ICT Role in 21st Century Education & its Challenges.pptx
Ed fest desirable difficulties
1. Deliberately difficult
Why it might be better to make
learning slower
David Didau
Wellington Education Festival
22nd June 2013
2. The most important role of
teaching is to promote
learning and to raise pupils‟
achievement.
Ofsted Inspection Handbook, 2013
3. Outstanding teaching and
learning will result in “almost
all pupils … making rapid and
sustained progress.”
Ofsted Inspection Handbook, 2013
4. 2 questions
Q: If Ofsted judge T&L by observing lessons,
what does „progress in lessons‟ look like?
A: Performance
Q: Can progress be both rapid and
sustained?
A: No
6. • But “as learning occurs, so does
forgetting…
…learning takes time and is not
encapsulated in the visible here-and-
now of classroom activities.”
Graham Nuthall, The Hidden Lives of Learners
The input/output myth
10. 2. Why is difficulty desirable?
• Rapid improvement (performance):
predictability, cues, massed practice
• Sustained improvement (learning):
variability, spacing, interleaving
These slow down performance but
lead to long term retention & transfer
of knowledge
11. The (New) Theory of Disuse
Retrieval strength
Storagestrength
Old friend‟s
address
New friend‟s
address
Childhood
address
What you
learn in this
session
12. Rapid progress prevents
sustained progress
• The higher the retrieval strength, the
smaller the gains from additional study or
practice
• Forgetting creates the likelihood of
increased learning
• If learning is difficult, retrieval strength will
decrease in the short term but will
increase in the long term
13. “The illusion of knowing”
Everyone likes rapid progress
But…
The route to sustained progress is
counter intuitive
18. What the evidence says
Spaced vs massed practice d = 0.71
Acquisition increased by d = 0.45
Retention increased by d = 0.51
John Hattie, Visible Learning
22. Items we‟ve not practised
retrieving are more likely to be
forgotten in the short term
But, forgetting increases chances
of retaining information that is
represented
Retrieval induced forgetting
23. Testing
• Which study pattern will result in the
best test results?
1. STUDY STUDY STUDY STUDY – TEST
2. STUDY STUDY STUDY TEST – TEST
3. STUDY STUDY TEST TEST – TEST
4. STUDY TEST TEST TEST - TEST
26. Reducing feedback
• Providing feedback of success is
counter productive
• Students become dependent
• Slows down pace of learning
• Prevents risk taking & challenge
27. A teacher‟s job is not to make work
easy. It is to make it difficult. if you
are not challenged, you do not
make mistakes. If you do not
make mistakes, feedback is
useless.
John Hattie, Visible Learning
28. Key messages
• Performance is not evidence of
learning
• Share the theory of „deliberate
difficulties‟ with your students
• Don‟t trust your gut!
Performance can be propped up by predictability and current cues that are present during the lesson but won’t be present when the information is needed later. This can make it seem that a student is making rapid progress but there may not actually be any learning happening.
Learning occurs but performance in the short term doesn’t improve, or…Performance improves, but little learning seems to happen in the long term.
represent, change context etc.
Threshold concepts?
Interference vs inhibiition??Items we’ve not practised retrieving are more likely to be forgotten in the short term but are more likely to be ‘learned’ in the long term
We respond to familiar cuesIf you take a test in the room in which you’ve learned you’ll do better – but much worse in an unfamiliar settingBut, if you learn in lots of different configurations, you’ll do better in tests