How Bad Ideas About Learning Spread | 5 Examples

A lot of strange ideas circulate among teachers and researchers and parents and students. Why?

0:00 The problem
1:05 A thought experiment
2:43 Ideas without tests and Dale’s Cone of Experience
4:09 Learning Styles
5:40 Why businesses sell ideas and Baby Einstein
7:23 “Science-based” businesses and brain training
8:37 Supermemo
10:19 What stops good ideas from spreading?
11:15 The role of teacher training
12:13 Good news

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Two books that I often recommend on learning are: The ABCs of How We Learn by Schwartz, Tsang, and Blair (https://bookshop.org/a/91541/97803937...) and Make It Stick by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (https://bookshop.org/a/91541/97806747.... I'm a Bookshop.org affiliate, so get a small commission if you purchase books through the above links.

Acknowledgements

The green example of Dale’s cone of experience (or learning) comes from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fi...

The Baby Einstein clip was from this video:    • Baby Neptune and More Baby Einstein Episod...  

The animated “learning styles” clip comes from:    • Discover Your Learning Style  

REFERENCES

A recent summary of the literature on screen time for young children: Guellai, B., Somogyi, E., Esseily, R., & Chopin, A. (2022). Effects of screen exposure on young children’s cognitive development: A review. Frontiers in Psychology, 4779. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/...

On physical activity and development, see: Carson, V., Kuzik, N., Hunter, S., Wiebe, S. A., Spence, J. C., Friedman, A., ... & Hinkley, T. (2015). Systematic review of sedentary behavior and cognitive development in early childhood. Preventive medicine, 78, 115-122. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...

On brain training, see: Simons, D. J., Boot, W. R., Charness, N., Gathercole, S. E., Chabris, C. F., Hambrick, D. Z., & Stine-Morrow, E. A. (2016). Do “brain-training” programs work?. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(3), 103-186. https://cogsci.northwestern.edu/event....

The example I gave of positive (narrow) results was from one of the early papers in the ACTIVE trial: Ball, K., Berch, D. B., Helmers, K. F., Jobe, J. B., Leveck, M. D., Marsiske, M., ... & ACTIVE Study Group. (2002). Effects of cognitive training interventions with older adults: a randomized controlled trial. Jama, 288(18), 2271-2281.

Supermemo advocates for an expanding spacing schedule, which isn’t necessarily bad. But the question of whether fixed or expanding intervals are superior is complicated. Perhaps it has something to do with how hard the retrieval is or the number of retrieval attempts. But there’s not a clear winner. See these two pieces for further discussion.

Latimier, A., Peyre, H., & Ramus, F. (2021). A meta-analytic review of the benefit of spacing out retrieval practice episodes on retention. Educational Psychology Review, 33(3), 959-987. http://www.lscp.net/persons/ramus/doc...

Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological bulletin, 132(3), 354. https://escholarship.org/content/qt3r...

The 2016 teacher training textbook report I mention, is here: Pomerance, L., Greenberg, J., & Walsh, K. (2016). Learning about Learning: What Every New Teacher Needs to Know. National Council on Teacher Quality. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED...

The paper I showed which was a collaboration between researchers and teachers was: Agarwal, P. K., Bain, P. M., & Chamberlain, R. W. (2012). The value of applied research: Retrieval practice improves classroom learning and recommendations from a teacher, a principal, and a scientist. Educational Psychology Review, 24(3), 437-448.