Introduction
When all those whose work has anything to do with teaching look for information on how to “teach” (and learn), they can draw on several sources. Right after years of studying pedagogy and related disciplines comes the option of applying hard-won experience, whether first-hand or passed on by colleagues. Those interested can also turn to detailed, yet often inaccessible texts from academic publications, or, on the contrary, to texts written in accessible language which, however, lack deeper analysis and references to the original research. Finally, there is the work reviewed in this article, How learning works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching, whose authors make no secret of their confidence that they have managed to write a book which aptly combines all the elements mentioned above: experience, theory and research-based facts that can be applied in teaching straight away. The book sets out to create a practical manual that synthesises empirical data and research-based theories without unnecessary jargon. In other words, the book is meant to be a much-needed “bridge between research and practice”, intended for a broad audience: from university teachers and students to librarians and secondary school instructors (AMBROSE, p. 2). Let us look at the extent to which the authors have succeeded in fulfilling their aim.
In its introduction, the book reminds us, with a quotation from the scientist Herbert A. Simon, that learning always takes place on the student’s side, in what the student does and in the way they think. Why? The authors answer that learning cannot be understood as a tangible finished product, but rather as a process that takes place in the student’s mind on the basis of their interpretation of and responses to experiences, whether conscious or unconscious, past or future. Learning presupposes a change in knowledge, behaviour and attitudes that has a positive impact on the student’s performance and on their capacity to keep improving at learning (Ibid., p. 3). Since learning is a continuous interaction of mind and experience, it is not possible, if we set aside the still futuristic depictions of science fiction, to have direct contact with the learning process (that is, with the content of the student’s mind). What “remains” for the teacher is to choose strategies which, by every available means of testing, lead to the preferred performance of the student. And it is precisely these strategies, or rather seven main principles drawing on cognitive, developmental and social psychology, anthropology, pedagogy and other fields, that the book offers. The book approaches these principles and learning holistically: the student is not a blank sheet of paper but brings into the classroom experience and knowledge shaped by the social and cultural environment they come from and in which they move.
Before I focus on summarising the individual principles in more detail, I list all of them at the outset, as the book itself does:
- Students’ prior knowledge can help or, on the contrary, hinder learning
- The organisation of knowledge influences how students learn and apply what they already know
- Students’ motivation determines, directs and sustains their relationship to learning
- To achieve mastery in a given activity, students must master component skills, including the ability to integrate them and to know when to apply them
- Goal-directed practice and targeted feedback enhance the quality of learning
- Students’ current level of (emotional and intellectual) development interacts with the social, emotional and intellectual climate of the classroom and affects learning
- To be able to learn independently, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approach to learning
The organisation of the book is subordinated to its stated goal, that is, practical use, and so every chapter follows the same clear template: first come two fictional stories from teachers’ lives which, in a narrative, easily imaginable form, give the reader a concrete example in which the problems stem precisely from the abstract principle in question. In the very first chapter, for instance, we read the story of a university teacher who, before a test in a statistics course, checks whether the students are familiar with the basic concepts. Although the students claimed they were, most of them fail to demonstrate it in the test. The puzzled teacher does not understand why the students did not simply say that they did not know or understand these concepts — some of us intuitively know why this is so; the book formulates this knowledge explicitly. The analysis of these stories uncovers one of the seven main principles, for which the rest of the chapter both provides the background of the relevant scientific research and offers a set of strategies for putting knowledge of the principles to good use.
Besides the chapters devoted to the main principles, the book takes one more logical step: it turns the principles towards the reader-educator and applies them to “learning how to learn”. Finally, the book contains a 47-page appendix in which the reader will find supplementary, often sample material in the form of forms and tests, which can serve as inspiration for applying the seven main principles in practice.
A summary of the seven principles
Chapter 1: How does students’ prior knowledge affect their learning?
The first chapter points out that students do not come into the classroom as a tabula rasa but bring with them knowledge, experiences, concepts and mental models which may either help learning or, on the contrary, have a rather negative impact on improvement and understanding. Since prior knowledge “influences how students filter and interpret incoming information” (Ibid., p. 13) and students must necessarily “connect new knowledge to prior knowledge while learning” (Ibid., p. 13), the ideal state is prior knowledge that forms a solid and relevant foundation on which, given suitable instruction, knowledge leading to learning can be built and extended.
Students who meet such conditions are rather the exception. Far more likely, students will display knowledge that is inactive, insufficient, inaccurate or inappropriate, and each type of knowledge in this list sets students and educators problems that call for somewhat different strategies for dealing with them. Activating prior knowledge, for example, which leads to a more lasting integration of new knowledge, requires questions that focus on the elaboration of an answer rather than on listing facts, and we can get the student to do this by asking “why” something happened, “why” the state of affairs is as it is. Building on this concept (elaborative interrogation), the authors of the book introduce the distinction between declarative (knowledge of the What type) and procedural knowledge (knowledge of the How and When type), which does not favour one type of knowledge over the other but points out that these differences exist and are fundamental, above all in how students acquire and apply them. Active and sufficient knowledge of mathematics requires more than knowing the formulas (declarative knowledge); one must also know when and how to use a formula appropriately to solve a given problem. Similarly, the authors mention a design student who has deep procedural knowledge, but whose insufficient grasp of theory, that is, of declarative knowledge, makes it difficult to transfer knowledge from one context to another. Context also matters in the study of specialist terminology and theories, whose meaning and validity often differ across fields. The authors therefore recommend explicitly listing the contexts in which a given piece of knowledge is valid.
According to the authors, understanding what prior knowledge students actually have makes it easier for us to design a more suitable way of delivering instructions and the subject matter. Analysing their actual knowledge helps not only with learning as such but also provides good information on what exactly students are missing and what they do not understand, so that the teacher can actively remedy these gaps.
Chapter 2: How does the way students organise knowledge affect their learning?
The second chapter focuses on the organisation of knowledge and offers insight into important differences between the way students and experts organise it. Experts differ in that they organise their knowledge into large conceptual so-called “chunks” (pieces), which give them quick access to their knowledge and let them work with it quickly. A related and important ability of experts is the classification of new information: they quickly recognise in the content the patterns that are significant and, conversely, the parts of the information that are irrelevant. As a result, experts do not have to go through information sequentially, case by case, but use shortcuts and leaps of which students are not capable. To support these facts, the book cites, for example, the now classic research by the academics Chase and Herbert A. Simon from 1973, which demonstrates that chess grandmasters differ from their less experienced colleagues in that they can quickly recognise, from a given configuration of chess pieces, which positions make sense and which are unplayable.
The stories at the beginning of the second chapter point out that the teacher, as an expert in a given field, frames their explanation to students on the basis of their own organisation of knowledge and cannot expect the students’ mental maps to come anywhere near that organisation. This finding will probably not surprise the reader of the book, but the authors point out that expert knowledge is (precisely because it is expert) unconscious. The teacher must therefore make a deliberate effort to become aware not only of how they organise what they know, but also of how they organise the whole course and syllabus. According to the authors, this explicit view of the arrangement of knowledge on the teacher’s part should lead the teacher, as a “designer”, to design every part of the course so that it supports, as far as possible, the organisation of knowledge in students that the teacher, the tests or the subject matter require.
Chapter 3: What factors motivate students to learn?
Students entering university face not only higher intellectual demands, but must also cope with a new, relatively greater autonomy in how they conduct their studies and which subjects they give their attention to. Yet, as the stories at the beginning of chapter 3 point out, a student’s enthusiasm and, consequently, performance are to a large extent shaped by their motivation.
By motivation the authors mean an individual investment (of resources, time, etc.) in an activity that should lead to a desired state or outcome. The research the authors cite shows that in an educational setting motivation is an important determinant of the intensity, persistence and quality of the behaviour that leads to learning. The chapter offers a detailed analysis of motivation and related concepts, and to understand them it is worth reading the book; here I will summarise the chapter through the framework the book illustrates with a figure, in which motivation itself consists of precursor components in the form of values and expectancies: if the student recognises usefulness and worth in the content being taught (whether as an inherent or an instrumental value) and at the same time there is an acceptable probability that putting in effort is a path to a positive outcome, we can speak of ideal ground for building the student’s motivation.
Motivation for what? the authors ask. For motivation to be productive, it must result in activity. That activity stems from goals (goal-oriented motivation), which, like a compass, steer and direct the student’s attention to the relevant activity, and whose fulfilment leads to more knowledge, better performance, or simply put, to learning. Entirely in keeping with its stated holistic view, the book points out that goals do not come only from the requirements of the course, but draw on “intellectual and creative pursuits, social and interpersonal relationships, identity and self-concept, the need for safety and material possessions, and the desire to lead a productive and competent life.” (Ibid., p. 79).
Even when a student is motivated and determined to meet the set goals, the learning process can be hindered by an unsuitable environment which, instead of support and stimulation, contains demotivating elements. Part of the environment is, of course, the teacher, to whom the chapter offers an extensive set of strategies for motivating the student, stirring their interest in the subject matter and aligning the teacher’s expectations with those of the student in a suitable way.
Chapter 4: How do students develop mastery?
Since mastery, as a high degree of competence in a field, has a good deal in common with expertise and the expert organisation of knowledge, I would perhaps venture to remark here that chapters two and four deserved to be closer to each other and better connected, if only because the authors mention the same research in both chapters, although they do draw somewhat different conclusions from it.
Chapter four shows that, besides a densely interconnected and well-organised network of knowledge, an integral part of a high level of skill in solving complex tasks (and not only academic and intellectual ones) is competence in so-called component tasks.
Geometry problems in mathematics, for example, require not only knowledge of formulas but also deductive thinking, a certain ability to visualise the problem in one’s mind, familiarity with strategies for solving geometric problems and, last but not least, a combination of all of the above. Yet it is precisely the fluent execution of the individual tasks (components) that is the foundation for deeper understanding and learning.
The authors, however, recall the problem already mentioned which teacher-experts must face when passing on knowledge: on an imaginary scale, the road to mastery begins with unconscious incompetence, continues through conscious incompetence, then conscious competence, and mastery is embodied in unconscious competence. In other words, the thoroughly positive unconscious competence of teacher-experts becomes an obstacle when they want to explain and pass on their knowledge. That is why the chapter repeatedly stresses that teachers must learn to deconstruct their expert knowledge back into its individual components.
It thus seems that thorough, isolated practice of component tasks is a crucial step on the road to mastery. Not so fast, say the authors. It is only the first, important step, let us say a preparation for the second course of the effort, which lies in grasping the component skills and then integrating them in order to solve complex tasks. The book goes on to cite a number of research works devoted to an equally important question: when to move from practising component skills to integrating them. This turns out to be no easy question, as it depends on the nature and context of the problem.
Speaking of context, mastery is demonstrated only when the student can apply what they have learned across different contexts. The specialist literature calls this skill the ability of transfer, which the book (and the literature too) divides into near transfer and far transfer. Near transfer means the same or a similar context, whereas far transfer describes the ability to apply knowledge across very different contexts.
How else can teachers support students on their road to mastery? Another option is to realise that solving an example is often not the same as understanding it. If, according to cognitive load theory, solving the problem itself demands most of the student’s attention and overloads their working memory, it is unlikely that the student will have any resources left allocated (to use a computing metaphor) to focusing, while solving it, on how they are solving the example. For this reason an alternative suggests itself: the teacher gives the student an example that has already been solved, allowing the student to devote their attention to a deeper understanding of the solution, which is more likely to lead to the acquisition of key, abstract and therefore transferable principles.
Chapter 5: What kinds of practice and feedback enhance learning?
In the fifth chapter the book draws on the preceding ones. It builds on the primacy of goal-oriented practice, which it complements with an analysis and theory of feedback. The authors define practice as “an activity that makes use of skills and knowledge” and feedback as “information about performance that guides future behaviour”. From the informative illustration on page 126 the reader can see how exactly goals, practice, monitoring of performance and feedback, specifically targeted feedback, interact in the learning process: goals direct practice, practice leads to a certain performance which is monitored, goals also determine which problems the feedback will focus on, and finally targeted feedback, completing the cycle, directs future practice.
In the previous chapter the authors analysed goals mainly in the context of the students’ own motivation, whereas in this chapter they focus on goals defined by the teacher and by the requirements of the course. According to the authors, teachers should articulate their goals as clearly as possible, above all so that changes in students’ performance against these goals can be properly monitored. Moreover, the difficulty of achieving the goals, that is, of the tasks leading to them, should follow the Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theory of the Zone of proximal development, according to which tasks, in order to remain motivating for students, should be difficult enough that students cannot solve them on their own, but can with the help and guidance of the teacher. Setting the difficulty of a task correctly is key to reaching the state of flow[1], in which “consciousness is completely immersed in the activity and [the student] experiences a feeling of deep enjoyment [from the activity]” (Ibid., p. 133).
Although the previous paragraph focused on the qualitative aspects of teaching, the authors, citing research, state clearly that students cannot do without many hours spent practising. In this they emphasise the quantitative aspects of learning, referred to collectively by the English term “deliberate practice”, which is also translated into Czech as deliberační/záměrná praxe[2].
In the section on feedback, the chapter notes that targeted feedback should clearly show what the student lacks in order to reach the desired goal; it should be given by the teacher in good time and often enough for the student to learn from it and incorporate it into their learning; and it should offer further opportunities to improve performance.
Chapter 6: Why do student development and course climate matter for learning?
In the sixth chapter the authors elaborate their holistic approach to learning in the greatest detail. As already said in the third chapter, students’ goals are diverse. It is therefore necessary to admit that students are not only intellectual but also social and emotional beings, and it is precisely these dimensions that complete the climate in which the learning process takes place. There are several arguments for why teachers should care about these “soft” aspects of learning. The authors mention, for example, that during university studies the positive gains in a student’s social and emotional development are noticeably greater than their intellectual growth (Ibid., p. 157). Even if a teacher were primarily interested in intellectual development alone, the authors argue, there is no way to prevent social and emotional aspects from affecting the student’s performance. Here I think that, although there are certainly teachers who for various reasons do not feel competent to influence a student’s social or emotional development, they should make sure that their behaviour and practices are at least neutral as far as this development is concerned, for while a positive social climate in a course stimulates learning, a negative one hinders it. And which practices lead to a positive social climate in a course?
The section of the chapter that explains student development relies on Chickering’s Model, which “attempts to systematically capture all the developmental changes a student goes through during the university years” (Ibid., p. 160). The model has seven dimensions, which the authors call vectors: developing competence (intellectual, physical, interpersonal), managing emotions, developing autonomy, establishing identity, freeing interpersonal relationships, developing purpose and, finally, developing integrity. All the vectors are interconnected, and only their sum determines the student’s resulting performance.
Performance is also shaped, in no trivial way, by the course climate, which the chapter defines as the intellectual, social, emotional and physical space of interaction between the students, the course content, the teacher and other school bodies with which the student comes into contact. Course climate ranges along a spectrum from completely marginalising to completely inclusive. The research cited warns that, despite all the progress towards greater inclusivity in education, most courses remain implicitly marginalising. In many cases the teacher is not even aware that their behaviour leads to marginalisation: from a fictional yet illustrative story at the beginning of the chapter we learn that a teacher wanted to prevent the stereotyping of women in the male-dominated field of electrical engineering by giving them help and guidance beyond standard teaching and by sparing the female students from being called on in class. However virtuous his intentions, in the end they led to lower self-confidence among the female students, while among the male students they provoked a sense of injustice.
Stereotyping, or more precisely the concept of threat posed by a stereotype (stereotype threat)[3], understood as a drop in performance caused by the fear of a group affected by a stereotype (women, ethnic or sexual minorities, etc.) that it will be judged through the lens of that stereotype, is one of the concepts that contribute to a marginalising climate. Motivation and performance are, however, also adversely affected by, e.g., the tone of verbal and non-verbal expression, the unhelpfulness of school bodies, or subject matter that dogmatically pushes one correct answer and perspective where a plurality of opinions and different perspectives is possible (e.g. in the humanities).
Despite every effort, however, it is not always possible to accommodate and satisfy all perspectives. For cases in which the teacher can expect conflict and emotional reactions, it is advisable to set clear rules for discussion in advance, which should prevent emotional short circuits by putting empiricism and rationality first, with the teacher building into the assessment itself a requirement for (and possibly a reward for) argumentation based on facts and reason. The chapter provides much more valuable material and many strategies for dealing with skills that are important (and not only for a holistic conception of learning) and that are all too often belittled as “soft”.
Chapter 7: How do students become self-directed learners?
Self-directed study means genuine autonomy in the intellectual development of the student, who is expected to be able to “assess the demands of the task, evaluate their own knowledge and skills, plan their approach, monitor their progress, and finally adjust their strategies as needed” (Ibid., p. 191). The ability to apply these strategies, which fall under the category of metacognitive skills, in other words “thinking about thinking”, is one of the main conditions for successfully managing the transition from secondary school to higher levels of education as well as to professional life, where the strategy of rote learning is inadequate for a deeper understanding of concepts.
Only in this last chapter do the authors place the notions of learning and intelligence side by side, a relationship the reader would, given the nature of the topic, have expected earlier. After all, the preceding principles would lose their meaning if every intervention in learning were to founder on the fixed nature of an intelligence that determines all of the student’s performance. Unfortunately, the chapter does not go into depth here and does not cite the relevant research on the influence of intelligence on learning. From the previous chapters describing mastery and expert knowledge, the reader learns that it is not intelligence but mainly the organisation of knowledge, the practice of component skills and their integration that set the expert apart from others. That is also why the reader is not surprised that this chapter is written in the same spirit: it is not intelligence as such, but the students’ perception of the role intelligence plays in learning that fundamentally affects performance. The book does indeed cite a number of studies confirming that if students believe that effort leads to improvement regardless of intelligence, they are more motivated to train their metacognitive skills, which in turn leads to an improvement in their performance.
The most important finding of the chapter is thus that, at least at university level, where students’ intelligence reaches a certain point, planning and monitoring their work clearly leads to better results, and therefore, according to the authors, these metacognitive skills should be part of the curriculum and be taught explicitly.
Conclusion
The authors of the book present a compilation of a large body of research, which they synthesise into the clear form of seven principles whose application will certainly help to improve the quality of teaching. The holistic and contextual view of the learning process is entirely appropriate, especially at a time when inclusion and diversity are live issues in society. The book feels very compact, which in most cases I consider a positive quality of this publication, even though I noticed that some topics would have lent themselves to being discussed together. Some topics that I consider essential, on the other hand, were pushed into the background, which I attribute not to carelessness or incompetence on the part of the authors, but rather to the chosen format of the book, which did not aim to be an exhaustive analytical work, but a practical introduction to and guide through the current state of knowledge in the academic fields that deal with the cognitive, as well as the socio-cultural, aspects of learning. The book is written in a clear and readable style, without unnecessary jargon, which will surely please the more general end of the readership, and Czech readers as well. And for this reason I dare to say that the book has achieved the aim it set itself at the outset.
[1] A concept introduced into psychology by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
[2] The Czech translation is not yet fully settled in the literature; see PÍŠOVÁ, Teorie a výzkum expertnosti v učitelské profesi, p. 19
[3] For a discussion of stereotype threat in one of the relatively rare contributions written in Czech, see e.g. SMETÁČKOVÁ, Fenomén stereotype threat a jeho vliv na školní výkony
About the book
Title: How learning works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching (Foreword by Richard E. Mayer)
Authors: Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, Marie K. Norman
Published: 2010 by John Wiley & Sons
Number of pages: 336
References
AMBROSE, Susan A. How learning works: seven research-based principles for smart teaching. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, c2010. Jossey-Bass higher and adult education series. ISBN 978-0-470-48410-4.
PÍŠOVÁ, Michaela. Teorie a výzkum expertnosti v učitelské profesi. Brno: Masarykova univerzita, 2011. Pedagogický výzkum v teorii a praxi. ISBN 978-80-210-5744-9.
SMETÁČKOVÁ, Irena. 2012. Fenomén stereotype threat a jeho vliv na školní výkony. In: Orbis scholae. Univerzita Karlova v Praze: Nakladatelství Karolinum, pp. 11-27. ISSN 1802-4637.