Educational Research and Mythbusting
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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.
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Educational Research and Mythbusting
- 1. Questionnaire What learning style preference do you have?
- 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
- 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 He even says, “I readily admit that the theory is no longer current” as “several fields of knowledge have advanced significantly since the early 1980s.”
- 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
- 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
- 22. Engaging with Research What are the barriers?
- 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
- 25. Myths From Christian Bokhove’s lecture at ResearchEd 2017 National Conference. The iron content of spinach…
- 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.”
- 28. Sources of Research on letters (Sandringham are now a at Teaching?”
- 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
Editor's Notes
- 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.