Archive for the ‘teaching’ category

To Retain New Learning, Do the Math

November 8th, 2009

Every teacher experiences the frustration. Content and skills taught throughout the year seem to abandon students during springtime standardized testing. “How can they not know this?” thinks the the teacher. “We learned this back in November.”

Recent research reveals some likely causes, and the principles for retaining new learning may not be intuitive to us as teachers. For example, multiple retrievals rather than multiple exposures promote better retention of new learning.1 In other words, the more students are required to recall new content or skills, the better their memory will be. Reviewing the material with students does not have the same effect. The students must be engaged in activity that requires them to recall the material. Even when students recall details incorrectly, if the teacher promptly provides the necessary instructive feedback, engaging students in recall of the material fosters better retention of new learning than a teacher-led review.2

But how often should teachers be engaging students in recall of newly learned material? Two findings provide answers.

First, repeated recall should occur frequently immediately following new learning. For example, a teacher who teaches students to add fractions should engage students in recall and use of that material several times over the school days immediately following instruction. Again, even if students do not recall the skill correctly, requiring recall combined with immediate instructive feedback is more effective than reviewing the skill.3

Second, once the initial period of learning and multiple retrievals is past, students still need to be engaged regularly in recall of the material. In general, students need to recall the material after a delay of 10 to 20% of the time between initial learning and final testing.4 For example, if students learn a new skill with only a month of school (about 20 school days) remaining, they should be engaged in recall of that skill every 2-4 days. This increases the likelihood that the new learning will be part of their knowledge when they begin the following school year. (Ideally, they would be recalling that skill every 7-14 days over a 10-week summer break!)

So, let’s go back to our opening scenario: a teacher teaches material in November that students need to recall for testing in May—a gap of about six months, or about 120 school days. To increase the likelihood that students will recall the material in May, they should be engaged in retrieving it every 12-24 days, once or twice a month, probably closer to every 12 days for the first few months and every 24 days for the last few months. It is critical that every retrieval be accompanied by immediate instructive feedback.

One more principle helps us design activities that engage students in retrieving new learning. The more material students are required to recall, the better. For example, if students are required to retrieve or construct an explanation of how to add fractions and actually apply the skill to add fractions, their retention will be greater than if they are merely required to apply the skill.4

According to this research, many of our classrooms may be structured for minimal memory retention. If we begin every school year reviewing material from the previous years and spend the second half of the school year introducing new material, students are less likely to retain the new learning in future school years because they were not engaged in recalling it throughout the school year. We need to be teaching more new material at the beginning of the school year and reviewing that material as the school year progresses. Perhaps this helps explain another common teacher frustration: the “They should have learned this last year” syndrome that we’ve all experienced.

Retrieval + Instructive Feedback = Retention of New Learning.

Devachi, L. The Limits of Memory: How to Maximize Your Memory Trace. Presented at the 2008 North American Neuroleadership Summit, New York.
Baddeley, A., Eysenck, M. W., & Anderson, M. C. Memory (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), p. 70-78.
Ibid. 74.
Ibid. 82.

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Posted in Baddeley, Devachi, instructive feedback, learning, memory, recall, retention, teaching, Testing

Authors, Illustrators, and Teaching: Part 2

October 15th, 2009

Authors and illustrators get treated like rock stars at the National Book Festival. Readers crowd into tents, some literally with standing room only, to see and hear the people behind favorite narratives and artwork. The payoff is worth the effort. Many authors and illustrators are as interesting in person as they are on paper.

In the last post, I discussed three authors and illustrators who provided insights related to teaching. Here are three more who similarly challenged and inspired me.

Sharon Creech was, in honesty, quite different from what I expected. I’m not sure what I expected, but it wasn’t an author who would embody one of her characters so perfectly that you felt like you were in theater with an accomplished actress rather than under a tent with a writer. Her editor shared the stage and played a role as Mrs. Creech read and enacted a section from her latest book, The Unfinished Angel. With drama and humor, the two wordsmiths captivated the crowd, even those beyond the tent’s borders. (By the way, for the record, unfinished angels speak in English with an Italian accent and make up words when necessary!)

Drama and humor. Tension and laughter. What a great combination for teaching. When I prepare to teach, do I look for the drama and humor in new material? Do I use these tools to not only keep attention but make material more memorable? Do I go the extra mile to bring such creativity to my teaching? I love this quote from Saul Bellow: “No school without spectacular eccentrics and crazy hearts is worth attending.” Do I allow myself to be the “spectacular eccentric” or “crazy heart” when doing so would promote learning?

Up next, another Newbery-winning author, Kate DiCamillo. I must highlight the perseverance DiCamillo personified. When rain knocked out power to the sound system, she continued to take questions and shout answers to the audience. This sounds less of an accomplishment than it actually was. The tent was jam packed and people wandered through steady rain falling outside.

But it was DiCamillo’s anecdote about the origins of The Tale of Despereaux that captivated my thoughts. A young boy suggested a story about a hero with large ears. At first, DiCamillo didn’t give the suggestion much thought. It certainly wasn’t much to go on when trying to write a whole book! But the idea stayed with her, and about five years later, The Tale of Despereaux was published.

Simply listening to students can sometimes provide substantial professional development! In trying to teach a group new concepts recently, one individual kept asking for examples. Every time I’d thoroughly explain something, at least in my own thinking, I’d get asked for an example—sometimes more than one. Listen to the suggestion, I told myself. Keep it in mind. Use it to improve your teaching. As I responded with examples, I could see the a-ha! moments multiply. The request, when fulfilled, made me a better teacher.

Sometimes a suggestion, even one focused on a hero with large ears, is all the you need to communicate in fresh and effective ways.

Finally, my favorite presentation came from Jerry Pinkney. Mr. Pinkney is a five-time Caldecott Honor medalist, and his latest book, a retelling of the Lion and the Mouse fable through illustrations, should catch the committee’s attention this year.

Mr. Pinkney shared his childhood with the audience. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, his parents, neither of whom possessed artistic talents, encouraged all their children to draw. It was something to do—something to keep the children occupied. While young Jerry manned a newspaper stand, an artist caught a glimpse of his sketches. Impressed, the artist invited Jerry to his studio. Before that visit, Pinkney was unaware that art was something you could do for a living, and oh!, the world of colors and artist’s tools that he encountered for the first time.

One caring adult—that’s it, just one caring adult opened up the world that would become Jerry Pinkney’s focus and passion. There’s a thought for teachers, but that’s not the one that I carried away with me.

Almost in passing, this successful, revered, and award-winning illustrator mentioned that he still takes drawing lessons. “You can always improve some aspect of what you do,” he explained, “and it’s important that you do so.”

While I can’t sign up for weekly teaching lessons, I can seek out professional development opportunities that will stretch some aspect of my teaching. Such continual growth is what Jerry Pinkney claims has empowered his success for several decades. My relevance and influence as a teacher may, likewise, depend on my willingness to continue growing professionally.

Drama, humor, wisdom, and growth. Sounds like a good recipe for teaching. In fact, it’s not a bad recipe for life.

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Posted in Jerry Pinkney, Kate DiCamillo, Kevin Washburn, National Book Festival, Sharon Creech, teaching

Can "The Least Of Us" Disrupt and Change Education for "The Rest Of Us?"

October 3rd, 2009

Disruption is a buzzword in education these days. This is a story about disruption. What follows may not happen, but then again, it might.

Education is highly resistant to change. Education has not fundamentally changed in over a 100 years. Many in my Personal Learning Network believe that public education will not change. If public education in this county will not change on its own, how can disruption become a factor and where will the source of this disruption come from?

Matt Mason insightfully points out in his book The Pirate’s Dilemma that youth movements are a source of social change. Youth movements through the years have brought Do-It-Yourself attitudes from punk rock. The youth movements have brought remixing music, video, video games, etc, forcing a reexamination of our copyright laws. Street artists challenge the meaning of open spaces and advertising. Rap brings voice to the disinfected. Matt points out that history has proven time and time again that youth movements have the potential to enact social change. They disrupt.

The question is where will disruption come from and who will bring it to education.

Matt Mason notes in his book that there are, “…currently 1.5 billion ten-to twenty-four-year-olds on Earth, and 86 percent of them live in a developing country.”

Developing countries are ripe for disruption because they provide the gaps where disruption can easily occur.

“While the U.N. Research Institute estimates that the richest 2 percent of adults in the world own more than half of all household wealth, a report from the World Institute for Development Economics Research at the United Nations University says that the poorer half of the world’s population owns barely 1 percent of the global wealth.”

The worlds poor does not have material wealth, but they do have minds and a desire to learn. The world’s poor posses a desire for knowledge and self-improvement that is equal to the wealthy. A “digital bridge” is slowly spanning the gaps between the rich and poor in developing countries.

“Efforts are being made to close the digital divide between the developed and the developing world. Open-source education, $100 laptops, and free, decentralized WiFi are a great start.”

But they are just a start. The key might lie in WiFi and Internet access.

“A report on Internet readiness rankings by the Economist Intelligence Unit in April 2007 shows that Asian and African nations are catching up with big Net users in the West.”

In other words, the poor are getting wired up and plugging into the Internet.

“According to the report, broadband is becoming cheap and affordable in almost every nation on Earth.”

Internet access brings knowledge and information to the poor around the world. The reality is that a poor person is more likely to gain access to the Internet and the world of knowledge and information that it brings, than he or she is to get well-trained teacher in school.

Disruption will come when the poor of the world figure out ways to educate themselves and their neighbors via the Internet. Of course this education won’t match the focus, rigor, and quality of Western schools, but never the less, the drive and need to learn will create a youth movement in these developing countries for using the Internet as a tool to educate themselves and others.

And if all one has is the Internet, one is eventually going to get very good at using it to meet their needs. He or she will develop methods and practices that seem strange, different, and unorthodox. They will rely on the Internet as a source of education.

Some in the West might begin to look at these poor kids in developing countries teaching themselves and their neighbors without classrooms and without teachers. Some might begin to wonder and ask, “If it works for them, might it work for us?” Some might adopt some of these strange, different, and unorthodox practices.

Some might say this is the way that works best for me. This is the way I want to learn.

And change might finally come to public education. Disruption brought to the wealthy West from the dusty villages, back alleys, and crowded slums of the developing world.

Probably won’t happen right? But it might.

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Posted in disruption, Edreform, Rob Jacobs, teaching, technology

Authors, Illustrators, and Teaching: Part 1

October 1st, 2009

Authors and illustrators recently challenged my thinking about teaching.

The National Book Festival is an annual event held on the Mall in Washington, D.C. This year my wife and I attended for the first time. As I listened to various children’s authors and illustrators, I was struck by how much relevance the ideas they communicated had for educators.

First up was Charles Santore. Mr. Santore has illustrated several well-known children’s books, including The Camel’s Lament and versions of classics, such as the poem “Paul Revere’s Ride” and the fantasy The Wizard of Oz. He also illustrated this year’s National Book Festival poster.

Because he moved from advertising illustration to children’s literature, many of Mr. Santore’s comments contrasted the two. For example, in illustration, Santore explained, you have to synthesize all the ideas into one, attention-grabbing illustration. However, in illustrating children’s literature, the artist can attend to pacing, even drawing “quiet” pictures that allow the reader to pause and ponder.

This pacing, giving the reader time to imagine and think, mirrors a pace the brain needs for optimal learning. Often called “down-time,” the brain needs to process new content in manageable chunks.1 A teacher who lectures for 45 minutes straight promotes less learning than a teacher who presents information for 10 minutes, engages students in processing new material, and then resumes presenting information for another brief period. To learn, the brain needs to pause and ponder—it needs the story of learning to include “quiet” illustrations.

Up next was one of my favorites: Nikki Grimes. Miss Grimes has authored several of my favorite children’s books, including The Road to Paris. With gifts in both poetry and prose, Miss Grimes captivated the audience with a colorful, poetic journey through several of her works. I cannot explain this sufficiently to help you appreciate it. She used poetry to introduce a color and its affective associations, then illustrated the concepts with passages from her writings. She created a hush in the tent and no one wanted her to stop.

What does this have to do with teaching? It made me think about how little thought I often give to my actual presentation of information. Sure, I think long and seriously about the activities I use to introduce or engage students in processing new information, but Nikki Grimes put that kind of thought into how she actually presented the information.

Hmm, how could I simulate this? Could I combine communication forms to better articulate critical concepts for students? Would a poetic journey through the Pythagorean theorem promote better understanding? One thing is certain: by challenging myself to consider the approach, I’d think more deeply about how I would actually explain the concept, and that would likely improve the words and phrases I used to teach it.

Finally, for this first of two posts, we heard and observed illustrator Kadir Nelson. Without exaggeration, Mr. Nelson is an artistic genius as evidenced in all his books, including the recent Testing the Ice.

A quiet individual, Mr. Nelson let his pens do most of the “talking.” He called two children up to the stage and recreated one of his illustrations with the children filling the roles of the original characters. Two young girls became Jackie Robinson and Yogi Berra, and their faces lit up with excitement and recognition. He actively involved the children, taking their minds to the scene he wanted them to imagine. Wow! In one illustration, he captured an entire narrative—a narrative to which two young girls could emotionally connect.

Narrative is a powerful teaching tool. Stories frame experience. Mark Turner suggests stories are actually fundamental, organizing structures: “Parable is the root of the human mind—of thinking, knowing, acting, creating, and plausibly even of speaking.”2 Neurologist and author Alice W. Flaherty agrees, suggesting metaphors, such as stories, contribute to memory formation and understanding:

…metaphors are cognitively useful because they rephrase an abstract concept in more physical terms. This engages the cortex with its visual, auditory, tactile, and olfactory maps, and the limbic system with its emotional charge…[Metaphors] create a sense of understanding by an analogous mechanism. By giving abstract concepts tastes, colors, smells, and emotional resonance, metaphors fix them in our minds and make us feel like we understand them.3

The human mind frequently thinks in terms of stories, communicates in stories, and converts new learning into stories. By framing experience, stories provide a structure for exploring and making sense of experience. Can I structure any of my teaching as narrative? Again, just challenging myself to try will likely improve my teaching.

Pondering pauses, poetic presentations, and narrative frames can inspire and inform my teaching. What I learn from authors and illustrators can become personal professional development if I’m willing to accept the challenges their ideas present.

In Part 2, insights from authors Sharon Creech, Kate DiCamillo, and illustrator Jerry Pinkney.

Sousa, D., How the Brain Learns, 2nd ed., (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, Inc., 2001).
Turner, M., The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), i.
Flaherty, A. W., The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004), 230.

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Posted in Charles Santore, Education, Kadir Nelson, Kevin Washburn, narrative, National Book Festival, Nikki Grimes, teaching

Avoiding the Dickensian Curriculum

August 27th, 2009

Monotonous tedium and homogeneous uniformity — the great plagues of education. With rampant disregard for age, class, or ability, a curriculum lacking topography flatlines interest, dulls creativity, and limits potential. Yet, we find ourselves haphazardly careening toward fact based national standards, accountability systems, and teacher pay incentives that further cement our commitment to high stakes assessments. Such batteries that, by proxy, entrench pedagogical practices in the mires of conformity.

What we need now is a hyperbolized metaphor to cast the right light on the situation. Enter 19th century Dickens.

I’m reminded of the orphan scene from Oliver Twist, in which sallow eyed kids lament full bellies while heavy handed lords offer meager sustenance, the lowest common denominator for survival. “Please, sir, can I have some more?” “MORE?!”

Fast forward to the 21st century, the faces of students drawn down by boredom, teachers droning on and dolling out dittos of “test prep” materials. One curriculum looks the same community to community, offering little variety (or interest) for the educators or the learners. Students under such Dickensian conditions soon associate learning and schooling with drudgery, toil, and starved minds.

The rare lesson that engages students to dig deep into an idea or concept, to explore new avenues, and to get a bit messy with creativity awakens and feeds an enthusiasm long suppressed by the sameness of repetition. Students for whom such learning has been absent, or withheld, find their palates whet with the sweet taste of authenticity and relevance. “Please, marm, can I have some more?” “MORE?!”

A bit much you say? Too overstated? How could I possibly compare NCLB to the New Poor Law of 1834?

You’re right to question, to stand up for an education system that endeavors to educate all students, and to advocate on behalf of the millions of educators working to cultivate the minds of our young.

However, the fact remains that while the world around us has changed, much of the education system remains firmly rooted in an industrial society that no longer exists. It is less important now that students can repeat the same task over and over. The standard of yesterday’s literacy, “Can the worker read the signs in the factory to ensure the safety of himself and his colleagues?” no longer applies to the degree it once did.

We enjoy a world with abundant and assorted information, replete with mutliple access points for ideas, concepts, and knowledge. Students of diverse backgrounds (and of both genders) can reasonably vie for myriad careers and a range of higher level learning opportunities, if so interested. Given this, it is of absolute necessity that we seek to add topography to our educational landscape. Homogeneity must give way to heterogeneity if we aim to give all students connecting points.

How do we do that?

Teachers need the demonstrated ability and supported autonomy to effectively tailor curriculum for the unique culture, skills, needs, and interests of each class. Beginning with a framework of basic skills, concepts, and themes, the teacher must seek two main pillars to effectively differentiate for the individuals within an individual class.

What does that mean?

Connections and Contrasts

Constructing knowledge begins with connections. If students are to make any sense of material, they must first find a connection with it. If we are to believe Jay McTighe’s quip that, “Facts don’t transfer, big ideas do,” then it is imperative that we elicit student involvement in order to link the big ideas to their interests and backgrounds.

Teachers have known this for ages. The KWL chart (Know, Want to know, Learned) is a well known acronym in teacher-ese. Beginning with the connection, teachers then need to provide enough contrast so as to stimulate the brain and effectively engage the student. Building (or at least maintaining) nueral pathways requires broad exposure that keep the nueral connections alive, functioning, and well traveled.

Unfortunately, legislation has come to think of that as simply exposure to copious facts we want the students to know. What we’ve ended up with are standards that are a mile wide and an inch deep. What the brain thrives on is consistent contrast.

Students need newness, contrast in experiences, and depth of study. This is the great beauty of the differentiated instruction movement — it seeks to provide big ideas that span the curriculum and add multiple connection points for students. Combined with the Understanding by Design efforts, in which teachers create new experiences that offer a contrast to the experiences of the past, we have the potential for a rich depth of learning that students find relevant, meaningful, and ultimately, useful.

The challenge then becomes, if we aim to leave no child behind and recognize that each student is different, how do we standardize teaching and learning without monotonizing teaching and learning?

Image: BBC One

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Posted in Dickens, Differentiated Instruction, Education Reform, Jason Flom, Jay McTighe, learning, NCLB, Oliver Twist, teaching, Understanding By Design

Making the Shift, Part 2: Toolboxes not Suitcases

August 17th, 2009

Ever go through a turnstile and realize something you needed was left on the other side of the gateway? During my first encounter with a public transit system, I tried to take a rolling suitcase through a subway turnstile. Of course I ended up on one side of the gateway with my luggage on the other. Fortunately a friendly New Yorker (They do exist!) saw my dilemma and hoisted my suitcase over the turnstile.

Such gateways are one-way by design; they promote lawful movement in single directions. However, a similar design for teaching, learning, and thinking limits student learning and its usefulness. Much of what we should emphasize ends up like my suitcase—on the wrong side of the turnstile.

For example, we may teach a biology unit on cell construction and emphasize new terminology and locations of various cell parts. Then, after students seem to have absorbed the information and can recite it back, we may engage them in “critical thinking” by asking questions that represent various “levels” of a taxonomy. Like my suitcase, thinking gets pulled along behind and occasionally doesn’t make it through the gate. It gets left behind because of pressures to cover the curriculum or because the assessment will only involve the memorization elements of the unit. If time allows, if the gateway stays open, we might pull in some thinking.

But what if thinking were not a wheeled suitcase but a toolbox, something we carry in-hand and set in a central place to enable our work, our learning? What if instead of thinking of ourselves as teaching content, we viewed ourselves as teaching thinking?

That doesn’t mean students would not learn any content. In fact, content would be exactly what they’d gain by making thinking the force that “pulls in” new understandings. After all, students need to learn how to learn to function successfully once a teacher is no longer telling them what to know.

Activating executive function (EF) offers a potential gateway for developing both understanding of new content and strategic abilities for future learning and success. Executive function comprises “complex cognitive processes that serve ongoing, goal-directed behaviors,”1 including goal setting and planning, self-regulation and metacognition, and working memory processes, such as organizing and patterning data. Executive function serves both as “infrastructure” and “overseer” of other cognitive functions.2 By itself, EF lacks purpose, but when infused with ideas and concepts, it illustrates the brain working at its best. Perhaps most importantly for us as teachers, EF enables intention, the transfer of new learning to novel situations. Teaching only to know—that is, to repeat on demand—does not engage the cognitive processes that promote intention. Martha Bridge Denkla describes such knowing as being able to recall a strategy without the capacity to be strategic.3 Simply knowing does not require the level of EF activation that doing does.

Philip David Zelazo suggests that the EF processes of solving problems and attaining goals reveal EF “subfunctions.” These subfunctions can be easily understood by viewing their roles through the questions they attempt to answer:

representation: “What do I need to accomplish? What is preventing me from accomplishing it?”
planning: How can I get from the current state to the desired state?
execution: What’s next? Check. What’s next?
evaluation: Did that action accomplish its intended result? What do I need to change to make progress toward the desired state?4

Teaching students to successfully engage these subfunctions equips them to learn independently. Engaging these subfunctions as a means of learning new content equips students to use their learning beyond the classroom. This brief look at executive functions reveals some principles that provide guidance for making thinking more of a toolbox and less of a rolling suitcase. An emphasis on teaching for action, or on teaching for knowing how, is more likely to produce transferable learning. Since doing requires greater executive function engagement than simply knowing, teaching that engages students in doing better equips students to transfer their learning to new situations.

Knowing that should become more of a by-product of applying know-how. Rather than just asking, “What do students need to know?” we need to ask “What can students do/produce to foster learning of what they need to know?” (This has additional implications for what and how we teach. I’ll explore these in a future post.)

Increasing an emphasis on executive function is better education for life. It’s impossible to know what knowledge and skills will be essential in the future, but it is certain that EF will continue to enable successful living.

Before concluding, allow me to attempt to prevent some potential misunderstandings. First, I am not advocating abandonment of the disciplines. As the Purview Project states, the disciplines “have contributed to man’s construction of knowledge for ages.” I believe the disciplines will continue to form much of the content schools teach. What I am suggesting is that how we teach the disciplines needs to change. Others have recently suggested similar ideas—e.g., Jose Bowen’s “Teach Naked” approach, which advocates increased thinking in the classroom. But an implication of changing the “how” is changing the “what.” If we’re going to engage students in more thinking, we need to equip and strengthen them to think optimally. I’ll explore this more in future posts.

Second, the ideas expressed here are easier to envision in content-heavy disciplines, such as social studies than in skill-heavy disciplines such as reading and math. I’ll explore these differences in future posts and suggest ways these principles can be applied in both types of material.

In conclusion, I have a confession. I’m writing this post as much to process these ideas as I am to communicate them. I’m in the learning process, which means I have more questions than answers, vague ideas than concrete specifics, and swirling concepts than guiding frameworks. Over the weekend I was asked what was “going on” in my head. In reply, I listed at least seven different major elements. This post is a very initial attempt to sort through some of them. I hope to explore and clarify these ideas in future posts. Stay tuned!

Meltzer, L. “Executive Function: Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 1-2.
Denckla, M. B. “Executive Functions: Binding Together the Definitions of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Learning Disabilities,” in Meltzer, L. (ed.), Executive Function in Education: From Theory to Practice, (New York: The Guilford Press, 2007), 7.
Ibid, 11.
Zelazo, P. D., “Executive Function Part One: What is executive function?” http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/News/Executive-Function-Part-One-What-is-executive-function.aspx?
articleID=8024&categoryID=news-type

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Posted in executive function, Jose Bowen, learning, Lynn Meltzer, Philip David Zelazo, teaching, thinking

Tags: executive function learning teaching thinking

TMI! Information Overload and Learning

July 6th, 2009

“Too much information—TMI!”

More than just a retort when conversations turn personal, TMI also describes a common student experience. When one period of steady information flow follows another, the rising data tide does not lift all boats. It overwhelms them.

We can maintain a quick and steady pace when we enter information into a database or spreadsheet, simply pushing “return” or “tab” to move to the next entry, but the brain is not a computer. It has limits. Data funneled endlessly through the senses prevents the processing required for learning.

What do students’ brains need to do to construct new learning? Let’s listen in as the neural “Data Manager” oversees the processing…

Okay, we got incoming data here. Everyone look alive!

Get that bit there and put it with the other that’s like it. Those two bits there, move them to the right. Move those others across the room to that grouping there.

Is that it? Do we have all the data? Okay, let me get up to the observation platform to see what we’ve got here. Hmm, okay. Put this label on that grouping there. And give that group to the right this label. That last group needs this label.

Okay, let’s see what’s really going on here. Seeing some patterns! Get the librarians searching for past records with these patterns.

Got something? Great. Let’s overlay it with this new data.

A-ha! The new data is like this past experience in some ways. Get the insights to the consciousness office and tell them to hit the “Give a lift” button! We’re constructing understanding right now!

Obviously no such director exists for cognitive activity, but the processing illustrated by the imagined “Data Manager’s” actions do reflect the brain’s approach to constructing new learning. Incoming data gets sorted and labeled as the brain engages in comprehension. The sorted and labeled data reveals emerging patterns that trigger recall of similar past experiences as the brain engages in elaboration. These cognitive processes empower learning.

But TMI floods the brain with data, preventing comprehension and elaboration, and thus, preventing learning. Jonah Lehrer suggests the danger of too much information is “it can actually interfere with understanding.” Why? Because the brain has a do-it-yourself attitude toward learning.

As teachers, we think through material when we plan its delivery. But students’ brains need to engage in that same process to learn for themselves. In short, we process the new material to teach it. Students must process the information similarly to learn it. As Daniel Willingham, author of Why Don’t Students Like School?, explains, “Good teachers design lessons in which students unavoidably think about the meaning or central point” [emphasis added]. Thinking cannot overcome TMI, but TMI quickly overwhelms thinking. In short, TMI prevents learning while unavoidable thinking promotes it.

When you stop informing and engage students in thinking, you empower learning. In other words, you truly teach.

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Posted in comprehension, Daniel Willingham, data manager, elaboration, Jonah Lehrer, Kevin Washburn, learning, teaching, thinking, TMI

Learning from Mistakes Takes the Right Feedback

June 9th, 2009

I slammed my foot and, to my surprise, picked up speed. The lawn mower headed straight for the newly planted apple tree in our backyard. The sound of mower blades slicing through a thin tree trunk caught my father’s attention. He strode across the lawn, and I prepared to be banished from the riding lawn mower. But my father laughed.

“Do you know what you did?” I nodded and explained I had stepped on the clutch rather than the brake, freeing the mower to roll downhill and over the sapling. “Okay,” he said, “where’s the brake?” I showed him which was the brake and which was the clutch. Chuckling, he explained, “You’ve got it. Don’t worry about the tree. It was dead anyway. Now we won’t have to look at it. Keep going.”

Mistakes, claims Jonah Lehrer, “should be cultivated and carefully investigated.” To the brain, “Disappointment is educational.”1

Dopamine, a neurotransmitter that influences emotion, provides a sense of pleasure when what we anticipate happening matches reality, but when our expectations are not met—when our actions do not produce the desired result—we feel disappointment. Through disappointment, we gain an opportunity to literally rewire neuronal connections, to learn, but only if we attend to our mistake: “Self-criticism is the secret to self-improvement.”2

Since we learn, in part, by attending to our errors, what kind of feedback should we, as teachers, give to our students?

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck contrasted the results of two different types of feedback. One group of students were praised for their intelligence: “You are smart at this.” A second group of students was praised for their efforts: “You worked hard and look at the results.”

The findings? Students praised for their intelligence became easily discouraged when they encountered difficult tasks and lost 20% of their achievement between pre- and post-testing. These students were only content when they could compare their results with students who preformed worse on tasks or tests. In contrast, students praised for their efforts sought challenge, welcomed mistakes, and increased achievement an average of 30% between pre- and post-testing. Lehrer explains:

The problem with praising kids for their innate intelligence—the “smart” compliment—is that it misrepresents the neural reality of education. It encourages kids to avoid the most useful kind of learning activities, which is learning from mistakes. Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models.3

Dweck’s findings mirrors those of Dr. Jennifer Mangels: individuals who believe intelligence is a fixed entity (i.e., you get the intelligence you’re born with) focus on performance and respond to negative feedback (i.e., the identification of an error) by withdrawing and extending little effort. In contrast, individuals who believe intelligence is malleable (i.e., smart is something you become not something you possess) respond to negative feedback with a mastery-orientation, seeking means of correction and learning. Such learners are resilient, responding to set-backs with renewed energy directed toward learning.4

How can we direct student response to feedback so that the mastery-orientation overcomes the performance-orientation? How can we guide student disappointment to careful investigation of mistakes?

Dr. Robert Brooks (2007) suggests couching feedback in “we” statements. For example, rather than telling a student that a response is incorrect and to “try harder,” Brooks suggests, in one-on-one conversation, saying, “This strategy you’re using doesn’t seem to be working. Let’s figure out why and how we can change the strategy so that you are successful.” Such a response invites a careful investigation of the mistake and makes the interaction a problem-solving experience. A classroom environment that welcomes error as a gateway to learning contributes to better feedback responses.5

My dad responded in a way that kept me moving forward in my learning and mowing the lawn successfully for several years. Disappointment led to reflection and investigation, correction, and renewed interest in getting it right. Guess I learned more than where to find the brake that day.

Lehrer, J., How We Decide (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2009), 51, 48.
Ibid., 51.
Ibid., 53-54.
Brooks, R., Mindsets for School Success: Effective Educators and Resilient, Motivated Learners. Presented at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Abilities and Achievement (Nov. 2007).
Mangels, J. A., Motivating Minds: How Student Beliefs Impact Learning and Academic Achievement. Presented at Learning and the Brain: Using Brain Research to Enhance Cognitive Abilities and Achievement (Nov. 2007).

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Posted in Carol Dweck, dopamine, effort, feedback, intelligence, Jennifer Mangels, Jonah Lehrer, lawn mowers, learning, mistakes, Robert Brooks, teaching

"What" and "Where" Enable Learning and Higher Thinking

June 2nd, 2009

By Dr. Kevin Washburn, Contributing Editor

While their research and associated technology can be complicated, the discoveries of neuroscientists often reveal simple principles of brain functioning.

For example, neuroscientists recently traced the flow of auditory data through the brain. As sound waves spark our nervous system into action, auditory data gets sent from lower functioning areas of the brain to higher functioning areas via two “routes.” One route, the “low road,” carries data through the temporal lobe and enables us to identify what we are hearing. Simultaneously, data traveling the other route, the “high road,” moves through the parietal lobe and enables us to identify where the sound was produced.1

Visual data follows very similar routes. The “low road” flows through the temporal lobe and extracts information about what is being seen. The “high road” flows through the parietal lobe and extracts information about where objects are located.2 What and where precede deeper thinking about new data.

What does this have to do with learning? If students are asked to think critically about or apply new information without an opportunity to establish what and where, their efforts will likely yield poor results.

For example, I often observe teachers presenting a sequence of steps that students need to follow to achieve some result. As students practice, the teacher roams the room and checks student work. A student with an incorrect result is often reminded that the steps “are listed on the white board,” and directed to look there to find his mistake. But whose brain processed what and where as the teacher wrote the steps in order on the board? The teacher’s. The student’s brain focused on the what and where of the teacher’s movement and voice, not the material. As a result, the student still lacks the processing of the material necessary to enable higher functioning, such as using the sequence of steps to achieve a result.

However, if the teacher has the students write the steps of the sequence onto index cards and then arrange them in the correct order, the students process the what and where of the new material. Additionally, the teacher can assess the students’ knowledge before they begin making application. Instructive feedback at this point prevents incorrect practice.

Professional literature often refers to this processing of what and where as comprehension (not to be confused with reading comprehension), and some instructional design models recognize its role in effective teaching. Including opportunities for students to identify and sort new instructional material—to identify what and where—enables the higher functioning, such as constructing understanding and engaging in critical thinking, that we’re pursuing.

A simple principle of brain functioning; a necessary element of learning.

1. How Brain Processes Speech. ScienceDaily. http://www.sciencedaily.com /releases/2009/05/090526140733.htm
2. Berns, G., Iconoclast: A Neuroscientist Reveals How to Think Differently (Boston: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2008).

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Posted in auditory, comprehension, Education, Gregory Berns, instructional design, Kevin Washburn, learning, parietal lobe, teaching, temporal lobe, visual

When is inequality constructive?

April 24th, 2009

By Candace Williams, An Aspiring Educator’s Blog

In the Boston Review article Inequality matters: Why globalization doesn’t lift all boats (via thickculture), Nancy Birdsall clarifies the distinction between constructive inequality and deconstructive inequality:

Distinguishing between constructive and destructive inequality is useful. To clarify the distinction: inequality is constructive when it creates positive incentives at the micro level. Such inequality reflects differences in individuals’ responses to equal opportunities and is consistent with efficient allocation of resources in an economy. In contrast, destructive inequality reflects privileges for the already rich and blocks potential for productive contributions of the less rich.

I’m used to thinking about issues of inequality and social justice on the macro-level. Inequality of social, economic, and political opportunity is one of the reasons why I teach and advocate for the rights of children. What about at the level of my classroom? When does inequality constructive or deconstructive in the context of pedagogies and learning environments? The most pervasive example of inequality teachers and administrators construct is grades. Although many schools try to make grades a reflection of how students are progressing on standards, the reality for many schools, is that grades both reflect and institutionalize tracks and hierarchies. Students with relatively higher grades have access to different pathways and resources than students who have relatively higher grades. There are different reasons why decision-makers at the classroom, school, and district level choose to have grades. In the classroom, I have noticed many teachers believe grades are an incentive structure: students and parents, on the whole, want higher grades rather than lower grades. Many are willing and able to change their behaviors to reflect this incentive.

Are grading I’ve seen examples of constructive or deconstructive inequality? On one hand, they are deconstructive because students are receiving marks on a scale without having access to the same academic and socioeconomic opportunities as their peers. Over time, students who fit into the culture of power and continue to have experiences that are valued by the school get higher grades, while students who do not have these opportunities get lower. The grades of students are compared and opportunities are doled out accordingly. This is deconstructive – the “potential for productive contributions” of struggling students is blocked. On the other hand, I have seen grading practices where the function and reason is feedback. When students are presented with qualitative and quantitative feedback about their performance, and have access to resources to improve, this feedback might alter micro-level incentives for them to engage in the process. This is more constructive than the case given above because the quality of resources and environments we offer children are not a function of their perceived level in academic hierarchies. Other examples of inequalities we construct are our classroom management schemes. They often feature preferred behaviors paired to positive and negative consequences that change a students’ academic and social reality.

Constructive and deconstructive inequalities exist in learning environments. Teachers have control over some of these inequalities, especially classroom management and community building structures. Administrators have more control over grading, curriculum, and tracking. Students also create their own inequalities via social hierarchies that are based on perceived intelligence, beauty, and other factors. Although teachers do not have complete control over the inequalities that manifest themselves in a classroom space, when it comes to the choices we make, we have to ask: “Am I generating inequality? If so, is this inequality constructive or deconstructive?”.

What are your thoughts? Does this distinction hold or does it rely too heavily on capitalist constructions?

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Posted in Candace Williams, Grading, Inequality, Leadership, learning, Pedagogy, teaching