Survey Shows Hands-on Science Learning Valuable to Students

Science reporter Jeffrey Mervis writes about a new study suggesting that college students may learn better through — surprise! — an active, iterative process that involves working through their misconceptions with fellow students and getting immediate feedback from the instructor.

The study, by a team at the University of British Columbia led by physics Nobelist Carl Wieman, that students in the "deliberate" practice section did more than twice as well on a 12-question multiple-choice test of the material as did those in the control section. The research also showed that students were also more engaged and a post-study survey found that nearly all said they would have liked the entire 15-week course to have been taught in the more interactive manner.

The New York Times reporter Benedict Carey points out that study is far from perfect: "More than 150 of the students were absent from the test, most of them from the comparison class. The researchers had no way to know how those students, if they'd come, would have changed the overall findings."

Experts said, according to Carey, that it was "problematic" for a study to offer an intervention (in the form of enthusiastic teachers) that could sway results. "This is not a good idea, since they know exactly what the hypotheses are that guide the study, and, more importantly, exactly what the measures are that will be used to evaluate the effects," James W. Stigler, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "They might, therefore, be tailoring their instruction to the assessment — i.e., teaching to the test."

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