This document discusses various topics related to education research and learning theories. It questions the idea of learning styles and preferences improving learning outcomes. While Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences was influential, the creator later admitted the theory was no longer supported. The document also discusses myths in education research, such as the iron content of spinach, and how research is not always engaged with critically by teachers. Sources of current education research are provided, including researchers to follow on Twitter.
4. Universities
UCL (advice to under/postgrads)
“Kinaesthetic learner [should] make studying more physical – work
at a standing desk/on an exercise bike”
5. Evidence?
How people learn not well understood
Plenty of studies conducted
Little to suggest learning through a ‘preferred
learning style’ improves learning
6.
7. Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences
8 intelligences, rather than the traditional IQ-type intelligence
E.g. musical, visual-spatial, naturalistic, logical-mathematical
8. Gardner in 2016
“Most psychologists, and particularly most psychometricians, have
never warmed to the theory”
“... nor have I carried out experiments designed to test the theory.”
He even says, “I readily admit that the theory is no longer current”
as “several fields of knowledge have advanced significantly since
the early 1980s.”
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14. Learning Outcomes
Think of a topic that you teach and scribble down some learning
outcomes in ascending order of challenge/difficulty/level
You just need two or three
15.
16.
17. Evils of Knowledge
“Give your scholar no verbal lessons; he should be taught by
experience alone … What’s the use of inscribing on their brains a list
of symbols which mean nothing to them?”
- Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Education, 1921
18. Immorality of Facts
“If nature has given the child this plasticity of brain … it was not that
you should imprint on it the names and dates of kings, the jargon of
heraldry, the globe and geography, all those words without present
meaning or future use for the child, which flood of words
overwhelms his sad and barren childhood.”
- Rousseau, Education, 1921
19. Passive Fact Learning
“The child is throw into a passive, receptive or absorbing attitude.
The conditions are such that he is not permitted to follow the law of
his nature; the result is friction and waste.”
- John Dewey, from The Essential Dewey (Hickman and Alexander)
20. English National Curriculum
Pupils should receive lessons “where rote learning of facts must give
way to nurturing through education of essential transferable skills.”
Part of a foreword to an ATL publication by the Director of
Curriculum at the QCA, who reorganised the curriculum, Mick
Waters said that:
21. Engaging with Research
“Much of what teachers are taught about education is wrong,
and … they are encouraged to teach in ineffective ways …
Ideas that had absolutely no evidence backing them up had
been presented to me as unquestionable axioms.”
- Daisy Christodoulou, Seven Myths About Education
23. Right and Wrong
It’s not like science – there are no clear answers
Purpose of education is tied to political and social debates; there is
often a conflict in what one person sees as important versus another
Being evidence-informed
24. Myths
Don’t tend to originate from experts/entrepreneurs misleading us
Usually from uninformed interpretations of genuine facts, promoted by
victims of their own wishful thinking
Howard-Jones, Neuroscience and education: myths and messages, 2014
26. Myths
In Larsson 1995, he explained that spinach being a good source of iron is
a myth from the 1930s, citing Hamblin (1981)
Hamblin (1981) explains that the discovery was actually in the 1980s
and that it was shown in the 1930s that the issue arose from an
incorrect decimal point
The decimal point has no reference
27. Myths
The lack of reference for the decimal point (and search that bore no
fruits) was highlighted to Hamblin by Sutton in 2010.
Hamblin replied thanking Sutton and continued:
“I am very pleased to see that you have uncovered the whole story and
very willing to admit that I was wrong. Incidentally, my name is Terence
not Terrance.”
29. Hot right now?
How we learn – cognitive sciences. Memory
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/memories-are-
made?amp
Rosenshine 2012
https://www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-views/are-these-7-
pillars-classroom-practice
Cognitive Load Theory
Retrieval Practice and the Testing Effect
Spaced Repetition and Interleaving
31. Publications
Rosenshine’s, “Principles of Instruction”
- Evidence-based teaching approaches
Sutton Trust, “What makes great teaching?”
- Lots of evidence-based ideas to do and ideas to
avoid
Education Endowment Foundation
- Lots of evidence-based strategies
Research Schools Network
- Sandringham Research School Newsletter
32. References
Edgar Dale ‘Audio-visual Methods in Teaching’ http://ocw.metu.edu.tr/file.php/118/dale_audio-
visual_20methods_20in_20teaching_1_.pdf
Christian Bokhove on Myths https://www.slideshare.net/mobile/cbokhove/researched-2017-
national-conference-this-is-the-new-mth
Doug Lemov on Bloom’s Taxonomy
http://m.teachlikeachampion.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fteachlikeachampion.com%2Fblog
%2Fblooms-taxonomy-pyramid-problem%2F&dm_redirected=true#3080
Dan Williams on Pyramids of Doom
https://furtheredagogy.wordpress.com/2016/05/18/pyramids-of-doom/
33. Gardner essay on MI Theory https://howardgardner01.files.wordpress.com/2016/11/scientists-
making-a-difference_gardner.pdf
Krathwohl’s Revised Taxonomy www.depauw.edu/files/resources/krathwohl.pdf
Pedro de Bruyckere on Bloom’s https://theeconomyofmeaning.com/2017/08/24/a-longer-piece-
on-the-taxonomy-of-bloom/
Willingham on Learning Styles http://www.danielwillingham.com/learning-styles-faq.html
Blake Harvard on Learning Styles https://theeffortfuleducator.com/2017/07/17/learning-myths-
vs-learning-facts/
Claire Stoneman on Learning
Styles https://birminghamteacher.wordpress.com/2017/10/25/vapid-and-vakuous-the-zombie-
myth-that-refuses-to-die-even-in-our-universities/
Lemov and Willingham on Blooms http://teachlikeachampion.com/blog/blooms-taxonomy-
pyramid-problem/
34. Seven Myths of Education, by Daisy Christodoulou
What if?, by David Didau
Education Endowment Foundation https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/
Sutton Trust’s “What Makes Great Teaching” https://www.suttontrust.com/research-paper/great-
teaching/
Deans For Impact “Science of Learning” https://deansforimpact.org/resources/the-science-of-
learning/
Kirschner, Sweller and Clark (2006) “Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work”
http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf
Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/periodicals/Rosenshine.pdf
ResearchED www.workingoutwhatworks.com
Link here http://www.staffs.ac.uk/sgc1/faculty/personal-skills/documents/learning_styles_questionnaire.pdf
Plenty of studies – but these have almost entirely been shown to lack credibility through poor methodology. Literature reviews have been conducted by prominent psychologists who have shown most studies lack key criteria that make them credible.
There’s a study into verbalisers and visualisers – those who like to think through words or through pictures. It showed that they do tend to move towards those approaches when given the freedom, but it didn’t show any differences in their learning when they use their preferred style to when they don’t.
Note that learning styles theory is a theory of how the mind works, not about instruction. You can base your instruction around covering all learning styles and do so very successfully, it’s just that the evidence is not there for their existence; you’re probably just a good teacher.
Gardner was intrigued because of Jean Piaget who considered scientific thinking as the high point of cognitive development. Gardner felt that this was only one plausible end state; as a trained musician and a lover of the arts and wondered how one would construe human development if one were to think of artistics thinking as the apogee of human cognition.
Noticed that damage to different parts of the brain affected certain aspects, e.g. musical areas can get damaged leaving linguistic capacities unaffected.
He decided experimental psychology wasn’t for him and carried out syntheses of known research to draw his own conclusions. Received a grant to conduct significant research into different ways of thinking, eventually publishing the 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Deliberately used intelligences to challenge psychologists who felt they owned the word (rather than using the word talents). His definition of intelligence was “the biopsychological potential to process information in certain ways in order to solve problems or create products that are valued in at least one culture.”
The theory in not experimental in the traditional sense, but is draws on hundreds of findings from half-a-dozen fields of science
Gardner says he is “no longer wedded to the particular list of intelligences that I initially developed. What I … have done is to undermine the hegemony over the concept of intelligence that was maintained for a century by adherents to a Spearman-Binet-Piaget concept of intelligence.”
Give printout of this one – it’s referenced and includes a Confucius quote
Then print off the various different examples from http://www.willatworklearning.com/2006/05/people_remember.html
Then go through the rest of the Dale explanations
His book is about teaching using audio-visual materials – these were particularly new – and the idea that AV can make the learning experience more memorable.
The whole purpose of the cone is to consider that there are experiences that are particularly direct and, thus, concrete, onto those experiences that are more abstract. It’s not intended as a hierarchy because, depending on what you are learning or the stage that you are at, there are plenty of abstractions and concrete experiences that are helpful and necessary (e.g. as a child you learn many words – visual symbols – which are necessary abstractions)
There is no triangle in the literature – this has been constructed by other people to try and represent it.
In Bloom’s 1956 paper, practically before cognitive science was a thing, it included the line “with the understanding that knowledge was the necessary precondition for putting these skills and abilities into practice.” Many people place limited importance on knowledge and that learning knowledge in lessons is one of the least productive things they could be doing.
In reality, you need the knowledge – the facts – in order to allow students to think deeply, and you have to reinforce the knowledge enough to ensure it is built into long-term memory.
His Taxonomy was designed to bring about a common language to talk about learning goals – this seems to have been successfully transferred.
However, there is no basis in research for the hierarchies that come with it. Even with the adaptations, there is no actual research basis for the categories or for one category being more difficult than another - they even acknowledged this in their own original paper, suggesting evaluation could come at any stage. There is research that has distinction between different types of knowledge (declarative – recall, comprehension, understanding; and procedural – enables application).
There are a number of adaptations over 50+ years. This from Dylan Wiliam has knowledge is in its own dimension as a necessary precursor to the others, but the rest is a collection, a toolbox, of ideas. You can do any of them together, on their own, before the other, after the other.
Daisy Christodoulou’s book ‘Seven Myths of Education’ outlines an argument that suggests Facts and Knowledge have been considered less important, with a series of chapters on myths around:
Facts prevent understanding
Teacher-led instruction is passive
We should teach transferable skills
Projects and activities are the best way to learn
Teaching knowledge is indoctrination
Daisy Christodoulou’s book ‘Seven Myths of Education’ outlines an argument that suggests Facts and Knowledge have been considered less important, with a series of chapters on myths around:
Facts prevent understanding
Teacher-led instruction is passive
We should teach transferable skills
Projects and activities are the best way to learn
Teaching knowledge is indoctrination
Daisy Christodoulou’s book ‘Seven Myths of Education’ outlines an argument that suggests Facts and Knowledge have been considered less important, with a series of chapters on myths around:
Facts prevent understanding
Teacher-led instruction is passive
We should teach transferable skills
Projects and activities are the best way to learn
Teaching knowledge is indoctrination
Daisy Christodoulou’s book ‘Seven Myths of Education’ outlines an argument that suggests Facts and Knowledge have been considered less important, with a series of chapters on myths around:
Facts prevent understanding
Teacher-led instruction is passive
We should teach transferable skills
Projects and activities are the best way to learn
Teaching knowledge is indoctrination
Barriers
Time to read research
Time to conduct research
Access to research
Lack of concise, easy-to-follow research
Lack of clarity in how to implement conclusions
Teaching is not a science
Desired objectives of ‘what makes good teaching’ / ‘what should we teach’ varies from one person to another
Lack of expertise to judge research quality
Success of implementation is not easily observable
Lack of engagement from many
Important to agree common goals in those areas where commonality is achievable – e.g. those areas that can be defined by science
Whole purpose of this is to inform, challenge and refine our professional judgement. Evidence and research shouldn’t undermine professional judgement – it is there for the former.