"Would the same results hold for, say, teaching literary or historical analysis, which isn’t just a matter of remembering discrete bits of information? It may be that you need a human being for that." Yes. You absolutely need a human being for that. 😳
I appreciate the ideas in this post and would like for schools with low ratings to give these ideas a try. Often, I suspect that our teaching units cover too much material. Maybe less would be more in the long run. I particularly join those who advocate for frequent testing followed by rapid feedback and correct answers. In addition, I support the idea of teachers talking less and asking more questions that require extended answers. I hope to ask questions that require thinking.
I fear that once state exams became over-valued as predictors of mastery, schools across the nation began teaching kids ways to identify the correct multiple-choice answers. Teaching children to analyze the exam has replaced teaching them to think and master information.
To summarize, I support the post's suggestions to 1) teach smaller chunks of information, 2) test frequently, 3) quickly provide feedback along with correct answers, and 4) provide examples to clarify the content of instruction.
Hi Theodore. I'm confused. What Koedinger study are you referencing? You say, "In this study, students played a simple computer game, and "mastery" was defined as achieving an 80% success rate". However that was not the case in this research: Koedinger, K. R., Carvalho, P. F., Liu, R., & McLaughlin, E. A. (2023). An astonishing regularity in student learning rate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(13), e2221311120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221311120
One aspect of educational "research" that I find frustrating is how weak or mediocre work is accepted uncritically, and results are often hyped far beyond what the actual study justifies. The Koedinger study is an example of this. In this study, students played a simple computer game, and "mastery" was defined as achieving an 80% success rate. The Hechinger Report article clearly states that the top quarter of students learning pace was 50% higher than the bottom quarter, so even using their own data there is a clear difference in learning speeds. And it's completely unjustified to generalize this one study to the claim that "students all learn at the same rate:. At best, all you can conclude is that the computer game used for the study was unchallenging, so that everyone could eventually achieve "mastery". Pretty much everyone can learn how to operate a cash register at a supermarket checkout line, but that doesn't mean that everyone can learn at the same pace; instead, it means that operating a cash register is not very intellectually challenging.
This study is literally incredible -- as in, it is not possible to believe it. Anyone with actual teaching experience will quickly see that students do not all learn at the same pace, and even when everyone starts from an initial point of complete ignorance some students will learn much faster than others.
"Would the same results hold for, say, teaching literary or historical analysis, which isn’t just a matter of remembering discrete bits of information? It may be that you need a human being for that." Yes. You absolutely need a human being for that. 😳
I appreciate the ideas in this post and would like for schools with low ratings to give these ideas a try. Often, I suspect that our teaching units cover too much material. Maybe less would be more in the long run. I particularly join those who advocate for frequent testing followed by rapid feedback and correct answers. In addition, I support the idea of teachers talking less and asking more questions that require extended answers. I hope to ask questions that require thinking.
I fear that once state exams became over-valued as predictors of mastery, schools across the nation began teaching kids ways to identify the correct multiple-choice answers. Teaching children to analyze the exam has replaced teaching them to think and master information.
To summarize, I support the post's suggestions to 1) teach smaller chunks of information, 2) test frequently, 3) quickly provide feedback along with correct answers, and 4) provide examples to clarify the content of instruction.
Many of these cognitive strategies sound like Explicit Instruction.
I would love to see a list of those strategies and how to implement them.
We are homeschooling the kids so they basically are 100% tutored
Hi Theodore. I'm confused. What Koedinger study are you referencing? You say, "In this study, students played a simple computer game, and "mastery" was defined as achieving an 80% success rate". However that was not the case in this research: Koedinger, K. R., Carvalho, P. F., Liu, R., & McLaughlin, E. A. (2023). An astonishing regularity in student learning rate. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 120(13), e2221311120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2221311120
One aspect of educational "research" that I find frustrating is how weak or mediocre work is accepted uncritically, and results are often hyped far beyond what the actual study justifies. The Koedinger study is an example of this. In this study, students played a simple computer game, and "mastery" was defined as achieving an 80% success rate. The Hechinger Report article clearly states that the top quarter of students learning pace was 50% higher than the bottom quarter, so even using their own data there is a clear difference in learning speeds. And it's completely unjustified to generalize this one study to the claim that "students all learn at the same rate:. At best, all you can conclude is that the computer game used for the study was unchallenging, so that everyone could eventually achieve "mastery". Pretty much everyone can learn how to operate a cash register at a supermarket checkout line, but that doesn't mean that everyone can learn at the same pace; instead, it means that operating a cash register is not very intellectually challenging.
This study is literally incredible -- as in, it is not possible to believe it. Anyone with actual teaching experience will quickly see that students do not all learn at the same pace, and even when everyone starts from an initial point of complete ignorance some students will learn much faster than others.