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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
Education and Learning offers an accessible introduction to the most recent evidence-based research into teaching, learning, and our education system.
- Presents a wide range references for both seminal and contemporary research into learning and teaching
- Examines the evidence around topical issues such as the impact of Academies and Free Schools on student attainment and the strong international performance of other countries
- Looks at evidence-based differences in the attainment of students from different socioeconomic and ethnic backgrounds, and explores the strong international performance of Finnish and East Asian students
- Provides accessible explanations of key studies that are supplemented with real-life case examples
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Seitenzahl: 753
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014
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Table of Contents
Title page
Copyright page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Preface
What Do We Mean by ‘Evidence’?
Chapter 1: Introduction: What Can We Learn from the History of Education?
Lessons from History
Pedagogical Methods
The Organization of This Book
Chapter 2: Memory: How Do We Remember What We Learn?
Learning
Memory
Long-term memory
Physical Changes in the Brain
Retrieval of Information
Factors that Affect Memory
Summary
Chapter 3: Language: What Determines Our Acquisition of First and Second Languages?
Acquisition of Our First Language
Teaching Second Languages
Summary
Chapter 4: Reading: How Do We Learn to Read and Why Is It Sometimes so Difficult?
Problems with Learning to Read
Dyslexia
Poor comprehenders
Summary
Chapter 5: Intelligence and Ability: How Does Our Understanding of These Affect How We Teach?
The Brain, Intelligence and Ability
Interventions to Affect Abilities and Intelligence
Attitudes to Ability in the Education System
Summary
Chapter 6: Sex Differences: Do They Matter in Education?
Sex Differences in Educational Outcomes
Men and Women at Work
Sex Differences in Cognitive Ability
Summary
Chapter 7: Metacognition: Can We Teach People How to Learn?
What Is Meant by Deep and Surface Learning?
Metacognition, Self-Regulation and Learning
The Impact of IT on the Way Students Learn
Overall Impact of Self-Regulated Learning Interventions
Summary
Chapter 8: Academic Selection: Do We Need to Do It and Can We Make It Fair?
Selection in Secondary Schools
Selecting Students for University
Summary
Chapter 9: Creativity: What Is It, and How and Why Should We Nurture It?
What Do We Mean by Creativity?
The Development of Creativity
Creativity and Intelligence
Fostering Creativity in the Education System
The Benefit of Fostering Creativity
Summary
Chapter 10: Education Policy: How Evidence Based Is It?
Inequalities in the Early Years
Unequal Outcomes in Primary Education
Attainment in Secondary School
Post-Compulsory Education
Summary
Chapter 11: Comparative Education: What Lessons Can We Learn from Other Countries?
International Comparisons
Values and Ideologies
Pedagogical Approaches and Learning Styles
Systems across the World
Vocational Education
Learning from the Best
Let's Not Forget …
Summary
Chapter 12: Life-long Learning: How Can We Teach Old Dogs New Tricks?
What Declines with Age and What Does Not?
Short-Term Working Memory/Executive-Function/Attention
Declarative Memory: Where Did I Get That Hat?
Implicit/Procedural Memory: One Doesn't Forget How to Drive a Car
Neuroanatomical and Functional Basis of Behavioural Changes in Ageing
Individual Differences
Can We Improve Cognitive Functions?
Summary
Chapter 13: Technology: How Is It Shaping a Modern Education and Is It Also Shaping Young Minds?
Digital Natives and Net Generations: Is Technology Changing How We Think?
Lessons for the Younger Generation
Computer-Aided Learning
Interactive Technologies in Schools
Learning from Paper and Screen
Inequalities in the Digital Age
Summary
Chapter 14: Conclusions: What Does the Future Hold for Education?
Index
This edition first published 2014
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Cover design by Simon Levy Associates
To Harriet
JM
Acknowledgements
I had the excellent idea of asking Katy to join me in writing this book when I realized that both I and the book needed energizing – I had become too distracted with minutiae. I am most grateful to her, and we have had great fun doing it together – even if it has put rather a strain on our families. I am particularly grateful to my daughter Harriet Impey for her many helpful criticisms and ideas throughout the process and for reading and correcting the entire final version. The educational histories of my grandchildren and the children of my friends have all provided the stimulus for writing this book. I am grateful also to all the schools and school children with whom I have worked for giving me some insight into what goes on in schools today. I am delighted that Sarah McElwee, who worked with me on our verbal reasoning test (VESPARCH) for five years, agreed to write the chapter on Metacognition since she knows so much more about this than we do. Thanks are also due to Susanna Blackshaw and Michael Humphreys for going to New Lanark and photographing the timelines in the schoolroom. I owe a great debt to Professor Larry Weiskrantz for encouraging me over the years on my journey from neurochemistry to psychology (and also for providing the photograph of the all-male Delegates of the Oxford University Press). Finally, I would like to thank my son Lawrence Impey for his example concerning the writing of books and for his help with choosing the title.
JM
Whilst writing this book I have lived and worked in many cities and even different countries, often collecting inspiration and material along the way. The enthusiasm of the people I have met and their genuine interest in the topics in this volume acted as invaluable motivation to keep writing, so I am grateful to them all. Particular thanks are owed to my family and friends who have been ever patient as my writing has taken up weekends and holidays. I hope they will enjoy taking the odd weekend or holiday to read the book now it is finished. Most of all, I would like to thank Jane for giving me the opportunity to work as a co-author with her. Needless to say, I could not have done this without her, and it has been a pleasure.
KT
Preface
Educators, politicians, students and parents have diverse ideas about the ways in which individuals learn and can be taught, but these ideas are not always backed up by empirical research. Educational psychology has its roots in educational theory rather than experimental psychology, and is one area of expertise that can provide evidence to inform educational practice. In this book we consider some of the psychological functions that are particularly important for education – language acquisition, learning and memory, ability, sex differences and creativity. In each case, we present an account of the basic psychology (and where necessary, neurology1) related to this area, alongside seminal studies and cutting-edge research that link the psychological knowledge back to education. In later chapters, we look at particular applied areas in the field of educational research: reading, the role of metacognition (thinking about learning), the effects of academic selection, the changes in cognition that occur with ageing, and the role of technology in the classroom. We consider how these areas are treated in different countries across the world and how they impact on social policy in England.2
We have, of course, been highly selective in choosing which studies to report, only including those which we feel best illustrate the points we are making. In some cases considerable detail is provided, in order to give the reader a chance to evaluate the evidence presented and form an independent opinion on its implications. References to the relevant scholarly research papers are also included in order to make it easier for academic readers to follow up on our conclusions. A summary at the end of each chapter addresses the question so often asked when new research findings are presented: ‘So what?’ We review the ways in which we believe the psychology we have described could support, and in some cases possibly change, the practice of teaching.
This book is intended not only for teachers and those studying education as an academic subject, but also for parents, grandparents and others who are interested in the education of the children and young people of today.
What Do We Mean by ‘Evidence’?
This section is intended for any of our readers who are not familiar with reading articles in scientific journals.
Throughout this book we have emphasized the importance of evidence for the effect of interventions and for demonstrating the detection of differences in education. We do, however, need to make clear what we are looking for when we present the findings of a scientific paper. We have sought to present empirical evidence which relates to contemporary methods of teaching and to the organization of our education system. However, it is essential to view such evidence critically, because at times researchers are just as likely as politicians to present data in a way that serves their own interests rather than giving a balanced view. So what sort of things do you need to look out for when you read about studies in this book and elsewhere?
Firstly, there are some basic aspects of research design of which you ought to be aware. Unless they use census data, all studies involve a sample of people and it is important to consider the nature of this sample if we want to know whether the results apply to the general population. How were participants recruited? By advertising, for example, or by buttonholing people in a supermarket, by using all the available children in a school year, or by following up particular birth cohorts? Actually, quite a lot of psychological research is done using university students. A second question to ask is what selection criteria were used and what proportion of the original sample was discarded as a result of applying these criteria. For example, in the study of ageing, were elderly people with organic disease or dementia included or not? Different methods of obtaining and selecting participants will introduce different possible biases.
Research can range from the highly qualitative to highly quantitative, with every mixture imaginable in between. Such studies can tell you different things. Qualitative studies, for example case studies or a small number of in-depth interviews, are very helpful for exploring people's motivations, why they do things, but are not so good for identifying general rules. We cannot necessarily assume that one set of people will behave like another. In contrast, large quantitative surveys can be good for capturing representative views and for identifying patterns of behaviour but they rarely tell us why these patterns occur. Large sample sizes are good because then small individual differences or errors will have less of an impact on the results. However, they also present a risk because with large samples many differences can be statistically significant without necessarily being that important.
When doing quantitative research most researchers will run statistical tests such as t-tests or ANOVAs (which tell us whether differences between average group results are significant) and correlations or regressions (which tell us if two factors vary together). These typically produce a ‘p’ value between 0 and 1. A p value of 0.05 indicates there is a 1 in 20 probability that the result occurred by chance and is a common criterion for statistical significance. It is worth noting, therefore, that if a researcher simply runs endless statistical tests then eventually they are likely to get a significant result by chance. In other words, don't assume that a significant result proves something, instead try to think about what it means and whether it actually makes sense.
Another caution is in the temptation to over-state findings, particularly when talking about causality. The key mantra is that correlation does not equal causation. In other words, although two things might vary together, it does not prove that one causes the other. You might think this is obvious, but it is easy to be convinced by an argument that intuitively sounds correct. For example, it is easy to note that socioeconomic status correlates with many educational outcomes such as attainment and the likelihood of going to university. However, being of low socioeconomic status does not in itself cause a pupil to have lower attainment. It is the various associated factors, for example the likelihood of parents reading to their children or the likelihood that a parent can pay for extra tuition, which actually have a direct impact on attainment.
Studies can either be cross-sectional – a snapshot in time – or longitudinal, with measures taken before and after a time interval. If we want to demonstrate causation then either we can use qualitative interviews to ask why people do things (and rely on the accuracy of introspection) or we have to conduct a formal, longitudinal experiment where we try to hold as many things constant as possible and then vary the factor of interest. If we start with two similar groups and find that after an intervention with one of them they differ significantly, there is a good chance this can be attributed to the intervention. However, it is important to be sure that the two groups were matched on relevant factors. In education such factors that are likely to affect outcome are: measured ‘ability’; socioeconomic background; parents' educational level; age; and sex. Of course, whilst this approach is ideal when working with levers, cells or chemicals, it is impossible in practice to find two identical classes and teachers, so these experiments are always open to critique. One should also check whether any control group undertook a comparable activity to the intervention activity, but one not targeted at the outcome of interest. This accounts for ‘tender loving care’ effects – that people can change their behaviour just because they know they are being studied. Longitudinal studies make the strongest case for proving causation but they are never perfect. This is one reason why it is so important to conduct multiple studies and replicate findings.
Unfortunately, it is very difficult for academics to get studies published if all they do is replicate the work of someone else. For this reason, we tend to get a lot of research that is similar but not identical. If we still want to pick out patterns across the papers, then one technique available is meta-analysis. Here, a researcher will collect together multiple papers addressing a single topic and try to aggregate the findings to see whether overall they are positive, negative or lack a clear pattern. This method has a lot of potential, but it relies on the researcher collecting a comprehensive sample of literature, filtering out poor quality studies and weighting the remainder to account for factors like sample size. It is also susceptible to problems of publication bias, because it is much less likely that a study will get published, and therefore included in the meta-analysis, if it includes no significant findings (after all, would you be more interested in reading about a food that boosts attention span or one that has absolutely no impact on it?). A good meta-analysis provides a helpful aggregation of literature, but you should not take the findings as fact.
This, actually, is the core message when reading empirical research: just because a researcher writes a very convincing paper highlighting the importance and relevance of their findings, you should not assume they have proved anything. You must always think through the logic of the study and consider every possible alternative explanation before coming to your own conclusion about what it means.
Notes
1 Sarah-Jayne Blakemore and Uta Frith's book, The Learning Brain (2005), Blackwell, UK contains a particularly readable account of the background neurophysiology and a glossary of terms.
2 Since education policy is devolved in the UK, we focus largely on English education policy and explicitly note where we are referring to Scotland or Wales.
Chapter 1
Introduction
What Can We Learn from the History of Education?
It is therefore the interest of all, that everyone, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in character, – that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth should be created, and knowledge attained.
Robert Owen (1771–1858), industrialist, promoter of the Co-operative movement, educator and philanthropist1)
Do you agree? If you ever have the chance, visit New Lanark, a World Heritage Site on the River Clyde near Glasgow. This was Robert Owen's mill town where he implemented his educational ideas. Visitors can still see the lofty schoolroom, which was intended not only for the instruction of reading, writing and arithmetic but for the introduction of pupils to much wider knowledge. For example, the walls are still hung with charts of timelines of historical events in different countries all over the world (Figures 1.1 and 1.2). Owen's holistic approach included the workers' and their children's health and well-being: the children had a daily dance class before lessons (Figure 1.3) and he rebuilt family living quarters as relatively comfortable small apartments. Today we would regard his attitude as paternalistic, but I think we would also agree that his vision contains much to which contemporary education should aspire.
Figure 1.1 Hanging scrolls of timelines in the New Lanark schoolroom. Photograph by Susanna Blackshaw
Figure 1.2 Purpose of the timelines at New Lanark. Source: Extract from Robert Dale Owen's ‘Outline of the system of education at New Lanark’, 1824.
Figure 1.3 Children at New Lanark dancing before morning lessons. G. Hunt, 1825. Reproduced with permission from the New Lanark Trust; www.newlanark.org.
In modern Britain, an array of educational practices can be found in schools and universities, based on diverse and sometimes conflicting educational theories.
It is well worth taking an interest in the content and process of education, both in Britain and beyond, because the working of the education system affects everyone, whether as a learner, employer, teacher, parent or politician. It is evident that there are many views on the purpose of education and what a good education ought to entail. Some traditional views can seem old-fashioned, but in fact many apparently modern innovations only repeat what has been tried before, albeit under another name. After all, questions about the role, practice and purpose of education have been actively considered in advanced societies for more than 2,000 years.
A traditional view is that education is the reproduction and perpetuation of the culture of a society – as Jaeger,2 in his book Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, has put it, how a community ‘preserves and transmits its physical and intellectual character’. A second perspective on the purpose of education emphasizes the need for the transmission of skills between the generations – reading, writing, arithmetic, playing musical instruments, painting and sculpture and more recently the use of IT (information technology). The literacy and numeracy hours in primary schools and training in PowerPoint or Access in secondary schools exemplify this trend. A rather different view of education is a political one – that it should provide a suitably qualified workforce. This was a view held in fourth-century bc Sparta where education was aimed at providing a well-trained army. Nor is such a view limited to the ancients. Thomas Sheridan (1756) wrote, ‘in every state it should be the fundamental maxim that the education of youth should be particularly formed and adapted to the nature and end of its government’. It was also a part of, but only a part of, Robert Owen's vision. Thatcher's government and those that followed have undoubtedly taken a similar stance. Indeed, today, when academics write applications for money to support their research they have to show that their work will not only add to existing knowledge or understanding, but will have ‘impact’ on society. It is important to be alert to, and even question, the views that policymakers and educators have regarding the nature and the role of education, because this has a great and often unacknowledged effect on what is taught, how it is taught and to whom.
Education for the reproduction of a culture
Why should a society wish to reproduce its own culture? And what role does education take in this? Culture encompasses a society's history, its social structure, its values and its creative achievements. Understanding our own culture is an important part of developing our own individual identity; seeing how we as an individual fit into a wider society. Once we have come to understand our culture, if we are comfortable with it and have chosen to embrace it, then it is human nature to seek to perpetuate it.
If we are looking at education as the reproduction of our culture, then a statement in a lecture3 by Nick Tate, a former Director of QCA (the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority), is particularly apposite: ‘education should give all children access to all those things that as a society we have decided we value and wish to pass on to our successors’. Such a view supports that of Thomas Arnold, the nineteenth-century educationalist: education should contain ‘the best that has been known and thought’. However, the problems here lie in the decision as to what is worth passing on to the next generations: who decides on the content of education? The National Curriculum (implemented in 1988, revised in 1995 and reviewed in 2007) was intended to encompass the corpus of knowledge that every educated person should be expected to possess, along with the basic skills of reading, writing and mathematics. Over the years, the curriculum became overloaded, as the proponents of many different subject areas fought to have their knowledge included. The 2007 review of the National Curriculum favoured reducing the factual content and proposed a radical change in the organization of knowledge – that is, the removal of subject boundaries. These boundaries have often been seen as supporting an elitist approach to learning, somehow following from the twentieth-century practice of subjects such as Latin being taught only in independent schools and grammar schools. However, in 2011 Michael Young4 forcefully argued against this: ‘Knowledge is not powerful just because it is defined by those who are powerful; it is powerful because it offers understanding to those who have access to it.’ The curriculum for all ‘should stipulate concepts associated with different subjects’ and enable pupils to ‘gain access to knowledge which takes them beyond their experience and their own preconceptions’.
A continual updating of curriculum content was supported in the 2007 review on the basis that this would ensure that pupils would see the curriculum as ‘relevant’ to them and to the society in which they lived. There has always been tension between views on the relative importance of ‘pure’ knowledge as opposed to applied knowledge in the classroom. The emphasis on ‘relevance’ can be traced to the work of John Dewey (1859–1952). He was an immensely wide thinker and a highly influential force in education. He believed that it was essential for education to be embedded in the ordinary life experience of the child at home and in the community – an emphasis on the applied aspects of knowledge. But the continual updating that is needed to maintain ‘relevance’ to contemporary life has caused considerable extra work and stress for the teaching profession. Tim Oates, who has chaired the most recent review determining the nature and content of the National Curriculum in primary schools, has taken a different point of view.5 He has pointed out that if the curriculum consists of core knowledge, such as the basic laws of physics and chemistry, then these will not change unless knowledge itself changes. Furthermore, he favours the division of knowledge into subjects since it can then be readily made coherent, so that one layer of knowledge follows another depending on the level of understanding of the developing child. Subjects rather than grandiose ‘themes’ are frameworks into which knowledge can be fitted – an essential aspect of the learning process. Oates has concluded that the curriculum should list the core knowledge, and that it should be left to the expertise of teachers to make the content relevant and motivating for the individual pupils. He has underlined the importance of looking to other countries that have successful education systems to try to learn from them, particularly in relation to the organization of the knowledge to be taught.
Treating education as a way to transmit our culture to a new generation makes sense in an insulated society where older and younger generations are broadly alike. But what about a multicultural society with much immigration of people from other cultures? The production of ‘community cohesion’ in a successful multicultural society requires many people to acquire two (or more) such individual identities – that of the adopted culture and that of the culture of origin. Where these conflict, for example in the role of women in society, this can lead to problems. Education then goes beyond reproduction of culture. Instead it takes on an important role in encouraging both coexistence and assimilation through the acquisition of knowledge and understanding of different cultures.
Lessons from History
At a time when education is so much in the public eye, it is worth considering what we might learn from education systems of the past. We can try to understand the value (and constraints) of the methods of teaching employed: how to teach reading, for example; the role of rote-learning; or the importance of memory versus documentation. It is interesting to recognize how the content and structure of past systems map onto the contemporary National Curriculum. And, most importantly, we can seek out common factors in different ‘successful’ systems that might be applied today.
Education in Ancient Greece
The origins of our traditional attitudes to education lie in the work of philosophers in fifth- and fourth-century bc Greece. The Greek philosophers conceived the conscious idea of culture and created a self-consciousness about the educational process in which they gave consideration to what the nature and intention of education should be. They devoted much thought to the idea of a standard, an ideal person and an ideal community. We must remember that we are not really any different from the inhabitants of Ancient Greece: they were at least as intelligent as we are and their brains at birth would have been similar to the brains of our babies, following the same developmental trajectories, although also being moulded by specific experiences which would have had similarities to, and differences from, our own. So, if we can understand what worked for the Greeks, then that might well work for us too.
Even in ancient Athens, the tension we see today existed between the belief that education should involve teaching facts and the belief that it should prepare the mind for future action. The trivium (three parts), grammar, rhetoric and dialectic, formed the central part of education. Grammar involved the full understanding of the structure of the language. Nowadays, the explicit teaching of English grammar is not often undertaken in English schools, but it was an integral part of the grammar school curriculum 50 years ago and the teaching of native grammar is still given time in the curriculum of many modern European systems, including those of France, the Netherlands and Germany. We do not know how much explicit teaching of grammar helps us to express ourselves, but the correct use of complex grammar does allow one to communicate subtleties that tend to be lost when language is simplified.
Rhetoric involved the processes leading up to the presentation of a reasoned argument. Firstly, the student would need to accumulate the relevant knowledge; then this knowledge would need to be organized; then, since rhetoric involved oral presentation, the style of delivery needed to be considered; then the speech would need to be committed to memory; and finally it would have to be delivered to the relevant audience. Rhetoric involved a combination, therefore, of acquiring knowledge and of the ‘transferable skill’ of presentation.
Dialectic involved the search for truth through a dialogue between teacher and student. Even today, in a classroom with many pupils, we see teachers using a similar approach in asking questions and steering discussion.
By the middle of the first century bc, the intellectual gymnastics of rhetoric and dialectic had been afforced by the more fact-based quadrivium (four parts), arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy, to form the seven liberal arts curriculum. It is clear that there is much in common between the current National Curriculum and the seven liberal arts: the importance of language, the importance of the transferable skill of oral delivery, the importance of mathematics and science (although admittedly astronomy, being largely astrology at that time, would not now be considered a science). Indeed, Michael Gove's proposed ‘English Baccalaureate’ is even closer to the seven liberal arts formula.
One obvious difference between the National Curriculum and education in fourth-century Athens is the integral part played by music and physical exercise in the past compared with the peripheral role that it now has in British schools. Music, poetry, dance and gymnastics were all deemed to be very important, and indeed even used to teach moral values. It is interesting that there is now scientific evidence that physical exercise both improves intellectual function and helps to preserve that function during ageing, and that this is supported by evidence concerning the underlying physiological mechanisms (Chapter 2). This valuing of physical movement, therefore, which at the time was based on little more than intuition, is now empirically supported.
Another difference between education in ancient Athens and ours was that it was offered only to an elite part of the population – those from amongst whom leaders were to be chosen, and only boys and men. That does not, however, mean that there are no lessons to be learnt from the Greeks.
Education in Ancient China
A thousand years after fourth-century bc Athens, the Chinese started an educational system that seems at first to be the very antithesis of what the Greeks believed should constitute education: rote-learning of literature took centre stage. The intention of the system, which started in the Sui Dynasty (ad 589–618) and lasted until 1905, was to select a highly educated elite to run the administration6 – a meritocracy to replace the established aristocratic rule. In this it might be compared with the selection method used until recently for the British Civil Service. The Chinese education started in the home from 3 to 7 years of age, when children learnt their first 25 Chinese characters (Box 1.1).
Translation:
Let us present our work to father,
Confucius himself taught three thousand,
Seventy were capable gentlemen.
You young scholars, eight or nine.
Work well to attain virtue,
And you will understand propriety.
Apparently, the initial teaching involved giving the child the outlines of each character, to be coloured in with ink on a brush; a rather similar method is often used in early schooling nowadays to familiarize a child with the shapes of letters and numbers.
The next 10 years of education required a vast amount of rote-learning, as the four books derived from the teachings of the philosopher Confucius (551–479 bc) had to be committed to memory, about 450,000 characters in all. The children learnt these first by reciting the words 50 times whilst reading them, then reciting them 50 times from memory. Today this amount of rote-learning would be considered ridiculously excessive in Western education, but it was necessary since written texts were not widely available. Whereas we can refer to books and the Internet, these Chinese scholars had to rely on their memories. However, even if stores of knowledge are more readily accessible nowadays, there may still be advantages to having a large amount of knowledge actually ‘in one's head’. We shall consider this point later in Chapters 2 and 13.
The Chinese did not, of course, just learn by rote. They read literature, they wrote poems in the style of the great poets, they considered philosophical and political problems and they used their accumulated knowledge to enlighten these activities. The initial rote-learning of information, as a basis for subsequent creative thought and production, is a recurrent theme in early educational practice and is still prevalent in many East Asian classrooms, not least because their orthographies require the acquisition of a vast number of different characters. Additionally, in stark contrast to the Ancient Greek method, the inculcation of respect for teachers and for established knowledge means that questioning and argument are often discouraged in the classroom. Although one might think that a combination of rote-learning and suppression of argument would result in poor understanding (see Chapter 7), recent research has actually shown that, as in Ancient China, modern East Asian students are able to use their rote-learnt knowledge base to think deeply about the subjects they study and make connections between different areas (see Chapter 11).
Teaching in medieval Europe
In medieval times, education took place within monasteries. John of Salisbury, a distinguished diplomat and philosopher (1115–1180), wrote about the phonological approach to reading in monastic schools. He promoted a method that is not very different from the synthetic phonics approach used in the modern primary school Literacy Hour. The pupil learnt to read not in his native (vernacular) language but in Latin. Latin was the language in which science, and religion and business, were conducted in medieval Europe and therefore educated people needed to learn it. Interestingly, Latin has a regular orthography (system of spelling), like modern Italian or Finnish but unlike either old or modern English. Although, of course, we do not actually know precisely how it would have been pronounced, it is likely that the words could be readily decoded phonologically. So perhaps serendipitously, it was particularly suitable for the phonological approach to learning to read. One of the controversies facing British educators over the past 50 years has been the question of whether English, as an irregular language, is really suited to this phonological approach (see Chapter 4). The medieval education would have put emphasis on reading the Bible (in the Latin translation) as well as Roman texts (such as Horace). Pupils learnt large amounts of text by rote, building up what might be called a ‘library in the mind’. Suzanne Reynolds7 has termed this approach a ‘memorial culture’ in her book on medieval education, to contrast with modern text- (and Internet-) based culture. The pupils were taught to ‘mine the text for meaning’ in order to acquire vocabulary. This reflects the main way that both children and adults naturally acquire new vocabulary – from hearing or reading a new word in context.
In order to be able to understand Latin texts, it was necessary for the pupil to acquire a comprehensive knowledge of Latin grammar. This entailed a great deal of rote-learning. Through the acquisition of this knowledge, the pupil would gain insight into the structure of language as well as becoming proficient in reading, writing and speaking Latin.
Pedagogical Methods
In Ancient Greece, the dialectical method involved teacher and pupil discussing propositions in order to determine the truth through dialogue (OED – dialectic: ‘the art of critically investigating the truth’). Such a process is still the basis of tutorial teaching, at least in arts subjects, at Oxford and Cambridge universities.
The method and content of teaching in medieval Europe was challenged in the seventeenth century by the German philosopher John Amos Comenius. He strongly opposed the notion that there was intrinsic value in ‘memorizing unintelligible grammatical rules’ of Latin, but at the same time did agree that the language had to be learnt so that the pupil could attain knowledge. Comenius was well ahead of his time in insisting that education should be available to the poor as well as the rich and to girls as well as boys. His proposal of the ‘Right Order for Learning’ (Box 1.2) has much in common with current views of what should be taught at what age, with the exception of the time allotted to foreign (particularly ancient) language learning.
When we consider different methods of teaching in schools, both in the past and the present, we again have several schools of thought. If you walk into a classroom in one school you may find pupils arranged in rows where the teacher instructs from the front – the so-called traditional ‘talk and chalk’ approach. In another school you may find pupils sitting around tables collaborating whilst the teacher roams the classroom and discusses the work with small groups. The small-group method can be used to encourage learning by discovery and discussion rather than by direct instruction (but does lend itself also to irrelevant discussion of football or TV).
A belief in the importance of applied knowledge is one thing that underpins the current emphasis on ‘transferable skills’. It has led to the change, for example, in history courses, which have become less focused on memorization of key dates and more dependent on learning how to assess the reliability and importance of sources concerning (say) the Second World War. On the downside, this leaves less time for pupils to acquire knowledge of the seminal events that occurred before or during the war. However, the pupil will at least learn to view evidence critically and their mind will be prepared for the ‘search for the truth’, which must also be an important goal of education.
Rote-learning has come into disrepute in the British educational system. Emphasis on understanding before learning something such as the multiplication tables has directly led to the situation where many young people cannot multiply even simple numbers. In support of the old-fashioned way, there is research that shows that for learning the multiplication tables, rote-learning provides a faster route to multiplication becoming automatic than does learning through understanding. And indeed it is still the case in Japan that young children learn their multiplication tables by singing them. Understanding can then follow.
The Organization of This Book
The chapters in this book take us on a journey from the building blocks of learning through to a consideration of the structure and social impact of education. Naturally, the first area of psychology that we consider (Chapter 2) is learning and memory. We look briefly at the rules governing simple learning that have been demonstrated in non-human animals and ask whether and where these might be relevant to learning in the classroom. We discuss short-term and working memory, which are needed for following instructions and for problem-solving. Working memory also interacts with our long-term store, which comprises memory for facts (semantic) and memory for events (episodic) as well as procedural memory, which we use automatically. From learning to read to the establishment of enduring and well-organized memory, we need frameworks (schemata) into which to put the information. Knowing about the characteristics of memory helps teachers and students to decide how it may be best to teach and to learn different sorts of information. However, there is not much research on this subject outside the laboratory and in the context of real classrooms – it is badly needed but raises difficult organizational and ethical problems.
Language skills (Chapter 3) are, of course, fundamental to educational success, because almost all teaching is delivered through speech and writing, even mathematics. It is therefore not surprising that measures of vocabulary and syntactical understanding and production predict educational achievement. This is a key area where socioeconomic differences impact heavily on outcomes. Children from low-SES (socioeconomic status) backgrounds on average enter school with lower levels of vocabulary and complexity of language and this influences their future success at school. Teachers, parents, school governors and government alike believe that it is desperately important to raise the educational achievement of children from disadvantaged backgrounds, both to promote equality of opportunity and to have a productive economy. We discuss the causes of poor language development and ways in which intervention may improve it.
Whilst the acquisition of our first language is essential for us to function in society, acquiring a second language has many advantages, particularly in terms of giving us full access to other cultures. In recent years, the British educational system has seen a reduced emphasis on second-language learning, with dramatic reductions in the numbers of pupils carrying this on beyond the age of 14. However, recent work on the new National Curriculum is emphasizing the importance of introducing modern language teaching into primary schools. Chapter 3 also considers what research does and could tell us about the most efficacious age at which to start classroom teaching of a foreign language.
Language development has a clear role in learning to read, both with respect to word recognition and to understanding what is read (Chapter 4). Following the Rose Review (2005), guidelines have been implemented in English and Welsh schools for the teaching of reading by synthetic phonics. We present the evidence that has supported this change, and discuss the controversies surrounding it. In fact, our understanding of how we learn to read is far from complete, as is our understanding of the causes of specific reading disability (dyslexia). Dyslexia is a heterogeneous condition and probably has multiple causes.
One factor that is often cited as explaining educational achievement is ‘ability’ or ‘intelligence’. The trouble is that neither of these terms has a simple definition and there is wide disagreement about the unitary or multiple nature of ability. There is also disagreement about the relative contribution of hereditary and environmental factors, of nature versus nurture, to the development of intelligence and abilities, and hence to their stability throughout life. We consider (in Chapter 5) the evidence relating to these differing points of view and the implications for the structure of the education system. For example, if we believe that children are all born with the same potential then there is good reason to invest in early intervention and intensive support with the expectation that every primary school pupil ought to reach the same level of attainment. In contrast, if we think intelligence is mainly heritable, then we may as well teach pupils in ability groups from a very young age so that those who are more able are not held back by slower peers. As with most topics about which there are extreme views, it is likely that the truth lies somewhere in between. However, in Britain a common response to variation in pupil attainment, evident even when children start primary school, has been academic selection and setting (see Chapter 6). It is then necessary to consider the consequences of such selection and how to make such differentiation as fair as possible. How do we prevent socioeconomic factors influencing our assessment of academic potential? And how do we protect pupils from the adverse consequences of selection? We may find lower-attaining pupils ‘coasting’ if they only compare their progress to that of similarly attaining peers, or see higher-attaining pupils suffer from the ‘Big Fish Little Pond effect’, where able pupils selected for entry into elite schools and universities may lose academic self-confidence when they are suddenly surrounded by people of equal or greater ‘ability’.
Of course, there are many factors beyond ‘ability’ that influence academic success. We know that the approach to learning that pupils adopt, their attitudes and the way they structure their working, can also affect the level of knowledge and understanding they acquire. This is why researchers are interested in metacognitive strategies that can be used to optimize pupils' learning (Chapter 7). Another extraneous influence on attainment is the perception that ‘people like me’ are not expected to do well. Indeed, psychologists have a name for this phenomenon: stereotype threat. In certain contexts, ethnic minority students or those of a certain sex can be seen to underachieve solely because of a dominant perception that their group is not good at that subject or task. However, there are other reasons that we see sex differences in attainment (addressed in Chapter 8). There may be inborn differences between the sexes that explain variations in behaviour and educational performance, but culture can also place great constraints on the environment that children experience and hence cause further sex differences to emerge. There are many preconceptions among the general public about sex differences in behaviour: for example, that women and girls can't navigate effectively, or that women are better at reading and writing whilst men are better at mathematics and physics. There is scientific evidence for some differences, but others are the result of poorly designed research, such as poor matching of comparison groups. However, the media love the subject of sex differences and so these differences have become part of the general consciousness.
Creativity is also of interest to the general public because it is relevant to so many aspects of life: both at work and during leisure time. Most educators also regard it as an important trait among pupils, worth fostering in the classroom. However, some aspects of creativity are not easy to manage in the classroom; indeed creative personality traits have been linked with increased rates of school dropout and with learning difficulties such as ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder). This is why it is so important to have strong research into the traits and behaviours associated with creativity and the most effective ways to support it in schools (see Chapter 9).
We know that at present the British education system is still not effectively serving the needs of all young people. Over half of young people from the lowest-income families do not achieve five GCSEs including English and mathematics at a C grade or above. This means they have not acquired the basic literacy and numeracy skills needed for further study or for a wide range of employment. Such social inequalities are present throughout the education system, as are some very subtle ethnic inequalities that mean, for example, that more ethnic minority pupils attend university but fewer attend the most selective institutions. Research can give us reasons for these inequalities, but there is an ongoing search for evidence-based interventions to address them (Chapter 10).
One way to identify new interventions or educational methods is to look at other countries. The increasing globalization of education and employment means that educators are now more than ever interested in the factors that make certain education systems particularly successful. We can learn a lot from research conducted in other cultures, not least the extent to which cultural assumptions rather than empirical evidence underpin the structure and pedagogy of our own education system (Chapter 10). For example, we see big differences in attitudes to children's potential in Eastern and Western countries: these feed into beliefs about the extent to which academic performance depends on innate ability rather than effort, and consequently about the appropriateness of ability grouping and individualized teaching. We focus on comparisons with a select group of countries including Japan, China, Finland and Singapore, which have gained international reputations for their pupils' high attainment.
A rather neglected area for more research concerns the educational needs of older learners. With the rapidly increasing number of people over 65 and the ever-increasing need for a technically qualified workforce, it is important to find ways of training people to be able to continue to work effectively into old age (Chapter 12). We know that memory starts to fail as people enter middle age and so methods of teaching that will allow long-term retention of what is learnt may need to be adapted for the old. However, we don't yet know much about how this would be achieved.
Of course, the increasing technological content of our lives is creating a challenge for educators working with all ages. As innovative ways of teaching using new technologies are being developed at an increasing pace, research is badly needed to find out where this aids and where it might impede learning (Chapter 13). For example, in some schools digital devices such as mobile phones are completely banned, whilst in others they are being embraced as a new way to engage learners. Similarly, we have some educators arguing that the Internet is a worrying source of unreliable information and others suggesting that it makes the learning of facts completely redundant. As Baroness Susan Greenfield pointed out in her book Tomorrow's People (2005), the use of the many technological devices such as tablets and laptops, particularly by young people, may actually change our brains and hence the way we think and learn. We need evidence of these changes if we are to understand how best to teach new generations.
References
1 Donnachie I. Robert Owen. Owen of New Lanark and New Harmony. Edinburgh: Tuckwell Press; 2000.
2 Jaeger W, Highet G. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 1986.
3 Tate N. What Is Education For? The Fifth Annual Education Lecture. London: King's College London; 1998.
4 Young M. The return to subjects: A sociological perspective on the UK coalition government's approach to the 14–19 curriculum. Curriculum Journal. 2011;22(2):265–278.
5 Oates T. Could Do Better: Using International Comparisons to Reform the National Curriculum in England. Cambridge: Cambridge Assessment, University of Cambridge; 2010.
6 Miyazaki I, Schirokauer C. China's Examination Hell: The Civil Service Examinations of Imperial China. Yale, CT: Yale University Press; 1981.
7 Reynolds S. Medieval Reading, Grammar and the Classical Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1996.
Chapter 2
Memory
How Do We Remember What We Learn?
Where were you when you heard about the horrific event of 9/11? Can you visualize your environment at that point? Or, if you are old enough, can you visualize where you were when you heard of the assassination of President Kennedy? It is likely that you have a rather clear memory of your situation at the time. These are extreme examples of episodic memory where an explicit memory has been acquired consciously. Can you remember from your early childhood learning the rules of the grammar for your mother tongue? No, because you acquired that memory implicitly; you were unaware of acquiring it. These examples allow us to contrast two sorts of memory: declarative and non-declarative memory (also called explicit and implicit memory).
Whether we consider education to involve the transfer of information or the development of skills, or most likely, both of these, the process would be useless to the learner unless s/he remembered what had been taught. In this chapter we describe the different sorts of learning and memory that have been identified and consider how we should capitalize on their use in different ways for different purposes.
Historically, different aspects of learning and memory tended to be investigated by different groups of psychologists and in different animals: learning was studied in non-human animals such as rats and pigeons, and even in invertebrates such as sea slugs and cockroaches. Short-term memory was studied in humans. Long-term memory, particularly its chemistry, was studied in non-human animals, including rats and cockroaches. We shall first give a very simple description of some of the rules governing animal learning and then discuss the types of memory which psychologists work on in humans. We shall be considering the ways in which different sorts of learning and memory are relevant to how we teach and how we learn. We shall also examine the evidence concerning factors that affect memory and discuss ways in which it may be possible to improve aspects of memory.
Stages of memory processing
Memory processes involve firstly encoding. This then leads to storage. Storage may be labile and short term (like the telephone number you have just looked up which will last whilst you dial it but will have decayed by the time the person answers the telephone) or long term, lasting from hours to years. The process(es) that convert a short-term labile store into a long-term stable store is termed consolidation. Later, when you require the stored information, it has to be retrieved. The neural processes involved in encoding, short- and long-term storage and retrieval are all different and all important in understanding how we learn and remember.
Learning
Non-associative learning
A very general definition of learning is ‘a change in behaviour as the result of experience’. By this definition some very simple types of behavioural change would be considered ‘learning’. Two of these are habituation and sensitization. Habituation and sensitization are described as non-associative forms of learning because they do not require the organism to learn a specific association between one stimulus and something else; they only require a changed response to the stimulus. These simple types of learning can readily be demonstrated in simple animals such as sea slugs as well as in humans. Habituation describes the decreased response to a stimulus that occurs after a number of repetitions. Indeed it is widely used in work on human babies to ascertain whether they can discriminate between two objects: they are shown one object several times and then a new object is introduced. If the baby now looks more at the new object than at the familiar one, it must have habituated to the first one. I used to demonstrate habituation to classes of undergraduates by standing behind the desk and dropping a large stick on the floor in such a way that they could not see what I was doing. This made a loud noise and the students would jump. The loud noise would not have any consequence, either positive or negative, for the students. I would then repeat the action several times (again not letting them see what I was doing) and their response would rapidly decrease on successive exposures.
Sensitization is in a sense the opposite of habituation: the difference is that now the loud noise, or other neutral stimulus (that is, a stimulus that does not signal anything, positive or negative), is coupled with an aversive stimulus, such as an electric shock. This can lead to exaggerated responses not only to the loud noise but also to other ‘neutral’ stimuli. In the context of teaching, it can be argued that habituation is one example of a source of boredom – as all teachers know, too much repetitive content or activity in the classroom will reduce the amount of attention that the learners pay to the lesson. It is possible that sensitization occurs after a teacher shouts at pupils, or that in the past corporal punishment may have resulted in long-term sensitization to the context of lessons.
Classical and operant conditioning
Classical and operant conditioning are forms of simple learning that require learning that two things are associated (e.g. a light predicts food or pressing a bar delivers food).
Ivan Pavlov (1849–1936), the Russian physiologist, discovered classical conditioning in dogs. His well-known finding occurred serendipitously in the course of physiological experiments on the production of saliva in the dogs’ mouths and digestive juices in their stomachs in response to food. What was interesting was that secretions also came to be produced in response to the arrival of the technician who fed the dogs, even in the absence of food. Pavlov later showed that a similar effect could be produced if a bell was rung before food was presented – the dogs learnt to associate the bell (a neutral stimulus) with food and the digestive system automatically became prepared for digesting it. In schools where there is a bell rung to signify dinner time, children can experience the same salivatory response as Pavlov's dogs and also report feeling hungry.
Operant conditioning was discovered by Thorndike, a psychologist working in America. Here, the association that the organism learns is between what it does itself and what the result is. Thus it may learn that making a particular motor action leads to its obtaining food – positive reinforcement; or that stepping down from a platform onto a grid leads to its receiving a small electric shock – negative reinforcement. Thorndike promulgated his ‘law of effect’ (1911) – that the strength of the association would depend on the number of such pairings.
Learning theory is the scientific description of the laws governing classical and operant conditioning.
How is conditioning relevant to human behaviour?
Operant conditioning probably does play a role in the way in which young children acquire certain patterns of behaviour. This may be particularly true with respect to negative reinforcement: for example, if a child approaches something dangerous such as a hot fire or tries to run across a busy road, an adult is likely to grab the child rapidly and stop it carrying out the risky behaviour, accompanying this with angry words of reprimand. A few repetitions of this will usually suffice to stop the child from trying to engage in these behaviours in the future; indeed just one exposure (one-trial learning) may be enough. Work on animal learning has shown that for maximum effectiveness the negative reinforcement needs to be administered close in time to the behaviour – delay reduces its effectiveness. Jeffrey Gray, in his book The Psychology of Fear and Stress,1 also points out from work on animals that ‘swift certain punishment can be as effective as a more intense punishment applied in a dilatory or inconsistent manner’. Even though this is stated in the context of animal learning, many parents and teachers could find resonance in this. In the past, the fear of corporal punishment may have produced a form of operant conditioning – this negative reinforcement reducing the likelihood of further performance of the bad behaviour. In today's schools, many of the punishments, such as detention, do not produce much fear or anxiety. Probably, a ‘telling off’ from a respected and scary teacher is more effective as a negative reinforcer. Also, where detention is only carried out at the end of the day or even deferred until the next day, this will make the punishment seem detached from the bad behaviour.
