Tag: classroom advice

As we put our lesson plans together, we teachers want to know: are some minutes more valuable than others?

That is:

Do students remember most at the 10-minute mark of the lesson, because they’re mentally revved up?

Or, perhaps they remember most from the final five minutes, because the whole class has led to this grand conclusion.

Or, perhaps some other time slot generates the most learning, because psychology reasons.

What does the research tell us?

Start Here

I occasionally see teaching advice that seeks to answer this question. That advice typically begins with a fascinating research pool.

Here’s the story.

Researchers present students with — say — a list of 15 words. After distraction, how many  words do students remember? And, can we predict which ones?

Several studies suggest a consistent answer.

Students tend to remember words from the beginning of the list. Researchers call that the “primacy” effect.

And, they remember words from the end of the list. That result gets the moniker “recency effect.”

Going all the way back to 1962, this primacy/recency effect has a lot of research behind it. (For a more recent study, click here.)

Lab to Classroom

So, how should teachers plan our lessons based on this particular finding?

Let’s imagine that I tell my students a list of 8 instructions. Because of the primacy/recency effect, I suspect they’ll remember the early and late instructionst better than the ones in the middle. (Hint: maybe I should write down a long list of instructions…)

But: what does this effect tell us about the most valuable teaching time during a class period as a whole?

From time to time, scholars who translate psychology research for classroom teachers make this argument:

The primacy/recency effect suggests that the first several minutes of class, and the final several minutes of class, have the greatest effect on learning.

That is: For the same reason that students remember the first and last instruction from my list of 8, they’ll learn the most during the first and last minutes of class.

Voila: a research-based answer to the question.

I confess, however, that I myself have doubts.

The argument says, in effect:

Rules governing mental processes for 60-120 seconds also govern mental processes for 45-80 minutes.

Honestly, I’m just not sure that’s plausible. My doubts spring from two sources.

Doubts, and More Doubts

In the first place, I doubt this advice because it extrapolates so far beyond the initial research conditions.

If research tells me something about — say — college students, that conclusion might also apply to 1st graders. But it might not. 1st graders aren’t college students.

If research tells me something about adolescents in Iceland, that conclusion might apply to teens in Brazil. But it might not. Icelandic culture differs from Brazilian culture.

And, if research tells me about mental functions over one minute, that conclusion might apply to 20 minutes. (Or 45, or 80.) But IT MIGHT NOT. One minute isn’t twenty.

Long-time readers know I always focus on “boundary conditions.” From my perspective, this advice goes WAY beyond the boundaries of the initial research.

By the way: I’ve asked SEVERAL wise people if they know of primacy/recency research that goes beyond a minute or two. So far, the answer is “no.”

The second reason I doubt this advice because of the specific mental functions involved.

As far as I can tell, researchers explain the primacy/recency effect by talking about short-term memory and working memory.

Both of these mental faculties describe very short-term mental functions. In my grad-school classes, our profs typically said that working memory holds information somewhere between 5 and 30 seconds.

If, in fact, the primacy/recency effect results from short-term and working memory functions, then those findings almost certainly won’t apply to mental processes that take 30+ minutes.

Like, say, our classes.

Just Answer the Question

If this advice doesn’t hold, what can research tell us about the “most important five minutes in class”?

I’ve got two answers.

Answer #1:

I’ve asked lots of people if they have a resaerch-informed answer to this question. So far, no one has a strong “yes.” But, If I hear of one, I’ll pass it along.

And, btw, a friend has answered “we really have to research that question!” So, I’ll let you know if/when his results come through.

Answer #2:

Long-time readers know my mantra: “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

In this case, I don’t think we can plausibly identify any one time slot that consistently generates the most learning.

Instead, we want to use core ideas from cognitive science to structure lesson plans effectively.

Use retriveal practice.

Beware working-memory overload.

Foster attention.

Activate prior knowledge.

And so forth.

If we follow this approach, every minute will build ultimately — and more-or-less equally — toward students’ learning.

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Castel, A. D. (2008). Metacognition and learning about primacy and recency effects in free recall: The utilization of intrinsic and extrinsic cues when making judgments of learning. Memory & Cognition, 36(2), 429-437.

Should students use cameras to take pictures of boardwork?

My high school students know my fierce anti-cell-phone policy. Nonetheless, they do occasionally ask if they may take a quick picture. (I typically say yes, and then check to be sure the phone goes back in the bag.)

When I do PD work at schools, or present at conferences, teachers take pictures of my slides ALL THE TIME.

Of course, the fact that students and teachers want to take those pictures doesn’t automatically mean that it’s a good idea to do so.

In fact, we have several reasons to think it’s a bad idea.

First reason: those photos might serve as subtle hint to our brain’s memory systems: “you don’t need to remember this, because you’ve got a photo.”

Second reason: the act of taking a photo might distract students (and teachers) from the content we’re discussing.

For example: If my students are thinking about framing the photo correctly (and using a cool filter), they’re NOT thinking about the ways that Fences combines both comic and tragic symbols.

Third reason: we’ve got research!

Check this out…

Prior Knowledge

Researchers have looked at this question for several years now.

In several studies, for instance, researchers asked participants to tour a museum and take pictures of various works of art.

Sure enough, later tests revealed that people remember more about the artwork they didn’t photograph than the artwork they did photograph.

As predicted above, something about taking a photograph made it harder – not easier – to remember the content.

For all these reasons, it seems, teachers might reasonably discourage students from taking photos.

At the same time, we should probably keep asking questions.

In particular, we should acknowledge that museum photography probably isn’t a good stand-in for classroom photography.

That is: my students (and teachers during PD) probably take photographs to help themselves remember important ideas, concepts, and examples. In museums, people might take pictures because that statue is so cool and beautiful!

The museum research offers a useful and interesting baseline, but we’d love some research into … say … actual classrooms.

Cheesemaking, and Beyond!

Well, I’ve got good news. A research team — led by Dr. Annie Ditta at the University of California, Riverside — has indeed started exploring exactly these questions.

In their studies, Team Ditta had students watch 3 short online video lectures about obscure topics. (Like, cheesemaking. No, I’m not joking.)

Participants took pictures of half of the slides.

Here’s the primary question: did students remember more information from the photographed slides, or the unphotographed slides?

SURPRISE! Taking pictures helped students remember the information on the slide.

For the reasons listed above, I did not expect that result. In fact, the researchers didn’t either.

But, those photos really helped.

In one study, students got 39% of the questions right for the slides they photographed, and 29% right for the ones they didn’t. (Stats folks: Cohen’s d was 0.41.)

Given how EASY this strategy is, we should really pay attention to this finding.

By the way, Dr. Ditta’s study explored some other questions as well.

First: students remembered info from photographed slides better both when they decided which slides to photograph and when they were told which ones to photograph.

So, if we tell students to “photograph this information,” we (probably) don’t disrupt the benefit.

Second: what about spoken information?

Common sense suggests that taking a picture won’t help remember spoken ideas (if those ideas aren’t written on the slide). In fact, taking that picture might distract students from the spoken words.

Strangely, in this research, Team Ditta came up with mixed – and surprising – results. In one study, taking a picture made no difference in memory of spoken material. In the other, it benefitted memory of spoken material.

WOW.

So, What Should Teachers Do?

Before we rush to apply research in our classrooms, we always want to ask a few questions.

In this case, I think we should have LOTS of questions.

First: Dr. Ditta’s research looked at brief, online lectures for college students.

Do these conclusions apply to longer classes? To in-person classes? For K-12 students? To students who aren’t neurotypical?

We just don’t (yet) know.

Second: participants in these studies didn’t do anything with the photos. They simply took them.

Would we find the same pattern for students who reviewed their photos, compared to – say – reviewing their notes?

We don’t (yet) know.

Third: participants were tested on their knowledge 5 minutes after the videos were done.

We’ve got LOTS of research showing that short-term gains don’t necessarily result in long-term learning.

So, would these findings hold a week later? A month later?

We don’t (yet) know.

 

Given all the things we don’t know, how can this research benefit us?

For me, these studies open up new possibilities.

In the past, as I described above, I permitted students (and teachers) to take photos. But I tried to discourage them.

I would even – on occasion – explain all the reasons above why I thought taking photos would reduce learning.

Well, I’m no longer going to discourage.

Instead, I’ll explain the complex possibilities.

Perhaps taking photos helps memory because it signals that THIS INFORMATION DESERVES ATTENTION.

Or, perhaps taking photos helps only if students DON’T review before tests. But, taking notes would help more … especially the students who DO review before tests.

And perhaps, just perhaps, this research team got flukey results because even well-done research sometimes produces flukey results. Future classroom research about taking photos of slides might ultimately suggest that (despite this thoughtful work), it really is a bad idea.

I wish the answer were simpler, but it just isn’t.

TL;DR

Surprising new research suggests that taking photos of lecture slides helps college students remember slide contents – even when students don’t review those photos.

Before we teachers rush to make dramatic changes, we should think carefully how this research fits our classrooms and contexts.

And, we should weigh this memory strategy against lots of other strategies – like retrieval practice.

Finally: let’s all watch this space!

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Ditta, A. S., Soares, J. S., & Storm, B. C. (2022). What happens to memory for lecture content when students take photos of the lecture slides?. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition.

Soderstrom, N. C., & Bjork, R. A. (2015). Learning versus performance: An integrative review. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(2), 176-199.

 

I’m on my annual vacation during this month, so I’ll be posting some articles that got attention during the last year.

This post, initially from December of 2021, looks at a proposed different way to “put all the research pieces together.”

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You want to improve your teaching with psychology research?

We’ve got good news, and bad news.

And more good news.

Good News: we have lots and LOTS of research. We can talk about attention, or working memory, or the spacing effect, or motivation, or stress…the list is long. And super helpful.

So much practical advice!

Bad News: actually, the bad news is the same as the good news. We’ve got SO MUCH good research that it’s honestly hard to keep track of it all.

I mean, seriously. Should you start by looking at attention research? Or stress research?

Should we think about the motivational effects of student-teacher relationships, or the perils of working memory overload, or the benefits of desirable difficulty?

Which is most important?

Honestly, I think our next priority is not so much finding out new truths about learning, but organizing all the information we already have.

More Good News

If you agree that we really need someone to sort all these suggestions into a coherent system, you’ll be delighted to read this article by Stephen Chew (Twitter handle: @SChewPsych) and William Cerbin (@BillCerbin).

Other scholars — for instance, Barak Rosenshine — have put together a coherent system based on learning principles. Chew and Cerbin, instead, organize their system around cognitive challenges.

That is:

If students feel anxiety about a topic or discipline, that emotion will interfere with their learning.

If students have prior misconceptions, they will distort students’ understanding.

If classroom work or assignments go beyond working memory limits, students won’t learn effectively (or, at all).

When planning a course or a lesson or an assignment, teachers can think their way through these specific challenges. By contemplating each one, we can design our work to best facilitate learning.

Getting the Emphasis Right

If you’re thinking “this is such excellent news! It just can’t get any better!” — well — I’ve got some news: it gets better.

Chew and Cerbin write:

There is no single best teaching strategy for all students, topics, and situations. The proposed framework is not prescriptive … and can guide adaptation of teaching practice.

In other words, they’re not saying: here’s a list of things to do.

Instead, they are saying: here are several topics/problems to consider.

Teaching advice should not include “best practices.” (That’s a business concept.) It should include “best questions to ponder as we make decisions.” Chew and Cerbin make this point repeatedly.

Frequent readers know that I’ve been banging on for years with this mantra: “Don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

We should think about our students’ working memory limitations. The strategies we use might differ for 1st graders and 8th graders.

We should think about the importance of transfer. A Montessori school and a KIPP school will (almost certainly) use differing strategies to reach that goal.

We should think about our students’ prior knowledge. The best way to measure that knowledge might be different for students with diagnosed learning differences.

Yes: we should consider these nine topics. But the ways we answer them must depend on our students, our schools, our curriculum, and ourselves.

For all these reasons, I recommend Chew and Cerbin’s article with great enthusiasm.

And, happily, you can meet Dr. Chew at our online conference in February! (In case you’re wondering: I was planning to write about this article before I knew he was joining the conference. A happy synchronicity.)

Imagine that you work at a school where these students consistently struggle compared to those students.

As teachers and school leaders, you’d like to help these students do better than they currently do; maybe do as well as those students. (Lower down in the post, I’ll say more about the two groups of students.)

What can you do?

Values Affirmation

One simple strategy has gotten a fair amount of research in recent years.

The idea goes something like this. If I am, say, a 12-year-old student, I might not really see how my school life fits with the rest of my life. They seem like two different world.

If teachers could connect those “two different worlds” — even a little bit — students would feel more comfortable, less stressed, better invested. Heck, they might even learn more.

To accomplish this mission, researchers provide students a list of values: loyalty, faith, friendship, hard work, justice, happiness, family, and so forth.

They then have students undertake a brief writing assignment. The instructions go something like this:

Choose one or more of these values that are most important for you personally. Write about why they are important. You won’t be graded on spelling or grammar; focus on explaining your ideas, values, and beliefs clearly.

The control group gets the same instructions, except that students choose values “that are the least important for you personally, but might be important to someone else.”

This strategy gets the somewhat lumpy name “values affirmation” — because it gives students a chance to affirm the values they hold.

This approach has been used in the United States in several studies, and has had some success. (See, for instance, here).

Across the Atlantic

But: would this strategy work elsewhere? What about, say, England?

Back in 2019, a group of researchers tried this approach with different groups of underperforming students. (Again, more on this topic below.)

They had two groups of 11-14-year-old students (the underperformers, the typical performers) do three “values affirmation” writing sessions: one in September, one in January, and one in April.

Of course, one half of both groups did the “values affirmation” version of the writing exercises; the other half did the control writing assignment.

What results did they find?

As was true in the US, the values affirmation writings had no effect on the typical performers.

However, it had a dramatic effect on the underperformers. Their math grades were higher at the end of the year (compared to the group that did the control writing). And their stress levels were considerably lower.

Because of the statistical method that the researchers used, I can’t say that values affirmation translated a B average into an A average. I can say that it had an effect size of 0.35 standard deviations — which is certainly noteworthy, especially to people who read research studies in this field.

In brief: this strategy costs literally zero dollars. It takes one hour over the course of a school year. And it helps underperforming students.

SO MUCH TO LOVE.

The Story Behind the Story

Up to this point, I’ve described what the researchers did. But I haven’t explained the psychological theory behind their strategy — because the theory prompts some controversy.

Now that we’ve looked at the strategy, let’s get to that theory.

Back in 1995, Claude Steele proposed a theory that has come to be called “Stereotype Threat.” It proposes a complex and counter-intuitive hypothesis.

To describe the theory, let me make up a non-existent stereotype: “blue-eyed people are bad at grammar.” (For the record, I’m regularly complimented on my blue eyes, and I teach a lot of grammar.)

Why might a blue-eyed student struggle on a grammar test?

Steele’s research suggests a surprising internal process. When my blue eyes and I sit down to take the grammar test, I know the material well. However, I also know that stereotypes suggest I’ll do badly.

What happens? I do NOT (as many suspect) give in and let the stereotype become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, I decide to fight back. And, in a terrible paradox, my determination to disprove the stereotype leads to all sorts of counter-productive academic behaviors.

For instance: I might spend lots of time working on a very easy problem to prove that I know this grammar. Alas, I took so long on the easy problems that I don’t have time for the harder ones.

In this unexpected way, Steele argues, stereotypes harm students’ learning.

Enter the Controversy

Over the years, many researchers explored Stereotype Threat. They found that stereotypes about almost anything (race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, academic major) can affect performance on almost anything (math tests, sports performance, leadership aspirations).

Steele’s book Whistling Vivaldi is, in fact, an unusually easy-to-read book about a complex psychological phenomenon. Many Learning and the Brain speakers (Joshua Aronson, Sian Beilock) have studied and written about ST.

At the same time, other scholars have doubted this entire research field. They point to various statistical and procedural concerns to suggest that, well, there’s no real there there. (If you’re interested in the push back, you can read more here and here.)

Putting It All Together

In the English study I’ve been describing, the relevant stereotype is “people from relatively lower socio-economic status just aren’t as smart as others.” According to the study’s authors, this stereotype is the predominant academic stereotype in England, whereas US stereotypes focus more on race, ethnicity, and gender.

So, in their study, the authors explored the effect of Values Affirmation on students who did (and did not) receive free school lunches: a common proxy for socio-economic status.

Sure enough, Values Affirmation had no effect one way or the other on students who did not receive free lunches. Because they faced fewer stereotypes about their academic performance, they didn’t suffer the harm that ST might cause.

But, for the students who DID receive free lunches, that same writing exercise helped a lot. This strategy made them feel more like they belonged, so they presumably didn’t need to work as hard to disprove stereotypes.

For that reason, as described above, one hour’s worth of writing reduced stressed and increased grades.

TL;DR

This research suggests that a Values Affirmation writing assignment (it’s free!) can help some underperforming students learn more and feel less stress.

And, it also strengthens the case that Stereotype Threat might — despite the concerns about methodology — really be a thing.

Even if that second statement turns out not to be true, the first one is worth highlighting.

Want a simple, low-cost way to help struggling students? We’ve got one…

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Hadden, I. R., Easterbrook, M. J., Nieuwenhuis, M., Fox, K. J., & Dolan, P. (2020). Self‐affirmation reduces the socioeconomic attainment gap in schools in England. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 90(2), 517-536.

Sherman, D. K., Hartson, K. A., Binning, K. R., Purdie-Vaughns, V., Garcia, J., Taborsky-Barba, S., … & Cohen, G. L. (2013). Deflecting the trajectory and changing the narrative: how self-affirmation affects academic performance and motivation under identity threat. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 591.