{"id":6288,"date":"2021-09-21T08:00:41","date_gmt":"2021-09-21T13:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=6288"},"modified":"2021-09-21T19:56:40","modified_gmt":"2021-09-22T00:56:40","slug":"why-dont-my-high-school-students-just-follow-my-advice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/why-dont-my-high-school-students-just-follow-my-advice\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Don’t My High-School Students Just Follow My Advice?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been teaching for several centuries now. You’d think my students would believe me when I tell them how to make their sentences better. Or how to interpret literary passages. Or how to succeed in life.<\/p>\n

Why don’t they?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Recent research suggests one potential answer: because my advice isn’t very good<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story…<\/p>\n

London Calling<\/h2>\n

A research team in London, led by PhD student Madeleine Moses-Payne, looked at research into adolescent metacognition<\/strong>: their ability to assess the correctness of their own judgments.<\/p>\n

And, they looked at teens’ willingness to accept advice — good and bad — from adults.<\/p>\n

In this case, the metacognition and “advice” were about a kind of space-themed video game. The participants had to determine — as quickly as possible — if there were more of species X or species Y on a planet.<\/p>\n

The species were simply blobs in different colors. So, the participants made a snap judgment: are there more blue or more yellow blobs on the screen? (You can see some images from the study here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

After the participants made their guess, they then rated their own confidence in their judgment; that’s the metacognition part.<\/p>\n

And occasionally they got guidance from a “space advisor,” saying either “there are more blue blobs” or “more yellow blobs.” Most of the time (70%) the advisor was correct; 30% it was wrong.<\/p>\n

What did researchers learn by putting all these variables together<\/a>?<\/p>\n

This Depends on That<\/h2>\n

Moses-Payne’s methodology included 3 age groups: children (8-9 years old), early adolescents (12-13), and late adolescents (16-17).<\/p>\n

She wanted to know if data patterns changed with time. Here’s what she found:<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: adolescents (both early and late) were better at metacognition<\/em>. That is, their confidence in their judgment aligned more precisely with the quality of their guesses, compared to the children.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: adolescents rejected more adult advice than children did.<\/p>\n

And, here’s the kicker:<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: adolescents rejected more bad<\/strong> advice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: children<\/em> lacked metacognitive certainty in the correctness of their judgements. Therefore, they let adult advice — even bad advice — sway their decision making.<\/p>\n

However, adolescents<\/em> had more accurate metacognitive confidence in their judgment. Therefore, they accepted<\/em> good advice<\/em> when they weren’t certain<\/em>, but rejected<\/em> bad advice<\/em> when they were certain<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In Moses-Payne’s pithy summary:<\/p>\n

adolescents, in contrast to children, take on others’ advice less often, but only when the advice is misleading.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So: why do my students resist my advice? Maybe they resist it when I’m wrong<\/em>…<\/p>\n

Not So Fast<\/h2>\n

So far, this research design makes a lot of sense, and leads to a helpful — and usefully provocative — conclusion.<\/p>\n

At the same time, I think we should notice the important limitations of its conclusions.<\/p>\n

In this research, the “advice” was either a correct or an incorrect answer<\/em> about perceiving<\/em> the relative number of colored blobs<\/em> on a screen.<\/p>\n

It was not, say, advice about career choice, or about the best strategy to use when solving a math problem, or about when to listen to your mother. (ALWAYS listen to your mother.)<\/p>\n

Most of the time, in fact, we don’t use the word “advice” to describe information that’s factually correct or incorrect. “Advice” is usually an experienced-based opinion, not the correct answer to a question.<\/p>\n

And so: this research does provide a helpful look at adolescent development.<\/p>\n

Teens improve their metacognitive awareness of their own right\/wrong answers.<\/p>\n

They can use that information to guide decision making effectively.<\/p>\n

It does NOT, however, give us a comprehensive new framework for thinking about advising teens (“Don’t worry if they reject your advice — it must have been wrong if they did!”).<\/p>\n

I suspect adults will still give teens advice. And, they’ll accept some and reject some. And we’ll still be puzzled when they do.<\/p>\n

And — if we’re high school teachers — we’ll still think they’re awesome anyway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been teaching for several centuries now. You’d think my students would believe me when I tell them how to make their sentences better. Or how to interpret literary passages. Or how to succeed in life. Why don’t they? Recent research suggests one potential answer: because my advice isn’t very good. Here’s the story… London […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6288"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6302,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6288\/revisions\/6302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}