How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice PDF
Preview How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice
“So often I’ve been asked to recommend a starting text for educators interested in the workings of the mind – now I have one. The text Kirschner and Hendrick offer alongside each seminal article does a wonderful job of situating the content in the broader scientific context, and in the classroom”. – Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology and Director of Graduate Studies, University of Virginia “As the volume of research into psychology and education grows, it becomes ever harder for researchers, let alone teachers, to keep up with the latest findings. Moreover, striking results often turn out to be difficult, or impossible to replicate. What teachers need, therefore, is good guidance about research that has stood the test of time, and practical guidance about how these well-established findings might be used to inform teaching practice, and this is why this is such an extraordinary, wonderful and important book. Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendrick have selected the most important research publications in the psychology of education, and, for each publication, they have provided a summary of the research, the main conclusions, and a series of practical suggestions for how the findings might inform teaching practice. I know of no other book that provides such a rigorous, accessible and practical summary of the last fifty years of research in educational psychology, and anyone who wants to understand how research can improve teaching needs to read this book. Highly recommended”. – Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment, University College London “It’s hard to overstate just how fabulous this book is; a book I’ve wanted to exist for years and now here it is. A judicious and comprehensive selection of seminal research papers presented by two expert communicators, this is absolutely superb – from the mouth-watering list of contents, and through each of the chapters. I meet teachers in schools every week who, on hearing about various findings from research, feel liberated, enlightened with a whole new perspective on the problems they wrestle with in their classrooms. Teachers are busy – often overwhelmed – and all too frequently have not yet found the time or had the opportunity to engage with research that underpins the profession they’ve committed their lives to. This book is going to change that for a lot of people. The format is excellent, presenting the original papers alongside insightful commentary and key practical recommendations; a brilliant idea executed with style! Every school should have this book and every teacher should read it”. – Tom Sherrington, Education Consultant; author of The Learning Rainforest and Rosenshine’s Principles in Action “Teachers are rightly encouraged to base their practice on research – but education research is a huge field and it’s hard to know where to start. This book provides the answer: it’s valuable in its own right as a summary of some key research papers, and it’s also a great starting point for further reading and research”. – Daisy Christodolou, Director of Education at No More Marking “With the increasing volume of calls for education to become more evidence based, teachers everywhere have shaken their heads and wondered where on earth they’re supposed to find the time to locate, read and evaluate the ever-increasing acreage of research papers out there. Worry no more. In How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice, Kirschner and Hendrick have done the hard work so that you don’t have to. The volume you have in your hands has compiled some of the most important and prominent research papers in the field of education and distilled them into a form that is genuinely useful to anyone chipping away at the chalkface. But, not only is this a resource of unparalleled utility, it’s also a fascinating and world-enlarging read”. – David Didau, author of Making Kids Cleverer “Future historians of education will look back on this period as a Renaissance; a time when dogma and orthodoxy were being challenged, and gatekeepers, priesthoods, and shamans felt the ground shift beneath their feet. The sleep of reason has bred monsters of pedagogy, and they have been fattened and nurtured by the relative ignorance of the teaching profession. Not a general ignorance, but a specific one: ignorance of the evidence bases behind the claims made in education. This Renaissance has been accompanied by an evolution, as teachers and academics reach out to one another and seek sincere, authentic dialogue. But, unless we stand on the shoulders of giants who have gone before us, each generation is doomed to rediscover what their ancestors painstakingly uncovered. For the health of the profession, we need the best of what we know in one place, so that successive generations of educators can carry on from their ancestors, and carry the conversation into the future rather than tread water endlessly. This book is the perfect resource with which to do so. I can give no higher accolade than to say that every teacher should be familiar with the research it represents, its chapters should be required reading on every teacher induction course, and no teacher should account themselves a professional until they can demonstrate its acquaintance. I wish I had read it in the infancy of my career”. – Tom Bennett, Founder, researchED How Learning Happens How Learning Happens introduces 28 giants of educational research and their findings on how we learn and what we need to learn effectively, effi- ciently, and enjoyably. Many of these works have inspired researchers and teachers all around the world and have left a mark on how we teach today. Exploring 28 key works on learning and teaching, chosen from the fields of educational psychology and cognitive psychology, the book offers a roadmap of the most important discoveries in how learning happens. Each chapter examines a different work and explains its significance before describing the research, its implications for practice, how it can be used in the classroom and the key takeaways for teachers. Clearly divided into six sections, the book covers: ■■ How the brain works and what this means for learning and teaching ■■ Prerequisites for learning ■■ How learning can be supported ■■ Teacher activities ■■ Learning in context ■■ Cautionary tales and the ten deadly sins of education. Written by two leading experts and illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli, this is essential reading for teachers wanting to fully engage with and understand educational research as well as undergraduate students in the fields of education, educational psychology and the learning sciences. Paul A. Kirschner is Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at the Open University of the Netherlands as well as Guest Professor at the Thomas More University of Applied Science in Belgium. Carl Hendrick teaches at Wellington College, UK, and holds a PhD in Education from King’s College London. How Learning Happens Seminal Works in Educational Psychology and What They Mean in Practice Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick Illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick The right of Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kirschner, Paul A., author. | Hendrick, Carl, author. Title: How learning happens : seminal works in educational psychology and what they mean in practice / Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043773 (print) | LCCN 2019043774 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367184568 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367184575 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429061523 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Learning, Psychology of. | Educational psychology. | Effective teaching. Classification: LCC LB1060 .K57 2020 (print) | LCC LB1060 (ebook) | DDC 370.15/23--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043773 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043774 ISBN: 978-0-367-18456-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-18457-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-06152-3 (ebk) Typeset in Tisa OT by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK Contents Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xiv Introduction xvi PART I How does our brain work? 1 1. A novice is not a little expert 3 2. Take a load off me 13 3. How deep is your processing? 23 4. An evolutionary view of learning 33 5. One picture and one thousand words 41 PART II Prerequisites for learning 51 6. What you know determines what you learn 53 7. Why independent learning is not a good way to become an independent learner 65 8. Beliefs about intelligence can affect intelligence 75 9. … thinking makes it so 85 10. How you think about achievement is more important than the achievement itself 97 11. Where are we going and how do we get there? 105 PART III Which learning activities support learning 115 12. Why scaffolding is not as easy as it looks 117 13. The holy grail: whole class teaching and one-to-one tutoring 125 vii Contents 14. Problem-solving: how to find a needle in a haystack 135 15. Activities that give birth to learning 143 PART IV The Teacher 153 16. Zooming out to zoom in 155 17. Why discovery learning is a bad way to discover things/Why inquiry learning isn’t 165 18. Direct instruction 175 19. Assessment for, not of learning 187 20. Feed up, feedback, feed forward 197 21. Learning techniques that really work 207 PART V Learning in context 219 22. Why context is everything 221 23. The culture of learning 231 24. Making things visible 241 25. It takes a community to save $100 million 251 PART VI Cautionary tales 261 26. Did you hear the one about the kinaesthetic learner … ? 263 27. When teaching kills learning 273 28. The medium is NOT the message 283 29. The ten deadly sins in education 295 Index 307 viii PREFACE Preface: “standing on the shoulders of giants” Of all the bitter feuds in science, one of the fiercest is the “war of letters” between Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton. One particular dispute between them popularised a phrase which has now become one of the most prominent observations about progress and the way in which true scientific discovery is inherently cumulative in nature. The source of their disagreement was on the nature of diffraction, how light bends around objects. Hooke claimed to have discovered this but Newton claimed that this “discovery” was largely as a result of earlier work by French and Italian scientists who had conducted similar experiments. In a letter to his great rival in 1675, Newton wrote: You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants. Although widely attributed to Newton, the phrase dates back a lot further. In 1159, John of Salisbury (1955) wrote of Bernard of Chartres that he used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature. However, the earliest recorded usage of the phrase dates back to the sixth century with the Latin Grammarian Priscian. At the time of Newton’s use of the phrase, the notion of knowledge as a perpetually changing process that is refined and built upon previous knowledge and discovery was very much a contested one as James Gleick (2004) notes: The idea of knowledge as cumulative – a ladder, or a tower of stones, rising higher and higher – existed only as one possibility among ix
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