perceptive.

Dr. K wondered: does this technique benefit others?

He ran a study, and — sure enough!! — found that Doctors Who Walked spotted suspicious masses more often that Doctors Who Sat.

Clearly, walking is good for thinking. Therefore, teachers should have students walk as they learn.

Please insert a second [record scratch] here.

Once again: a great story about experts doesn’t meaningfully apply to the work we do in schools.

Doctors who read X-rays are highly trained experts. They’ve been in school for roughly two decades.

And: reading X-rays is a perception task.

If walking helps highly trained experts stay alert enough to perceive patterns better, we can ask if walking helps students learn better.

But both the people involved (experts vs. novices) and the cognitive task (perceiving established patterns vs. learning new patterns) are meaningfully different.

We really need research looking at this question directly before we make strong recommendations.

Based on my the research I know — and my experience as a classroom teacher:

Yes: exercise is good for the body, and good for the brain.

Yes: physical activity before learning provides lots of benefits. (Link)

No: physical activity during learning hasn’t been studied much. (Link)

And: based on my classroom experience, walking my students around outside while trying to discuss Macbeth with them seems like a deeply bad idea.*

Dr. K’s treadmill might help him and his colleagues; I don’t think it does much of anything for teachers and students.

TL;DR

When reading popular science books that include teaching advice, be aware:

The stories about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things fascinate and compel us.

However:

Before we make changes to our teaching practice, we should see research that looks at students like ours studying a topic like ours.

If we don’t, we’ll end up doing the teaching equivalent of eating 10,000 caleries a day.

* Yes, of course, if students are studying something that is in fact outside, it makes sense to go outside and look at it.

For instance: when I taught Where The Crawdads Sing — a book that relies heavily on the symbolism of marshes and swamps — I took my class out to see the marshes on school property.

I’m not saying: never take students for a walk. I am saying: do so with a very specific pedagogical purpose in mind.

Here at Learning and the Brain, we like research-informed teaching suggestions.

At the same time, we remember Prof. Dan Willingham’s timeless motto: “one study is just one study, folks.”

That is: one study might show a particular conclusion – but one study isn’t entirely persuasive.

Instead, we’d like SEVERAL studies looking at roughly the same question. If those studies all point the same direction, then we can feel increasingly confident that this conclusion has merit.

For instance:

Several years ago I blogged about an impressive study by Dr. Jay Greene. It suggested …

… that attendance at live theater improved students’ knowledge of the play (not a big surprise)

… and, it improved students’ tolerance (surprise!)

… and, it enhanced their desire see the world from another’s perspective.

Because I REALLY WANT those statements to be true, I looked at this research with extra skepticism. But I was ultimately persuaded that the study design made lots of sense.

Of course, “one study is just one study.”

It would be GREAT to see more research on this topic. Well, I have good news…

Take Two

I’ve recently come across a second study looking at the benefits of live theater — this one led by Angela Watson (no relation that I know of).*

As is often the case, this research team looked at some of the same questions, and some additional questions as well.

So, they asked:

Does live theater provide benefit for students? How about art museums? How about symphonies?

Do these cultural field trips benefit students in different demographic groups?

The Greene study looked at tolerance and “social perspective taking” – the desire to see the world from another’s perspective. Watson’s research also asked questions about conscientiousness and empathy.

So, what did they find?

Methods and Conclusions

As you can imagine, these questions require lots of logistical complexity.

We can study – say – “retrieval practice” fairly easily in a classroom. But, schlepping large groups of students to plays, museums, and symphonies takes a lot more coordination, planning, and cooperation.

Basically, these researchers had students attend different numbers of plays, symphonies, and museums: as few as one trip, or as many as six.

And, they had students fill out questionnaires. And, they followed up for two years!

So, do additional “cultural” field trips make a difference for these students?

As is so often the case, the answer is both “yes” and “no.”

So, for instance, attending the theater/symphony/museum did NOT make students more interested in going back.

And, contrary to Greene’s study, it did NOT make students more “empathetic.”

Specifically, students responded to statements like these: “After seeing a play or a movie, I have felt as though I were one of the characters.”

Their responses did not vary depending on the number of field trips they went on.

At the same time, Team Watson did find some benefits.

Attending field trips did increase “social perspective taking.”

That is: students were asked questions like “When you are angry at someone, how often do you try to ‘put yourself in his or her shoes’?”

Students who attended more field trips put on those shoes more often.

Also, female students — although not males — demonstrated higher levels of conscientiousness after participating in more cultural field trips. (Alas, this change didn’t last as long as the others.)

The news isn’t all good, but not all bad either.

What About Tolerance?

The case of “tolerance” is especially tricky.

When Watson & Co. ran the numbers, these field trips didn’t affect the students’ answers to questions like:

“Some people have views you oppose very strongly. Do you agree that these people should be allowed to come to your school and give a speech?”

So, strictly speaking, field trips didn’t increase tolerance.

However, Watson speculates that the wording of these questions was especially complicated. And, she notes that the students in this cohort had relatively low reading scores.

So, perhaps, students really did feel more tolerant, but the question’s complexity masked that change.

Watson supports this hypothesis by noticing that the students at the high end of reading comprehension DID have higher tolerance scores.

In other words: the students who understood the question better expressed higher levels of tolerance — and might reflect a truer understanding of the field trips’ effects.

TL;DR

We now have even more research showing some SEL benefits for field trips to cultural events.

This trips…

… consistently help students “put themselves in someone else’s shoes,”

… might increase students’ tolerance of others’ opinions,

… enhance girls’ conscientiousness (albeit temporarily).

We have less certain evidence that field trips enhance empathy, or that they encourage students to attend more cultural events.

Equally important: having MORE studies on one topic allows us to contemplate these SEL benefits with greater nuance and sophistication.

* To be precise, Watson’s study is a “working paper.” It hasn’t been peer reviewed in an academic journal.

Watson, A., Greene, J., Holmes Erickson, H., & Beck, M. I. (2019). Altered attitudes and actions: Social-emotional effects of multiple arts field trips.

Because we teachers are a busy lot, we sometimes want simplicity and clarity:

“I’m honestly too busy to sort through all the options and variables; just tell me what to do.“

In fact, when I went to my first Learning and the Brain conference in 2008, that was exactly my plan.

The researchers would tell me what to do.

I would do it.

VOILA: brain-based teaching.

The more time I spend in this field, the more I doubt that logical chain. In fact, I frequently warn people against that kind of thinking.

My regular mantra:

“Don’t just DO this thing. Instead, THINK this way.”

In other words, we teachers always have to translate research-based advice to our own context.

Today’s News

I recently came across a study looking at twelve different instructional activities in English and math classrooms.

In this study, “instructional activities” include …

… open discussion among teacher and students,

… use of whiteboard by teacher

… students working in groups

… one-to-one teaching

… students copying from the whiteboard

And so forth.

The research team asked: do students benefit from the same instructional activites in both disciplines?

To answer this question, researchers had observers keep track of teachers’ instructional activities. These observers — during more than 2500 visits! —  recorded whether teachers did these 12 activities “none or very little,” “some of the time,” or “most or all of the time.”

And, they then looked at the students’ scores on national exams in English and math. (This study was done in England, where most students take the GSCE when they’re 16 years old.)

So, what did they find when they put all those pieces together.

Fascinating Results

First, this research team found that teachers do different things:

Some teachers spend much of class time using traditional direct instruction, including lecturing and the use of textbooks, while other teachers devote more class time to students working with their classmates or individual practice.

For instance: one third of teachers use “open discussion” most or all of the time, but one quarter don’t do so at all.

Second, those different instructional activities matter.

In math classes, students benefit from a) practicing on their own, and b) teachers’ checking for understanding.

Students who engage in these activities “all or most of the time” score significantly higher than those who do so “some of the time.” (In this case, “significantly higher” is a bit hard to describe. Probably the easiest way to say this is: both statisticians and the students themselves would notice the difference.)

In English classes, however, students benefit from working and talking with each other (and the teacher).

So, to answer the question in this post’s title: at least according to this study, we shouldn’t teach all disciplines in the same way.

What This Finding DOES Mean

If you teach math or English to high-school students in England, I think you should give this study a careful look to guide your classroom practice.

That is: I’ve given an introduction — but the study includes A LOT more information that could be practically helpful to you.

Even more important:

If you don’t fit in that teaching category, this study means that research-based teaching advice always requires translation and adaptation.

Students benefit from different instructional activities in math and English. And, presumably, in other disciplines as well.

That is: you might go to a conference session that highlights the importance of mind-maps. (I’m picking this example at random.) That session shows research about its effectiveness in helping students learn.

However, this study clearly reminds us that we might need to adapt that advice to our own classrooms.

High-school English teachers might have students create mind-maps together; remember, students benefit from “working and talking together.”

High-school math teachers might have them create mind-maps solo; students benefit from “working on their own.”

More generally, this study might prompt you to ask some direct questions during that mind-map session. Was the research done with students in different grades? In different school or community cultures? Studying different topics? With diagnosed learning differences?

In other words: this specific research finding reminds us of a general lesson. We should be curious about and open to research-based suggestions. AND, we should check and be sure the research aligns with our teaching context before we make drastic changes.

What This Finding DOESN’T Mean

The flipside of my last point is: this research should encourage you to adapt your teaching practices only if your classrooms look like these classrooms.

Do you teach history? This research might not (or might) talk directly to you.

Do you teach second grade? Ditto.

Perhaps you teach in a different cultural context — say, Korea, Cairo, or Kansas.

Perhaps your school has a specific teaching philosophy (a Montessori school; a military academy) that rules out these approaches.

In other words: don’t just DO what this research tells you to do. THINK about your teaching practice with these ideas in mind — and see if they fit and make sense in your world.

Burgess, S. M., Rawal, S., & Taylor, E. S. (2022). Teachers’ use of class time and student achievement (No. w30686). National Bureau of Economic Research.

If we’re going to make “research-based” claims about education — and we are! — then we better have the research goods.

So, how can we at Learning and the Brain — and you as teachers and administrators — find and evaluate research?

For a few years now, I’ve relied on two great sources.

Scite.ai helps me see if a particular study is an outlier, or in alignment with other research findings.

Connectedpapers.com shows a spider web of research studies on any given topic.

They’re great, and you should check them both out. (I’m on those sites several times a week.)

But, we’ve heard A LOT about AI in recent weeks. Can we rely on newer websites to help us out?

I spent an hour or so on Monday playing around on two sites; here’s what I found.

The Inevitable ChatGPT

I won’t rehash all the Twitter agita on this subject, but gosh ChatGPT has gotten lots of attention. (Twitter tells me it’s either the savior of education, or the end of education, a deranged stalker of New York Times reporters, or a nothingburger.)

Can it help us explore research into education?

To answer this question, I asked Chat GPT to describe “schema theory.” Here are the first two paragraphs of its answer:

“Schema theory” is a cognitive psychology theory that describes how people understand, organize, and store information about the world. The theory suggests that people use mental frameworks or “schemas” to categorize information and simplify their understanding of the world around them.

A schema can be thought of as a mental structure that represents knowledge about a particular category of information, such as objects, events, or social interactions. For example, a person might have a schema for a “restaurant” that includes information about the typical layout, menu items, and social norms associated with dining out.

So far, so good. (The restaurant example of schema is quite common.)

I asked it to dig a bit deeper, and to identify problems or limitations with schema theory. Again, I got a solid set of answers. For instance, a limitation:

Overgeneralization: Schemas can sometimes lead to overgeneralization, causing people to perceive things in a stereotypical or biased manner. For example, people with a schema of a “criminal” may unconsciously associate criminal behavior with certain groups.

When I asked it for research supporting schema theory, its first three answers were several decades old, so I asked it for research from the last 20 years.

Of the three it listed, this one looked most promising:

Lee, J. J., & Anderson, N. (2015). The role of schema in the interpretation of ambiguous scenes. Memory & Cognition, 43(8), 1186-1197.

But, strangely, when I tried to find that study on Google Scholar, it didn’t seem to exist.

Stranger still, when I went to the website for the journal Memory and Cognition, it also doesn’t exist. (To be clear: the journal exists; the article doesn’t exist in it.)

You’re not going to believe this, but it seems that ChatGPT simply MADE UP a research study supporting schema theory.

The Chat Gets Awkward

I pointed out to ChatGPT that the source doesn’t exist, and it responded:

I apologize, it seems I made a mistake. The study by Lee and Anderson (2015) that I mentioned in my previous answer does not seem to exist. As a language model, I strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information, but sometimes I may make errors or misunderstand the information given to me. I appreciate your feedback and will take this into account in my future responses.

Okay, I’m not happy about this. But it did fess up to its mistake, and promise to do better.

So, the conversation continued: