Greg Ashman is enthusiastic about research, and yet skeptical about innovation.
Ashman’s argument resonates with me in large measure because it helps explain the power of Mind, Brain, Education as an approach to teaching.
Of course, MBE does offer its own specific pedagogical suggestions. For example: if you’ve spent any time at Learning and the Brain conferences, you know the benefits of active recall. (Both Ian Kelleher and Scott MacClintic have blogged on this topic recently.)
The Bigger Picture
More broadly, MBE gives teachers a consistent rubric with which we can measure the value of many other pedagogical approaches. Here’s what I mean:
Is project based learning a good idea? How about flipped classrooms? Service learning? 1-to-1 laptop programs? Design thinking? Or, the new idea that will inevitably surface tomorrow?
If you’re being encouraged to try one of these approaches, it can be hard to know how to measure its effectiveness. All of them have research (of some kind or another) showing how beneficial they are. All of them have enthusiastic endorsements by earnest-seeming teachers. All of them have books and conferences and websites and … I don’t know … Ben & Jerry’s flavors named after them.
But: do they all work? How can they – some seem to conflict with each other.
The more you know about MBE, however, the more tools you have that allow you to make consistent comparisons.
Here’s what I mean…
The First Tool in the Toolbox
If you’ve learned about working memory at an LaTB conference, then you already know it is a short-term memory capacity that allows people to hold several pieces of information, and then reorganize and combine them into some new pattern.
For example: if I ask you to put the 6 New England states into alphabetical order, you have to hold all six names in your memory, and then reorganize them in a particular way. That’s working memory.
You may also know that working memory is very small; you can probably alphabetize 6 states, but you couldn’t do sixteen – at least, not without writing them down.
Once you understand even a few simple facts about working memory, then you can use that MBE knowledge to analyze all of the pedagogies listed above.
Is project-based learning a good idea? Well: what might it do to working memory?
Do 1-to-1 laptop programs increase or reduce working memory demands?
In other words: now you have a consistent criterion – one you can use to analyze all new proposals that come across your doorstep.
More Where That Came From
Michael Posner’s work on attention provides an equally useful yardstick. It might tell you, for example, whether flipped classrooms are likely to enhance or diffuse attention. (Or, more likely, both…)
So too Carol Dweck’s work on mindset, and Claude Steele’s work on stereotype threat. And Mary-Helen Immordino-Yang’s work on emotion.
And so: MBE allows you both to learn about specific psychology- and neuroscience-based teaching strategies and to develop a system for measuring all the other pedagogical proposals that crowd your inbox.
As Ashman implies: research helps us not only because it allows innovation, but also because allows consistent, skeptical analysis of innovation. Our students will benefit from both.
It has long been true that men are diagnosed with dyslexia more often than women. This article (rather technical, by the way) offers one potential explanation: processing speed.
What is processing speed? It’s an unusually straightforward concept in psychology.
Imagine that I show you a piece of paper with several rows of different shapes. There might be a square, and then a star, and then a rectangle, and then a circle. And so forth.
To test your processing speed, I simply ask you to name all those shapes as quickly and accurately as you can. Or, I might ask you to say the colors of the shapes: the first one is green, the second is purple, and the third orange.
If you accomplish these tasks relatively quickly, you have a high processing speed.
Overall, women have slightly higher processing speed than men–especially in verbal tasks. The authors of this new study find that this difference in processing speed gives women an edge in reading fluency–and reduces the likelihood that they will be diagnosed with dyslexia.
There are no immediate teaching implications of this finding; however, anything that helps us understand how learning differences come to be…and, come to be diagnosed…might help us improve reading and learning in the future.
You have heard before, and will doubtless hear again, that students don’t need to memorize facts because everything we know is available on the interwebs.
Mirjam Neelen and Paul A. Kirschner explain all the ways in which this claim is not just wrong, not just foolishly wrong, but dangerously wrong.
(The danger, of course, is that if we believe it, we’ll fail to teach our students all sorts of things they need to know.)
Students can do critical thinking if and only if they already know lots (and lots) of factual material. We don’t stifle creativity or deep thinking by teaching facts: we make creativity and deep thinking possible.
Brain research can be thrilling; it can be useful; it can be confusing. This article is–frankly–depressing.
Over ten years, from 2005 to 2015, the authors find that the number concussions has more than doubled–even though the sports participation rate has remained almost the same.
They also find that the concussion rate is lower for boys playing (American) football than for girls playing (what Americans call) soccer. You read that right: girls playing soccer are in greater danger of experiencing a concussion than boys playing football.
The greatest rate of increase in concussions over these ten years? For boys: baseball. For girls: volleyball.
Given the short- and long-term dangers of concussions, this research merits careful attention.
Dr. Savo Heleta, a scholar at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, argues that scholars should devote more of their work to communicating with readers outside of the university.
Heleta explains that, to his dismay, professors have few incentives to write for a broader audience. As a result, scholars most often write for each other–and, in truth, not very many of each other. (According to one study, 82% of articles published in humanities journals are never cited by another scholar. As my grandmother wryly noted: never is a long time.)
So, how are you part of the solution?
In my experience, Learning and the Brain (along with the related scholarly discipline, Mind Brain Education) is one of the few places where such connections happen regularly and successfully.
You’re a 6th grade science teacher, and you want to learn about the latest research in synapse formation?
You’re an academic psychologist who studies adolescent motivation, and you want to know what high school teachers really struggle with day to day?
You work with special needs students, and you’d like to understand the research into executive function with greater sophistication?
In each of these cases, and dozens more, you’d like to join a dialogue between researchers and K-12 professionals.
You are–simply put–doing what Helata wants the world to do: helping highly specialized knowledge get out of the ivory tower and into the everyday world of education. In Helata’s hopeful phrase, you just might be changing the world.
This New York Times article offers a handy overview of research into the importance of movement for learning.
However, before you read it, you have to stand up and move around for three minutes.
(By the way, if you’re interested in gestures–that is small, specific motions–rather than movement–that is full body actions–you should check out Sian Beilock’s book How the Body Knows its Mind.)
This article summarizes the current debate — call it a “controversy” — about brain training. (The authors prefer the phrase “cognitive training.”)
The authors conclude that intelligence can be increased, but … so far … only in controlled lab settings. That is: NOT in schools with various training programs…
This article does get a bit technical; for instance, the authors debate whether or not a particular series of studies ought to have been included in Melby-Lervag’s & Hulme’s well-known meta-analysis. (Melby-Lervag & Hulmedid not include the studies, and these authors think they should have.)
At the same time, I think the complexity of the question is the point. If you or your school plan to devote the considerable time and money that this kind of training requires, you should know all sides of the argument.
(Caveat emptor: this article is, in effect, an advertisement for the authors’ book. I haven’t read that book, but … based on the thoughtful balance of the article … they strike me as sensible folk.)
While you’re at Learning and the Brain, we’d love to hear your story.
What have you learned? What will you try when you get home? How will you measure results?
If you’d like to share your experience, please send me an email with:
Who you are and what you do.
The research and the researcher that inspired you (and, at which conference you heard this idea).
What you plan to do (or, already did) with this inspiration.
The results you will collect (or, have already seen).
Please be sure to include a specific source (a speaker, a book, or an article) for the ideas that you tried. And, keep in mind that you’re writing for a blog audience—short and punchy entries are especially welcome.
We won’t be able to publish every entry, but…we hope to hear from you!
Common themes ran throughout the Learning and the Brain conference in San Francisco, February 17-19, 2017 but the ones that resonated most strongly with me were the ideas of curiosity and play, and how they impact both learning and parenting. It makes sense that this should be the case given that I am a mother of two teenagers and an educator of almost 25 years.
Like most, I am drawn to the ideas that confirm my biases around learning. So much of what I have always believed can now be confirmed through brain science and not just my hunches! Some of these key beliefs include:
Standardized tests don’t improve learning.
Play and creativity are important at all ages.
Parenting and teaching have a significant influence on both.
Yong Zhao in his keynote, Counting What Counts: Why Curiosity, Creativity and Student-Centred Learning Matter, argued that the goal of “closing the gap” sounds admirable, but paradoxically results in making everyone average.
He suggested that, ultimately, the role of education is to help our children become who they are meant to be instead of working towards an average which testing promotes.
He explained that we claim to want to “close the gap,” but then challenged us to consider that the gap itself doesn’t matter. After all, the tests that determine where the gaps exist, are flawed in the first place.
Zhao noted that we use these flawed tests to determine:
the achievement of our children,
the skill level of our educators and ultimately,
the success of nations—
for instance, with the PISA test.
Yong Zhao explained that what we test is actually quite random; standardized tests evaluate students based on whatever success model is presently in vogue. We take this narrowed, biased model of success and try to replicate it in schools; yet these models further reduce diversity of thought, experience and creativity among our students.
(They also reduce diversity of thought among educators, who know that teaching to the test is the path of least resistance. )
Zhao’s clear message was, “success is about supporting each person to become unique. When we talk about closing the gap, we are narrowing the variability.” He fears that “education was created to suppress diversity” in a time when assembly lines were the prevailing job that workforce had.
If we are to support our children to become creative problem-solvers, then we need to move away from pursuing averages that are based on a single prescribed profile for all learners.
Eddie Brummelman’s message in his session, The Praise Paradox: How Well-Intended Words Can Backfire, wasthat we should not treat our children as “unique snowflakes”: an argument which initially seemed to contradict Zhao’s research–but, in fact, supports it.
At the core of Brummelman’s work was the belief that yes, of course, we can praise our children– but not in comparison to others.
The reason we praise our children should be the desire to support them in their growth. When praise is mixed with comparison to others, it confuses the message by implying that what makes the child special is related to others when in fact, it is only tied to the individual. So when we say, “You are a wonderful artist. I love the way you use colour to convey mood!” versus “You are a much better artist than _____!” Brummelman stresses that uniqueness relies on comparison but that praise should be connected to the child’s passions, interests and talents that will lead them towards their best selves.
In this way, Brummelman echoes Zhao’s argument. By creating norms and averages we are drawn to comparison and rank–rather than to our children’s curiosities about what they want to learn, become or aspire to be.
Brummelman’s research cautions parents against overpraising our children, lest we lead them to narcissism and entitlement. It isn’t that we should avoid praise, but that certain types of praise are more effective in raising children to be successful, functioning adults.
Specifically, he explained that when parents believe their children are struggling with low self-esteem, they tend to overpraise–believing that extra praise will in fact raise the child’s self esteem. But, his research showed that it does the opposite. Children with praise-boosted narcissism tend to be more perfectionistic. They seek more praise and therefore fear risks; in other words, they are less likely to embrace play and creativity.
If praise is tied to the child’s perception of success, and success is tied to narrow definitions of achievement, then children work towards that common standard against which Zhao cautioned us. If they are less likely to take risks then they will seek a single right answer rather than embrace both creativity and curiosity. The standardized test will always be the measure of success.
Brummelman explained that what has the most profound impact on our children is the experience of parental warmth, interest and shared joy. They don’t need praise–they need our presence and affection. Zhao stresses that as educators and parents we must guide and nurture our children and students so that they can grow into the unique people they are meant to become.
Mom explains to her son , “The world just wants us to fit in and to fit in, we just gotta be like everyone else.”
Dash challenges her with a “ya, but” as many kids do, “But dad always said our powers were nothing to be ashamed of–our powers made us special!”
His mother tells him, her frustration obvious from her tone, “Everyone is special, Dash…”
He turns away to look out the window and replies, “Which is another way of saying no one is…”
Of course, Dash’s mom is doing this to protect him and her other children.
In other words, like Dash, we all have super powers, and as Dash’s mom stresses, we stay in our space of trying to fit in and be like everyone else because it is safer in many ways. When the time is right and she realizes the importance of her children’s powers, she encourages both Dash and his sister to use them.
When Dash is discouraged from standing out, he is falling in line with the average that Zhao argues is the problematic goal of education. When he moves out of the space and engages with his powers, it connects us to the ideas of Brummelman, who sees these powers as self expression and self actualization.
As a system leader, I understand how deeply important for us to consider what both Zhao and Brummelman are saying about the role of assessment, praise and student success.
I have taken their ideas and informed my own understanding of the vital role of assessment, reporting to parents and school/system improvement as a whole. I have made a commitment to question the status quo and the acceptance of average as the goal to ensure that our students are supported in finding who they are as creative and curious learners.
If you would like to see the sketchnotes and comments for all the keynotes and presentations I attended, you can see more of my thoughts about the conference here.
[Editor’s Note: Dr. Debbie Donsky is Principal of Curriculum and Instruction Services, Learning Design & Development, and the Arts, at the York Region District School Board in Ontario, CA. You can follow her on Twitter: @DebbieDonsky]
Because brains are so complicated, people who explain them routinely search for analogies.
Your brain is like a muscle: practice makes it grow stronger.
Your brain is like an orchestra, and the prefrontal cortex is the conductor.
Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is like MiracleGro for synapses.
All such analogies have weaknesses; a few of them have their uses. Most often, the brain is so amazingly unusual that it’s like itself and nothing else.
This article from Science Magazine, however, offers a precise and unusual analogy (and, an unusually precise analogy): your brain is like the internet. Specifically, the way long-term memories strengthen (and weaken) resembles control of information flow on the internet.
Especially if you’re technology savvy, you might enjoy this particular comparison.
If you’ve got brain analogies that you especially like — or don’t like — you might put them in the comments below.
