All those diagrams of synapses and neurotransmitters might be factually correct, but misinterpreted to explain memory formation.
Basically, some researchers argue that we’re thinking about learning in the wrong place. In the old model, we focused on many, many interactions at the very tips of the dendrites.
In a new model, the researchers propose we focus on a few changes at the root of the dendrites — much closer to the place where they connect to the neuron’s main body.
This summary explains the headlines. (The original article itself can be found here.)
Both these links include helpful visuals to understand the difference between these two models.
The details are fantastically complicated. But the possibility of a new model is…technically speaking…awesome sauce.
What Should Teachers Do With This New Knowledge?
Believe it or not, not much.
In the first place, we should remember that for teachers: neuroscience is fascinating, but psychology is helpful.
That is, we don’t really need to know exactly what changes in the brain when students learn. (Although, of course, it’s SO INTERESTING.)
But, we DO really need to know what teaching practices create those neural changes — whatever they might be.
We need to manage working memory load.
We need to help students manage their alertness levels.
And, we need to use retrieval practice.
And so forth.
In every case, psychology research tells us what teaching strategies do and don’t help. If — as might be true in this case — our neuro-biological understanding changes, that change almost certainly doesn’t matter to our teaching.
We still need to manage working memory and alertness.
We still need to use retrieval practice.
And so forth.
We might think differently about the neurons and synapses and dentrites, but we will keep using the most effective teaching practices.
In the Second Place…
Let this news remind us of Kurt Fischer’s famous saying: “when it comes to the brain, we’re all still in first grade.” That is: modern neuroscience is still a young discipline, and we’ve got LOTS more to learn.
So, we can indeed be thrilled by all the neuroscience information we glean at Learning and the Brain conferences. But, we shouldn’t latch onto it too firmly. Instead, we should expect that, as the years go by, our neuro-biological models will need several fresh revisions.
I have, in fact, waited over a year since this article was first published to see what traction it has gotten in the field. So far, I have heard almost nothing about it.
Simply put: I don’t know whether the new model is more accurate than the old. Perhaps, ten years from now, the old model will be seen as an embarrassing relic. Perhaps, instead, the new proposal will have been forgotten.
In either case, we can think more effectively about brains (and about teaching ad learning) if we keep our mental models flexible enough to allow for fresh discoveries.
If you keep up on brain news, you have frequently had this experience:
You read a newspaper headline or a blog link, and news of a potential discovery gives you an adrenaline rush:
Eating garlic may prevent age-related memory loss!
Radoiactive tracer shows effectiveness of cancer treatment!!
Ketamine may relieve depression!!!
Filled with enthusiasm, you read the accompanying article. Only to discover: the research was done on mice. The resulting adrenaline crash might cause you to desire chocolate-chip cookies (according to research done in mice).
Today’s News
Of course, mouse research is super important to establish basic biological processes. But, it doesn’t give teachers useful guidance. Ever.
(Now might be a good time to repeat one of my few absolute rules:
NEVER, NEVER, NEVER,
Change your teaching practice
Based on research
Into non-human animals.)
To highlight the foolishness of headline-hiding-the-mouse gambit, researcher James Heathers has created a vital new twitter account: @justsaysinmice.
That’s it. When you follow his account, you’ll get occasional updates with links to articles drawing breathless conclusions about research. Heathers wants you to know that the research shows results in mice.
As of this writing, Heathers’s account has 29 tweets, and north of 45,000 followers.
(By the way, we’ve written about Heathers’s skepticism before. He is developing a specialty in debunking inaccurate science communication.)
So, to tune up your skepticism skills, I encourage you to make @justsaysinmice a part of your twitter world.
Blake Harvard teaches psychology and coaches soccer at James Clemens High School. For three years now, he’s been actively at work trying out teaching strategies derived from cognitive psychology. And, he blogs about his work at The Effortful Educator.
I spoke with Blake about his work, hoping to learn more about the classroom strategies he finds most helpful and effective. (This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.)
Andrew Watson
Blake, thank you for taking the time to chat with me.
I always enjoy reading your blog posts, and learning about your strategies to connect psychology research with the teaching of psychology.
Can you give an example of research you read, and then you tried it out in your classroom? Maybe you tinkered with it along the way?
Blake Harvard
Well, first: retrieval practice and spacing. Research tells us that we forget things very rapidly. Forgetting information and then retrieving that information again strengthens ties in the brain. It promotes long term memory of that information.
So, I’m very conscious of different ways that my students elaborate on information and generate information.
What am I doing to have my kids review? Or, how am I spacing out the information that we were learning yesterday versus what we were learning a week ago versus what we were learning months ago. What are the ties among those things? How are they related?
In the past, when we completed a unit of study, it was in the past. We moved on. Now I’m very careful to revisit. I space out their practice and provide the opportunity for my students to think about material we’ve covered in the past.
And second, dual coding.
I think every teacher does some activity where they have students draw something. But dual coding is more than just about drawing things. It’s about organizing the information: how does it link up?
So, using those general concepts of retrieval practice, space practice, and dual coding, and applying them to my class specifically, I’m constantly trying to get my kids to think – to think more.
Andrew Watson:
Can you give an example of a strategy you use to be sure they do?
Blake Harvard
Sure. One example is, I use an unusual template with multiple-choice questions.
In a normal multiple-choice question, you have a kid read it. They answer “B.” You think, “okay B’s correct, let’s go to the next thing.”
Well, I’ve got this template where kids have to use – have to think about – A through E.
If B’s the right answer, they have to tell me why B’s the right answer. That is, they have to think about B.
But, then, they also have to take A, C, D, and E, and think about those too.
Why is C the wrong answer?
Or, how could you make D into the right answer?
Or, what question could you ask to make E the right answer?
Even, why is A tricky?
Andrew Watson
That seems both simple and extraordinarily powerful at the same time.
Blake Harvard
I don’t want to boil all of cognitive psychology down to that, but that’s really central, I think. There’s no elaborate trick. You don’t need any new technology. At the end of the day, you’re just getting those kids’ brains thinking more with the information.
Andrew Watson
Are there some teaching strategies that you read research about, and you tried them out, and you thought: I understand why this works in psychology lab, but it actually just doesn’t work in my classroom. I’m not gonna do it anymore.
Blake Harvard
Well, I just recently did something with flexible seating. I have an AP psychology student who wanted to try this out in my classroom, I said sure.
I have first block and second block class, and they’re both AP Psychology classes, and they’re both on the same pace, doing the same stuff.
We took the first block class, and we put them in a flexible seating classroom. This classroom had beanbags, it had a couch, it had comfortable chairs, it had only one or two tables with traditional chairs.
With my second block class, we kept them in more traditional seating: sitting at tables, facing the front.
And then I taught a unit, which is about seven or eight days, to both classes. I tried to keep everything the same as much as possible, and at the end we took our unit exam and then we compared the data.
So: how did the seating affect the grades, right?
The people in the flexible seating classroom did worse than the people in the traditional seating.
And then I took the grades and compared them to people who took the same course and the same test in years past. I got the same results. The flexible seating in that one classroom was worse than all of the other classes.
I know it’s not perfect methodology. Nothing is perfect “in the wild,” so to speak. But, I gave it a go. And I’ve decided that that’s not what I want to do.
Now, my student was focused more on the emotional part of it: “how did the kids feel about it?”
She had them fill out a survey: “Do you think you did better?” “Did you feel more comfortable in class?” – those sorts of things. And I haven’t seen those surveys yet; she’s compiling information herself. I am interested to see those too.
I heard some of the comments, and it’s interesting. Some of the comments on the first day of the class that was in the flexible seating classroom were like, “Oh my gosh! This is great!” And then by the end it was, “When is this over?”
Andrew Watson:
I’m wondering if your students take the strategies you use to their other classes? Do they study history with retrieval practice? Or science? Or do you find it stays pretty local to the work you do with them?
Blake Harvard
The short answer is: I don’t know. But I definitely impress upon them that this is how you should be studying.
Rereading your notes is not the most effective way to study. Going back over your notes and highlighting them is not effective. If you’re not thinking about the information, if you’re not actually trying to do something with it, you’re probably not being as effective as you should be.
In fact, it’s not just about simplifying; the right study strategies actually save you time. If you’ve tested yourself on this concept two and three times, and you get the same things right, you’re probably pretty good. You got it. Focus on the other things that you haven’t gotten right.
It doesn’t matter if it’s math, it doesn’t matter if it’s biology, it doesn’t matter what it is. The brain works the way the brain works. If you can’t use the information, if you can’t answer this question, you don’t know it. And you need to study it, because if you did know it, you would have answered the question. It’s as simple as that.
Andrew Watson
Yes. So, we talked about whether or not students use these strategies in other classes. Are there things you encourage them to do that have research support, but they’re particularly resistant to?
Blake Harvard
That’s an interesting question. Nothing off the top of my head is coming to me…
You know: those who don’t think they’re great artists – at first, don’t want to use dual coding. Because they think “my drawing’s bad.” And I’ll say: “you know, it’s not about how good your drawing is. It’s about what it represents to you, in your mind.”
Andrew Watson
The mental practice that goes into it.
Blake Harvard
Exactly. Once you explain that to them, they’re much more receptive to it.
Andrew Watson
One of the tricky parts of our field is that there are many teaching strategies that people say have “a whole lot of research support.” And part of our job is to be good at sifting the good stuff from the not good stuff.
Do you have any advice for teachers who are trying to figure out what really is valid and valuable, not just trending on Twitter?
Blake Harvard
It’s never easy, you know.
Often, I look for multiple cases of a particular teaching strategy. Did they test 20 kids in one classroom? Or was this tested across the country?
You also want to think about the people you have in your class. If researchers test a particular demographic, but you don’t teach that demographic, perhaps their conclusion doesn’t apply to your class. Something that might work in an elementary classroom: there’s a chance it could work in my AP Psychology classroom, but I’ve got to really look at it.
To be fair, this is something I’m figuring out myself.
Andrew Watson
I know that you are a coach as well as a teacher. I wonder if you use any of these strategies in your coaching world as well as your teaching world.
I want to show my soccer players what a skill should look like, what the strategy does on the field, why it works.
We want to start small. I want each player individually working on it, and perfecting it or getting better at it. Then we go into a small sided game: maybe two-versus-two or three-versus-three. And then, let’s work it into a bigger scenario.
Eventually, obviously the goal is that they use it in a real-world game.
Just like in the classroom, I’m not a huge fan of inquiry-based learning. I think that there are much more effective ways of teaching than that. I want to explain each new concept to them very clearly, in a very organized way, so that they have a good understanding of what it is. Then we try to apply it to real life. But I don’t start off there.
Andrew Watson
So, you follow the coaching version of direct instruction.
Blake Harvard
Right, yes.
Andrew Watson
Are there questions I ought to have asked you which I haven’t asked you?
Blake Harvard
It’s an interesting journey to get to where I am right now. I graduated with my Master’s Degree in 2006 and up until about 2016 I was just doing just normal professional development: whatever the school had for me to do.
Sometimes I was really excited about it; sometimes I was sitting in there barely paying attention. But now that I’ve found these different types of professional development opportunities, I see they can really improve you, and improve your students and your classroom.
You don’t have to think “I’ll just do the PD that I’m supposed to do and then I go back to my classroom.” There are ways – simple ways, easy ways – to improve your classroom, to improve learning for your students.
Andrew Watson
It’s interesting you say that, because you’ve described my journey as well. I had been a classroom teacher for decades when I found Learning and the Brain, and those conferences completely changed my professional trajectory.
So, what happens when you put all that together and ask about technology and adolescent well-being?
Predictions
I myself would have made two predictions:
One: except at the very extreme end of screen use, I would have doubted technology time matters much for adolescent well-being. Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of studies suggesting that teens do just fine — even socially — when they’re often on line.
In brief: I’ve heard lots of exaggerated concerns, but little persuasive data behind them.
Two: sleep is, of course, essential for human well-being. We can’t think or learn well without it. Heck, we can’t function very well without it.
And, we’ve got research showing that the light from screens delays melatonin onset — and therefore makes it hard to fall asleep.
For those reasons, I would have predicted that screen time before bed — especially LOTS of screen time before bed — would make life hard for adolescents.
The Findings
According to this review, I’m half right. And: not the half I was confident about.
A study that looked at more than 17,000 adolescents in the US, England, and Ireland found that technology use generally didn’t affect adolescent well-being.
(More precisely, they found that screen time accounted for less than 1% of the difference in adolescent well-being.)
And — SURPRISE — they found that technology use before bed had no statistically significant effect.
Amazingly, even one hour of screen time produced no ill effects in this study.
What Teachers and Parents Should (and Should Not) Do
This study reconfirms the point that screen time — except extreme amounts — probably isn’t hurting teens. Even pre-bedtime screens aren’t such a big deal.
(If you’re still having trouble wrapping your head around that second point, don’t worry. I am too.)
So, what should we do?
Well, if we want to improve adolescent well-being, we should NOT focus our efforts on changing their technology habits. After all, if this study is correct, even an optimal change would improve their well-being by less than 1%.
That is: we should NOT be alarmed by the alarmists.
Instead, we should find out what really is stressing them out and focus on those problems instead.
As I find persuasive, research-based evidence to answer that question, this blog will let you know.
In the world of science, if you see the right kind of evidence, you have to change your mind.
As of this blog post, I might start changing my mind.
Regular readers know that I frequently decry false claims about “brain training.” In particular, when people claim to increase working memory capacity, we find that those claims don’t stand up to research scrutiny. (For instance: here and here and here.)
In my last post on the topic, I more-or-less gave up on the possibility. In fact, I wrote:
So, from now on, I’m just going to assume that new claims are highly likely to be false.
If brain training claims are subsequently replicated by many research teams; if the methodologies are scrutinized and approved by several scholars in the field; well, if that happens, I’ll relent.
For now, I don’t want to be fooled again.
But maybe — just maybe — researchers might have found a strategy to improve working memory. (I can’t believe I just wrote that sentence.)
We’ve got persuasive research showing that working memory overload causes brain waves in different regions to fall out of synch.
Reinhart and Nguyen, in effect, wondered if they could help resynchronize those brain waves.
In a multi-step study, they found that:
First: asynchrony of frontotemporal theta-phase waves corresponds with working-memory declines in 60-76 year olds (compared to 20-29 year olds).
(The findings get even more technical from there, so I’ll just stick with “brain waves” for now. If you want the details, click the link above.)
Second: the right kind of external electrical stimulation resynchronizes those waves.
Third: when the theta waves resynchronized, the WM function of the older subjects returned to levels typical for the younger subjects.
Technically speaking, THAT’S HUGE. The right kind of electrical stimulation improved WM.
What Happens Next?
A) Before we get too excited, we should let some expert skeptics weigh in. Although the concept is easy enough to understand — “the right kind of brain zaps restore WM to higher capacity!” — the specifics are fantastically complicated.
We should, in other words, let other scientists in this field kick the tires good and hard.
By the way: nine researchers have responded here. Several have suggestions for other populations to study: for instance, people diagnosed with dementia. But, none of them spot glaring errors in the methodology.
(For instance: in two studies I can think of, researchers made claims about improving working memory, but tested short term memory instead. This study doesn’t include that kind of switcheroo.)
B) Again before we get too excited, we should recall: this study isn’t about raising WM capacity for students. It is about restoring WM capacity for people who have experienced a decline.
That result might benefit each of us as we age. But, it doesn’t (yet) offer benefits to our students who have typically functioning WM.
However, this technique might help younger people with diagnosed WM deficits. That finding alone could be transformative for some students in our schools.
C) We don’t really know what this might look like outside of the neuroscience lab. As professor Robert Howard warns:
The “real world” benefits of any apparent improvements in experimental working memory function associated with the technique will also need to be evaluated together with the impact of any potential adverse effects of brain stimulation.
For example, induced improvements in working memory might come at the price of worsening of other areas of cognitive function.”
D) Okay, you can now go ahead and get really excited. I have said for years that if we could improve WM capacity, that change would be like the printing press in its effect on human cognition.
For the first time in a decade, I’m starting to think that it just might happen.
If you’d like to learn more, this very helpful summary of Reinhart and Nguyen’s work is a good place to start.
If you’re reading this blog you already know: brain researchers can offer fascinating and practical advice to improve teaching and schooling.
There’s SO MUCH good advice, you might want to make lots of changes right away to get all those benefits.
Before you do that, let me offer two suggestions.
First: Take Incremental Steps
I worked with a school where the math department dramatically overhauled its entire program, with research guidance along the way.
The department adopted an inquiry based pedagogical model. And, it developed a syllabus designed to space and interleave practice. And it championed a group-work approach. And, to help students manage math anxiety, it adopted a mindful meditation program. And it incorporated lots of exciting technology.
The results: not good. By every measure, the students didn’t learn as much math. (In some cases, the results were quite alarming.) And: stress levels among teachers and students went up considerably.
Here’s the vexing point: the teachers didn’t know what to do next, because they didn’t know which of the changes they made created the problem.
Should they go back to direct instruction? Should they return to the traditional syllabus? Give up on group work and stop mindfulness breaks? Return all the iPads?
Because the grand combination of changes had produced those bad results, teachers didn’t know which one piece (or combination of pieces) to undo.
Potential solution: make one change at a time. Get a good measure of its success or failure before you add the next.
Second: Define Success and Failure in Advance
When we put lots of effort into a new project, we’re naturally inclined root for its success. In fact, we’re inclined to exaggerate its success.
For example: if I commit to a systematic program of retrieval practice with my students, I’m likely to see its benefits. And: to overlook its shortcomings.
To compensate for these natural blind spots, I think, we should define success and failure before we make the changes.
For instance, I might decide that all my retrieval practice work is succeeding if class averages on weekly vocabulary quizzes go up by 5%. It’s failing if that average falls by 5%. Any result in between is inconclusive noise.
(No doubt, what you measure and how you measure it will differ considerably from this hypothetical.)
At the end of the following term, I can check out my class averages, and have a plausible measurement of the results.
When I calculate those averages, I will hope that all my work paid off in more vocabulary learning. But I’ll be less tempted to overhype success — “look, they’ve having so much more fun!” — if cold data throw water on my enthusiasm.
And, that cold water will be all the more bracing if I myself decided on that measurement — well before the experiment even began.
To Sum Up
We should indeed make changes to schools based on psychology and neuroscience research.
To ensure those changes produce the most benefit, we should introduce them at a reasonable pace.
And: we should know before we start how to define success.
My English classroom often includes discussions like these:
When we read Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, I might ask my students “who is the antagonist?”
To answer this question, my students must recall several bits of factual information:
the definitions of “antagonist” and “protagonist”
the major characters of the novel
their most important actions and goals
Once they’ve recalled those facts, my students have to rearrange all that information into new conceptual patterns.
Which character’s actions and goals best align with the definition of “protagonist”? (In this case, that’s an easy question. Janie Crawford is far and away the likeliest nominee. )
Who’s the antagonist? That is, which character’s actions and goals thwart Janie’s?
That’s a much harder question, and students must wrestle with several possibilities as they develop a plausible argument.
Let’s Talk About the Mind
Where do my students hold and process all this information?
For a psychologist, that’s an easy question: working memory.
Working memory allows students to select, hold, reorganize, and combine information held in long-term memory: in this case, the novel’s events.
It also allows them to select, hold, reorganize, and combine information perceived from the environment: the question I just asked about antagonists.
Because we constantly ask our students to hold and combine bits of information, our students use working memory all the time.
When we ask students to calculate the volume of a solid, or to compare historical figures, or to explain a trophic cascade, or to predict what will happen when I roll a ball down a ramp, we’re asking them to use working memory.
By the way: this truth hold for skills and processes as well. Why is learning to drive a stick shift so hard? Because you must hold, combine, and co-ordinate several distinct physical processes.
And, here’s an essential point: we don’t have lots of working memory to use.
Let’s Talk About the Brain
We know a lot about the mental processes involved in working memory. (I might have written a book about them.)
But, the neuroscience of working memory has been harder to study.
In the world of psychology, we know that WM can be easily overwhelmed.
But, in the world of neuroscience, we don’t know exactly what happens at that moment.
In other words: what’s happening in the physical object of the brain that accounts for the mental difficulty?
What happens, for example, when I can’t shift gears properly on this stupid manual car?
Are neurons somehow disconnecting from one another? Are electrical signals going haywire? Perhaps neurotransmitters are watching kitten videos on Youtube ?
Today’s News
We’re starting to get an answer to that question.
New research suggests that successful working memory functioning requires that distinct brain regions operate synchronously.
When they reach overload, those regions fall out of synch.
Once those regions no longer synchronize, then students might struggle to solve math problems, or sound out a word with new phonics rules, or conjugate a verb in a freshly learned tense.
Like much neuroscience research, this study is fantastically complicated. Luckily, it’s been described quite well by Jordana Cepelewicz over at Quanta Magazine. (No need to worry about the “seven plus or minus two” formula.)
The good news here is clear: we’re starting to get a clearer picture about the neuroscience of working memory overload. Because teachers should be obsessed with working memory overload, we might well be intrigued by this news.
We should keep in mind, by the way, that this research so far has been done with monkeys. Whenever considering new research, always keep this rule in mind:
Never, never, never change your teaching practice based on research into non-human animals.
At some point, we might get neuroscience research that helps teachers manage working memory load. Although that day isn’t today, we should be glad that research possibility is clearer now than before.
Do students learn better after they experience failure? Two recent studies over at The Science of Learning help us answer that question.
In the first study, professors in a Canadian college wanted to help their Intro Bio students learn difficult concepts more effectively. (Difficult concepts include, for example, the “structural directionality of genetic material.”)
They had one Intro Biology section follow a “Productive Failure” model of pedagogy. It went like this.
First, students wrestled with conceptual problems on these difficult topics.
Second, they got in-class feedback on their solutions.
Third, they heard the professor explain how an expert would think through those topics.
Another Intro Bio section followed these same steps but in a different order:
First, they heard the professor explain how an expert would think .
Second, students wrestled with conceptual problems.
Third, they got in-class feedback on their solutions.
So, all students did the same steps. And, they all followed an “active pedagogy” model. But, one group struggled first, whereas the other group didn’t.
Who Learned More?
This answer proves to be unusually complicated to determine. The researchers had to juggle more variables than usual to come up with a valid answer. (If you want the details, click the link above.)
The headlines are:
On the next major test, students who experienced productive failure learned more.
On the final exam, however, only the “low performing” students did better after productive failure. For the middle- and upper- tier students, both strategies worked equally well.
Conclusion #1:
So, we can’t really conclude that productive failure helps students learn.
Instead, we’re on safer ground to say that – over the longer term – productive failure helps “low performing” students learn (compared to other kinds of active learning).
But Wait, There’s (Much) More
Two weeks after they published the study about Canadian college students in Biology classes, Science of Learning then published a study about German fifth graders learning fractions.
(As we discussed in this post, watching students learn fractions helps researchers measure conceptual updating.)
In particular, these researchers wanted to know if students learned better after they struggle for a while. (Again, for details click the link.)
In this case, the answer was: nope.
So, we arrive at Conclusion #2:
Somecollege students, but not most, learned more from productive failure in a biology class – compared to those who learned via other active learning strategies.
However, fifth graders did not learn more about fractions – compared to those who learned via direct instruction.
Got that?
The Biggie: Conclusion #3
When teachers come to research-world, we can be tempted to look for grand, once-and-for-all findings.
A particular study shows that – say – students learn better when they use an iPad to study astronomical distances. Therefore, we should equip all our students with iPads.
But, that’s NOT what the study showed. Instead, it showed that a particular group of students studying a particular topic with a particular technology got some benefit – compared to a particular alternate approach.
So, Conclusion #3:
Teachers can often find helpful research on teaching strategies.
We should assume that results vary depending on lots of highly specific conditions. And therefore, we should seek out research that includes students (and classroom subjects) as much like our own as possible.
And so: if you teach biology to college students, you might give the first study a close look to see if its methods fit your students well. (Given that it worked particularly well with struggling students, that variable probably matters to you.)
If, however, you teach fractions to fifth graders, you should probably hold off on productive failure – unless you find several other studies that contradict this one.
In other words: teachers can learn the most from psychology and education research when we investigate narrow and specific questions.
A final thought. I’ve only recently come across the website that published these studies. Congratulations to them for emphasizing the complexity of these research questions by publishing these studies almost simultaneously.
I’m sure it’s tempting to make research look like the last word on a particular topic. Here, they’ve emphasized that boundary conditions matter. Bravo.
In school as in life, sometimes we just need to get stuff done. And, truthfully, getting stuff done can be a real challenge.
For instance: I’m about to start writing a book. Based on previous book-writing experiences, I can predict the mundane problems that will get in my way.
My cats invariably need attention just as I’m starting to get in the zone.
The alerts from my email account lure me away from difficult writing passages.
I can never decide: stop for a snack now, or wait until lunch?
Luckily, we’ve got a remarkably simple strategy to get over these predictable hurdles.
Give Me Three Steps
Step 1: make a list of the potential problems. (I’ve already done that.)
Step 2: figure out the most plausible solutions.
So, for instance: instead of responding to my email alerts, I can simply close that browser. Problem solved.
Step 3: turn the first two steps into an “if-then” plan.
IF I get an email alert while working on my book, THEN I’ll close my email browser rather than look at the email.
Believe it or not, this simply process makes it much likelier that I will, in fact, ignore the email. (Or the cat, or my hunger.) And, because I’ve taken care of the most common obstacles, I’m much likelier to get my book written.
(Ask me six months from now how it’s going.)
Two More Steps?
This technique is even more effective when combined with another technique called “mental contrasting.”
In a recent article summarizing research in these fields, Marc Hauser describes mental contrasting this way:
In [mental contrasting], the individual first identifies and vividly describes a desired goal or wish. To be effective, this wish has to be feasible, but not easy.
Next, the individual identifies an obstacle that might get in the way of achieving this goal and vividly describes it [too].
Doing both together — vividly describing the goal AND vividly describing the obstacle — turns out to be much more helpful than doing just one or the other.
The Proof in the PSAT, and the Pudding
These techniques seem so simple that it’s hard to believe they work. In fact: why should we believe it?
Well, we’ve got some good research to persuade us. Hauser’s article, in fact, does a very helpful job summarizing both the theoretical background behind these strategies, and the studies that show their effectiveness.
For instance, Angela Duckworth (yes, that Angela Duckworth) worked with high-school students who wanted to prepare for the PSAT. Those who went through this process did 60% more practice problems than those who did a control task instead.
In fact, we’ve got good findings for non-academic tasks as well: limiting drinking, smoking, snacking, and so forth.
Practical Applications for Students
This technique, it seems to me, could be VERY easy for teachers to use. When we talk with our students about their homework habits, we can guide them through this process.
In fact, when I work with students in schools, I bring a specific form to guide them through the process.
Equally helpfully, we can use this technique to get our own work under control as well. We might not all have books to write, but we all have plenty of lesson-planning to do.
IF my phone rings while I’m preparing tomorrow’s class, THEN I’ll switch the phone to airplane mode without looking at the caller ID.
Being bilingual, of course, offers lots of advantages. You can speak with more people, and — depending on potential cultural differences — gain valuable additional perspectives.
For a long time, researchers have wanted to know: does being bilingual offer additional cognitive benefits? Can it, in a meaningful way, help us think differently, and think better?
Some researchers — including my grad-school professor Gigi Luk — have argued that it increases cognitive control.
However, this claim has long provoked controversy.
In this recent study, using highly sophisticated statistical procedures, researchers found that being bilingual did not improve executive function for Turkish immigrants to Germany.
What Should Teachers Do?
I have, over the years, seen studies on this topic go back and forth.
For instance, the Head Start research cited above seems quite persuasive. In that study, all students increased self-control during their Head Start year; after all, they were getting older.
Crucially, the students who also became bilingual showed greater increases in self-control. The likely explanation? The cognitive control required to be bilingual helps with other kinds of self-control as well.
And yet, as seen in the study of Turkish immigrants, that conclusion just might not be plausible.
So, my suggestions:
First: if your school currently makes strong claims about the executive-function benefits of bilingualism, you should think strongly about acknowledging the controversy in this field. That claim does have support. It also faces lots of strong counter-evidence.
Second: use this study as a reminder to seek out contradictory findings before you make changes to your classroom.
That is: if you hear persuasive research about topic X, be sure to look for anti-X research before you start X-ing.
Third: somewhat glumly, I wonder if this question ever can be answered finally and persuasively. The category “executive function” is alarmingly nebulous. And, the reasons that people become bilingual vary dramatically.
Given so many kinds of variety, I increasingly doubt we’ll be sure of an answer here.
With that point in mind, I think we should highlight this important point: learning a second language has value even if doing so doesn’t produce additional executive function benefits.
When we learn new languages, we create new opportunities to meet and connect with a world full of people. That benefit alone makes all that hard work worth while.
