Two Forthcoming Studies: ‘Direct Instruction Really Can Limit Young Children's Learning’

No news flash here: Alison Gopnik, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, explains on Slate that there are now two studies to back up what many people, from parents to preschool teachers and even a few policy-makers, have suspected all along: Yes, young children, particularly preschoolers, should indeed be allowed, even encouraged, to "explore, inquire, play, and discover" as a way to build curiosity and creativity.

Gopnik cites two studies soon to be highlighted in the journal Cognition. One study is from a lab at MIT, while the other hails from her lab at UC-Berkeley. Here's a nice tidbit from Gopnik's article:

As so often happens in science, two studies from different labs, using different techniques, have simultaneously produced strikingly similar results. They provide scientific support for the intuitions many teachers have had all along: Direct instruction really can limit young children's learning. Teaching is a very effective way to get children to learn something specific—this tube squeaks, say, or a squish then a press then a pull causes the music to play. But it also makes children less likely to discover unexpected information and to draw unexpected conclusions.

Again, there's really no surprise here. But as Gopnik points out, the findings — though common sense for many — are often at odds with efforts like the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act that explicitly called for "more direct instruction in federally funded preschools." Of course, it's not just No Child Left Behind. Even in San Francisco, I hear parents regularly ask preschools to offer more direct instruction to kids and, by default, less spontaneous learning.

Still, Gopnik's timing is good. Over the last year, momentum has been building around the need for creativity in solving some of the world's biggest challenges. According to IBM's survey of more than 1,500 CEOs from 60 countries and 33 industries worldwide, people believe that "more than rigor, management discipline, integrity or even vision ... successfully navigating an increasing complex world will require creativity."

For Gopnik, creativity comes from spontaneous learning, and for young children, that means allowing — or, in some cases, designing — a "rich, stable, and safe world, with affectionate and supportive grown-ups, and lots of opportunities for exploration and play." She points out that spontaneous learning is more fundamental than the likes of direct instruction. Gopnik also credits Patrick Shafto, from the University of Louisville and a co-author of both these studies; Noah Goodman at Stanford; and their colleagues for exploring how "we could design computers that learn about the world as effectively as young children do." It's this work, Gopnik says, that inspired these experiments.

To hear more from Gopnik, head to this interview with Charlie Rose.

Image source: Charlie Rose Show

Another Reason to Love Skype: An Edu Platform to Connect Teachers

GOOD blogger Liz Dwyer recently highlighted Skype's latest effort:  Skype in the classroom, "a free global community created in response to, and in consultation with, the growing number of teachers" using the tool to help students learn.

Already, there's more than 7,000 teachers connected, 211 projects, and 377 resources. Listen to a teacher from Missouri talk about connecting with teachers via Skype or watch a a classroom exchange on earthquakes, between classrooms in Chile and the US.

Image credit: Skype

Woodshop for Kids of Any Age (Really)

Today, The New York Times highlighted the resurgence of hands-on woodshop class for kids — little kids, like 3-year-olds.

How nice to see a consideration of shop class outside the mental — and school-day — confines of "streaming," or tracking, kids. Too often, it seems that kids are routed to shop and art classes, particularly in the upper grades, with the assumption that they can't hack academic classes. On the flip side, budding designers, engineers, and other hands-on learners are dissuaded from taking "easy" classes that may fall flat on a college application.

Times reporter Julia Scelfo interviewed Doug Stowe, an educator and woodworker in Arkansas, and he offers up several interesting tidbits. "Up until the early 1900s, there was a widespread understanding that the use of the hands was essential to the development of character and intellect," explained Stowe in The Times interview. "More recently, we've had this idea that every child should go to college and that the preparation for careers in manual arts was no longer required. ... we have forgotten all the other important things that manual training conveys."

Stowe's blog, Wisdom of the Hands, is named after a program he started a decade ago at Clear Spring School in Eureka Springs. (His effort to preserve and teach the craft of woodworking got him named a Living Treasure there in 2009).

Another interesting take comes from Abigail Norman, director of the Eliot School in Boston: "Children are so driven to find the right answer, to put their name on the right place on the page, to fill in the right multiple-choice question, to blacken the right dot. They're crying out for opportunities to use their creative mind to take creative risks. Woodworking and art supply that."

Of course, the article's author does due diligence in explaining that, y-e-s, power tools in the hands of both 3- and 16-year-olds can be dangerous. But as Brian Cohen, a former music industry exec and co-founder of Beam Camp, a "summer art and building" camp in New Hampshire, points out "tetherball is more dangerous than the shop."

Interestingly, Cohen explained that he started Beam Camp after noting the hours and hours kids were using iPods and laptops. Now, he has kids aged from 7 to 16 building geodesic domes "in the shape of virus protein shells" and parade floats with kinetic sculptures.

The article also offered me a nice reminder of a wonderful San Francisco resource: The Randall Museum, packed with rogue city critters, ceramic and theater courses, and a children (and adult) woodworking program. According to The Times, the museum has doubled the number of its classes and added one for preschoolers in recent years. Now that I think about it, as a leftie — surrounded by woodworking gear made for right-handers in the Randall, where I made a ridiculously sturdy oak bookshelf — shop could be just a dangerous as tetherball.

Photo sources: The New York Times, The Randall Museum (yep, that photo is from museum)