This post may shock some of you as it did me, especially teachers, educators and coaches.
This sentence in the chapter shocked me, “The idea that individuals have distinct learning styles has been around long enough to be part of the folklore of educational practice and an integral part of how many people perceive themselves“.
The authors elaborated that learning styles are only preferences in which people choose to learn, but empirically, there is no substantial evidence it does not contribute to better learning.
The authors argue that a main difference that appears to matter a lot is how someone sees themselves and their abilities. They quote a saying “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.” (I think it’s Confucius but I heard it before from Will Smith from this motivational video that I watch occasionally) – “The person who says ‘I can’ and the person who says ‘I can’t’ are both usually right”, and this is the main work of Carol Dweck.
“What you tell yourself about your ability plays a part in shaping the ways you learn and perform – how hard you apply yourself, for example, or your tolerance for risk-taking and your willingness to persevere in the face of difficulty.” This sentence alone also reminds me of the work by Angela Duckworth (grit and perseverance), Martin E. Seligman (cultivating optimism and understanding sources of pessimism) and Paul Tough (development of children who succeed with focus on grit, curiosity, character), which, all three, have been successfully implemented in KIPP Schools in America.
The authors argue that each and every of us have a large pool of resources in many forms of “aptitudes, prior knowledge, intelligence, interest, and sense of personal empowerment”. These, the authors explain, are the things that mould how people learn and overcome their shortcomings. The authors suggest, with evidences and examples later in the chapter, that there are many differences in our learning journey. Some of these differences in resources can make an impact to our learning but we may not realize it. Some of these differences that we think it would help but in truth, it doesn’t, which is linked to Chapter 5: Illusions of Knowing.
The authors go on to establish other ‘learning styles’ that are more credible and trustworthy to be used by educators rather than the typical visual, kinesthetic and auditory types since the latter group had no definitive evidence to support its claim other than the type of instruction based on the learning preference should match the lesson i.e. visual instruction in an art or geometry lesson, auditory instruction in a music lesson.
The authors go on to provide psychologist Howard Gardner’s suggestion regarding different intelligences, which include logical-mathematical, spatial, linguistic, kinesthetic, musical, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalistic. Despite this, Gardner himself realizes that to decide someone’s mix of intelligence is “more an art than a science“.
Another psychologist, Robert J. Sternberg proposes three intelligences instead: analytical, creative and practice. Additionally, unlike Gardner’s work, Sternberg’s is supported by empirical research. After providing examples of Sternberg’s research, in Sternberg’s view, we’re all in a state of developing expertise and mastery, and any assessment that attempts to measure what the student knows is only a static measure that tells nothing about his or her potential.
Next the authors propose a type of testing that supports the progress from a lower to a higher state of competence: dynamic testing. In dynamic testing, a student or educator would determine the state of expertise, then refocusing learning on areas of low performance and follow up testing to measure the improvement and subsequently to refocus learning in order to keep raising expertise. The change is in the interpretation where before, an educator or student would look at a weakness as a fixed inability but now they would translate the process as remediation of the skill or knowledge.. This reminds me of a Edutopia video of a school in Texas, Arizona which focuses on a school model of reteaching and enriching students, which I think can be a model for dynamic testing especially in Singapore schools.
[The following has nothing to do with the book but merely a reflection of mine.
This (dynamic testing) is, I think, something simple that can be applied in a lot of schools in Singapore, at the very least, at a specific level. Additionally, for children who are in the upper primary levels, they can also attend these lessons, both reteach and enrich lessons, if they so would like.
The only administrative issue I can foresee is how schools or middle management would want to plan this out. One possible way is to remove the remedial or supplementary lessons and to redesign it as a reteach or enrich group.
This way, it allows two benefits to take place: 1) teachers can plan the lessons together and are focused on reteaching using better or different instruction methods and 2) parents and students have a more realistic and motivated perspective towards “remedial and supplementary lessons.
Additionally, tracking of progress would definitely give all stakeholders motivation to persevere and focus on working on fundamentals, subsequently creating a growth mindset.]
The next part, structure building, is very close to what I’m trying to create with English, at least with the students here locally in Singapore. Structure building is the act of constructing a logical and consistent mental framework as students encounter new material and extracting important key points and ideas. Strangely, I’ve always thought this would be a personality issue as I find it, at times, incessantly frustrating when having a conversation with someone who rambles on and apparently does not have a point or key idea in his argument.
The authors, however, indicate that the research is still very young with regards to whether a low structure-building is a result of faulty cognitive mechanism or is structure-building a skill that some pick up naturally but for some, it has to be taught. Personally, I think it goes back to the mindset of whether you want to find out the key ideas when someone is communicating. In fact, when I’m reading this books, the authors use a lot of story telling and I found myself trying to figure and wanting to rush the reading to reach to the end where the summary of the chapter always was. It’s not that I don’t like the examples but sometimes they gave more than I would need to try and see what the chapter is about, which brings us to the next theory that the authors propose of whether you are a “rule leaner” or an “example learner”.
As a summary, (and I think I should do this more often for the chapter summaries), the authors advocate the following:
- Be the one in charge. One must have the mindset to go for what one wants to master. It is a quest and not something you just have to do. Without the mindset, even the best coaches and materials would not be a factor in one’s success.
- Embrace the notion of successful intelligence. The authors demand learners to take command of their resources and tap all of their “intelligences” to master the knowledge or skill they want to possess, with the following steps:
- Describe what you want to know, do, or accomplish
- List competencies required, what you need to learn and where you can find the knowledge or skill
- Then be the one in charge and go get it.
- Use effective and research proven learning strategies.
- Mentally consider your level of mastery to be in a state of continuous development,
- Practice dynamic testing to discover your weaknesses
- Focus on improving yourself in those areas
- Building on strengths, Improve your weaknesses. You will become even more competent and dynamic, flexible and versatile when you use testing, trial and error to further improve in areas where you need remediation.
- Distill the underlying principles; build the structure. This is my favorite. The authors posit that the learner break down the idea or the skill into its component parts (which is similar to what Tim Ferris does in his book 4 Hour Chef) and then go on to attempt to recall, describe, compare and contrast between them. This way the learner would be able to better understand the knowledge, skill or idea from the mental model or structure.
The Million In My Head 