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Experts, Expertise, and Teachers (and Students!)
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
September 22, 2024

Experts, Expertise, and Teachers (and Students!)

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Researchers often focus on experts and expertise. And bloggers like me often follow their leads.

You’ll read about the novice-expert continuum, the differences between novices and experts, and the expertise-reversal effect.

A substantial collection of tools organized on a peg board above a workbench

But let’s pause for a minute and ask: what is an expert? What is this “expertise” that novices gradually acquire on their way to becoming an expert?

A recent book by Roger Kneebone — Expert: Understanding the Path to Mastery — takes on these fascinating questions.

Biography, and Beyond

Kneebone himself followed an unusual trajectory to this set of questions. He started his professional life training to be a surgeon; his stories of emergency surgery in South Africa will set the squeamish on edge.

By the way, while not slicing his way through gory neck wounds, Kneebone also spent time learning how to fly at a local airport. Here again, his mishaps as a pilot provide important examples for his investigation of expertise.

After some number of years as a surgeon, he decided to retool himself as a general practitioner in rural England — the kind of doctor we would now call a “primary care provider.”

That is: instead of snipping gall bladders out of patients he barely knows, he discusses hang-nails with patients he’s know for years.

Oh, by the way, he also takes up playing the harpsichord — he even builds one of his own. You guessed it: this pursuit also informs his book.

He finally ends up with yet another career: he helped found a program for training surgeons. He is — rather curiously — an expert in expertise.

Sample Size

To explore the nature of expertise, Kneebone reaches outside his own experience to talk to a remarkable variety of experts. As in:

An expert taxidermist

An expert tailor

An expert harpsichord maker

An expert magician

An expert fighter pilot

An expert ceramicist

And so forth.

In these conversations, Kneebone finds remarkably consistent patterns. That is: the path to becoming an expert surgeon is surprisingly like the path to being an expert tailor or an expert magician — even though the actual work of these professions differs substantially.

In his book, he maps out this path, using examples and stories from all those professions.

I won’t trace the entire path from “apprentice” to “journeyman*” to “master*” — you should read Kneebone’s book if you want the details, but I do want to share a few of his insights.

First, Kneebone sees the phase transition from apprentice to journeyman as a change in focus. An apprentice teacher (for example) focuses on what s/he is doing: what does my lesson plan look like? Am I covering learning objectives?

A journeyman teacher focuses on the effect of those actions on students. Are they learning? Did they understand that example? How do their mistakes this week compare to their mistakes last week?

As a developing teacher, I can’t do the second part (focusing on students) until I’ve made the first part (focusing on myself) routine. But that switch really makes all that initial work worthwhile.

Second: the phase change from journeyman to mastery — if I’m understanding Kneebone correctly — involves another such change in focus. Journeyman teachers focus on their students. Master teachers focus on helping other teachers help their students. They switch to a meta-level, and think about the profession itself: how to pass on — and improve! — professional skills, norms, and knowledge.

Once again, this journeyman-to-mastery switch can’t happen until after MANY years of journeyman-level effort. And, in fact, lots of people never make this second leap: they stay focused on the proximate, not the ultimate, effects of their work.

If you’ve been teaching for a while, perhaps you can see these steps in your work, and your colleagues’. Certainly I can see that progression in the schools where I have worked.

Teaching Implications

As teachers, we’re understandably tempted to ask: “How should I think about helping my students along this path? How can I help my students arrive at expertise?”

Kneebone doesn’t address this question directly, but I suspect I know part of the answer.

In Kneebone’s model, the path from apprentice to journeyman to mastery takes…literally…years. Probably decades.

Kneebone doesn’t object to repetitive drudgery; in fact, he considers it an essential step in the process of developing mastery.

For instance: the master tailor he interviews spent literally months sewing a specialized part of a pocket…over and over (and over) again. While he was doing so, he often felt irritated and confused — all too aware of the seeming pointlessness of the exercise. Only once he’d travelled further along the path did he recognize all the subtleties he had absorbed along the way.

So, I suspect Kneebone would tell me: “Andrew, get real. Your high-school sophomores will not become experts at writing — or Shakespeare, or grammar — in a year. Becoming an expert in Shakespeare — in anything — takes DECADES.”

Instead, I found Kneebone’s book to be most helpful as we think about teacher training: how we can reasonably expect apprentices in our profession explore and sift their experiences on their way to later stages of expertise.

A Final Distinction

While I think Kneebone’s book gives better guidance for training teachers (over several years) than teaching students (over several months), I do think the terms “novice” and “expert” are useful in understanding our day-to-day classroom work.

Specifically, we should be aware that our students (almost always) know much less than we do about the topic we’re teaching; they are, relatively speaking, “novices.” We should not act as if they’re experts; doing so will almost certainly overwhelm their working memory.

And, we should not abandon “expertise” as a goal — as long as we focus on “relative expertise.”

That is: my sophomores won’t be Shakespeare experts at the end of the year. But — if I’m doing my job right — they will have more expertise than they did before.

They’re better at parsing Shakespearean syntax.

They know more about King James I’s obsession with witches, and with deception. (Hello, Gunpowder Plot.)

They’re on the lookout for the words “do,” “done,” and “deed” as they make their way through the poetry.

They’re not experts, but they’re relative experts: that is, experts relative to themselves at the beginning of the year.

As long as we keep the goal of “relative” expertise in mind, then the novice/expert distinction provides lots of useful guidance for our work with students.

As long as we recognize that Kneebone’s insights apply more to teaching training than to student instruction, I think his book provides importand and helpful insights into the nuances, trials, and joys of our work.

* These terms, of course, raise questions. Kneebone considers them, and sticks with this terminology.

Kneebone, R. (2020). Expert: Understanding the path to mastery. Penguin UK.

When Prior Knowledge Bites Back: The Dangers of Knowing Too Much
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
March 07, 2023

When Prior Knowledge Bites Back: The Dangers of Knowing Too Much

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In this blog, we typically highlight the benefits of prior knowledge.

For example: if a student knows a lot about baseball, she’ll be much more successful in understanding a reading passage about baseball.

Young rowan tree seedling grow from old stump in a sunlit forest.

That same student could struggle mightily with a passage about cricket. What’s an “over”? A “wicket”? A “badger”?

In the world of cognitive load theory, prior knowledge helps because it reduces working memory load.

An expert knows relevant definitions, concepts, procedures – and the relationships among them.

And because experts have all that knowledge in long-term memory, they don’t need to noodle it around as much in working memory.

The teaching implications of this insight:

First: find out how much prior knowledge students have on any given topic.

Second: ensure student have the prior knowledge they need before starting on any given topic. Don’t start it until they do.

NB: This second insight has important implications for many project pedagogies.

This conclusion is well settled in cognitive load theory. But: is it always true?

Is it possible that prior knowledge might increase working memory load? Could it make thinking and problem solving more difficult?

Thinking the Unthinkable

Here’s a question:

“To mitigate the effects of climate change, would it be a good idea to plant more Douglas fir, oak, and beech trees in the Black Forest?”

I know a bit about climate change, and a bit about trees, and I’m generally inclined to say “yes.” Because I’m a novice – that is, I don’t have lots of prior knowledge on these topics – the question strikes me as straightforward.

However, if I were an expert, I might draw on my prior knowledge to see additional complexities in the question.

For instance…

…those trees might be vulnerable to particular diseases or pests,

…they might harm the ecosystem in the Black Forest,

…they might – paradoxically – do some tree thing or another that would ultimately exacerbate climate change rather than mitigate it.

In this case, an expert’s prior knowledge could introduce complicating variables – and thereby increase working memory load.

A research team, made up of scholars from Germany and Australia*, tested this hypothesis.

As you would expect, they asked forestry experts and forestry non-experts to consider (roughly) the tree-planting question above.

The experts considered the question more complicated than the novices did. That is: that said that it required more thought, more simultaneous contemplation of variables, and more complex thinking..

And – here’s the kicker – their answers weren’t any better than the novice’s answers.

In Other Words

Putting all these pieces together…

Forestry experts’ higher level of prior knowledge increased their perception of the problem’s complexity;

It did so (probably) because they thought of additional variables not included in the question;

These additional variables increased working memory load;

Because of additional strain on working memory, these experts didn’t benefit from their prior knowledge – and didn’t answer the question more effectively than novices.

Wow.

The research team then went ahead and tested this same idea with 4th graders in Australia.

As often happens in research, the details get complicated. The headline is: when they tested a classroom analog of the same problem, they got somewhat similar results.

Students with higher levels of prior knowledge DID perceive the cognitive load to be higher.

However, when those students solved problems, they scored higher than when they did not have relevant prior knowledge. (Remember: for the forestry example, higher cognitive load eliminated the experts’ advantage in solving the problem.)

In other words: the potential dangers of prior knowledge do show up in the classroom, not just in abstract research exercises.

Teaching Implications, Take II

Above I wrote:

First: find out how much prior knowledge students have on any given topic.

Second: ensure student have the prior knowledge they need before starting on any given topic. Don’t start it until they do.

Based on this study, I think we should add another implication:

Third: stop and consider – how might a student’s expert prior knowledge interfere with their learning of this concept? What other concepts or procedures might they draw into a question in ways that unhelpfully complicate their thinking?

At this point, I don’t think we have enough research into the dangers of prior knowledge to have refined or thorough guidance in answer to those new questions.

I do think, however, we should get in the habit of asking them.

TL;DR

Typically, prior knowledge benefits students by reducing working memory load.

Therefore, typically, we should ensure they have relevant prior knowledge before starting a topic.

In some cases – according to this research – prior knowledge can complicate thinking when experts bring in too many ideas from their knowledge base.

In these cases, we should be sure to think through those potential dangers, and head them off as best we can.

And: we should follow this research pool. It’s an intriguing topic!

* One of the researchers here is none other than Ollie Lovell, who wrote an EXCELLENT book on Cognitive Load Theory for teachers. You can read my review here.

Endres, T., Lovell, O., Morkunas, D., Rieß, W., & Renkl, A. (2022). Can prior knowledge increase task complexity?–Cases in which higher prior knowledge leads to higher intrinsic cognitive load. British Journal of Educational Psychology.

How Do Experts Think?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
October 12, 2021

How Do Experts Think?

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Perhaps you’ve heard the saying: “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

It means, more or less, we see what we’re trained to see.

If I bring a problem to a plumber, she’ll think about it like a plumbing problem. An economist, like an economics problem. A general, a military problem.

What does research tell us about this insight? And, does that research give us guidance about teaching and learning?

The Geoscientists and the Balloon

A research team led by Dr. Micah Goldwater wanted to explore this topic.

So, they asked a few hundred people these questions:

“A balloon floating is like _________ because _________.”

“Catching a cold is like _________ because _________.”

Those who answered the question fell into four distinct groups:

Expert geoscientists — who had an MA or PhD in geoscience

Intermediate geoscientists — who were studying geoscience

Expert vision scientists –who had an MA or PhD in vision science

Non-expert adults — who had not studied science in college

Goldwater’s team wanted to know: how often would people offer causal analogies? “A balloon floating is like hot water rising in a cold sea because they result from the same underlying causal principle.”

Deeper still, they wanted to know how often people offer those causal analogies spontaneously, and how often they need to be prompted to do so. (The research details get tricky here, so I’m simplifying a bit.)

Archimedes Catches a Cold

Sure enough, expert geoscientists spontaneously offered causal analogies for the balloon question — because they have a relevant geoscientific rule, called “Archimedes’ principle.”

However, expert vision scientists did not spontaneously give causal analogies, because their branch of science does not include a causally relevant analogy.

And neither group spontaneously proposed many causal analogies for “catching a cold,” because neither field builds on underlying relevant principles.

This finding — along with other parts of Goldwater’s research — suggests this conclusion: hammers typically see nails.

That is: experts spontaneously perceive, contemplate, and understand new information (“floating balloons”) through core principles of their field (“Archimedes’ principle”) — even though balloons don’t come up very often in geoscience.

Teaching Implications: Bad News, and Good

As I visit schools, I often hear teachers say “I want my students to think like historians” or “think like scientists” or “think like artists.” To accomplish this goal, some pedagogies encourage us to give students “expert tasks.”

Alas, Goldwater’s findings (and LOTS of other research) suggest that this bar might be MUCH too high. It takes years — decades? — to “think like a researcher” or “think like a coach.”

Even people with PhD’s in vision science don’t think causally about floating balloons unless explicitly prompted to do so.

As Dan Willingham writes in Why Don’t Students Like School?, “cognition early in training is fundamentally different from cognition late in training” (127).

This message often feels like bad news.

All those authentic tasks we’ve been giving students might not have the results we had hoped for. It’s extraordinarily difficult for students to think like a mathematician, even when we give them expert math tasks.

However, I see glimmers of hope in this gloomy conclusion.

My students (I teach high school English) won’t think like literary critics. However, I think they can and do become “experts” in much smaller sub-sub-sub-fields of English. (Warning: I’m about to switch from summarizing research to speculating about a classroom anecdote.)

When Comedy is Tragic

For instance: I recently gave my students a fairly complex definition of “comedy and tragedy.” This section of the unit required LOTS of direct instruction and LOTS of retrieval practice. After all: I’m the expert, and they’re novices.

My students then read a short story by Jhumpa Lahiri called “A Temporary Matter.” I asked them to look for elements of comedy and tragedy in that story.

Not only did they find those elements, they SPONTANEOUSLY pointed out Lahiri’s daring: she uses traditionally comic symbols (food, music, celebration, childbirth) as indicators of tragedy (“death and banishment”).

And, since then, they’ve been pouncing on tragic/comic symbolism, and other potentially innovative uses thereof.

These students aren’t (yet) expert literary critics. But on this very narrow topic, they starting to be flexible and inventive — a sign of budding expertise.

As long as I have a suitably narrow definition, a focused kind of pre-expertise is indeed a reasonable and achievable goal.

In Sum

Like lots of research in the field of “novices and experts,” Goldwater’s study warns us that experts really do think differently from novices, and that true expertise takes years to develop.

However, that insight shouldn’t scare us away from well-defined tasks that build up very local subsections of developing expertise. Our students aren’t yet capital-E Experts. And, the right-sized educational goals can move them towards ultimate Expertise.

 

Balancing Direct Instruction with Project-Based Pedagogies
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
December 14, 2019

Balancing Direct Instruction with Project-Based Pedagogies

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A month ago, I wrote about a Tom Sherrington essay proposing a truce between partisans of direct instruction and those of project-based learning (and other “constructivist pedagogies”).

In brief, Sherrington argues that both pedagogical approaches have their appropriate time in the learning process.

EARLY in schema formation, direct instruction helps promote learning for novices.

LATER in schema formation, project-based pedagogies can apply, enrich, and connect concepts for experts.

Today’s Update

At the time I wrote about Sherrington’s essay, it was available in a book on Education Myths, edited by Craig Barton.

I do recommend that book–several of its essays offer important insights. (See this post on Clare Sealy’s distinction between autobiographical and semantic memory.)

If you’d like to read Sherrington’s essay right away, I have good news: he has published it on his website.

Happily, his contribution to the debate is now more broadly available.

A Final Note

Like other thinkers in this field, Sherrington proposes the novice/expert divide as the most important framework for understanding when to adapt pedagogical models.

In my own thinking, I’m increasingly interested in understanding and defining the transition points from one to the other.

That is: how can we tell when our novices have become experts?

What are the signs and symptoms of expertise? How can we describe those signs and symptoms so that 3rd grade teachers and 7th grade teachers can make sense of them?

Or, science teachers and history teachers?

Or, soccer coaches as well as dance instructors?

In other words: I agree with Sherrington’s framework, but I think it’s incomplete without clearer guidance about the novice/expert continuum.

Do Expert Teachers See More Meaningful Classrooms?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
June 30, 2018

Do Expert Teachers See More Meaningful Classrooms?

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Why do chess experts win more chess matches than novices?

This question has a perfectly straightforward answer: they know more about chess. Obviously.

expert teacher vision

Forty-five years ago, William Chase and Herbert Simon tested another hypothesis. Perhaps, they speculated, chess experts see the world differently than do chess novices.

They don’t just think differently. The literally see differently. Their chess knowledge changes their perception.

Sure enough, as Chase and Simon predicted, chess experts see chess boards as meaningful groups of chess pieces.

This chess board shows a modified French Dragon Attack.

That chess board shows a King-and-Bishop vs. King-and-Rook problem.

Chess novices, however, see chess boards as scatterings of individual pieces.

This chess board shows…a bunch of pieces.

That chess board shows…a different bunch of pieces.

Because the expert sees a different chess board, she sorts through her possible moves much more efficiently. And: she’s likelier to win the game.

Expert Teacher Vision: Are Experienced Teachers Like Chess Grand Masters?

Does this finding hold true for teachers? Does expert teacher vision differ from that of novice teachers?

Charlotte Wolff (and others) explored this question in a study that used eye-tracking software to understand where teachers look.

Sure enough, they found that expert teachers look at classrooms differently.

For instance: expert teachers “appear to be searching for activity between students,” even “following posture and body movements.”

Novices, on the other hand, focus on irrelevant details: for example, a student’s “fluorescent green shoelaces.”

When you look at the photos in the study, you’ll see that novices spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at unimportant details. A painting on the wall. People walking by in the hallway. Even an electrical outlet oddly placed in the wall.

Expert Teacher Vision: Eyes and Words

Intriguingly, Wolff & Co found that experienced teachers used different words to describe what they saw. In particular, they commented more frequently on feelings, and on the events happening in the room.

For my taste, this part of the study needs further elaboration. I’d love to hear about they ways that experts describe their classrooms differently from novices.

Here’s why.

A novice teacher might reasonably ask this question: “How do I train myself to have expert teacher vision?”

The likeliest answer is: practice, practice, practice. We don’t know many good shortcuts for developing expertise. It just takes time.

However, if we knew more about the words that experts use, we might train new teachers to speak and think that way when they comment on classrooms. These verbal habits — a kind of deliberate teacherly practice — just might help novice teachers hone their visual skills.

 

 

Crucial in the Classroom: Distinguishing between Experts & Novices
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
May 21, 2018

Crucial in the Classroom: Distinguishing between Experts & Novices

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Over at A Chemical Orthodoxy, Adam Boxer explores the crucial distinction between novices & experts.

novices & experts

In particular, he offers some helpful diagrams to depict key differences. Not only do novices and experts know different facts and feel at ease with different procedures. They think very differently about the facts and procedures they know.

A few of Adam’s essential conclusions:

Experts notice features and meaningful patterns of information that are not noticed by novices…

Experts are able to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little attentional effort…

Though experts know their disciplines thoroughly, this does not guarantee that they are able to teach others…

Novices & Experts: The Teaching Implications

First: We can’t teach novices by treating them like experts. They won’t learn what we want them to learn, because they don’t yet think like experts.

In fact, as this famous chess study demonstrates, they don’t even notice the same things that experts see. Even before they think about the world, experts literally perceive the world differently. (I’m an English teacher, so when I say literally, I mean literally.)

Second: This insight gives teachers a clear goal.

To lead our students to ultimate expertise, we want them to know the facts, procedures, and patterns essential to a particular discipline.

Adam’s article gives two helpful examples of exactly this work. How do we help novices become experts in English? In Geography? And—by extension—the topics you teach? Check out the link above.

Novices & Experts: Project Pedagogies

Third: Some pedagogical strategies that sound good just might not work.

“Authentic assessment,” for example, has a nice ring to it, and plenty of authentic assessments can motivate students to learn deeply.

At the same time, some authentic assessments might ask novices to behave like experts. If my senior elective in business economics asks my students to start a business…there’s a real danger here. This expectation might require more expertise of my novice learners than they can plausibly demonstrate.

To return to the list above:

They might not yet notice patterns of employee or consumer behavior that experts would spot in a second…

They might need LOTS of attentional effort—far more than they plausibly have to spare—to pull up essential information from different places. Clearly, they have to consider payroll, marketing strategies, the lease they’re negotiating, and the applicable state laws…

My own expertise in running a business doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve explained any of those points clearly enough in the first place.

If you run across a teaching philosophy that asks novices to think like experts, you should at least ask hard questions.

Better yet: revise its expectations so that the novices we teach can make the gradual progress that least ultimately to expertise.

If you’d like to read further on this topic, Chapter 6 of Daniel Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?  will guide you well. It’s grounding principle: “Experts think differently from novices.”

Beware: Too Much Structure Hinders Creativity (for Experts)
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January 26, 2018

Beware: Too Much Structure Hinders Creativity (for Experts)

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structure inhibits creativity

How can teachers foster our students’ creativity?

To explore that question, we can also reverse it: what inhibits creativity?

Two researchers at the University of Toronto wondered if information structure hinders creativity.  That is: do we interfere with imaginative impulses if we give people information within clear and logical hierarchies.

If that’s true, could we encourage creativity by presenting information in unstructured ways?

100 Nouns

Kim and Zhong explored this possibility with two different research paradigms.

In the first, they gave college students lists of 100 nouns and asked them “to generate as many sentences as they want” using those words.

Half of these students were given nouns in obvious groupings. All the “games” were listed together: chess, bingo, backgammon. All the “bodies of water”: river, ocean, waterfall. All the “tools,” “pieces of jewelry,” and “trees.” In other words, students got these nouns within a clearly structured system.

The other half of the students saw those 100 nouns listed in a jumble: meteor, wildebeest, soccer, hotel, Ukraine. This second list, clearly, lacks any coherent system.

When the sentences that students wrote were rated for creativity, researchers found a clear difference. Students who saw nouns in a structured list wrote notably less creative sentences that those who saw the jumbled list.

For these students, logical structure hinders creativity. Absence of that structure promotes it.

Lego Aliens

To be sure of their conclusion, Kim and Zhong then asked different students to build an alien out of Lego bricks.

As you’ve already predicted, half of the participants got their Legos pre-sorted by shape and color. The other half got the same pieces all mixed together in a bin.

Here again, structure reduced creativity. Legos mixed together prompted more creative aliens than Legos sorted into tidy categories.

“Structure hinders creativity”: classroom implications

Reading this study, teachers who value creativity might be tempted to reduce cognitive structures as much as possible.

Here’s my advice: DON’T DO THAT.

Why? Beginners need structure to learn. This study was done with experts. College students are already very good at writing sentences. They devoted childhood years to building objects out of Lego.

In other words, they were not learning a new skill. They were, instead, being creative with a well-tuned skill.

For this reason, we should take this study as guidance for student creativity in skills they have already mastered. For skills they are still learning, students need lots of guidance, and structure.

Interrupting Skilled Students
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July 13, 2017

Interrupting Skilled Students

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AdobeStock_65282787_Credit

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.

It Ain’t What You Know, It’s…Oh, No, Sorry, It IS What You Know
Ian Kelleher
Ian Kelleher
January 22, 2017

It Ain’t What You Know, It’s…Oh, No, Sorry, It IS What You Know

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AdobeStock_92720672_Credit

I sense that the tide is beginning to turn on the knowledge-versus-skills debate, ‘21st Century’ or otherwise. There is an increasingly confident voice shouting a phrase that teachers have shouted for the few thousands of years that there have been teachers: knowledge is really important.

Yes, even in this Googleable world, knowledge is important. We could patiently wait for the “importance of knowledge” pendulum to swing back, or we could, as evidence-informed professionals, boldly provide an epistemic nudge [1].

This post is a concise argument for the importance of knowledge, and offers some research informed ideas for teachers on how to build it.

I recently heard Robert Pondisco, senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, give a wonderful talk at ResearchED DC on the importance of a recommitment to teaching knowledge. During his talk, Pondisco eloquently painted the picture of President Obama during his first Inaugural Address, glancing down the length of the Mall to the Lincoln Memorial where Martin Luther King Jr. said those famous words not that long ago.

And then Obama delivered the words in this clip. It was a powerful moment in American history. And Pondisco posed the question: what knowledge would children need to have to understand the significance of these words at this moment? Would they have this knowledge? How would they have got in? Who might have it and who might not? How does this fit in the existing inequality gap? Pondisco’s questions offer a fascinating thought experiment into the importance of knowledge.

Acknowledge the limits of active working memory

Active working memory can hold fewer things for less time than most people realize. Though it is hard to measure, 7 things for 30 seconds for adults is a well agreed upon estimate [2]. For children the numbers are lower. And there is a trade off too – we can hold more things but for progressively less time.

How do these limitations fit my argument?

Having knowledge stored in long term memory frees up the active working memory to more effectively help with higher order thinking tasks. In other words, having stored knowledge helps us think.

Even project based learning needs knowledge

What about things like project based learning (PBL): the antithesis of the “lecture, lecture, test” mode of teaching? How important is it to be very purposeful in teaching knowledge when we want students to be on a voyage of independent exploration? It turns out that explicitly teaching knowledge in very deliberate ways is extremely important for PBL: make-or-break important, in fact.

I will tuck deeply into the deficiencies of PBL at a later date. But the crux of the research-supported argument is that for project based learning to have any measure of success, independent inquiry needs to be balanced with didactic instruction. Without foundational information, students lack sufficient knowledge and skills to be able to engage with the task.

In fact, failing to provide adequate support for knowledge and skills may actually contribute to the achievement gap, as students from disadvantaged backgrounds often enter school with deficiencies in knowledge and skills that are necessary for success in the project [3, 4, 5].

Part of pedagogical content knowledge, that highly interlinked combination of subject knowledge and how to teach it, is to know exactly what knowledge scaffolding students need in order to successfully launch into a project. So if we want to create great projects, which we do, we also need to be great at teaching knowledge – and great at discerning what knowledge that needs to be.

Teaching for stickiness

No matter where in the spectrum from direct-instruction-focused to project-focused we happen to be teaching, we need to get content knowledge to reliably stick in long-term memory. Fortunately there is robust research to guide us here. It suggests both things we should do and should not do.

Things Not To Do

(1) rereading notes

A trip down the aisles of Staples in August confirms what we already know – students love highlighters. But research suggests that the staple of studying, rereading notes or the textbook, is a terrible way to study. It tends to lead to what Brown, Roediger and McDaniel call “the illusion of fluency” [6], where students become so familiar with the text that they believe they know it before they actually do.

HIghlight

(2) misusing flashcards

Similarly, students tend to use flashcards in entirely the wrong way – which is hard for such a simple device. They tend to turn them over too quickly to see the answer. The key part is how one lingers in the moment of not knowing. The key part is the moment before you turn it over. Flashcards work best when students ponder difficult questions, even when the answers prove elusive.

Things To Do

(1) retrieval practice

Retrieval practice is this idea of trying to recall knowledge from memory. Even if a student is unable to, research suggests that the act of trying helps memory storage and recall. Retrieval practice can take many forms: self testing, proper use of flashcards or online tools such as Quizlet, or taking a sheet of paper and writing out everything you know on a subject.

But I am sure you can be creative and add to this list. The key is having students try deeply to recall, then  having them check this against their notes or model answers.

(2) spacing

There is great research around the spacing effect. That is, students should study, leave a gap, then study again. We can, for example, coach students to space their studying rather than use massed studying. Massed studying does not lead to durable learning.

Instead, allowing your memory to get a bit rusty between study sessions makes the next study session more challenging. In doing so, it helps create knowledge that is both more durable and more flexible. This is a concept that Clark and Bjork call “desirable difficulty” [7].

But what is the optimal spacing gap for your students, your subject, and the content you are teaching? This is a great idea for you to play with and do your own disciplined inquiry. (You might check out Scott MacClintic’s forthcoming article on gathering classroom data for suggestions.)

(3) formative assessments

Replace pop quizzes with no- or low-stakes formative assessments. As you give these quizzes, say something along the lines of, “this is for you to figure out where you are, for me to figure out where you are, and for us both to adjust what we do accordingly.” This technique is retrieval practice plus. A further benefit is that more of the brain restructuring associated with learning occurs when we struggle and when we get things wrong [8, 9]. Getting things wrong is an important part of learning, and we need to craft no- or low-stress opportunities for this to happen.

(4) interleaving

Interleaving is a way to deliberately build the spacing effect into how you design your courses. Instead of starting the year with unit one, followed, perhaps, by unit two then unit three, there is an alternative way to organize things that will promote learning. After moving on to a new unit, plan on revisiting the core knowledge at least a couple more times at spaced intervals later on [10].

(5) pre-testing

“Research suggests that starting a unit of study with a pre-test helps create more enduring learning. It appears to give students something on which to hang subsequent information. This test should, of course, not be graded, or if it is, it should be graded for effort rather than correctness.

The other point of this pre-test is to give the teacher an idea of where the level of the class generally is, and what knowledge each individual student brings with them already, so that the teacher can tailor subsequent classes to best match the needs of the class. It is important to avoid seeding boredom, and to avoid the potential skipping of foundational knowledge that could prevent future learning. These are two common toxic effects on learning” [11].

A thought on how these suggestions link to assessment

Since a little kid, I have always enjoyed words. Some are more fun to play with than others, of course, but one of the best is ‘facile.’ We often use it to refer to someone who appears so good at something they do it with an effortless ease. But its more nuanced meaning is to refer to a demonstration of thinking that at first glance seems neat, concise and elegant, but which on closer inspection is only neat, concise and elegant because it is oversimplistic, itself lacking in nuanced details.

So this article, I believe, leads us to a future one that needs to be written: how do we avoid facile demonstrations of knowledge by our students? How do we craft assessments that steer students away from this? Or, as Rob Coe and David Didau put it, where will students think hard in this lesson? But in the time before this second article is written, I encourage you to explore this idea yourself. And if you have ideas as to what should go in such an article, please let us know.

 

  1. Thank you, Troy Dahlke, for this playful term
  2. Cowan, N. (2008). What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?. Progress in Brain Research, 169, 323-338. [link]
  3. Education Endowment Foundation Analysis [link]
  4. Kirschner, P. A., Sweller, J., & Clark, R. E. (2006). Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: An analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching. Educational Psychologist, 41(2), 75-86. [link]
  5. Kirschner, P. A., & van Merriënboer, J. J. (2013). Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education. Educational psychologist, 48(3), 169-183. [link]
  6. Brown, P. C., Roediher, H. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (2014). Make it stick: The science of successful learning. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
  7. Clark, C. M., & Bjork, R. A. (2014). When and why introducing difficulties and errors can enhance instruction. In V. A. Benassi, C. E. Overson, & C. M. Hakala (Eds.), Applying the Science of Learning in Education: Infusing psychological science into the curriculum.  [link] 
  8. See this accessible research summary from Robert Bjork at UCLA
  9. Moser, J. S., Schroder, H. S., Heeter, C., Moran, T. P., & Lee, Y. H. (2011). Mind Your Errors Evidence for a Neural Mechanism Linking Growth Mind-Set to Adaptive Posterror Adjustments. Psychological Science, 21(2), 1484-1489. [link]
  10. Blasiman, R. N. (2016). Distributed Concept Reviews Improve Exam Performance. Teaching of Psychology, 44(1), 46-50. [link]
  11. Whitman, G. and Kelleher, I. (2016). Neuroteach: Brain science and the future of education. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.