The first interesting point is that
Such theories have developed in part because of sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance .
Without worrying about what theories, consider the part of the sentence "sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance." If what we teaching educators is based on "sketchy education research that doesn’t offer clear guidance" then are educators learning how to teach. Does a degree in education make sense? Worse presume that educators really learn what they were taught, then how do we help them to improve?
Now to continue
In recent years, cognitive scientists have shown that a few simple techniques can reliably improve what matters most: how much a student learns from studying.
Yet because these techniques contradict common wisdom, "the techniques have not caught on." Those students who are doing poorly are the ones who need to most improve their study habits. And what do schools do? Schools "don't pick them up."
"We have known these principles for some time, and it’s intriguing that schools don’t pick them up, or that people don’t learn them by trial and error," said Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. "Instead, we walk around with all sorts of unexamined beliefs about what works that are mistaken."
So in all this race to the top we are hurting students by teaching them poor study habits. Now consider the following:
Take the notion that children have specific learning styles, that some are "visual learners" and others are auditory; some are "left-brain" students, others "right-brain." In a recent review of the relevant research, published in the journal Psychological Science in the Public Interest, a team of psychologists found almost zero support for such ideas. "The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing," the researchers concluded.
Are educator's minds being filled with nonsense? Sure looks like it. Now let's move on to teaching styles.
Ditto for teaching styles, researchers say. Some excellent instructors caper in front of the blackboard like summer-theater Falstaffs; others are reserved to the point of shyness. "We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere," said Daniel T. Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the book "Why Don’t Students Like School?"
So all the "style" stuff is crap. The article points to how testing is good as it helps students to remember. Not so much end of the year high stakes testing, but rather
When students studied the same material twice, in back-to-back sessions, they did very well on a test given immediately afterward, then began to forget the material.
But if they studied the passage just once and did a practice test in the second session, they did very well on one test two days later, and another given a week later.
Imagine teachers who constantly test as the material is taught. I did this when I taught college. Students received a quiz every week. My students did much better on end of the year exams than others taking the same course. I am not a good teacher, but the constant quizzes helped. My hourly exams were tough. See the following:
Of course, one reason the thought of testing tightens people’s stomachs is that tests are so often hard. Paradoxically, it is just this difficulty that makes them such effective study tools, research suggests.
My hourly exams were very hard. Not in the sense of asking lots of questions, they rarely had more than three questions, but in the sense that students had to apply what they learned to answer the questions. Sometimes students were creative. Sometimes I did not see their solutions. But I always allowed students to explain their answers to me. Then I almost always fixed their grade.
Tests graded in a vacuum without the ability of the student to have a say, i.e. the standardized testing used for No Student Left Behind and Race to the Top is not as beneficial as testing done where the student has input and the test is more than memorization, but actually requires thought.
My bottom line is we need to rethink education and that rethinking needs to go beyond simple races and not leaving behind. We need to use cognitive science and we need better education research. Our solutions do not apply these principles and they should.
Update: I revised the title to get some readers and comments. It is a better tile.
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