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From:

The desk of Jared Cooney Horvath | PhD, MEd

East of Lake Arrowhead

Thursday, 8:27 am

Why the Science of Learning Is Too Often Ignored

There’s a vast body of research describing what works (and does not work) in learning - but it’s often not making its way into colleges and universities.

In 2019, five faculty members at Harvard University published an intriguing study. They ran an experiment in an introductory undergraduate physics course to figure out why active learning – a form of teaching that’s scientifically proven to be effective – often dies a slow death in the classroom.

The researchers compared the effects of a traditional lecture with the effects of active learning, in which students solved problems in small groups. Predictably, they found that when students were taught via active methods, they performed better on tests.

However, they also found something much more noteworthy: despite performing better through active learning methods, students believed they had actually learned more when they sat through a lecture.

And herein lies a central paradox in higher education …

Scholarship on teaching and learning has grown exponentially over the past four decades, encompassing thousands of experiments, stacks of books and journal articles, and major initiatives to bring the science of learning into the classroom.

Nevertheless, many faculty members remain untouched by this work, either because they are skeptical of its value (i.e. it doesn’t feel right to them), they are unsure of how to apply it to their work, or they are simply unaware of it altogether.

To be sure, many instructors have participated in workshops run by their campus teaching centers. And the use of some evidence-based teaching practices – such as peer learning or the use of clickers to keep students engaged in the classroom – are far more prevalent today than they were a generation ago.

But faculty developers, education researchers, and learning scientists still say they feel like the majority of their work is simply not making it through to teachers and students …

And what does get through is often garbled, or

just one small piece of a larger puzzle.

Case in point: A recent review of teacher training textbooks found that not only did they contain little-to-no discussion of the large body of learning research, but they frequently passed off ideas with limited research support as hard science.

 
Moreover, many prominent ‘learning myths’ still persist across all levels of education – despite the best efforts of experts to highlight the lack of support for such ideas in the literature. For instance, in a large 2019 survey of secondary and tertiary teachers:

• 77% of respondents endorsed the unfounded idea that people are either right-brained or left-brained, and that this difference impacts how people learn.

• 97% of respondents endorsed the myth of innate ‘learning styles’ – the idea that people can be categorized into one of several discrete learning styles such as auditory, visual, or kinesthetic.

• 69% of respondents incorrectly selected re-reading over retrieval (i.e. active recall) when asked directly about which would be more effective for learning.

It’s evident that the expanding body of knowledge about teaching and learning continues to be largely ignored, even while the dangers of doing so become ever more apparent.

Traditional teaching may have sufficed when college campuses were more ivory tower than lifeboat – educating future generations of scholars and other elites rather than trying to lift up a diverse group of students and prepare them for an increasingly complex world.

However, as universities enroll students from a wider range of backgrounds, many are witnessing firsthand the unintended consequences of outmoded practices such as high-stakes testing, rigid course structures, and lecture-based classes.

Such traditional approaches disproportionately set up students 

from disadvantaged backgrounds to flounder or fail.

On the other hand, active learning and other evidence-based practices – such as building more small assignments (i.e. scaffolding) into the syllabus – have been shown to close performance gaps and help all students succeed.

Beyond questions of equity, however, exist those of basic efficacy …

For instance, research has shown that in fields like STEM, traditional teaching can be ineffective at helping people understand complex concepts and develop problem-solving skills. As a result, struggling students often decide early on that science and engineering are not for them.

But while these findings are disconcerting, professors and

faculty members themselves are not to blame …

Most work hard every day, often in complex and difficult situations, with a genuine desire to drive better student outcomes.

As such, it’s not a stretch to assume that your average professor likely feels intrigued – but overwhelmed – at the thought of testing new ideas or strategies in the classroom.

Clearly, our support systems for university personnel must change to provide them with more opportunity for teaching and learning growth, while also accounting for their demanding agendas.

In some ways, this is an incentive problem. Tenure and promotion policies rarely reward – or even recognize – the hidden work it takes to improve one’s teaching. Not to mention that, in academic culture, a stellar record of research is often held in higher regard than a reputation for excellent teaching.

But more practically speaking, this is a delivery problem. Despite a growing interest in teaching and learning research across all departments …

The ability for university personnel to access this research

in a practical and efficient manner remains elusive.

Enter The Learning Blueprint …

Combining 40+ years of established learning research with 10+ years of classroom implementation, The Learning Blueprint is designed to bring key Science of Learning insights to colleges and universities.

The aim is to deliver the latest and most impactful applications from the Learning Sciences; help professors and faculty members build a deep understanding of the learning process; and introduce a collaborative, easy-to-implement classroom innovation tool called Micro Projects.

Initially developed in 2020 for Monash University (ranked #48 Best Global University by U.S. News) …

The Learning Blueprint is now available to

any college or university that wants to bring

The Science of Learning to their community.

In terms of logistics, it's a fully-scaffolded program that can be done simultaneously by a live learning cohort, or individually via an on-demand model.

This means that if your school supports professional learning groups, The Learning Blueprint could be a great option. Alternatively, if you host an internal catalog of on-demand PL resources (as many schools now do), The Learning Blueprint can work for that as well.

That being said, I urge you to continue scrolling down to learn more …

And, if you like what you see, I'd love the opportunity to chat with you further about The Learning Blueprint (there's an option to schedule a meeting near the bottom of this page).

If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to email my team at info@lmeglobal.net. 

Thanks for reading, and I sincerely hope I get a chance to speak with you.

Regards/Jared Cooney Horvath, PhD, MEd