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Cognitive Science Matters to Middle School: Applications to Instruction and Learning Marcia A. Barnes, Ph.D. Professor of Special Education, UT-Austin

What is Cognitive Science?

•  Interdisciplinary field of study – linguistics, cognitive & developmental psychology, education, neuroscience, computer science –AI, anthropology, philosophy

•  How does the human mind work? •  How do people think, act, and learn?

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Why do we need it for teaching & learning?

•  Research-based evidence for a set of powerful learning principles or techniques

•  When applied, these techniques optimize learning

•  Several principles have direct application for instruction and learning for middle school students

If we know what works why don’t we use it more often?

1.  Sorting out what is likely to yield the biggest bang for the buck from a vast literature that spans several disciplines with technical language in journal articles is not an easy task

2.  Techniques are not consistently and frequently covered in all teacher preparation programs

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Textbooks that Cover Teaching and Learning Strategies

•  Main textbooks used in courses: •  Inadequately cover techniques •  Do not cover the most effective techniques

or do not provide ratings of effectiveness –  Where should I put my effort?

•  Do not provide enough guidance on implementation –  How can I use this in my teaching?

(Dunlovsky et al. 2013)

If we know what works why don’t we use it more often?

3. Techniques not known by teachers are not transmitted to students – Consequences- some popular learning

techniques students use are ineffective 4. Focus may be more on WHAT students need

to learn and less on HOW to promote student learning across content areas and over time

5. Principle of Desirable Difficulties (R. Bjork)

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Desirable Difficulties – Short term pain for long term gain

•  Using techniques slows down learning •  Use may not result in immediately

discernable changes in learning, but produces longer lasting benefits for comprehension and retention

•  Can students be convinced to use techniques that have long term pay-offs without evidence of immediate benefit?

Outline of Presentation on Techniques from Cognitive Science

•  Review of 2 techniques with the highest levels of evidence for what works

•  Review of 3 techniques with moderate levels of evidence for what works

•  Cognitive science principles to pay attention to in multi-media learning environments

•  Discussion of techniques that do not work •  Small group activities and quizzes infused

throughout the seminar

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Highest Levels of Evidence For:

Technique   Descrip.on  Distributed  Prac6ce  

Frequent  well-­‐spaced  opportuni6es  to  relearn  and  retrieve  previously  taught  materials;  studying  distributed  over  6me  vs.  cramming  

Tes6ng  Effect  or  Prac6ce  Tes6ng  

Frequent  quizzes  on  learned  materials  –teacher  delivered  and  student  prac6ce  tes6ng  

Why are these techniques rated as highly effective with high usability?

•  Techniques  are  rela6vely  easy  for  teachers  to  use  and  teach  to  students  (class  6me  efficient)  

•  Don’t  require  that  a  lot  of  materials  be  found  or  made  up  and  don’t  require  technology  

•  Useful  for  all  ages  •  Help  learning  and  comprehension  across  a  large  range  of  content  areas  and  materials  

•  Good  evidence  they  increase  student  achievement  

 

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Basic Demonstration of Distributed Practice Benefits: Keppel (1964) �

Bahrick (1979): Learning translations of Spanish words: Desirable Difficulties in Action�

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Distributed Practice– What do these and newer findings tell us?

•  Note that there was a complete flip in the findings – where learning looked worse after 6 sessions for the distributed practice group with widely spaced sessions, but a final test after a month showed the best learning for this group and the worst for the massed practice group – illustrates the principle of desirable difficulties

•  Distributed practice with appropriate spacing yields long term retention benefits even though initial learning looks better after cramming

Distributed Practice – Why does it work?

1.  Massed practice leads to deficient processing vs. effortful processing for distributed practice –  students don’t have to work hard to retrieve what they just

learned –  false sense of what they know and will remember because of

“easy” processing (faulty metacognition)

2.  Reminding – the more times you retrieve, hear, see something the better you will remember it

3.  Distributed learning takes advantage of a better-consolidated neural memory trace -hippocampal consolidation takes time

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Distributed Practice – Why don’t students use it?

•  Students think that cramming works even though distributing studying (even when total studying time is the same in both cases) works better over educationally relevant periods of time

•  Learning feels “tougher” with distributed practice

•  There is a false sense of security with cramming

Distributed Practice – What can you do to help them use it?

•  Bad habits that seem helpful are hard to break •  Use an analogy that makes sense to them -

– Can they cram for a basketball game? A dance or singing recital or a school play? Their driver’s road test? No, they distribute practice for these

– Success and progress in computer games are all about distributed practice

– Skill learning in math, science, ELA, social studies is no different

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Distributed Practice – What can you do to help them use it?

•  Give explicit instruction to help students map out study blocks distributed over time – show them how to work backwards from test dates – help them develop a STUDY PLANNER

•  Have them study in shorter blocks of time, but more frequently – e.g., two short study blocks per week for past and recent material – try it out in class to monitor for first time

•  Have them combine distributed practice with practice tests - the testing effect (next topic)

Distributed Practice – How can you use it in the classroom?

•  Return to most important material repeatedly across days/weeks/months

•  Repeating important points helps students with distributed learning, and cues these concepts are important and need to be remembered

•  Put key information from previous weeks or units on your weekly or daily quiz – repeat most important material across quizzes

•  Use cumulative exams, but cue students as to what content they need to learn/relearn

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Basic Demonstration of Testing Effects: Roediger & Karpicke, 2006�

Quiz: Identify and explain an example of Desirable Difficulties using this graph.

Practice Testing – Why does it work?

•  Requires retrieval of prior learning from long term memory (distributed practice opportunity)

•  Along with retrieving information specific to answering the question comes related information in memory - may be why technique helps inference making and application of old learning to new problem solving

•  May lead learners to better mentally organize information in memory

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Testing Effect– What do the findings tell us?

•  Effects are found for multiple choice, short & long answer formats, and for learning facts and making inferences

•  Findings are positive even for open book tests •  Transfer between formats – performance on

multiple choice transfers to performance on other types of criterion tests such as free recall

•  However, results best when practice tests require answer generation (free recall, essay) vs. recognition (multiple choice, short answer)

Testing Effect–Robust learning across domains and time

•  Effects found for learning: –  science, history, math, spelling, vocabulary –  from texts of different genres –  from video lectures – maps and other object and spatial location

information •  Effects are durable across educationally

meaningful intervals – days to months, years •  Best effects when feedback used

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Why is feedback so important?

•  Prevents the wrong information from creeping into students’ long term memory – Multiple choice and short answer questions are

often answered inappropriately from general knowledge and if not corrected become part of the student’s knowledge base

•  Allows student to revise memory and update understanding

•  Important in all subjects, especially for math

The Testing Effect – How can you help students to implement it?

•  Teach  students  how  to  use  key  info  flash  card  technique  –  during  note  taking  write  down  a  ques6on  on  a  key  term  or  piece  of  informa6on  with  the  answer  on  the  other  side  and  use  cards  in  self-­‐tes6ng  

•  Have  students  do  prac6ce  tests  and  quizzes  in  their  textbooks  or  provide  prac6ce  test  as  part  of  homework  

 

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The Testing Effect – How can you implement it in your classroom?

•  Give daily or weekly no-stakes or low-stakes quizzes at the beginning or end of class and provide immediate feedback – can call it review

•  Choose most important ideas for practice tests •  Have overlap between questions on quizzes and

higher stakes tests/exams so students take them seriously

•  Students remember more if they know that their final exam is cumulative and includes previously learned/tested information

Quiz on Distributed Practice and Testing Effect �

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Moderate Levels of Evidence For:

Technique   Descrip.on  Interleaved  Prac6ce  

Mixture  of  problems  or  materials  within  same  session    

Self  Explana6on   Self  explana6ons  of  steps  in  a  problem  –  thinking  aloud  about  how  something  is  being  understood    

Elabora6ve  Interroga6on  

Explaining  why  something  is  true  or  false;  “Why”  ques6ons  

Interleaved Practice vs. Cover and Drop

•  Most science and math textbooks cover a topic then move on to another topic (e.g., add and subtract decimals, then multiply decimals, then…)

•  Practice is often specific to that topic •  Interleaving can mean both interleaving of the

teaching of different (but related) concepts and procedures as well as the mixing of problem sets for practice on worksheets or tests

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���Taught how to solve for volume of one shape with practice then another shape etc. vs. taught how to solve all four shapes and practiced with a different shape on each trial (Rohrer & Taylor, 2007) �

Interleaved Practice

•  Performance looks better during problem solving immediately after learning and practice on same problem sets, but opposite effects on delayed test – Quick learning è quick forgetting – Slower learning è better retention

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Interleaved Practice: Why does it work?

•  It’s a type of distributed practice – not over time, but with respect to content

•  Interleaved practice may require deeper thinking about what type of problem is being solved – requires more engagement in identifying problem types and thinking through steps to solve them

•  Massed practice may lead to more robotic problem solving

Interleaved Practice – Implementation in the Classroom

•  Interleave problems on tests with those from previous units/weeks and those from more current lessons – Expect students to struggle at first, but

longer-term learning will be better •  Use the same principle for worksheets •  Encourage students to do the same when

studying and when they do their own practice testing

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Elaborative Interrogation – What is it?

•  Why question prompts: – Why does it make sense that… – Why is this true? Why is this false? – Why is this true of X, but not of Y?

•  Most useful prompt is one that drives the learner to produce similarities AND differences between concepts

Elaborative Interrogation – Why does it work?

•  Relates new information to old knowledge •  Provides a way of organizing new learning into

pre-existing categories/knowledge structures, which makes new learning easier to retrieve

•  Processing of similarities, but particularly differences makes memories more distinct and easier to retrieve

•  Helps you figure out what misconceptions students have and helps students correct faulty thinking and misconceptions (use feedback)

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Elaborative Interrogation: Conditions for Use

•  Can be used at whole class level or in small groups or with pairs of students

•  Strong evidence for effectiveness in middle school (less so with younger children)

•  Seems to work for high achieving students as well as for students who are struggling and who have learning difficulties

•  Works across domains such as history, science, ELA

Elaborative Interrogation: Cautions for Use and Other Interesting Findings

•  Works best when the learner generates the answer (the generation effect) –  Research shows that if a teacher’s question is

not answered within 4.5 sec. s/he answers it for the students (try to avoid this)

•  Lack of general knowledge makes technique difficult to use so make the exercise fit within the students’ zone of proximal development – where new learning occurs

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Elaborative Interrogation: Self Generated Examples

•  Form  groups  of  2-­‐3  and  come  up  with  an  example  you  could  use  in  your  teaching  

•  The  genera6on  effect  in  ac6on!  •  Share  with  the  group  

 

Self Explanation – what is it?

•  Students explain how they are processing information – like Thinking Aloud but with specific prompts

•  Self-explaining can also be implemented by drawing diagrams for some types of problems

•  Can use prompts such as What does this sentence mean? How does it relate to what I know? What new information does it provide? Is there anything I don’t understand?

•  Can be modeled by a teacher

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Self Explanation– Why does it work?

•  Relate new information to pre-existing knowledge so better remembered

•  Generation effect, again -engaging in effortful, deep processing makes things memorable

•  Meta-cognitive aspects of processing – when explaining something to yourself you are more likely to notice when something doesn’t make sense and use a repair strategy – SELF-MONITORING

•  Increases time on task? Dosage explanation?

Self Explanation: Conditions of Use

•  Works best while engaging in a task rather than retrospective explanations (self-monitoring?)

•  Evidence for effectiveness across grades, and for students with lower ability and knowledge

•  Has been used in science, math, for narrative and expository text

•  Useful for correcting student misconceptions

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Self Explanation: Cautions for Use and Other Interesting Findings

•  If explanations are provided, effect is not as great (generation effect again)

•  Best effects if the technique is taught to students with teacher direct instruction and modeling

•  Shows transfer effects to similar problems (near transfer), but also generalizes to new problems that look less similar (far transfer)

Self Explanation: Self-Generated Examples

•  Form small groups and generate examples you could use in your teaching

•  Bring back to group

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Multi-Media: Why can it be a powerful learning tool?

•  New information is remembered and understood better when it is presented in more than one “code” - Dual Code Theory (Paivio) – Visual and auditory – Oral lesson and computer-delivered

content

Principles to look for when choosing multi-media materials

•  Contiguity – concepts that belong together should be close together in space on the screen or in time

•  Coherence – visual and auditory streams should match and map onto each other in space and time

•  Because information can be simultaneously auditory, visual, motor, setting up the right learning environment means paying attention to not overloading the learner

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Techniques with Low or No Evidence:

Technique   Descrip.on  Highligh6ng  Underlining  

Idea  that  highligh6ng  or  underlining  text  iden6fies  important  points  –  may  result  in  less  integra6on  between  parts  of  text  

Rereading   Passive  rereading  of  materials  –  idea  that  mere  repe66on  results  in  beber  learning    -­‐  it’s  more  like  the  massed  prac6ce  situa6on  

Learning  Styles   Idea  that  there  are  individual  differences  in  the  modali6es  by  which  students  learn  best  

What study techniques do students report using the most?

•  Highlighting •  Underlining •  Rereading

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No evidence for learning styles

Integrative Review Quiz

•  Generate a list of 3-4 common mechanisms across the 5 highly and moderately effective techniques and identify the techniques for which they are relevant

•  Generate some common characteristics of ineffective techniques that make them ineffective

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Why did we cover only 5 techniques?

•  Best to invest time and effort in techniques that will provide the highest yield and that are the easiest to implement across content areas

•  There are more techniques and more technical information on the ones we covered in the articles listed under Further Reading

•  I followed another principle from cognitive science – human working memory has limits:

– THE 5 + or – 2 rule

Further Reading

•  http://home.umltta.org/home/theories/25p (from Dr. Art Graesser’s website) •  http://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/pdf/practice_guides/20072004.pdf (IES practice

guide by Pashler et al.) •  Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J., & Willingham, D. T.

(2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques promising directions from cognitive and educational psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4-58. (pdf can be downloaded for free)

•  Bjork, R. A., Dunlosky, J., & Kornell, N. (2013). Self-regulated learning: Beliefs, techniques, and illusions. Annual review of psychology, 64, 417-444. (can be downloaded for free)

•  Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles concepts and evidence. Psychological science in the public interest, 9(3), 105-119. (downloadable PDF)

•  http://www.aft.org/newspubs/periodicals/ae/fall2013/dunlosky.cfm