Zombie Learning Theories

This week's article summary is Attack of the Zombie Learning Theories.

Every year there are a number of education articles published that debunk ideas about the process of learning that nevertheless remain popular with many teachers.

The most important take-away from these articles is everyone learns the same way -- meaning new information getting stored in long-term memory and being readily available to recall and use.

New information presented to us (optimally via many senses) first needs to connect (be encoded) with prior knowledge to have any chance of sticking in our brain. Then, in order to be permanently placed in long-term memory, this new information must be retrieved from our brain many times, ideally in spaced out time periods. (This is why cramming the night before a big test rarely works.) Without retrieval practice, our brain rejects this new information which then gets dumped when we sleep.

While the human brain has different sections that serve different purposes, e.g., our prefrontal cortex is where executive function skills are located, our entire brain works in unison all the time (much like the different parts of a car engine), which is why multi-sensory presentation of new information is advantageous for learning as it stimulates more than one section of our brain.

While we live in an age of distraction, multitasking remains an ineffective way to work and learn. We sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we can multi-task, but that usually involves one chore that’s in our muscle memory, like driving or exercising.

Check to see which if any of the Zombie Theories below you may have thought are valid.

Joe

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You probably know that zombies have a fondness for brains. What you may not know is that zombies also like theories about how the brain works. Zombie Learning Theories are ideas about how we learn that have been killed (i.e., thoroughly debunked by research), yet still roam our classrooms. These misconceptions make it harder for students to learn since they counteract the reality of the learning process.

Let’s meet some of the most common learning zombies so we can recognize them for what they are when they appear.  

Zombie #1: Learning Styles: Have you ever heard someone say they’re a kinesthetic or auditory learner? That’s this zombie at work. While the theory that students have specific learning styles has long been debunked, it still haunts many classrooms and lecture halls. It’s true that we have individual preferences for learning activities, but our brains are not wired differently to learn better from one style or another. Even education researcher Howard Gardner (whose theory of multiple intelligences contributed to the creation of this zombie) has stated that grouping students by learning styles is not a helpful practice.

Zombie #2: Left Brain vs. Right Brain: This zombie says that we have two sides of our brain, and one is more dominant. Those who use the right side of their brain are more creative, while those who use the left side of their brain are more analytical. A related zombie theory is that we only use 10 percent of our brains. None of this matches up with neuroscience. Humans use 100 percent of their brains all the time. And, while each part of the brain does play a different role, our level of creativity or analytical thinking are not determined by this division of labor. Whether you’re an artist or an engineer (or a little bit of both), your brain will look and behave very much the same. And if you want to develop creative or analytical thinking skills, practice is likely the key!  

Zombie #3: Fill Your Brain: This zombie says that our brain is like an empty bucket you have to fill with information. It uses words like “put this into your brain” or sometimes compares the brain to a hard drive or filing cabinet where you store things. The truth is that the brain doesn’t work like a storage container where you drop bits of information. Instead, our knowledge grows by making connections to things we already know. A better analogy might be to compare the brain to a strip of velcro where new things stick if they have enough hooks to build a connection.  

Zombie #4: 10,000 Hour Rule: This zombie says that if you practice something for 10,000 hours, you will become an expert at it. Malcolm Gladwell generalized this number in his book Outliers, and the zombie was born. In reality, there’s no hourly threshold where practice automatically confers expertise. While practice is certainly important, it’s effective practice that matters most. If you spend 10,000 or even 10 hours practicing the wrong skills, it will not lead you to become an expert.   

Zombie #5: Intense Specialization Is Required for Expertise: This zombie says that you develop expertise by focusing on one skill for as long as possible. It seems intuitive enough; spending more time, with less distraction, on one thing should certainly give you a leg up. But this zombie is friends with the Gladwell zombie, and both of them need to be put to rest. It’s true that sometimes people who hyperfocus on one skill become recognized experts in that area. But more often than not, it’s those who have generalized and explored a variety of interests who rise to the top. Developing a range of skills and knowledge is what allows us to innovate, pivot when needed, and find overall success, even in highly specialized fields.  

Zombie #6: Multitasking: This zombie often brags about its ability to focus on multiple tasks at once–something it calls multitasking. However, this zombie theory has been dead for a long time. In short, human brains are not able to focus on multiple things at one time. What is actually happening is that our brain is quickly switching from one task to another, but still only focusing on one of them at any given moment. And there’s a real productivity cost with each of the “switches” that makes it harder for our brains to provide focus and attention to any one of the tasks. From a productivity standpoint, it is far better to focus on one activity for a longer amount of time and reduce the amount of switching between activities that our brains have to do.  

Zombie #7: Boys and Girls Excel at Learning Different Things: This zombie insists that boys are naturally able to learn certain things more easily than girls and vice versa. In reality, brain development is attributed to environmental and social influences. So, while not accurate from a physiological standpoint, this zombie theory often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: if we think boys can’t learn something as well as girls (and therefore don’t expect them to be able to), in the long run their abilities may be reduced. But not because of any cognitive deficiency. Cultural assumptions and practices surrounding boys vs. girls have been shown to have a larger impact on learning than physiology itself. 

Zombie #8: Experts Make the Best Teachers: This zombie says that the greatest experts are naturally the best choice for teaching novices. Unfortunately, research shows that individuals who have developed extensive expertise in a subject over many years may be so removed from their novice days that they struggle to recall the challenges a new learner might experience. In addition, deep experts with a natural gift for a skill or domain may be unable to relate to ever feeling challenged if a skill came to them naturally. Expertise is important in teaching, but someone who has recently attained a skill might actually be more effective at teaching a novice than someone who mastered it long ago. Long-time expert teachers should consider pairing up with more recent learners to understand best approaches for teaching concepts.  

Zombie #9: Recalling What We’ve Learned Is Easy: Intelligence requires being able to recall the information we need at the right time. But this zombie fools us into believing that everything we’ve ever learned is ready and waiting for us to retrieve. This, unfortunately, isn’t the case. Our brains remember far more than we often give them credit for. (Think how an old photo or a particular smell can bring back very detailed but long “forgotten” memories that weren’t actually forgotten at all.) But retrieving the substance of something we’ve learned is a difficult task for the human brain. Retrieval of knowledge requires deliberate practice. As we think about teaching, we may need to balance the amount of time we spend presenting new information with the amount of time we help students develop strategies for retrieving the key information they’ve learned when and where they need it.   

How Schools Smother Curiosity

This week's article summary is How Schools Smother Curiosity.

At our Admissions Open Houses, I share with prospective parents the 4 Cs we stress at Trinity:

• Cognition -- the fancy word for academic development
• Character -- ethical/moral and organization/executive function skills, habits, and attitudes
• Confidence -- which we build in students slowly over time 
• Curiosity – innate in young children, yet sadly can be extinguished as early as 2nd grade

As you’ll read in the article below, furthering curiosity in students is too often lacking in schools. With un-engaging, low level, rote assignments, school often becomes a mundane chore for kids to endure rather than an exciting adventure of exploration, discovery, and possibilities.

For Trinity, maintaining a child’s innate curiosity is one of our hallmarks.

We employ many teaching strategies to spark our students’ curiosity:

• Asking them to reflect on their learning
• Challenging them to find multiple solutions to a problem
• Working collaboratively and cooperatively in groups with other students
• Asking open-ended questions
• Giving students options and choices in class
• Soliciting feedback from students about what interests them
• Providing age-appropriate assignments and activities that are engaging and relevant to children

It’s important that we never take for granted how unique we are in developing a strong foundation of continued curiosity.  It’s why we proudly say that we create life-long learners.

Joe

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When Susan Engel, a psychologist at Williams College, decided to spend a few months observing suburban elementary schools, she had a specific goal in mind: to study variations in rates of children’s curiosity. Which kids asked lots of questions? Which classrooms tended to encourage that? But Engel discovered that it was almost impossible to make valid comparisons because “there was such an astonishingly low rate of curiosity in any of the classrooms we visited.”

What she kept encountering—during that project and since—were children who had learned not to bother wondering. If a classmate did volunteer a fascinated observation (“A bird flew right into my house!”) or a question (“Why would it do that?”), the teacher would offer a perfunctory response and then direct the child back to the planned lesson.

For more than half a century, researchers have studied our desire to explore just for the sake of exploring, our itch to make sense of the unexpected. The educator Seymour Sarason argued that education should be dedicated to stimulating the “intellectual curiosity, awe, and wonder that a child possesses when he or she begins schooling.” Or at least try to avoid killing it.

Curiosity is valuable in its own right—and not just for children. It’s a passport to a richer, more fulfilling life. But it also contributes to academic achievement.

Left to their own devices, children will seek answers to the questions that bubble up in them. But adults can help—less by providing answers than by reframing and building on those questions. They can call attention to connections between what different kids are asking. They can assist a community of learners in finding resources and thinking more deeply as they explore.

How, specifically, should teachers nurture curiosity?

• Not just by welcoming students’ questions when they diverge from the curriculum but by rethinking the curriculum itself to address the topics that intrigue students. That includes questions to which the teacher doesn’t know the answer—and, indeed, questions that don’t have a single right answer.
• By “priming the pump” when necessary: suggesting questions or offering information that piques students’ curiosity about things they haven’t yet considered.
• By being curious themselves. A study confirmed that “the teacher’s own behavior has a powerful effect on a child’s disposition to explore.”
• By being keen to learn how each student’s mind works. Outstanding teachers tend to do more listening than talking, in part because, the more intensely interested a teacher is in a kid’s thinking, the more interested the kid becomes in her own thinking.
• By providing students with what psychological theorists call “autonomy support"—encouraging a sense of self-determination—which has been shown to heighten both intrinsic motivation (a concept that’s similar to curiosity) and the quality of learning.

Alas, these recommendations for teachers often run smack into structural constraints: an inflexible schedule that doesn’t leave time for exploration; a principal who insists on quiet, orderly classrooms; a central office that imposes a standardized curriculum; a school board that cares more about test scores than about meaningful learning.

Other traditional practices have a similar effect. Among the most reliable extinguishers of the flame of curiosity are mandatory homework (making students work a second shift after school), grades (which signal that success matters more than learning), a preoccupation with rigor (which often elicits anxiety, smothering curiosity), and the use of additional rewards or punishments to enforce this regimen.

Much of the problem comes from construing learning as a list of facts to be memorized or discrete skills to be practiced. This premise tends to promote teacher-centered direct instruction, which is often scripted or otherwise tightly controlled.

A group of University of California, Berkeley researchers found that when young children were shown exactly how to do something, they subsequently engaged in less exploration on their own than those who had received no explicit direction.

What Susan Engel discovered to her dismay in the early grades—a diminished desire to find out—only gets worse as kids make their way through traditional schools. Often, we don’t notice—either because, as Engel warns, we assume it’s enough for a teacher to be a nice, caring person or because we’re falsely reassured by high-achieving (albeit joyless) students. As education professor Lillian Weber once put it, too many kids start out as exclamation points and question marks, but leave school as plain periods.

Sure, everyone says curiosity is a lovely thing. But are we willing to oppose the traditional practices and policies that fail to nurture and even actively discourage it?