Last week, I described a small but persuasive study about the benefits of mindfulness.
This study combined techniques from both psychology and neuroscience to show that mindfulness really can help students manage stress.
And, it even had an active control group. Just what a research wonk would desire.
As I noted at the time, however, this study focused on stress and not on grades.
Of course, stress is important. (Let me say that again. Stress is important.) But, as teachers, we probably care about grades too.
We’d love to see another study: one that includes information on topics other than stress. Like, say, learning.
We’d also be delighted it were larger. 40 people is nice…but several hundred would be even more persuasive.
Today’s News
Sure enough, a just-published study focused on mindfulness and several academic measures:
Grades
Attendance
Standardized math and literacy tests
Number of suspensions
Yup: mindfulness correlated with more of the good stuff (higher grades and test scores) and less of the bad stuff (suspensions).
And, this study included 2000 students in grades 5-8.
This study is, in fact, the first to show strong connections between mindfulness and these academic measures.
A Reminder
We might be tempted to jump to a strong conclusion. If
Study #1: mindfulness interventions reduce stress, and
Study #2: higher mindfulness correlates with better academic outcomes,
We’re tempted to conclude that
Mindfulness interventions lead to better academic outcomes.
But, as we remind ourselves daily
Correlation is not causation.
Until we run a large study (with active controls and random assignment) which shows that students who practiced mindfulness ended up with more learning, we can’t be sure of that conclusion.
However, that’s an increasingly plausible possibility, given these two studies.
A Final Note
Both these studies were supervised by John Gabrieli, at MIT. He’ll be speaking at this fall’s Learning and the Brain conference. If you’d like to learn more about the connection between mindfulness and school, come join us (and Dr. Gabrieli) in Boston.
Harvard teaches psychology to high school students. He knows A LOT about the mind and the brain. He’s careful to base his teaching practices on deep knowledge of research.
In fact, he even tries occasional experiments to study different teaching practices in a (relatively) controlled manner. In this post, for instance, he writes about his exploration of flexible classroom seating.
In brief, he knows his stuff.
Harvard’s conclusions, at time, challenge current trends. For instance: he describes himself as a relatively traditional teacher: more persuaded by research on direct instruction than by constructivist approaches.
You might not agree with those conclusions. But, if you read his blog, you’ll be impressed by his command of the research.
So, what did Harvard do when he came across research seeming to contradict his beliefs?
What if, for instance, a study headline says that students learn more from (“constructivist”) active learning than from a (direct-instruction-y) lecture?
Heck: the study was even highlighted in the Harvard Gazette. (To be clear: the Blake Harvard I’m writing about doesn’t work at Harvard, the university in Cambridge, MA.)
Key Lesson #1: Try to Prove Yourself Wrong
After a moment of understandable trepidation, Harvard forced himself to do what he tells his psychology students to do: confront their biases.
That is: Harvard (the teacher) thinks that the right kind of lecture will result in more learning than most active learning paradigms: exploratory discussions, for example, or projects.
When he finds research that purports to show the opposite, he had a great opportunity: he could disconfirm his prior convictions.
This may be the very best strategy to achieve the goal at the top of this post: to base our teaching on excellent research.
If you think that strategy X will result in the most learning for your students, you should:
First: assume that someone has found contradictory evidence (someone always has), and
Second: actively seek out that contradictory evidence. (Try Google Scholar.)
When you find it, give that evidence a thoughtful read. You’ll end up facing one of a few options.
Option 1: the contradictory evidence is more persuasive than the evidence you’ve been following. As a result, you’ll be able to improve your teaching practice. That’s great news!
Option 2: the contradictory evidence isn’t very persuasive. As a result, you know you’ve been doing it right up to now. That’s great news!
Option 3: both evidence pools are equally convincing. Now you know that your former certainty isn’t supported by the best evidence. You can try out both approaches with your students. You’ll find the answer that works best in your context. That’s great news!
In any case, your scrupulous attempt to prove yourself wrong will lead to a better teaching result.
Key Lesson #2: Precise Definitions Really Matter
As it turns out, when Harvard tried to prove himself wrong by reviewing the research, he ended up focusing carefully on the study’s definition of “lecture” and “active learning.”
His ultimate conclusion–whether or not he changed his mind–came down to a very precise understanding of the specific teaching techniques used in those two classes..
For instance: if you read a study saying that “metacognition improves learning,” you should find out exactly what the researchers DID. What, precisely, was the metacognitive strategy that students employed?
And: does that technique make sense for you and your classroom?
Until we know the answers to those questions, we can’t know if this research makes sense in our specific classrooms.
A Final Point
You’ve noticed, I suspect, that I haven’t told you what (Blake) Harvard decided about Harvard (University’s) research.
When teachers hear about an intriguing new approach, like–say–“flipping the classroom,”we’re inclined to ask: “but does it work?”
Let me propose a different question: “under what circumstances does it work?”
After all, we should assume that many teaching techniques work for this teacher instructing these students in this topic. Alas, those same techniques might not work for that teacher teaching those students this other topic.
So, ask not “does flipping the classroom work?” Instead, ask “does flipping the classroom help seventh graders in Germany learn three basic algebraic principles?”
That question might sound obscure. (Okay, I’m sure it sounds obscure.)
But: research can answer that second question. It can answer the first only by answering the second dozens (or hundreds) of different ways.
So, Does It?
Here’s a very particular example. Doctors in Finland have to write very particular kinds of insurance certificates. Therefore, Finnish medical schools have to teach future doctors to write them.
So our question is: “Does flipping the classroom help Finnish medical students learn to write insurance certificates?”
To answer that question, researchers did everything you’d want them to do. They had one professor teach the lecture-only version of that skill. The med students then practiced at home.
For a different group of med students, the professor created a short video for students to watch at home. And, they practiced the skill in class with the professor’s guidance.
Which group learned better?
The Envelope, Please
The flipped classroom group learned better. A LOT BETTER. The cohen’s d value was 2.85. (I’m typically delighted by a d value of 0.50 or higher. I can’t remember another 2.85.)
So, clearly all teachers should start flipping the classroom–right?
NO WE SHOULD NOT.
This study showed that Finnish med students learned certificate writing better this way.
But, this is a niche-ey topic indeed.
These are fourth year med students. They’re nearing the end of a highly technical education. They’re as good at school as any students on the planet.
Also, they’re learning a discrete skill. I don’t know much about Finnish medical insurance, but I’m guessing it’s quite a distinct genre. The video covering this skill lasted four-and-one-half minutes.
In other words: if you’re teaching very advanced students a very narrow topic, then this study might encourage you to flip the classroom.
But, if you’re teaching beginners, or you’re teaching complex and abstract material, you might want to find other research before trying out this technique.
For instance: this study of students learning epidemiology showed that flipping the classroom made essentially no difference.
Final Thoughts
I have a research adjacent (although, not research supported) opinion about flipping the classroom.
As always, I think the key variable is working memory. The headline is: teachers should have students to do the heavy WM work in the classroom.
So: I guess that the basic principles of insurance certificate writing are easy to understand. But, applying them to specific circumstances can be more challenging.
That is: the application takes more WM. For that reason, watching a video at home and practicing in class with the prof makes sense.
In the case of–say–analysis of literature, those demands are reversed. Students can read stories quite effectively on their own. So, that should be the homework. But, the analysis of that literature requires lots of complex working memory initiative. This sort of discussion should be in-class, with the teacher, and not online.
I’ve never seen research consider flipped classrooms from a WM perspective. But, that framework seems to offer reasonable guidelines–especially if you can’t find research that matches your situation.
After I drafted the post above, I found this recent meta-analysis. The headline is that it found modest benefits to flipping the classroom, but that they were subject specific. Alas, the abstract doesn’t say which disciplines do and don’t benefit. I hope it becomes public soon, so we can find out!
At the beginning of July, we started an in-depth series of posts about working memory.
For starters, we learned how to define it: “a short-term memory capacity that selects, holds, reorganizes, and combines relevant information.” (Handy acronym: SHREK.)
We then focused on its key features. It’s essential for classroom learning. It’s alarmingly small. And we can’t make it bigger (artificially).
For all those reasons, teachers need to be experts at anticipating WM overload. For example: look out for these Dark Sides of the Force.
And, we need recognize WM overload when it happens. (That student who forgot his question while his hand was in the air? That was probably a working memory problem.)
Today’s task: start SOLVING all those problems that we anticipated and recognized.
Solutions, Part I: Rely on Long-Term Memory
First: connect new information to information that students already have in their long-term memory.
Why does this strategy work? Because ideas and facts in LTM require much less working-memory processing than information coming in from the outside world.
And so: if a new idea resembles something in LTM, then that pre-existing knowledge acts as a kind of cognitive crutch.
For example, whenever I teach my students about gerunds, I teach them the Beyoncé rule:
If you like it then you should have put an -ing on it.
My students already have that catchy tune in their heads. By attaching a new grammatical rule (“all gerunds end with ‘-ing’ “) to that catchy tune, I reduce its WM demands.
As a bonus, I also make them laugh.
Second: explicitly teach core facts and processes.
“Rote memorization” of “random facts” has gotten a bad reputation. It seems so not-21st-century.
Alas, we can’t think without knowledge.* If our students have already learned the foundational ideas, definitions, dates, and processes before they start grappling with complex cognitive work, they’re much more likely to succeed.
Why? Because all that prior knowledge in long-term memory reduces WM load.
Solutions, Part II: Spread Cognitive Work Over Time
This solution is so helpfully straightforward.
If a lesson plan overwhelms WM because it includes too much information RIGHT NOW, then don’t include all of it right now. Spread it out.
In some cases, that simply means reorganizing the lesson plan. Let students practice the first topic they learned before they move on to the next one.
Once they’re comfortable with a particular mental process, they’re ready to take more ideas on board. (Barak Rosenshine, I’m looking at you.)
In other cases, you might reconsider if this information needs to be included immediately.
Are you students struggling with several instructions? Spread them out.
Here’s a handy strategy: give one instruction, and wait for all students to complete it before giving the next. (I got this advice at the very first Learning and the Brain conference I attended. Pure magic.)
Note, too, how exceptions can be postponed.
In French, “all nouns that end in -ette are feminine.” Knowing that rule reduces students’ WM load: they have fewer variables to juggle as they tinker with adjectives and pronouns.
That rule, however, has an exception: “squelette” is masculine. But — this is crucial — my students don’t need to know that right now. Why would they need the word “skeleton”?They’re not watching CSI Paris.
So, I can reduce WM load by leading with the rule and postponing exceptions until they’re necessary. (You can alert your students that exceptions might show up later, so they don’t lose faith in your expertise.)
If you anticipate or recognize WM overload, ask yourself if you can put off some of this cognitive work until later in the lesson plan…or, later in the syllabus.
Solutions, Part III: Make Cognitive Work Auditory AND Visual
Schools rely a great deal on auditory processing. That is: students listen to us — and to each other — talking.
However, working memory has both auditory and visual processing capacity. If we use only half of it, we’re leaving substantial cognitive resources untapped. It’s like asking students to carry a heavy box using only one arm. Two arms would be So Much Easier.
This approach leads to some very straightforward strategies. Verbal instructions take up lots of working memory capacity. Written instructions take up less — because students don’t have to “select” or “hold” them.
Oliver Caviglioli has just written a genre-defining book on combining visual and verbal information: Dual Coding with Teachers. If you want to focus on this teaching strategy to reduce WM load, you should get your copy ASAP.
Solutions, Part IV:CUT
Let’s take this hypothetical:
You look at your lesson plan, and anticipate a great deal of working-memory overload. So, you start using these strategies.
You find ways to connect new information to ideas students already know (solutions, part I).
You find ways to spread information out over time (part II).
You move lots of WM labor into the visual realm (part III).
And yet, you still worry the working-memory load might be too high. What can you do?
You’ve really got only one choice: take stuff out of the lesson plan — and maybe the syllabus. You’ve got to cut.
That’s a troubling answer. We don’t want to cut, because we want our students to learn it all. (And, we might be required to cover lots of things.)
But, here’s the reality: if my lesson plan/syllabus overwhelms my students’ working memory, then their cognitive processes will shut down. That is: their brains will cut stuff out automatically.
If I know that’s going to happen, the only responsible course of action is to make those cutting decisions for them. After all, because I’m the teacher, I know better which parts can be cut without long-term harm.
The Good News about Part IV
By the way: there is some hidden good news in this strategy. If we cut material from an overstuffed syllabus today, then our students are much likelier to learn the remaining ideas than they were before.
As a result, they’ll be better positioned to learn the ideas that come later in the curriculum.
As is so often the case: less might be more. That is, less information early in the curriculum might lead to more learning by the end of the year. Why? Because “less” allowed students to use their working memory more effectively, and hence create more long-term memories.
Concluding Thoughts
I’ve named several strategies here, and given quick examples.
However, to get the most from these ideas, you will adapt them to your own circumstances. As you’ve heard me say before: “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”
That is: once you’ve started THINKING about working memory in your classroom with your students and your curriculum, you’ll see your own way to apply each strategy most effectively.
No one else can tell us exactly how to do it. Using our teacherly insight, wisdom, and experience, we will shape those ideas to fit the world in which we teach.
In sum: once we anticipate and recognize working memory overload, we’ve got many (MANY!) strategies to reduce that load. And, those strategies are flexible enough to work in every classroom. The result: our students learn more.
* If you’re skeptical about the importance of prior factual knowledge, you’re not alone. But, the research here is compelling. Check out
Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham
I like a good nap. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a bad nap.
But for this blog we must ask: can naps benefit learning?
We’ve written often about the importance of a good night’s sleep for learning. But, nap sleep might not have the same benefits as nighttime sleep.
Of course, we do have suggestive studies from the sleep lab. This study, for instance, shows that naps including both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep do boost learning.
But, what happens when we test naps in school? Do we show benefits there?
In other words: do actual students learning actual school stuff from actual teachers benefit from naps at school?
A Promising Start
This study from Brazil answers those questions with a resounding YES.
Researchers had 5th graders study either history or science during the first period of the day. Some napped during the 2nd period, while others studied another topic.
Over the course of six weeks, students learned more on the days that they napped compared to the days they didn’t. On average, they scored 10% higher on the content taught pre-nap.
This finding held true for longer naps (between 30 and 60 minutes), but not shorter naps (less than 30 minutes).
Slight Hesitations
Long-time readers know that I try to be especially skeptical about research findings that I want to be true. Because I like naps so much, I’m pushing myself to be skeptical here. For that reason, I raise these questions:
First: the study includes 24 students. That’s 24 better than 0, but it’s still quite a small study. I hope researchers follow this up with a few hundred students.
Second: I wonder about cultural influences. Does napping have a role in Brazilian culture that differs from its role others? I’m not sure why cultural influences would change the benefits of napping, but I’d like to see this research replicated in other cultures.
Third: This “nap” comes quite early in the morning: from 8:10 to 9:20 AM. I would have thought post-lunch naps to be more beneficial. The researchers explain that school begins quite early in Brazil — but, the timing of naps should clearly be studied.
School Implications
Despite my attempts at skepticism, I do think we should seriously consider investigating this question at scale. If students could in fact learn information better by sleeping at school, the benefits to both health and cognition could be dramatic.
After all, I’ve been “studying” naps on my own for years, and can report highly positive results.
We’ve got many reasons to believe that technology — whatever its benefits — can distract from learning.
Heck, according to one study, the mere presence of a cellphone reduces available working memory. YIKES.
Unsurprisingly, we often hear calls for technology-free zones in schools. Laptop bans have ardent champions.
One group of researchers wanted to know: what effect might a technology ban have on the tone of the classroom?
Would such a ban complicate the students’ relationship with the professor?
Would it affect their engagement with the material?
And, of course, would it benefit their learning?
The Study
One professor taught four sections of the same Intro to Psychology course. Cellphones and laptops were forbidden from two sections, and allowed in two.
At the end of the course, researchers measured…
Students’ rapport with the professor: for instance, students rated statements like “I want to take other courses from the professor,” or “I dislike my professor’s class.”
Students’ engagement with the class: for instance, “I make sure I study on a regular basis,” or “I stay up on all assigned readings.”
Students’ grades — on 3 exams during the term, and on their overall final grade.
That’s straightforward enough. What did they find?
The Results, Part I: Hang On to your Hat
You might predict that a technology ban would improve class tone. Freed from the distractions of technology, students can directly engage with each other, with their professor, and the material.
You might instead predict that a ban would dampen class tone. When teachers forbid things, after all, students feel less powerful.
Hutcheon, Lian, and Richard found that the tech ban had no effect on the students’ rapport with the professor.
They also found that the ban resulted in lower engagement with the class. That is, on average, students in a tech-free class said they did class readings less often, and put forth less effort.
This finding held true even for students who preferred to take notes by hand: that is, students who wouldn’t be inclined to use laptops in class anyway.
The Results, Part II: Hang On Tighter
The researchers hypothesized that students in the technology-ban sections would learn more. That is: they’d have higher grades.
That’s an easy hypothesis to offer. Other researchers have found this result consistently (famously, here).
However, Hutcheon and Co. didn’t get that result. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups.
But, they got a result that did approach significance: the technology-ban sections learned less. On the final exam, for instance, the tech-ban sections averaged an 84.30, while the tech-permitted sections averaged an 88.04.
The difference between a B and a B+ might not be statistically significant…but it sure might feel significant to those who got the B.
What On Earth Is Going On?
The researchers wonder if the tone of their tech ban led to these results. To be honest, when I read the policy on “Technology Use in the Classroom,” I thought it sounded rather harsh. (For example: “Repeated infractions will result in points lost on your final grade.”)
So, perhaps a more genially-worded ban would impede class engagement less, and allow for more learning.
But, that’s just a guess.
For me, the crucial message appears in the authors’ abstract:
“[T]hese results suggest that instructors should consider the composition of students in their course prior to implementing a technology ban in the classroom.”
In other words, technology policies can’t be the same everywhere. We teach different content to different students in different schools. And, we are different kinds of teachers. No one policy will fit everywhere.
To be crystal clear: I’m NOT saying “This study shows that a tech ban produced bad results, and so teachers should never ban technology.”
I AM saying: “This study arrived at helpfully puzzling results that contradict prior research. It therefore highlights the importance of tailoring tech policies to the narrow specifics of each situation.”
As I’ve said before, teachers should follow relevant research. And, we should draw on our best experience and judgment to apply that research to our specific context.
Classrooms should do more than simply house our students. We want them to welcome students. To set an encouraging and academic tone. To reflect the values our schools champion.
That’s a lot of work for one classroom to do.
As a result, our rooms sometimes end up looking like the nearby image: a busy tumult of color and stuff.
Does this level of decoration have the desired result? Does it make students feel welcome, valued, and academic? Realistically, might it also distract them?
Two researchers in Portugal wanted to find out.
Today’s Research
Several people have studied the effect of classroom decoration on learning. (In perhaps the best-know study, Fisher, Godwin and Seltman showed that kindergarteners learned less in a highly decorated classroom.)
Rodrigues and Pandeirada wanted to know exactly which mental functions were disrupted by all that decoration. Their study design couldn’t be simpler.
These researchers created two study environments.
The first looks basically like a library carrel with a dull white finish.
The second added lots of lively, upbeat photos to that carrel.
The result isn’t as garish as the photo above, but it’s certainly quite busy. (You can see photographs of these two environments on page 9 if you click the link above.)
Rodrigues and Pandeirada then had 8-12 year-olds try tests of visual attention and memory.
For instance: students had to tap blocks in a certain order. (Like the game Simon from when I was a kid.) Or, they had to recreate a complex drawing.
Crucially, these 8-12 year-olds did these tasks in both environments. Researchers wanted to know: did the visual environment make a difference in their performance?
It certainly did. On all four tests — both visual attention and memory — students did worse.
In short: when the visual environment is too busy, thinking gets harder. (By the way, visual distraction is not a “desirable difficulty.” It results in less learning.)
Two Sensible Questions
When I discuss this kind of research with teachers, they often have two very reasonable questions.
Question #1: how much is “too much”? More specifically, is my classroom “too much”?
Here’s my suggestion. Invite a non-teacher friend into your classroom. Don’t explain why. Notice their reaction.
If you get comments on the decoration — even polite comments — then it’s probably over-decorated.
“What a wonderfully colorful room!” sounds like a compliment. But, if your students see a “wonderfully colorful room” every day, they might be more distracted than energized.
Question #2: Won’t students get used to the busy decoration? My classroom might look over-decorated now, but once you’ve been here for a while, it will feel like home.
This question has not, as far as I know, been studied directly. But, the short answer is “probably not.”
The Fisher et al. study cited above lasted two weeks. Even with that much time to “get used to the decoration,” students still did worse in the highly-decorated classroom.
More broadly, Barrett et al. looked at data for 150+ classrooms in 27 schools. They arrived at several conclusions. The pertinent headline here is: moderate levels of decoration (“complexity”) resulted in the most learning.
In other words: students might get used to visual complexity. But: the research in the field isn’t (as far as I know) giving us reason to think so.
Summer Thoughts
Here’s the key take-away from Rodrigues and Pandeirada’s research: we should take some time this summer to think realistically about our classroom’s decoration.
We want our spaces to be welcoming and informative. And, we want them to promote — not distract from — learning.
Research can point us in the right direction. We teachers will figure out how best to apply that research to our classrooms, for our students.
A final note: I’ve chatted by email with the study’s authors. They are, appropriately, hesitant to extrapolate too much from their library-carrel to real classrooms.
They show, persuasively, that visual distractions can interfere with attention and memory. But: they didn’t measure what happens in a classroom with other students, and teachers, and so forth.
I think the conclusions above are reasonable applications of these research findings; but, they are my own, and not part of the study itself.
Design thinking invites students to approach learning with an engineer’s perspective.
Students begin with a problem, and think their way towards several possible solutions. Each design thinking framework includes its own particulars, but all include variations of these steps:
deliberately explore the problem,
brainstorm several possible solutions,
create those solutions,
repeat these steps as necessary (with healthy doses of metacognition).
Here, for instance, is a 1-pager from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education that summarizes key design-thinking ideas and protocols.
To be confident that this approach has merit, we should ask ourselves two hard questions:
First: do students who learn design thinking apply it in new circumstances? If not, then the method might help students solve a specific problem — but not help them think differently about problems in general.
Second: when students apply design thinking to novel problems, do they learn more than others who don’t? If not, then this new way of thinking doesn’t seem to have made much of a difference.
So: how might we answer these tough questions?
Researchers at Stanford’s School of Education wanted to give it a try…
The Research Plan
A large research team worked with 6th graders in a California public school. They had students practice two distinct design thinking systems.
One group practiced a system that urged them to seek out corrective feedback. That is: they got in the habit of looking for constructive criticism.
A second group practiced a different design-thinking system that emphasized creating several different prototype models before deciding on which one to pursue.
Helpfully, the study design insured that students learned and used these 2 systems in different classes.
Math class (2 weeks)
Social Studies (1 week)
Science (1 week)
A week later, students took a test gave them the chance to apply those skills.
However — and this is the key point — the test didn’t resemble any of the previous design thinking work that they had done. For this reason, the test let researchers answer this question:
“Do students who practice design thinking for a full month spontaneously apply those strategies when facing new, not-obviously-related problems?”
And, given how well they did on this test, it let them answer a second question:
“Do these design thinking strategies help students solve problems more effectively?”
That is: this study design let researchers answer the two hard questions we asked ourselves at the beginning of this post.
Two Answers
This study, I suspect, will be something of a Rorschach test for people who look at its conclusions.
Skeptics — and, by the way, I myself am often in the “skeptic” category — may focus on the most straightforward finding: “there was no stand-alone effect of treatment.”
In other words: the training didn’t have a statistically measurable effect.
Optimists, however, might well have a different take.
To explore their results in greater detail, Chin & Co. analyzed data for the students based on their prior academic accomplishment.
For students in the high-achieving group, and the middle-achieving group, the design thinking training had no statistically measurable effect.
However, for those in the low-achieving group, it certainly did.
An optimist’s summary might go like this.
“Mid- and high-achieving students are ALREADY doing what design thinking teaches. That is, those student ALREADY seek out constructive feedback, and try different models before they decide on one.
The design-thinking training helped low-achieving students behave more like their mid- and high-achieving peers.
That’s great!”
If, in fact, a design thinking curriculum can help some students develop the good learning habits that other students already have, that is in fact great news.
The best way to use design thinking will clearly depend on your own school’s culture and demographics. This study gives us some hope that — used the right way with the right students — it can help students learn.
The short version is: “listening to Mozart makes you smarter!” (Translation: “Parents: run right out and by Mozart recordings for your children!”)
The longer version is: “in one study, children who listened to Mozart before they took a spatial reasoning test did better than those who didn’t. The effect lasted, at most, fifteen minutes.”
That initial study turned into several books, and several extravagant claims. In 1998, the governor of Georgia wanted the state budget to buy every child a classical music recording.
Plausible Extrapolation?
If listening to Mozart before a spatial reasoning test improves performance, then … just maybe … listening to music while I do my schoolwork will help me think better.
I know LOTS of teenagers who insist that this is true. Whenever I talk about brain research at schools, high-schoolers assure me quite passionately that they learn more with their music playing.
That’s a plausible claim. Let’s research it.
Perham and Currie tested this claim quite simply. They had adults take a reading comprehension test adapted from the SAT. Over headphones, they heard either…
…music they chose because they liked it (Frank Ocean, Katy Perry),
…music they didn’t like (thrash metal),
…music that didn’t have lyrics, or
…silence
What Perham and Currie find?
Quite clearly, these learners did their best thinking in silence.
More specifically, when they answered reading comprehension questions in silence, they averaged 61%. Listening to music without lyrics, they averaged a 55%. Music with lyrics — either likable-Katy Perry or disliked-thrash metal — led to a 38% average.
The drop from a 61% to a 38% should get everyone’s attention.
Here’s a straightforward summary for our students.
Would you like to increase your reading comprehension 20%?
TURN OFF THE MUSIC and read in silence.
Asking the Right (Narrow) Question
To sum up:
Perham and Currie’s study strongly suggests that listening to music with lyrics interferes with reading comprehension.
This study strongly suggests that listening to music during a task interferes with students’ creativity.
But, this study suggests that listening to upbeat music before a task increases creativity.
And, this study might — or might not — suggest that students who join band classes in high school improve in their ability to process language sounds … which might (or might not) have beneficial academic effects.
In other words: to understand the relationship between music and learning, we need to ask narrow, precise questions.
When students say “I study better with music because, Mozart Effect,” we can say:
a) we’ve got good research showing that’s not true,
and
b) we can’t extrapolate from very tentative Mozart findings to your homework.
One final point deserves emphasis.
I understand the desire to say: “students should study music because it helps them do this other thing better.”
I’d rather say: “everyone should make music, because it connects us to our humanity and to each other.”
Mozart or Frank Ocean or Thrash Metal. Bring it on…
To answer this important and practical question, Blasiman’s team first had students watch an online lecture undistracted. They took a test on that lecture, to see how much they typically learn online with undivided attention.
Team Blasiman then had students watch 2 more online lectures, each one with a distractor present.
Some students had a casual conversation while watching. Others played a simple video game. And, yes, others watched a fencing scene from Princess Bride.
Did these distractions influence their ability to learn?
On average, these distractions lowered test scores by 25%.
That is: undistracted students averaged an 87% on post-video quizzes. Distracted students averaged a 62%.
Conversation and The Princess Bride were most distracting (they lowered scores by ~30%). The nature video was least distracting — but still lowered scores by 15%.
In case you’re wondering: men and women were equally muddled by these distractions.
Teaching Implications
In this case, knowledge may well help us win the battle.
Blasiman & Co. sensibly recommend that teachers share this study with their students, to emphasize the importance of working in a distraction-free environment.
And, they encourage students to make concrete plans to create — and to work in — those environments.
(This post, on “implementation intentions,” offers highly effective ways to encourage students to do so.)
I also think it’s helpful to think about this study in reverse. The BAD news is that distractions clearly hinder learning.
The GOOD news: in a distraction-free environment, students can indeed start to learn a good deal of information.
(Researchers didn’t measure how much they remembered a week or a month later, so we don’t know for sure. But: we’ve got confidence they had some initial success in encoding information.)
In other words: online classes might not be a panacea. But, under the right conditions, they might indeed benefit students who would not otherwise have an opportunity to learn.
I’ve just learned that both of Dr. Blasiman’s co-authors on this study were undergraduates at the time they did the work. That’s quite unusual in research world, and very admirable! [6-11-19]
