Educational Beliefs Not Backed by Research

This week's article summary is 5 Popular Education Beliefs That Aren't Backed By Research.

I enjoy articles that refute long-standing educational beliefs, especially ones I believed and used.

There’s been much research over the past 25 years on how our brains work and how we learn. One important understanding is how limited our short-term memory is. Consequently, to learn something new, we need to be attentive and focused. Any internal or external distraction can inhibit learning.

Many of the studies below illustrate what we believe are boosts to learning are often impediments, like doodling (a habit of mine) and background music in the classroom (I used to play classical music during free reading time).

Learning also requires motivation and persistence. Some common classroom strategies like oral reading and even grades can decrease student motivation and increase anxiety.

Clearly, cognitive scientists have uncovered much about how we best learn (Daniel Willingham, quoted in this article, is perhaps the most renowned), yet we teachers need to keep examining if the tried-and-true strategies we employ are really effective.

Joe

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Not every learning myth requires teachers to pull up stakes and start all over again. There are some commonly held misconceptions that contain a nugget of wisdom but need to be tweaked in order to align with the science of learning.

Sometimes, in other words, you’re already halfway there. Here are five myths that educators can quickly adjust and turn to their advantage.

DOODLING IMPROVES FOCUS AND LEARNING: When we write about the power of drawing to learn, we often hear from readers who feel compelled to defend an old habit: “See, I told you that when I was doodling, I was still paying attention!” But doodling—which is commonly defined as “an aimless or casual scribble or sketch” is distinct from what researchers call “task-related drawing.” And doodling, in this sense, is not associated with improvements in focus or academic outcomes. In fact, both cognitive load theory and experimental studies are generally downbeat on doodling. Students who sketch complicated scenes or designs as they try to process a lesson on plate tectonics are engaging in competitive cognitive tasks and will generally underperform on both. Doodling, like all drawing, is cognitively intensive, involving complex feedback loops between visual, sensorimotor, attentional, and planning regions of the brain and body. Because our ability to process information is finite, drawing and learning about different things at the same time is a simple question of too much.

How to fix it: Sketching what you are actually learning—from representational drawings of cells or tectonic boundaries to the creation of concept maps and organizational drawings—is, in fact, a powerful learning strategy and that applies “regardless of one’s artistic talent.” Try to harness a student’s passion for doodling by allowing them to submit academic sketches as work products. To get even more bang for your buck, ask them to annotate their drawings, or talk you through them—which will encode learning even more deeply.

READING ALOUD IN TURN IMPROVES FLUENCY: Often called round robin reading (RRR), teachers deploy RRR—during which the whole class follows a text while students read sections consecutively—for good reasons: Arguably, the practice encourages student engagement, gives teachers the opportunity to gauge oral reading fluency, and has a built-in classroom management benefit as well. Students are generally silent and (superficially) attentive when a peer is reading. But there is no research evidence that supports the claim that RRR actually contributes to students becoming better readers, either in terms of their fluency or comprehension. RRR also has the unfortunate effects of stigmatizing struggling readers, exposing new readers to dysfluent modeling, and failing to incorporate meaningful comprehension strategies. 

How to fix it: Reading out loud is necessary to teach fluency, but there are better methods. Pairing kids together to read sections of the text aloud to each other (partner reading) is a good approach, especially if teachers circulate to listen for problems. More generally, reading strategies that model proper reading speed, pronunciation, and affect—while providing time for vocabulary review, repeated exposure to the text, and opportunities to summarize and discuss—can improve both fluency and comprehension.

TALENT BEATS PERSISTENCE: It’s a common trap: Observers tend to rate people who appear to be naturally gifted at something more highly than those who admit they’ve worked hard to achieve success. Researchers call this the naturalness bias. In reality, the opposite is more often true. Popular lore tells us that genius is born, not made. Scientific research, on the other hand, reveals that true expertise is mainly the product of years of intense practice and dedicated coaching. Experimental studies extend the point to academics: An influential 2019 study found that high school GPA is a better predictor than the SAT of how likely students are to complete college on time. That’s because grades are a very good index of your self-regulation—your ability to stick with things, your ability to regulate your impulses, your ability to delay gratification and work hard instead of goofing off.

How to fix it: All kids—even the ones who already excel in a discipline—benefit when teachers emphasize the importance of effort, perseverance, and growth. Consider praising students for their improvement instead of their raw scores; have students read about and then discuss the idea of neural plasticity; and consider assigning reports on the mistakes and growing pains of accomplished writers, scientists, and artists. Try to incorporate rough-draft thinking in class, and think about taking risks yourself.

BACKGROUND MUSIC (ALWAYS) UNDERMINES LEARNING: It’s a fascinating and complex question: Can students successfully learn while background music is playing? In some cases, it appears, background music can be a neutral to positive influence; in other scenarios, it’s clearly distracting. There are several factors at play in determining the outcomes. Because music and language use some of the same neural circuitry, listening to lyrics of a familiar language may rely on the same cognitive resources as vocabulary learning, and that can lead to an overload of processing capacity and thus to an interference effect. Other features of the music probably matter, too: dramatic changes in a song’s rhythm, for example, or transitions from one song to the next often force the learning brain to reckon with irrelevant information. Studies show that background music has a small but reliably detrimental effect on reading comprehension. In some cases, however, music may aid learning. Catchy melodies, for example, can boost a student’s mood—which might lead to significant positive effects on learning when motivation and concentration are paramount.

How to fix it: Basically, “music has two effects simultaneously that conflict with one another,” cognitive psychologist Daniel Willingham says—one distracting and the other arousing. “If you’re doing work that’s not very demanding, having music on is probably fine”—and likely to motivate students to keep going, In those cases, try to stick to music that’s instrumental or familiar, in order to decrease the cognitive resources needed to process it. “But if you’re doing work that’s just somewhat difficult, the distraction is probably going to make music a negative overall,” Willingham adds.

GRADES ARE MOTIVATING: Teachers are well aware that grading, as a system, has many flaws—but at least grades motivate students to try their hardest, right? Unfortunately, the research suggests that that’s largely not the case. “Despite the conventional wisdom in education, grades don’t motivate students to do their best work, nor do they lead to better learning or performance,” write motivation researcher Chris Hulleman. A recent study revealed that when confronted by grades, written feedback, or nothing at all—students preferred the latter two to grades, suggesting that A–F rankings might actually have a net negative impact on motivation. Another study showed grades enhance anxiety and avoidance of challenging courses but don’t improve student motivation. Providing students with specific, actionable feedback, on the other hand, promotes trust between instructors and students, leading to greater academic ambition.

How to fix it: While grades are still mandatory in most schools—and some form of rigorous assessment remains an imperative—educators might consider ways to de-emphasize them. Some teachers choose to drop every student’s lowest grade; allow students to retake a limited number of assessments each unit; or periodically give students the discretion to turn in their best work from a series of related assignments.