Here’s a sentence that won’t surprise you: practice typically makes us more skilled at the activity we’re practicing.
Here’s a sentence that might surprise you: practice makes us more vulnerable to mistakes after an interruption.
So, for example, if my students have just learned how to solve for three variables with three equations, then an interruption will have some effect on them when they get back to work.
If, however, they have spent some time getting familiar with the process of solving for three variables with three equations, then an interruption will distract them even more.
Said a different way: an interruption may distract your relatively advanced students more than your less advanced students.
Counter-intuitive?
My first response to this research finding was straightforward puzzlement. Why are experienced students more distractible than neophytes?
As I’ve thought more about this study, I’ve had an idea. If I’m experienced at a step-by-step activity, then I’m probably not paying full attention to each step as I go through the process. After all, my experience lets me work almost by rote. In this case, an interruption is quite a problem, because I wasn’t really focused on my place in the list of steps.
However, if I’m a newbie, I’m likely to be focusing quite keenly on each step, and so–after a distraction–am likelier to remember where I left off.
Teaching Implications
In the first place, this study by Altmann and Hambrick is the only one I know of that reaches this conclusion. Until their results are replicated, we ought to be interested in, but not obsessed by, their findings.
Second, we should note that relative expertise does have occasional disadvantages. We shouldn’t assume that our accomplished students won’t be fuddled by a classroom interruption–in fact, they might be more so than their still-struggling peers.
Third, I for one will be on the lookout for this pattern in my own work. In theory at least, I’m the expert in my classroom, and so I might be more discombobulated than my students by a distraction during a rote task.
Given this research, I now know to turn to my least confident students for a reminder of where were were.
Here’s an odd question: is it ever a bad idea for teachers to be authentic?
In a recent study, Johnson and LaBelle surveyed students to discover the teacher behaviors that struck them as “authentic.”
By closely analyzing the students’ descriptions of “authentic” teachers, they came up with four broad categories. According to their findings, authentic teachers are…
… Approachable (for example: they tell appropriate personal stories and jokes)
… Passionate (they’re excited about their subject matter)
… Attentive (they know their students’ names)
… Capable (they stay on top of assignments)
Unsurprisingly, “inauthentic” teachers do the opposite (and, are Disrespectful to boot).
Johnson and LaBelle acknowledge that this research includes some methodological quirks.
In particular, paradoxically, the fact that students describe these behaviors as “authentic” doesn’t mean that they are authentically “authentic” for all teachers.
For example: “authentic” teachers are approachable, and approachable teachers tell jokes. But, what if you’re not a joker? Maybe your sense of humor is quieter than that. Or maybe, while you appreciate a good joke told by others, you’re just not comfortable telling them yourself.
Should you adopt “authentic” teacher behaviors even if they’re not authentic to you?
Zooming Out
This question–which Johnson and LaBelle raise but don’t answer–hovers over much of the research you’ll hear about at Learning and the Brain Conferences.
Let’s imagine that you come to the November LatB conference, which will focus on the intersection of teaching and technology. You might attend a session that warns about the distractions that technology creates, and the attentional benefits that movement can provide.
On the one hand, this argument might make good sense to you. You know of several computer programs that might help your students, and you’re happy to know that they’ll be less distracted by technology if they’ve had a chance to move about recently.
On the other hand, as you listen to the speaker’s list of movement strategies (Have them move into small groups! Require students to change their seats every 20 minutes! Ask 5 students to write their answers on the board!), you might feel a growing dread.
Those strategies might seem like a good fit for the speaker. And, based on the fact that everyone around you is nodding energetically, you conclude they’re eager to give them a go.
But here’s the thing: that’s just not you. You simply can’t imagine directing your students about in some elaborate traffic-control exercise. You’re feeling a little embarrassed just thinking about it.
We’ve got good research showing the benefits of this particular teaching behavior. And, alas, that beneficial teaching behavior just doesn’t mesh with the persona you bring to the classroom.
So, what should you do?
Hard Questions, Tentative Answers
For starters, I think you should be suspicious of anyone who thinks this is an easy question.
On the one had, research has powerful answers to lots of questions about good and bad teaching. On the other hand, research mostly looks at AVERAGES.
And here’s the thing: you are not average. Your students aren’t average either. Your school isn’t average.
You are an agglomeration of unique particulars, and some research-established average might not apply to you.
That hard truth goes double when the teaching practice under discussion runs counter to something deep in your personality.
Here’s the best answer I got. In my view, you can decline particular teaching practices, but you shouldn’t ignore the broader topic within which those practices reside.
To go back to my “attention and movement” example: you can decide that you won’t rely on movement to focus your students. After all, that’s just not you.
But, you can’t overlook the topic of attention itself. There are MANY other teaching strategies you can use to foster attention, and–especially if you’re going to set this one strategy aside-you’ll need to be even more attentive and thoughtful about the other strategies that you have at hand.
Imagine a Venn diagram. Once circle represents all the teaching practices that have research support. A second represents those that students find “authentic.” A third represents those that are, in fact, authentic to you.
Find the teaching practices that fit in all three of those circles–you’ve found the best place to be.
How should we manage working memory limitations in the classroom?
Furtheredogogy has a handy post about Cognitive Load Theory, which is basically a fancy way of saying “taking care of our students’ working memory capacity.”
Notice, btw, that the author suggests worked examples as a working-memory friendly alternative to project-based learning–which can all to often overwhelm students’ cognitive resources.
You think grades interfere with learning? You’d like to do away with them? And yet, you’d like some consistent way to measure students’ academic development? And to communicate that development to others?
You’re not alone.
The Mastery Transcript Consortium seeks to accomplish these very goals.
The plan itself is layered and intricate; if you’re interested, it’s worth your time to read this article from Inside Higher Ed.
At present, the plan is in its very early stages: no schools currently use it, because it doesn’t yet exist. But, having just gotten a $2 million dollar grant to develop it, the consortium is hopeful that they have launched a movement that can reshape the educational landscape.
[Full disclosure: this plan has been developed by Scott Looney, head of Hawken School outside Cleveland, OH. I myself was a lifer at Hawken, and have spoken with Mr. Looney about his plans. Although I have done some consulting work with Hawken faculty, parents, and students, I am not involved in the Mastery Transcript project.]
A friend recently referred me to this online article (at bigthink.com) about this research study: the eye-catching phrase in both headlines being “Teaching Critical Thinking.”
(The online article is even more emphatic: “Study: There Are Instructions for Teaching Critical Thinking.”)
This headline sounds like great news. We can do it! Just follow the instructions!
We should, of course, be delighted to learn that we can teach critical thinking. So often, especially in upper grades, schools emphasize teaching “not what to think, but how to think.”
Every time we say that, we are—in effect—claiming to be teaching critical thinking.
The author of the BigThink article summarizes the societal importance of critical thinking this way:
We live in an age with unprecedented access to information. Whether you are contributing to an entry on Wikipedia or reading a meme that has no sources cited (do they ever?), your ability to comprehend what you are reading and weigh it is a constant and consistent need. That is why it is so imperative that we have sharp critical-thinking skills.
Clearly, students need such skills. Clearly we should teach them.
It Can Be Taught!
The study itself, authored by N. G. Holmes and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Arts and Sciences, follows students in a college physics course. The course explicitly introduced its students to a process for thinking critically about scientific data; it emphasized the importance of this process by grading students on their early attempts to use it.
For example (this excerpt, although complex, is worth reading closely):
“students were shown weighted χ2 calculations for least squares fitting of data to models and then were given a decision tree for interpreting the outcome. If students obtain a low χ2, they would decide whether it means their data are in good agreement with the model or whether it means they have overestimated their uncertainties.”
Early in the course, the instructors often reminded the students to use this process. By term’s end, however, those instructions had been faded, so the students who continued to use it did so on their own.
The results?
Many students who had been taught this analytical process continued to use it. In fact, many of them continued to use it the following year in another course taught by a different professor.
In other words: they had been taught critical thinking skills, and they learned critical thinking skills.
Success!
It Can Be Taught?
Sadly, this exciting news looks less and less promising the more we consider it.
In the first place, despite the title of his article, Holmes doesn’t even claim to be teaching critical thinking. He claims to be teaching “quantitative critical thinking,” or the ability “to think critically about scientific data and models [my emphasis].”
Doubtless our students need this valuable subset of critical thinking skills. And yet, our students think about many topics that defy easy quantification.
If we want our students to think critically about a Phillis Wheatley poem, or about the development of the Silk Road, or about the use of gerundives, we will quickly recognize they need a meaningfully different set of critical thinking skills.
How, for example, would a student use “weighted χ2 calculations for least squares fitting of data” to compare the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution of the United States?
To return to the examples offered in BigThink’s enthusiastic paragraph: despite this author’s enthusiasm, it’s not at all certain this procedure for analyzing “scientific data and models” will help us update a Wikipedia entry, or critique an unsourced meme.
(It might, but—unless we’re editing a very particular kind of Wikipedia entry, or reading a very statistical meme—it probably won’t.)
In brief: ironically, the headlines implying that we can “teach critical thinking” generally do not stand up to critical thought.
The Bigger Picture
Cognitive scientists, in fact, regularly doubt the possibility of teaching a general set of critical thinking skills. And here’s one big reason why:
Different disciplines require different kinds of critical thought.
Critical thinking in evolutionary biology requires different skills than critical thinking in comparative theology.
The field I’m in uses psychology and neuroscience research to inform teaching; hard experience has taught me that the fields of psychology and neuroscience demand very different critical thinking skills from their practitioners.
Perhaps your own teaching experience reveals the same pattern:
The English department where I taught included some of the sharpest minds I know: people who can parse a sonnet or map a literary genre with giddy dexterity. Their critical thinking skills in the world of English literature can’t be questioned.
And yet, many of these same people have told me quite emphatically that they are hopeless at, say, math. Or, chemistry. Or, doing their taxes. Being good critical thinkers in one discipline has not made them successful at critical thought in others.
Chapter 2 of Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School explores this argument at greater length.
The Smaller Picture
There’s a second reason that it’s hard to teach general critical thinking skills: knowledge of details.
To think critically about any topic, we need to know a very substantial amount of discipline-specific factual information. Finding those facts on the interwebs isn’t enough; we need to know them cold—have them comfortably housed in long-term memory.
For example: to use Holmes’s critical thinking technique, you would need to know what “weighted χ2 calculations for least squares fitting of data” actually are.
Even more: you’d need to know how to calculate them.
If you don’t have that very specific kind of detailed knowledge, you’re just out of luck. You can’t think critically in his world.
Another example. Much chess expertise comes from playing lots and lots of chess. As Chase and Simon’s famous study has shown, chess experts literally see chess boards differently than do chess novices.
You really can’t think like a chess expert (that is, you can’t engage in critical chess thinking) until you can see like a chess expert; and, seeing like a chess expert takes years. You need to accumulate substantial amounts of specific information—the Loomis gambit, the Concord defense—to make sense of the chessboard world.
Your own teaching experience almost certainly underlines this conclusion. Let me explain:
How often does it happen that someone learns you’re a teacher, and promptly offers you some heartfelt advice on teaching your students more effectively? (“I saw this AMAZING video on Facebook about the most INSPIRING teacher…”) How often is that advice, in fact, even remotely useful?
And yet, here’s the surprise: the person offering you this well-meaning advice is almost certainly an expect in her field. She’s an accomplished doctor, or financial adviser, or geologist, or jurist. In her field, she could out-critical-think you with most of her prefrontal cortex tied behind her occipital lobe.
Unfortunately, her critical thinking skills in that field don’t transfer to our field, because critical thinking in our field requires a vast amount of very specific teaching knowledge.
(By the way: twice now this post has assumed you’re a teacher. If you’re not, insert the name of your profession or expertise in the place of “teacher.” The point will almost certainly hold.)
Wishing and Thinking, not Wishful Thinking
As so often happens, I feel a bit like a grinch as I write this article. Once again, I find myself reading news I ought to find so very exciting, and instead finding it unsupported by research.
Truthfully, I wish we could teach critical thinking skills in general. If you’ve got a system for doing so, I genuinely hope you’ll let me know. (Inbox me: [email protected])
Even better: if you’ve got research that shows it works, I’ll dance a jig through Somerville.
But the goal of this organization—and the goal of Mind, Brain, and Education—is to improve psychology, neuroscience, and pedagogy by having these disciplines talk with each other deeply and knowledgeably.
And with that deep knowledge—with critical thinking skills honed by scientific research—we know that critical thinking skills must be taught discipline by discipline; and, they must be honed through extensive and specific practice.
This task might sound less grand than “teaching critical thinking skills.” And yet, by focusing not on lofty impossibilities, but on very realistic goals, we can indeed accomplish them—one discipline at a time.
I’m reviewing the vocabulary I learned in today’s Spanish class. The last time I went through my flashcard deck, I got all of those new words right. Should I keep studying? Or, is it time to move on to my Algebra?
In a recently published paper, Shibata and colleagues argue that overlearning benefits long-term memory formation. That is: I should keep studying, because that extra level of work — above and beyond what’s required to get all my flashcards correct — protects these new memories from later interference.
(If you want the neurotransmitter details, Shibata finds that overlearning, which he calls “hyperstabilization[,] is associated with an abrupt shift from glutamate-dominant excitatory to GABA-dominant inhibitory processing in early visual areas. Hyperstabilization contrasts with passive and slower stabilization, which is associated with a mere reduction of excitatory dominance to baseline levels” p. 470. Got that?)
And yet, there’s a reason I put that question mark in the title of this article. Earlier researchers have found that overlearning just doesn’t work. (Doug Rohrer and Hal Pashler have published on this topic here and here.)
For the time being, I’m inclined to believe Rohrer and Pashler. Why? Because Shibata’s research paradigm showed a change in neuotransmitters after 2 days. Rohrer and Pashler’s paradigm showed no benefits for learning after 1 month.
In my view, teachers ought to be more interested in learning than in GABA and glutamate; and we ought to be less impressed by results obtained after 48 hours than by results obtained after 4 weeks.
(To be clear: I am interested in neurotransmitters. But, as a teacher, I’m MUCH more interested in demonstrated learning.)
So, for the time being, I’m will continue to recommend that students and teachers not emphasize overlearning. However, I will add an asterisk to that advice: as of today, our understanding of the neural results of overlearning is far from complete.
[Editor’s note: this guest blogger piece is by Cindy Gadziala, Chairperson of Theology at Fontbonne Academy in Milton, MA.]
I am a veteran teacher, and yet sometimes I feel overwhelmed by all that I am supposed to be doing in my 21st century classroom.
The “wave of the future,” instructional technology—with its one-to-one initiatives, and Google platforms—offers many benefits: for example, individualized instruction, or applications that promote problem-solving skills. I have had students demonstrate their learning by creating electronic posters and comic strips. I have even sent them on a virtual archaeological dig!
But, there are days where classroom 102 becomes a battleground; and my enemy appears to be technology. As a Theology teacher I am supposed to love my enemy, but I need the best help I can get.
Enter — brain science!
Technology Problems: Working Memory and Attention
Psychology researchers are working diligently to understand how we get information “in and out” of our brains, and working memory is now understood as an essential gateway for learning. We also know that working memory is both precious and limited. [1]
Part of our challenge in the classroom is to avoid overloading a student’s working memory, thereby causing a catastrophic failure…those glazed looks and blank stares that send a chill through the fiber of any teacher’s being!
So, teachers can employ proactive strategies to reduce the strain on working memory to facilitate learning. For example: lots of new information, or too many instructions, can create working memory burdens for overtaxed students.
And yet, paradoxically, classroom technology can sometimes require students to master new material, and to follow all sorts of instructions.
Just as it might overwhelm working memory, technology can also distract students’ attention.
For example: I often project images from my iPad to help my students focus. And yet, when the projector times out and kicks over to a screen saver, the swirling colors and images can disorient the very students whom I was helping focus.
These kinds of problems intensify all my questions about use of technology in the classroom:
Should I be allowing students to take notes on their laptops and tablets?
What happens to working memory when a student clicks a tab to go someplace else?
How does this affect the working memory of the student seated next to the web surfer?
While I hope that I am creating brilliantly engaging lessons to minimize such distractions, I have my limits.
Enter — “the conundrum!.”
Technology Possibilities
One of the boasts of technology in the classroom has been that students can use their devices for efficient note taking, yet the well-known Mueller and Oppenheimer study [2] suggests that laptops make note-taking too easy. Counter-intuitively, this ease reduces cognitive processing, and thereby reduces learning. Between the risk of distraction and the reduction to learning I hear the cry go forth from teachers everywhere: Victory! Ban technological devices in the classroom!
I have seen kids take amazing notes on a laptop. Often, they work quite thoughtfully with information, creating their own visual representations and mind maps as they go. I do not want to take this beneficial tool away from them.
So, my task is to teach appropriate use of technological devices, build note-taking skills and…oh, by the way…teach content: all without overwhelming my students’ working memory.
I wanted to know: how can I make technology my ally in the classroom to accomplish all these objectives? I have found an option that may help teachers to reduce strain on working memory in class, and facilitate cognitive processing both in class and at home.
Because the Rocketbook has QR codes built into its pages, students can take handwritten notes in class, and then use a cell phone app to upload notes into the cloud. (Rocketbook supports Google Drive and Evernote, for example.)
Symbols on each page can be assigned to different destination folders, and so students can upload work for multiple disciplines to distinct places in the cloud. Once their notes are uploaded, students can re-work them into a mind map or graphic organizer.
From a teacher’s perspective, Rocketbook’s combination of paper and technology provides many benefits:
I reduce the strain on working memory in class because no devices should be open when students are engaged in note taking. In this way, I also make my classroom management easier.
I increase their cognitive processing, because they are writing by hand.
I increase their touches with content, because they are re-organizing their notes into the cloud.
I can use my LMS and Google Drive in concert to make this process part of their homework. When students provide me with a link to their uploaded notes, I can see their work from class, provide feedback on their note taking, see how they are processing and reorganizing the information, and create the opportunity to correct misinformation or redirect them to concepts they missed.
Of course, all innovations include some downsides; in this case, I sacrifice teaching my students about appropriate use of their devices in the classroom.
(A unique feature of the Rocketbook is that when the notebook is full, you can zap it in the microwave; the ink disappears and you start all over!)
Choices, Choices
While I have used the Rocketbook myself and find it both functional and cost effective (under $40.00 for pens and notebook!), there are some other interesting options available that teachers and students could use in a similar fashion. (My thanks to Learning and the Brain tech guru Scott MacClintic for these suggestions.)
First, there is the LiveScribe Echo Pen by Anoto. There are several versions of this product and the functions increase with the price tag. (Average setup cost comes in around $200.00.) The premise here is that as you write your notes, the pen records what is being said in class. This recording allows students to sync notes with the audio, review what was said and expand, revise and reorganize material from class.
While the Echo Pen’s marketing is often directed to LD students, their tagline “write less, listen more” speaks to all learners. If students are coached on how best to use the tool, hearing class again combined with re-working the material could reap cognitive processing benefits.
Equil’s Smartpen 2, (coming in around $160.00) does not offer the audio feature, but it does not require special ink or paper either. When students take notes with a special Bluetooth-enabled pen, those notes appear both on the paper where they write and on a Bluetooth-linked tablet. Like the Rocketbook, in other words, it converts pen-and-paper notes into a laptop version—eliminating potential distractions from websites, advertisements, and Facebook.
In Sum…
While technology offers both challenges and benefits to students and teachers, it is clear to me that there are no magic bullet solutions with technology alone. Teachers cannot abdicate their role to technology. To use it effectively, we need to know how it affects learning and the brain. We must be all the more deliberate in our lesson planning, classroom management, and relationship building with our students.
We equally must inform the art of teaching with the science of the brain. When we start integrating instructional technology, brain science and good pedagogical practice, as teachers we provide truly great opportunities for student learning!
Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school? A cognitive scientist answers question about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mueller, P. A., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2014). The pen is mightier than the keyboard: Advantages of longhand over laptop note taking. Psychological Science, 1-10, doi: 10:1177/0956797614524581. [link]
Most times when I get asked about the e-reader debate, it is usually not a sincere question from a person who does not already hold a strong opinion on the matter. In these moments I am reminded of the expression “when you find yourself in a hole, stop digging!”
No matter how many studies I mention or which side of the issue I am trying to argue on behalf of, as soon as I provide a brief pause, I am confronted with “yeah, but…” and then the person proceeds to tell me why his/her long-held belief is the final word on the subject.
As for where I come down on the issue, I tend to defer to people who are way smarter than me on the subject — such as Daniel Willingham.
As Willingham concludes in his review of some of the literature on the subject, If the choice is read on a device or read on paper, I believe that the paper is still slightly in the lead if you are looking at straight up comprehension. The problem I have is that this shift to digital is really only a lateral move or a substitution situation, and perhaps not a wise one if you want improved student comprehension!
As a teacher, I choose to incorporate technology in the design of my lessons if I believe it is going to result in noticeable and definable modification or redefinition of the learning tasks and outcomes (SAMR model). The question I ask is “what will the use of this technology allow me or my students to do that previously could not have been accomplished?” If the answer is a “not much” then I do not bother to use the technology. The technology itself should not be the focus of the lesson; student learning must be front and center.
So…”to e-reader or not to e-reader” is actually not the question that we should be asking; rather, we should be asking “does this technology add transformative value to the learning experience for my students?” If we want to go even further, we should ask “How might I measure this value and know that my students are benefiting?”
The invaluable Daniel Willingham briefly reviews the literature, and concludes that — for the time being — students understand more when they read on paper than when they use e-readers.
Willingham acknowledges that his review isn’t comprehensive. However, he’s recently written a book about reading instruction, and so I suspect he’s more up-to-date than most in this field.
If he’s right, this conclusion should give pause to the many (MANY) schools that are switching to e-textbooks. I know they have advantages; they’re less expensive, more portable, easier to modify to suit a specific teacher’s or student’s needs.
And yet, if students learn less when reading them, none of those advantages matters!
Willingham is hopeful that the quality of e-readers will improve enough to eliminate this discrepancy. Until that happens, and until we have good research showing that students can learn well from e-readers, old-fashioned books seem like the best technology we have.
(Scott MacClintic, this blog’s tech guru, will have some thoughts on this topic soon…)
