Seven Big Myths about Learning
Posted: February 14, 2012 Filed under: development, Education | Tags: myths 3 Comments »Another great post from Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post that helps us understand what 21st century science and experience are revealing:
Basic Facts Come Before Deep Learning
This one translates roughly as, “Students must do the boring stuff before they can do the interesting stuff.” Or, “Students must memorize before they can be allowed to think.” In truth, students are most likely to achieve long-term mastery of basic facts in the context of engaging, student-directed learning.
Rigorous Education Means a Teacher Talking
Teachers have knowledge to impart, but durable learning is more likely when students talk, create, and integrate knowledge into meaningful projects. The art of a teacher is to construct ways for students to discover.
Covering It Means Teaching It
Teachers are often seduced by the idea that if they talk about a concept in class, they have taught it. At best, students get tentative ideas that will be quickly forgotten if not reinforced by a student-centered activity.
Teaching to Student Interests Means Dumbing It Down
If we could somehow see inside a student’s brain, its circuitry would correspond to its knowledge. Since new learning always builds on what is already in the brain, teachers must relate classroom teaching to what students already know. Teachers who fail to do so, whether due to ignorance or in pursuit of a false idea of rigor, are running afoul of a biological reality.
Acceleration Means Rigor
Some schools accelerate strong students so that they can cover more material. Schools in the Independent Curriculum Group are more likely to ask such students to delve deeper into important topics. Deep knowledge lays a stronger foundation for later learning.
A Quiet Classroom Means Good Learning
Students sitting quietly may simply be zoned out — if not immediately, then within 15 minutes. A loud classroom, if properly controlled, includes the voices of many students who are actively engaged.
Traditional Schooling Prepares Students for Life
Listening to teachers and studying for tests has little to do with life in the world of work. People in the work world create, manage, evaluate, communicate, and collaborate.
Thoughts?
Afraid of Free Play? No Way!
Posted: October 18, 2011 Filed under: development | Tags: play Leave a comment »When children are in charge of their own play, it provides a foundation for their future mental health as older children and adults.
1. Play gives children a chance to find and develop a connection to their own self-identified and self-guided interests.
2. It is through play that children first learn how to make decisions, solve problems, exert self control, and follow rules.
3. Children learn to handle their emotions, including anger and fear, during play.
4. Play helps children make friends and learn to get along with each other as equals.
5. Most importantly, play is a source of happiness.
Read the entire article here.
Teens aren’t Stupid, you $#@&^%$!!
Posted: October 13, 2011 Filed under: development | Tags: brain, cognitive development 2 Comments »For teens, risky behaviors feel great and are experienced as more rewarding than how adults process risk. However, the part of the brain that handles impulse control hasn’t developed quickly enough for teens in order to keep the risky part in check.
Sensation seeking is situated in two brain areas: the ventral striatum and the orbitofrontal cortex, both of which process incentives. Impulse control is situated in the lateral prefrontal cortex. Although both are involved in risk-taking, they aren’t the same.
Although both areas of the brain change from childhood to adulthood, they don’t change at the same speed.
- The incentive processing centers become sensitized right after puberty, making adolescents take much more pleasure out of rewards. This leads them to experience risk as relatively more pleasurable.
- The impulse control centers of the brain develop more slowly over time, and are still developing in early adulthood. This is the part of the brain that keeps you from doing risky things before you think through the consequences.
“You must be smart at this” VERSUS “You must have worked really hard”
Posted: October 10, 2011 Filed under: development, Education | Tags: encouraging effort, praise, proper feedback 1 Comment »In an experiment with over 400 fifth graders, psychological researcher and professor Carol Dweck created an easy test consisting of nonverbal puzzles. After the children finished the test, the researchers told the students their score, and provided them with a single line of praise. Half of the kids were praised for their intelligence. “You must be smart at this,” the researcher said. The other students were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”
The students were then allowed to choose between two different subsequent tests. The first choice was described as a more difficult set of puzzles, but the kids were told that they’d learn a lot from attempting it. The other option was an easy test, similar to the test they’d just taken.
When Dweck was designing the experiment, she expected the different forms of praise to have a rather modest effect. After all, it was just one sentence. But it soon became clear that the type of compliment given to the fifth graders dramatically affected their choice of tests. When kids were praised for their effort, nearly 90 percent chose the harder set of puzzles. However, when kids were praised for their intelligence, most of them went for the easier test. What explains this difference? According to Dweck, praising kids for intelligence encourages them to “look” smart, which means that they shouldn’t risk making a mistake.
Dweck’s next set of experiments showed how this fear of failure can actually inhibit learning. She gave the same fifth graders yet another test. This test was designed to be extremely difficult — it was originally written for eighth graders — but Dweck wanted to see how the kids would respond to the challenge. The students who were initially praised for their effort worked hard at figuring out the puzzles. Kids praised for their smarts, on the other hand, were easily discouraged. Their inevitable mistakes were seen as a sign of failure: Perhaps they really weren’t so smart. After taking this difficult test, the two groups of students were then given the option of looking either at the exams of kids who did worse or those who did better. Students praised for their intelligence almost always chose to bolster their self-esteem by comparing themselves with students who had performed worse on the test. In contrast, kids praised for their hard work were more interested in the higher-scoring exams. They wanted to understand their mistakes, to learn from their errors, to figure out how to do better.
The final round of tests was the same difficulty level as the initial test. Nevertheless, students who were praised for their effort exhibited significant improvement, raising their average score by 30 percent. Because these kids were willing to challenge themselves, even if it meant failing at first, they ended up performing at a much higher level. This result was even more impressive when compared to students randomly assigned to the smart group, who saw their scores drop by nearly 20 percent. The experience of failure had been so discouraging for the “smart” kids that they actually regressed.
Read the entire article here.
“Curiosity is a fragile thing.”
Posted: October 2, 2011 Filed under: development, Education | Tags: learning, science Leave a comment »Fascinating results of an experiment from a recent study, “The Double-Edged Sword of Pedagogy,” led by Laura Schulz, an MIT psychologist. This research consisted of giving 4-year-olds a new toy outfitted with four tubes. What made the toy interesting is that each tube did something different. One tube, for instance, generated a squeaking sound, while another tube turned into a tiny mirror.
The first group of students was shown the toy by a scientist who declared that she’d just found it on the floor. Then, as she revealed the toy to the kids, she “accidentally” pulled one of the tubes and made it squeak. Her response was sheer surprise: “Huh! Did you see that? Let me try to do that again!” The second group, in contrast, got a very different presentation. Instead of feigning surprise, the scientist acted like a typical teacher. She told the students that she’d gotten a new toy and that she wanted to show them how it worked. Then, she deliberately made the toy squeak.
After the demonstration, both groups of children were given the toy to play with. Not surprisingly, all of the children pulled on the first tube and laughed at the squeak. But then something interesting happened: while the children from the second group quickly got bored with the toy, those in the first group kept on playing with it. Instead of being satisfied with the squeaks, they explored the other tubes and discovered all sorts of hidden surprises. According to the psychologists, the different reactions were caused by the act of instruction. When students are given explicit instructions, when they are told what they need to know, they become less likely to explore on their own.
The moral is that parents and teachers must navigate the fine line between giving kids a taste of knowledge – the universe is not all mystery – while at the same time preserving a sense of ambiguity and uncertainty. When we explain things to kids, we shouldn’t pretend that we have all the answers. We shouldn’t turn science class into a dry recitation of facts that must be memorized, or only conduct experiments in the classroom in which the results are known in advance. Because it’s the not knowing – that tang of doubt and possibility – that keeps us playing with the world, eager to figure out how it works.
Read the entire article here.
It’s Not the Mistakes Themselves, it’s the Attitude Towards Them
Posted: October 2, 2011 Filed under: development | Tags: mistakes attitude Leave a comment »When someone makes a mistake, their brain makes two quick signals: an initial response that indicates something has gone wrong, and a second response that indicates the person is consciously aware of the mistake and is trying to right the wrong. Both signals occur within a quarter of a second of the mistake. After the experiment, the researchers found out whether people believed they could learn from their mistakes or not.
People who think they can learn from their mistakes did better after making a mistake – in other words, they successfully bounced back after an error.
Read the entire article here.
Can we help students recognize that mistakes are a limitation only when one has a defeatist attitude?
Why Are Finland’s Schools Successful?
Posted: September 29, 2011 Filed under: development, Education | Tags: Finland 1 Comment »Teachers in Finland spend fewer hours at school each day and spend less time in classrooms than American teachers. Teachers use the extra time to build curriculums and assess their students. Children spend far more time playing outside, even in the depths of winter. Homework is minimal. Compulsory schooling does not begin until age 7. “We have no hurry,” said Louhivuori. “Children learn better when they are ready. Why stress them out?”
Ninety-three percent of Finns graduate from academic or vocational high schools, 17.5 percentage points higher than the United States, and 66 percent go on to higher education, the highest rate in the European Union. Yet Finland spends about 30 percent less per student than the United States.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands-Schools-Successful.html
“An exquisitely sensitive, highly adaptable creature” – The Teenager
Posted: September 18, 2011 Filed under: development | Tags: a new look at teenage risk, teenage brain development 1 Comment »According to B. J. Casey, a neuroscientist at Weill Cornell Medical College who has spent nearly a decade applying brain and genetic studies to our understanding of adolescence, “We’re so used to seeing adolescence as a problem. But the more we learn about what really makes this period unique, the more adolescence starts to seem like a highly functional, even adaptive period. It’s exactly what you’d need to do the things you have to do then.”
A New Look at Teenage Risk
Teens take more risks not because they don’t understand the dangers but because they weigh risk versus reward differently: In situations where risk can get them something they want, they value the reward more heavily than adults do.
A video game Steinberg uses draws this out nicely. In the game, you try to drive across town in as little time as possible. Along the way you encounter several traffic lights. As in real life, the traffic lights sometimes turn from green to yellow as you approach them, forcing a quick go-or-stop decision. You save time—and score more points—if you drive through before the light turns red. But if you try to drive through the red and don’t beat it, you lose even more time than you would have if you had stopped for it. Thus the game rewards you for taking a certain amount of risk but punishes you for taking too much.
When teens drive the course alone, in what Steinberg calls the emotionally “cool” situation of an empty room, they take risks at about the same rates that adults do. Add stakes that the teen cares about, however, and the situation changes. In this case Steinberg added friends: When he brought a teen’s friends into the room to watch, the teen would take twice as many risks, trying to gun it through lights he’d stopped for before. The adults, meanwhile, drove no differently with a friend watching.
To Steinberg, this shows clearly that risk-taking rises not from puny thinking but from a higher regard for reward.
“They didn’t take more chances because they suddenly downgraded the risk,” says Steinberg. “They did so because they gave more weight to the payoff.”
Researchers such as Steinberg and Casey believe this risk-friendly weighing of cost versus reward has been selected for because, over the course of human evolution, the willingness to take risks during this period of life has granted an adaptive edge. Succeeding often requires moving out of the home and into less secure situations. “The more you seek novelty and take risks,” says Baird, “the better you do.” This responsiveness to reward thus works like the desire for new sensation: It gets you out of the house and into new turf.
Read the entire article at the National Geographic website.
