{"id":7906,"date":"2024-11-10T08:00:49","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T13:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=7906"},"modified":"2024-11-06T10:02:12","modified_gmt":"2024-11-06T15:02:12","slug":"even-more-questions-3rd-of-a-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/even-more-questions-3rd-of-a-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Even More Questions (3rd of a Series)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This blog post continues a series about research into <em>questions<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">I started with questions that teachers should ask <a href=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/questions-questions-first-of-a-series\/\" target=\"_blank\">BEFORE<\/a> students&#8217; learning begins: &#8220;pre-questions,&#8221; measuring prior knowledge.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">I then turned to questions that we ask <a href=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/again-with-the-questions-second-of-a-series\/\" target=\"_blank\">DURING<\/a> early learing: retrieval practice, checking for understanding.<\/p>\n<p>Now &#8212; can you guess? &#8212; I&#8217;ll focus on questions that we ask LATER in learning, or &#8220;AFTER&#8221; learning.<\/p>\n<p>To structure these posts, I&#8217;ve been focusing on three organizing questions:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>When<\/em>\u00a0to ask this kind of question? (Before, during\/early, during\/later)<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Who benefits<\/em>\u00a0most immediately from doing so?<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">What do we do with the\u00a0<em>answers<\/em>?<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s dive in&#8230;<\/p>\n<h2>A Controversy Resolved?<\/h2>\n<p>At some point, almost all\u00a0teaching\u00a0units come to an end. When that happens,\u00a0teachers want to know: &#8220;how much did my students learn?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To find out, we typically ask students questions. We might call these questions &#8220;quizzes&#8221; or &#8220;tests&#8221; or &#8220;assessements&#8221; or &#8220;projects.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AdobeStock_83865037.jpeg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-7912\" src=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AdobeStock_83865037-300x199.jpeg\" alt=\"A young girl reads and draws in a garden\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AdobeStock_83865037-300x199.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/AdobeStock_83865037-1024x678.jpeg 1024w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Whatever we call such questions, students answer by writing or saying or doing something.<\/p>\n<p><em>Who benefits<\/em> from all these activities? Well, here we arrive at a controversy, because reasonable people disagree on this point.<\/p>\n<p>OVER HERE, some folks argue that assessments basically benefits school systems &#8212; <em>and harm others<\/em>. After assessments, school systems can&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>sort students into groups by grade, or<\/li>\n<li>boast about their rising standardized test scores, or<\/li>\n<li>evaluate teachers based on such numbers.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I don&#8217;t doubt that, in some cases, assessments serve these purposes and no others.<\/p>\n<p>OVER THERE, more optimistically, others argue that assessments can benefit both teacher and student.<\/p>\n<p>Students benefit because<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>They learn how much they did or didn&#8217;t learn: an essential step for metacognition; and<\/li>\n<li>The act of answering these questions in fact helps students solidify their learning (that&#8217;s &#8220;retrieval practice,&#8221; or &#8220;the testing effect&#8221;).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Teachers benefit because<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>We learn how much our teaching strategies have helped students learn, and<\/li>\n<li>In cumulative classes, we know what kinds of foundational knowledge our students have for the next unit. (If my students do well on the &#8220;comedy\/tragedy&#8221; project, I can plan a more ambitious &#8220;bildungsroman&#8221; unit for their upcoming work.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In other words: final assessments and grades certainly be critiqued. At the same time, as long as they&#8217;re required, we should be aware of\u00a0<em>and focus on<\/em> their potential benefits.<\/p>\n<h2>Digging Deeper<\/h2>\n<p>While I do think we have to understand the role of tests\/exams\/capstone projects at the &#8220;end&#8221; of learning, I do want to back up a step to think about an intermediate step.<\/p>\n<p>To do so, I want to focus on\u00a0<strong>generative questions<\/strong> &#8212; especially as described by Zoe and Mark Enser&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/\/december-book-a-palooza\/\" target=\"_blank\">excellent book<\/a> on the topic.*<\/p>\n<p>As the Ensers describe, generative questions require students to\u00a0<strong>select, organize,\u00a0<\/strong>and\u00a0<strong>integrate<\/strong> information &#8212; much of which is <em>already<\/em> stored in long-term memory.<\/p>\n<p>So:<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Retrieval practice<\/em>: define &#8220;bildungsroman.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\"><em>Generative learning<\/em>: can a tragedy be a bildungsroman?<\/p>\n<p>The first question asks a student to retrieve info from long-term memory. The second requires students to recall information &#8212; and\u00a0<em>to do mental work with it<\/em>: they organize and integrate the parts of those definitions.<\/p>\n<p>For that reason, I think of <em>retrieval practice<\/em> as an early-in-the-learning-process question. <em>Generative learning\u00a0<\/em>comes <em>later<\/em> in the process &#8212; that is, <em>after<\/em> students have relevant ideas in long-term memory to select, organize, and integrate.<\/p>\n<p>The Ensers&#8217; book explores research into, and practical uses of, several generative learning strategies: drawing, mind-mapping, summarizing, teaching, and so forth.<\/p>\n<p>In my thinking, those distinct sub-categories are less important that the overall concept. If students select, organize, and integrate, they are by definition answering generative learning questions.<\/p>\n<p>For instance: the question &#8220;can a tragedy be a bildungsroman&#8221; doesn&#8217;t obviously fit any of the generative learning categories. But because it DOES require students to select, organize, and integrate, I think it fits the definition.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">(I should fess up: technically, retrieval practice is considered a generative learning strategy. For the reasons described above, I think it&#8217;s helpful to use RP\u00a0<em>early<\/em> in learning, and generative learning\u00a0<em>later<\/em> in learning. My heresy could be misguided.)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Generative learning&#8221; is a BIG category; teachers\u00a0can prompt students to\u00a0think generatively in <strong>all sorts<\/strong> of ways. A recent review by Garvin Brod suggests that some strategies work better than others for <em>different age groups<\/em>: you can check out those guidelines <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/article\/10.1007\/s10648-020-09571-9?s=09\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<h2>TL;DR<\/h2>\n<p>In most school systems, teachers must ask some kind of summary questions (tests, projects) at the end of a unit. Such questions &#8212; if well designed &#8212; can benefit both teachers and students.<\/p>\n<p><em>After<\/em> students have a bedrock of useful knowledge and <em>before<\/em> we get to those final test\/project questions, teachers should invite students to engage in generative learning. By selecting, organizing, and reintegrating their well-established knowledge, students solidify that learning, and make it more flexible and useful.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>Brod, G. (2021). Generative learning: Which strategies for what age?.\u00a0<i>Educational Psychology Review<\/i>,\u00a0<i>33<\/i>(4), 1295-1318.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>* Grammar nerds: if you&#8217;re wondering why I wrote &#8220;Zoe and Mark Enser&#8217;s book&#8221; instead of &#8220;Zoe and Mark Ensers&#8217; book&#8221; &#8212; well &#8212; I found that apostrophe question a stumper. I consulted twitter and got emphatic and contradictory answers. I decided to go with the apostrophe form that makes each Enser and invidivual &#8212; because each one is. But, I could be technically wrong about that form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This blog post continues a series about research into questions. I started with questions that teachers should ask BEFORE students&#8217; learning begins: &#8220;pre-questions,&#8221; measuring prior knowledge. I then turned to questions that we ask DURING early learing: retrieval practice, checking for understanding. Now &#8212; can you guess? &#8212; I&#8217;ll focus on questions that we ask [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":7912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-7906","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906","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=7906"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7914,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7906\/revisions\/7914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}