Tag: MBE

I’ve been discussing a topic with colleagues in recent months, and want to share my thinking with you.

The outline for this blog post is:

An observation/question that has been nagging at me, then

A theory about the answer to the question, then

Possible implications of that theory.

Here goes:

A Puzzling Problem

In recent years, as I listen to discussions on BIG EDUCATIONAL TOPICS, I frequently find myself surprised by this truth:

Education is full of folks who are

1. Obviously smart,
2. Obviously well informed,
3. Obviously concerned about their students, our profession, and our society, and
4. FEROCIOUSLY, ANGRILY at odds with one another.

Seriously, if folks could punch one another online, Twitter would have LOTS of broken noses.

This observation leads to a straightforward question: why? Why do these ferocious disagreements persist?

If many of us think ably and know a lot and care deeply, it’s surprising that we disagree…and keep disagreeing. The heated arguments just don’t change much.

In many scientific fields, heated arguments result – over time, at least – in the ultimate persuasiveness of one case or another.

Plate tectonics used to be a controversial topic, with lots of heated rhetoric. Today, those debates among smart, knowledgeable, and caring people have resulted in something like consensus: the theory is almost certainly correct.

Surgeons now wash their hands before surgery. That practice was initially scorned, but now the anti-handwashing argument seems impossible to understand. OF COURSE one side prevailed in the debate.

Why haven’t educational debates followed this pattern? Why haven’t our disagreements led ultimately to agreements?

One Possibility

I’ve been discussing a possible answer with several friends: here goes.

I wonder if our debates remain so heated because we don’t agree on the GOALS of education. In fact, we aren’t even in the habit of discussing those goals – or the habit of connecting them to teaching practices.

Off the top of my head, I can imagine all sorts of big-picture goals for the millions of dollars and millions of hours our society devotes to creating and maintaining its educational system.

If I were to ask 100 people this question, I can imagine a wide range of answers: “the goal of our educational system is to…

1. Create a workforce for the future,” or
2. Help students understand and enact the word of God,” or
3. Know the best that has been thought or said,” or
4. Ensure that individual students develop to their fullest potential,” or
5. Promote justice, equity, and peace,” or
6. Preserve our culture and way of life,” or
7. Raise scores on key benchmark assessments,” or
8. Prepare children and society for an unpredictable future,” or
9. Develop students who see themselves as readers, historians, scientists, etc.,” or
10. Ensure that students know the curriculum,” or
11. Create an informed and civic-minded electorate,” or
12. Foster a love of learning so that students become life-long learners,” or …

…and so forth.

Perhaps the reason our debates about teaching strategies go nowhere is that we’re in fact trying to go different places.

That is:

I might read about a teaching strategy and think “Pish posh. That’s obviously bonkers. It simply won’t accomplish the core aims of education.”

And yet, the person proposing the strategy might well have entirely different aims. And – sure enough – the teaching strategy being proposed might achieve their core aims, if not mine.

If, for example, I practice the Awesome Watson Learning Method, I might to do because it fosters a love of learning (goal 12) and ensures that students see themselves as writers and programmers and doctors (goal 9).

A critic might respond: “that pedagogy won’t accomplish our goal!” And that criticism might be sincere, because the pedagogy doesn’t (let’s say) help students “learn the greatest that has been thought or said” (goal 3). Yet because I’m not striving for goal 3, I’m genuinely vexed and puzzled by my critic’s (obviously incorrect) critique.

Humbling Implications

If I’m right that our “debates” simply talk past one another because we don’t share — or discuss — educational goals, that realization suggests several next steps.

Step A:

The next time I hear someone espouse a teaching method that strikes me as foolish, I should switch from contempt to curiosity.

Rather than “pish posh,” I should say: “That’s intriguing — tell me more!”

If I ask the right questions in an open-minded, non-snarky way, I might discover an entirely unexpected goal at the end of the process. I might not agree about the importance of that goal, but I might …

…understand why the other person champions it, and

…recognize that the teaching strategy I once thought foolish might in fact accomplish it.

Sadly, this “switch from contempt to curiosity” is really difficult. I will face the constant temptation to ask leading questions and trap my interlocutors into admitting that my goal surpasses theirs in wisdom and beauty.

(The best book I’ve read that discusses this problem is David McRaney’s How Minds Change. It has really shaped my thinking on this challege.)

Step B:

Since 2008, I’ve been thinking about using scientific research — especially in psychology and neuroscience — to improve my teaching.

Obviously, this approach focuses on numerical measurements: calculations, graphs, statistics.

In other words: I believe that my teaching strategies accomplish my goals because I’ve got numbers that say so.

However, several of the big-picture goals listed above simply can’t be measured.

How would I know if the Awesome Watson Teaching Method…

… helps students become life-long learners?

… ultimately fosters civic engagement?

… encourages students to live and act according to God’s word?

The end point for these goals (and others) lies decades away — and will be influenced by THOUSANDS of other forces.

This fact, however, does not necessarily invalidate the potential importance of those goals.

Teachers might not be able to show a study — with p-values in the appropriate range, and a Cohen’s d above 0.2 — concluding that their teaching method promotes justice and peace. But that impossibility does not mean that their goal has no merit.

In other words: I’m attracted to a science-y approach to thinking about teaching practice, and I like being able to cite all those numbers. (92% of in-classroom studies show that  retrieval practice promotes long-term memory better than control conditions!)

But science-y approaches can’t routinely dictate answers to moral or ethical questions.

Another Possibility?

Of course, I have a MUCH simpler explanation for the fact that many people disagree with me — often angrily:

Those other people could be daft, ignorant, and/or immoral.

That explanation has several benefits.

• It’s easy to summarize.
• It converts me from a person into a hero/protagonist.
• It frees me from the need to listen to their foolish, ill-informed, morally-tainted ideas.

At the same time, I find this simpler explanation unsatisfying — because I disagree with many people who don’t strike me as daft or wicked.

Perhaps there’s a third explanation?

TL;DR

I’m trying to focus less on why others are wrong. I’m trying to focus more on their implied goals for education — goals that have led them to teaching advice that puzzles or alarms me.

When I understand their goals, I might better understand — and learn from — their teaching suggestions.

Perhaps you’ll join me in this effort — and let me know what you learn.

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In case the title of this post doesn’t make sense: researchers in the world of mindset encourage a less focus on performance goals (test scores, etc.) and more focus on learning goals (“look! I made progress!”).

This blog post isn’t about mindset-y learning goals, but about society’s broader goals for education.

I live in Boston, and we just had an ENORMOUS snow storm. TWELVE INCHES of snow fell in just a few hours. It was, as we say, “a monstah.”

Oh, wait a minute, that didn’t happen.

The FORECAST said we’d get a monstah. In reality, by the end of the day, exactly 0.0 inches of snow had accumulated on my sidewalk. It was as close to “nothing” as was the Patriots’ chance of winning the Super Bowl this year.

You can imagine the public response:

Hah! All the “experts” with all their science-y equipment and equations and models and colorful images … they all got it wrong. AGAIN!

That’s it: I’m done with all this weather forecasting nonsense. I’ll rely on my trick knee to tell me when the weather is a-changing.

While that response is predictable, I also think it’s unfair. In fact, believe it or not, it reminded me of the work we do at Learning and the Brain.

In most ways, weather forecasting has almost nothing to do with cognitive science. But the few similarities might help explain what psychology and neuroscience research can (and can’t do) for teachers.

I want to focus on three illustrative similarities.

Spot the Butterfly

First, both meteorologists and cognitive scientists focus on fantastically complex systems.

In the world of weather:

As the butterfly theory reminds us, small changes over here (a butterfly flapping its wings in my backyard) could cause enormous changes over there (a typhoon in Eastern Samar).

In the world of education:

Whether we’re looking at neurons or IEPs or local school budgets or working memory systems or mandated annual testing, we’ve got an almost infinite number of interconnected variables.

Research might tell us to “do this thing!”, but the effect of that recommendation will necessarily depend on all those other variables.

We should not be shocked, therefore, that a one-step intervention (e.g.: growth mindset training) doesn’t have exactly the effect we want it to. That one intervention interacts with all those other complex systems.

The research-based suggestion isn’t necessarily wrong, but it also can’t briskly overcome all the other forces that influence learning.

Possibilities and Probabilities

Second: like weather forecasts, research-based suggestions focus on probabilities.

That is: the weather channel didn’t say “Boston is going to get 12 inches of snow!”

If you looked past the simplified headline, it said:

“We’ve seen conditions more-or-less like this 100 times before.

2 of those times, we got less than 2 inches

8 times, we got 2-6 inches

25 times, 6-10 inches

45 times, 10-14 inches

15 times, 14-18 inches

5 times, more than 18 inches.

Make plans accordingly.”

They don’t know for sure; they’re making predictions based on previous cases — and those previous cases provide a range of possibilities.

Notice, by the way, that the forecasters weren’t exactly wrong. New York and Philly got pounded; they got the “monstah” we were expecting.

But — because a butterfly somewhere flapped its wings — the storm went slightly south and left us alone.

So, too, with psychology and neuroscience research aimed at the classroom.

Researchers can say: “this strategy helped students score 5% higher on the end-of-year exam … ON AVERAGE.”

That means the strategy (probably) helped more students than it hurt. But the effects were different student-by-student.

Who knows: the strategy could have made learning harder for some students.

We’re looking at probabilities, not panaceas.

The Bigger the Claim…

Third: expert forecasters get their predictions right more often than they get them wrong. And — this is crucial — the “wrong” results come more often for big, outlier events.

Sunny days in June? Glum rain in November?

Relatively easy to predict.

A once-in-a-generation hurricane? A monstah snow storm?

MUCH harder to predict. We just have less data about unusual events because…they’re unusual!

So too in the world of research-based teaching advice.

I honestly think that researchers get their advice “right” much of the time — at least within the narrow confines of the context they describe.

That is: a large collection of well-designed studies probably merits careful consideration.

At the same time, if researchers loudly announce a big, outlier conclusion, we should be ready for that claim to collapse upon further investigation.

Imagine that researchers claim…

… dancing a hornpipe helps students learn fractions, or

… standing in a “power pose” does something worthwhile/important, or

… teachers don’t need to know anything about a topic to teach it well.

In each of these cases, the extremity of the claim should prepare us for doubts.

Equally true, let’s say “research shows” that a particular teaching strategy has a HUGE effect on learning.

It’s possible, but honestly kinda rare.

For instance, as I wrote recently, I found a meta-analysis claiming that the “jigsaw” method has a cohen’s d value of 1.20. As stats people know, that’s simply ENORMOUS.

It’s possible…but I wasn’t at all surprised to find very little support for that claim. I honestly can’t think of any teaching intervention that makes that much of a difference on its own.

TL;DR

Like weather forecasters, psychology and neuroscience research…

… looks at enormously complicated systems,

… offers conclusions best understood as probabilities, and

… is likeliest to be right when it makes modest claims.

In brief: this field can be fantastically useful to classroom teachers, as long as we understand its challenges and limitations.

Our teacherly “trick knee” might be right from time to time. But wisely considered research will probably be better.

Here at Learning and the Brain, we bring together psychology (the study of the MIND), neuroscience (the study of the BRAIN), and pedagogy (the study of EDUCATION).

That is: we bring together THREE complex fields, and try to make sense of their interactions, differences, and commonalities.

Such interdisciplinary work creates meaningful challenges.

In any one of those fields, scholars argue about basic definitions and concepts. So, you can imagine the debates that rage when all 3 disciplines together. (Quick: what does the word “transfer” mean? Each field defines that word quite differently…)

So, who decides what “we” think in the field of MBE? What core beliefs hold us together, and how do we know?

One Answer: Ask Delphi

To solve this puzzle, Dr. Tracy Tokuhama-Espinosa, Dr. Ali Nouri, and Dr. David Daniel organized a “Delphi Panel.”

That is: they asked 100+ panelists to respond to several statements about the intersection of psychology, neuroscience, and education. (Full disclosure: I’m almost sure I was 1 of the 100 — but I don’t have specific memories of my contributions.)

They then crunched all those answers to determine a) the panelists’ points of agreement, and b) their enduring concerns about those points.

For instance, 95% of the panelists agreed with this statement:

Human brains are unique as human faces. While the basic structure of most humans’ brains is the same (similar parts in similar regions), no two brains are identical. The genetic makeup unique to each person combines with life experiences and free will to shape neural pathways.

However, several participants disagreed with the inclusion of the phrase “free will” — including some who agreed with the statement overall.

This Delphi Panel method, in other words, BOTH looks for points of consensus, AND preserves nuanced disagreements about them.

 21 Tenets, and Beyond…

So, what do “we” in the world of MBE believe?

The Delphi Panel supported 6 principles and 21 tenets across a wide range of topics: motivation, facial expression, tone of voice, sleep, stress, novelty, even nutrition. (91% of panelists agreed with the statement “NUTRITION influences learning. Basic nutritional needs are common to all humans, however, the frequency of food intake and some dietary needs vary by individual.”)

Taken all together, they add up to several Key Concepts — almost all of which matter to teachers who read this blog.

For instance:

Teachers should understand some basic definitions, and beware of some enduring neuromyths. (“Learning styles,” here’s looking at you.)

We should know that attention networks can improve, and so can executive functions. (I’m a little concerned about this last statement, as it implies false hopes about working memory training.)

Teachers should know that affect matters as much as cognition; that retrieval practice and spacing really work; that growth mindset is a thing; that interleaving helps.

Excellent Timing

In fact, several of this Delphi Panel’s conclusions align with our upcoming conference on Calming Anxious Brains (starting November 19).

For instance:

STRESS influences learning. However, what stresses one person and how may not stress another in the same way. (95% agreement)

ANXIETY influences learning. However, what causes anxiety in one person may not cause anxiety in another. (97% agreement)

In other words: our students aren’t little learning computers. Their emotional systems — when muddled by the stress and anxiety of Covid times — influence learning profoundly.

Teachers should attend to our students’ emotional lives not because of some misguided mushiness; instead, we do so because those lives can make learning much harder, or much more fluent and natural.

MBE research, and the Delphi Panel, say so.

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As a bonus, here’s Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa explaining the “The Difference between Mind, Brain and Education, Educational Neuroscience and the Learning Sciences”:

I recently spent two hours talking with a group of splendid teachers from Singapore about Mindset Theory.

We talked about “charging” and “retreating.” We discussed “performance goals” and “learning goals.” Of course, “precise praise” merited lots of attention.

At the end of our session, several of their insightful questions focused on systemic change:

How can we help teachers (not just students) develop a growth mindset?

How can we change our grading system to promote GM goals?

What language should we use throughout the school to talk about learning and development?

These questions — and others like them — got me thinking:

We know that psychology and neuroscience research has so much to offer teachers, learners, and education. What systems should be in place to spread the word? 

Thinking Big

This question gets complicated quickly.

In the first place, teaching will (almost) always be INDIVIDUAL work taking place within a complex SYSTEM.

In some cases, we want teachers to have lots of freedom — say, to try out teaching strategies suggested by cognitive science.

In other cases, we want teachers to follow their school leaders’ guidance — say, when leaders follow wise psychology research.

How can we get that balance right?

• In England, I believe, a national agency (OFSTED) has evaluation standards that apply to all schools and teachers.
• France is in the process of creating a Council to vet research-based advice to schools and teachers. (LatB speaker Stanislas DeHaene is taking a leading role.)

In the US, of course, local control of schools makes such a system hard to imagine.

What might we do instead? What levers can we push?

I know of one organization — Deans for Impact — that focuses on teacher education.

Their logic makes great sense.

If we can ensure that teacher training programs incorporate cognitive science wisely, we can change the beliefs and practices of a generation of teachers.

Now THAT would — as they say — “move the needle.”

D4I has published a number of immensely useful summaries and reports. This one, for instance, briskly summarizes six core principles of learning: the research behind them, and their classroom implications.

Focus on Schools

Instead of teacher training, we might focus on schools as systems.

Eric Kalenze (blog here) has written a splendid book about creating a school within a school. What The Academy Taught Us doesn’t focus on cognitive science, but it does offer a chalk-in-hand view of building new systems from scratch.

In Kalenze’s telling, a supportive and inspiring principal created just the right combination to allow for meaningful change. (And a school district’s overly rigid policies brought this hopeful experiment to an end.)

I know of several independent schools that are doing exactly this work. The Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning at St. Andrew’s School has been guiding their faculty — and teachers across the country — for over a decade.

The Peter Clark Center for MBE at the Breck School and the Kravis Center for Excellence in Teaching at Loomis Chaffee (the school where I work) both do excellent work in this field.

Perhaps this “Center” model will spread widely throughout schools in the US. If so, these highly local “Deans for Impact”-like initiatives just might — gradually but powerfully — shape the future of teaching.

One By One

At the same time, my own experience suggests the importance of working teacher by teacher.

I attended my first Learning and the Brain conference in 2008. Inspired by the possibilities of combining psychology, neuroscience, and education, I began my own independent exploration.

Although I don’t run a school or supervise teachers, I’m able to spread the word — both as a classroom teacher, and in my work as a consultant (hello Singapore!).

And here’s where Learning and the Brain conferences continue to be so valuable.

The more individual teachers who attend — the more groups of teachers who pool together to share excitement and ideas — the more we can expand networks and create the movement we need.

Perhaps the best way to change the complex system is: one teacher at a time.

I hope you’ll join us in Boston in November!