Make Learning Harder, not Easier

I was in a class this week where students were reviewing addition of fractions  They had recently learned multiplication of fractions and several students confused those solutions by adding across numerators and denominators (like you would for multiplication) instead of finding the common denominator and adding the numerators.

This common error underscores a learning principle outlined in Make it Stick, the Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger III, and McDaniel.   They note that many learning environments are designed to produce the familiarity trap.

Beware of the familiarity trap: the feeling that you know something and no longer need to practice it.

The students who knew how to add fractions months ago are now tripped up by that very skill because they have now been taught to multiply fractions and they are confusing the two solutions.

Many teachers tell me that students need to stay focused on one thing until they master it.  The familiarity trap tells us this is not the case.  When we stay with one thing until mastery (a luxury not afforded often in the real world) we will gain a false sense of knowing when we receive a similar problem that requires a different solution.

The solution is interleaving, which is practicing two or more subjects interchangeably so that they not only see the underlying differences between the problems, but will be able to discriminate between the problems and solutions when they face them outside of the sanitized and carefully organized classroom setting.

Let's go back to that fraction conundrum.  Teachers and learners would be better off practicing addition and subtraction of fractions side by side (which is exactly what was happening in those classrooms I saw this week) so they can see the different solutions that are required and be able to choose the proper path.

This  learning structure slows down and seems to frustrate the learner --- and the teacher --- however, it turns out, that it has one overarching, hidden quality - it produces deeper learning.

#thestruggleisreal

Learning What Works Through Failure

Misconceptions are a natural phase in the learning process.  Here's  a great quote from Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning about the benefits of failure and problem solving.

It's not the failure, that's desirable, it's the dauntless effort despite the risks, the discovery of what works and what doesn't that sometimes only failure can reveal.  It's trusting that trying to solve a puzzle serves us better than being spoon-fed the solution, even if we fall short in our first attempts at an answer.

Research shows that effort is required for learning to be lasting and durable.  Sweat equity must be paid and the task for teachers is to design learning experiences that allow for productive struggle and determination without leading to frustration and burnout.

Everything Bad is Good For You

That's the title of an intriguing book by Steven Johnson and appears to be the theme of the science of learning form the authors of Make it Stick.  In my first summay, I described the testing effect and how it is superior to rereading.

The next section of their book describes the antitode to massed practice or blocked practice, the idea of practicing one skill until it is burned into memory - think math homework over the past 50 years.  It turns out that this type of focused and repetitive practice is not as beneficial as we would believe.

The antitode to massed practice  is spaced, interleaved, and varied practice.  It turns out that the goal is to make the practice a little harder to encourage retrieval in a manner that leads to improved descrimination skills.

Spaced Practice - Leaving a little time (at least a day) between practice sessions allows the learner to forget just enough so that it requires effort to retrieve the content.  It is this act of retrieval after a little forgetting that actually impedes the forgetting process.  Daniel Willingham summarizes the studies about massed practice and shares suggested implications here.

Interleaved Practice -  Learning several new and related concepts at the same time is actually slower and feels less productive. Intuitively we all want to practice one thing at a time until it is mastered.  It turns out that for long term benefit, even though we feels like we are not, we are actually benefitting from a less uniform approach to learning new concent.  Instead of learning the formula for area of one shape at a time, it will be better for long term memory to learn the area formula of several different shapes interleaving them together thus solidifying our ability to choose the  right formula when needed.

Varied Pracitce - The authors cited another study that showed two groups who were practicing tossing a beanbag.  One group practiced consistently at three feet. The other group practiced at two and four feet.  They were both tested on a three foot toss and the group that had NEVER practiced on three feet performed better than the group that ONLY practiced on three feet.

My biggest takeaway is that we need to develop practice routines that allow the learner to rehearse the decision making that they will face in an authentic setting.   In closing, the authors spoke about the need to add reflection to all learning expereinces. Asking questions such as What happened?, What did I do?, How did it work out? are invaluable tools to cement learning in every experience.  Finally, we should ask, What should I do next time?

Maybe Weighing Pigs Does Make them Fatter?

Photo Credit: Ethan Block on Flickr

A good friend of mine likes to remind me that simply testing kids doesn't increase their learning, thus the title of this post derives from her catchy phrase that, "weighing pigs doesn't make them fatter".  The authors of Make it Stick (Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel) might disagree with that statement.  The subtitle of the book is The Science of Successful Learning and their aim is to review the research on what practices help us learning.    You can get a summary of their work on the American RadioWorks podcast here and a related podcast here.

The first strategy that they discuss is the benefit of retrieval to aid memory, especially when compared to simply rereading content.  Retrieval is described as self testing, using flash cards to practice the content, summarizing after reading short chunks, writing key ideas after reading, and low stakes quizzing.  Study after study compares the benefits to learning that accrue when one retrieves the information periodically during a course of study instead of simply reading and rereading the material and notes.   Students who stop to recite what they are learning or are asked to answer short quizzes learn more both in the short term - and here's the big bonus - in the long term.  This is called The Testing Effect.  For those of you who are still bent on cramming, you will see some immediate benefit from that frenzied approach, but the gains quickly disappear in to the black hole of long term forgetting.  You will get more benefit from studying and testing yourself AND you will remember more of what you have learned a month later.

Their research about this topic also found that learners benefited from questions and testing that were spaced out to allow some forgetting to occur such that the act of retrieval was accompanied by cognitive effort.  The greater the effort (so long as there was ultimate success) the more that the learner remembered.   Other benefits of frequent quizzing (effortful retrieval) included students understanding the content that they knew and didn't know in order to study more effectively, lower test anxiety because frequent quizzes helped students gain confidence, and slight improvement in attendance in higher education courses.

I see several implications for schools.

1.  Teach students how to study.  Explain to students the benefits of summarizing what they are learning through taking notes about the content they are grasping.

2.  Embrace low stakes quizzing throughout all units of study.  While we are in an environment of high stakes testing and there are plenty of reasons to eschew more testing.  Research has shown that low stakes questioning will enhance learning of all content and allow students to perform higher order thinking because of the rich content that is solidifying into their long term memory.

3. Implement this research today.  Too often educators have sneered at research that seems counter intuitive and the big losers are our students.  Check out the research yourself and you will see that this practice consistently allows students to learn material at a much higher rate than merely rereading.

Let's try this out!