Learning That Transfers - E117

Rachel: 0:40

In this episode, we are talking all about learning and how to structure learning so that it transfers to new situations.

Katie: 0:49

Yes, we are returning to why don't students like school where we are going to be discussing chapters four through six, about learning.

Rachel: 0:56

Let's get started. This week, Katie and I are back in chatting a bit more about the book. Why Don't Students Like School by Daniel Willingham

Katie: 1:12

yeah. So we left off at chapter four, so today we're gonna kind of tackle three different chapters, so four through six and we'll explain a little bit more about implications for classroom and, and what each of these chapters are about.

Rachel: 1:26

Yeah. The, the, these few chapters that we're gonna talk about today, they actually tie together really nicely in terms of their guiding principles and, and classroom implications. So that's why we kind of clustered those.

Katie: 1:39

Yeah, exactly. So we'll get, why don't we just dive in with chapter four. The title for this one is, why is it So Hard for students to Understand Abstract Ideas? And then the guiding principle is we understand new things in the context of things we already. And most of what we know is concrete. This makes me think so much of my own learning that's going on right now with my master's program and language learning because. all ties in so well. But that makes sense because it's all about the brain and how we think and how we learn. So this reading was actually fascinating for me because I was thinking of different models of language learning and language teaching and how this also fits in with that, which is so nerdy and I apologize to our listeners now, but it, it was, it was very fascinating and, and helped me kind of connect more because I'm using my own concrete thoughts in the things that I know to, to make sense of this chapter as.

Rachel: 2:28

That's what I found really useful actually when I did my master's degree, is I didn't do mine until a good, you know, five, seven years into teaching and being in the classroom. is that it was so much more useful in terms of the understanding and making connections because I, I had that context going into it. I think if I had done my master's any earlier in my career, it, I wouldn't have gotten as much out of it. And I bet you, cuz Katie, you're doing yours even later in your career that you're probably getting even more out of it than what I got out of.

Katie: 3:02

yeah. It's actually been really interesting because I always do things quite instinctually as a language teacher, and so I kind of respond to my students, see what's working and tweak things, and I never know what it was called. Or why I was doing it or why it works. And so now it's kind of neat to connect, you know, the theories and, and why they're effective to, why it has been working in my classroom, but then also to be exposed to other methods as well that I've never really thought about. So um, it, I've, I've been getting a lot out of it and I, and I think because I waited so long and really wanted to take my masters, it's also, it's a motivation thing as well. Because I'm, I don't know. I just find it very fascinating.

Rachel: 3:41

It is very fascinating. I, I also have noticed as I read more and kind of engage in, in some of those education pedagogy books that I start to see even more and more connections to. either what I do in the classroom or connections between other things. So you, an interesting kind of connection that I had when I read this chapter was, wow, this reminds me a lot of the book called uh, learning That transfers and they talk about their ACT model. So their act model for developing learning sort of lessons and, and things like that for your students. that you go through three different stages. The A stands for acquire, C stands for connect, and then the T stands for transfer. And, um, you, you basically have different activities in sort of like this logical progression to build up to that transfer of knowledge. And so it's kind of neat, right? Because this is talking all about transferring knowledge and so yeah, I, I don't know. It's just so cool, like seeing those different connect.

Katie: 4:45

Yeah, it's actually. It's sometimes it's a little frightening how connected things are cuz I don't really, like, when I'm reading this book, I'm thinking in the context of why don't students like school and how we can make it accessible. But it really does connect to everything else that we're learning and, and we do on a daily basis, even in our personal lives. And so it's fascinating. But yes, let's get further into this chapter.

Rachel: 5:07

Yeah, so uh, really kind of the premise of the chapter is that students will understand new ideas by relating them to old ideas. So essentially things that really work here are analogies. Analogies are great as long as the context of the analogy is something that students are familiar with as well as integrating some really concrete examples. And again, they need to. Examples that students are familiar with in order to be able to help them to understand these new ideas.

Katie: 5:38

And, and I think that's key and, and a lot of what we have been talking about, especially because of Covid and everything else, is getting to know your students and their background knowledge. And I think that really speaks to this chapter cuz if we don't know the lived experiences or, or what our students know, it can be very hard for them to connect new learning and, and what we want to teach them in a meaningful.

Rachel: 6:01

There was one, uh, one quote that I wrote down here from the chapter that I really love. So it says, understanding new ideas is mostly a matter of getting the right old ideas into working memory and then rearranging them. So making comparisons we hadn't made before or thinking about a feature we had previously ignored. So how cool is that to think about, well, how do we then build our lessons or our activities? In order to be able to bring out those right old ideas for students to understand that new concept,

Katie: 6:32

Yeah. And I just wanna say, I also wrote down the exact same quote, so I love that we both picked that up and liked that.

Rachel: 6:39

that one just, it really resonated with me. I'm like, yes. Like, because it, it, it is, you know, any kind of new thinking or new learning really is about combin. things that are you've, you've already got in your, your memory and combining them together in new ways like that is what the book defines as as thinking.

Katie: 6:58

and if you haven't already, I, I do strongly recommend you actually purchase this book or find it in a library or whatever the case may be. Because I really love the examples right throughout all the chapters. I love that he embeds real life examples and actually puts it to work and shows you how you can make something more accessible because. it. It helps to kind of, I don't know. It helps me make sense of it all. You can tell me something, but until I actually see it in practice, it can be hard for me to understand it. So I love that he does that.

Rachel: 7:25

yeah. No, the examples are great and we are no, no way affiliated with this book. We just really enjoy the book,

Katie: 7:30

Yeah, yeah. We're not like trying to sell it. I'm just saying it's a really good resource,

Rachel: 7:35

Yeah, I know. It's be, it's been great for my learning.

Katie: 7:38

So throughout the chapter he also talks about like shallow versus deep knowledge and kind of what the differences are. And so within that, he talks about rote knowledge and rote knowledge isn't bad. Rote knowledge is being able to give the right answer, typically word for word. But recognizing that that doesn't mean a student is thinking and it doesn't mean they have a deep understanding of it. And how shallow knowledge is like some understanding of a concept, but it's very limited, so, Only being able to understand something in the context in which it was taught or or explained. Whereas deep as being able to know more about that subject and see the connections between different situations and being able to use that knowledge in a new context. And um, I found this fascinating cause I always think back to word problems in math I know that's silly, but that's kind of where my mind typically. and I understand I can make sense of this whole shall shallow versus deep because oftentimes kids get stuck in the example, the situation that is being set up for them and they can't think outside of the context that was taught in the classroom. So that example, that language that was used in the lesson. And so it really makes me think more about how we can help. Make their knowledge more deep,

Rachel: 8:55

yeah, so that book learning that transfers, I think is a really good read as a sort of a next step because they do talk a lot about shallow and deep knowledge in that book too, and how to develop that deep knowledge because honestly, it doesn't come easy and it does require, a lot of practice and, and a lot of, frankly, it takes time to be able to really develop deep knowledge I I think it's like they do talk quite a bit in this chapter about transfer as well, and about being able to take some of that knowledge and applying it to a new problem. and then they talk about like that surface structure versus deep structure. And um, that kind of goes to your math word problems, right? Like if you have a math word problem, maybe you can understand it in the one context, but if you take the same mathematical principle, but put it in a different context, most of the time our students can't identify that that deep structure is there.

Katie: 9:50

Yeah. And, and so in this context, the surface structure is like that scenario that we're building up for them, that that isn't actually the important part. And, and the deep structure is that actual math concept, that thing that you've been teaching them. And so they get so hung up by that surface structure and trying to make sense of the words that they're looking at and the scenario that they're being presented with that they can't see through to the math.

Rachel: 10:12

So that was one of the. Really good classroom implications that I took away from this chapter was to make sure that your expectations for deep knowledge is realistic because students have to progress through first having no knowledge to then developing a shallow knowledge to then developing deep knowledge. So they're not gonna get to that deep knowledge right away. And we do need to provide those scaffolds as we go.

Katie: 10:36

And then I think the other thing is like multiple examples. If we wanna help students comprehend how to use, you know, their thinking and the, and these new concepts they're learning, we have to give them multiple examples, give them different scenarios, get them thinking about where to find the math in those problems. Don't worry so much of. Getting them to answer the questions, but get them to think through the examples to see the parallels and where the math is, or whatever. I'm using math because it makes sense in my head, but any subject area.

Rachel: 11:05

So I think we should move on to the next chapter and talk about practice. So it's called Is Drilling Worth It? And, uh, the guiding principle here for this chapter is it is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task without extended.

Katie: 11:21

And I love, at one point he's talking about how people with more working memory capacity are better thinkers. And I'm like, I'm never going to be good at thinking so a lot of times what we do is we get hung up by. You know, you, we have to use our working memory to make sense of things. And so if there's too much in our working memory, we're not going to be very efficient. And so the idea of drilling and practicing is we don't have to use as much of our working memory because we have it proceduralized and in our long-term memories.

Rachel: 11:53

so I wrote this down too, that working memory has limited space and it's the fundamental bottleneck of human cognition. I really, really like how he put that because it is, it, it is your limiting factor to getting to that deep sort of think.

Katie: 12:09

And, and I can actually feel that most times when I'm approached with a problem and I'm like, wait a second, I need, I need paper. I need something to help me get things down, And so it talks about how, you know, we can. we can use methods such as chunking to help us to actually proceduralize words or terms or phrases, expressions, knowledge so that we can have that in our long term memories. And it's easily accessible as a unit that we have a definition to. We know what that is.

Rachel: 12:35

one of the other points that he kind of really emphasizes here is not everything needs to be practic.

Katie: 12:41

Nope.

Rachel: 12:42

So it's, it's thinking about those things that you want your students to really become automatic. Because when you have a mental process that is automatic, then it no longer takes up that space in your working memory, which then frees it up to be able to use the pieces of information it does need to be able to use in the working.

Katie: 13:02

yes. He mentions cramming and I laugh And so we talk about studying and, and how it can be effective and what is effective long term versus short term. And it really brings me back to my high school days when I was like, Crammer, that's what I did the night before a test. I would cram all that knowledge in. I would go, I would write the test, I would do really well, and then it's outta my brain within a week. And he does mention that, and how that's not exactly effective if we're looking for long-term learning. And so spacing it out is important just to help for more long-term knowledge building and bringing that into our long-term memories.

Rachel: 13:36

with space practice as well. You don't actually have to do as much. Like you, it can be less because you are spacing it out and doing, doing it over. A much longer sort of timeframe, right? Whereas cramming is all just done in one sort of sitting and then, whoa, there you go. You forgot it. right? Another sort of strategy he talked about in here was Overlearning and I thought that was really interesting. So Overlearning is basically continuing to study something after you seem to already know it. It was really interesting in terms of the, the different examples and stories he brought in there to talk about how it actually offers some protection against forgetting things. I thought it was really, I don't know, really weird.

Katie: 14:18

But it makes so much sense, especially like he was using a lot of language examples. And that makes sense to me in my head cuz that's kind of where I often think of things. And so he's right. Like you could very easily forget a word when you're acquiring your le a new language, a new vocabulary, et cetera. And so the Overlearning just helps as that extra reminder so that you can hold onto it for a bit longer and hopefully establish that in your long term

Rachel: 14:39

The one other big thing I wrote down here in terms of what really stuck out to me in this chapter was that practice will improve transfer. And that's because it helps. The more you practice, the more you'll start being able to identify that underlying structure of the problem. And so it starts to make that deep structure. That we just talked about in that previous chapter, a lot more obvious to students. So the more practice we get, the easier that deeper sort of learning uh, will come about.

Katie: 15:07

Okay, let's talk about classroom implications. I think one of the big ones for me was spacing out the practice, and I think that's, you know, both individual and as a classroom teacher, making sure I do that with my students.

Rachel: 15:19

I've been doing that for quite some time actually because there's a bunch of learning sciences books that I've read and, and so space practice is one of those. Retrieval practice is another. Being able to retrieve ideas from your memory without. I guess, without having any sort of aids or anything like that. Right. And, one of the things that, that I've done quite a bit, I haven't done so much this year, but I have these little, like retrieval grits I call them, and I, I like to bring them out on a Friday. And basically it's a bunch of different questions from, and, and I'll have them color coded based on if we learned the concept yesterday or if we learned it two days ago or if we learned it last week or last month. And so I'll jumble all the questions up there and kind of put that up as, as our entrance ticket, I guess you could call it. And, uh, so it gives students a chance to work collaboratively and do some of that space practice together.

Katie: 16:15

And last but certainly not least, we have chapter six, which is entitled, what's the Secret To Getting Students To Think Like Real Scientists, mathematicians and Historians. And in this case the guiding principle is cognition. Early in training is fundamentally different from cognition late in training. And I love that that's kind of a reminder for teachers to. It's not realistic. to expect them to think like experts because they're not yet experts.

Rachel: 16:44

Mm-hmm. no, I know. I, when I read this chapter, I'm like, yes, yes. This is like, this is our big struggle in science especially, is we, we really want students to develop those critical thinking skills that you use as a scientist, but really our expectations are probably way above where they need to be because students are just not there yet cognitively.

Katie: 17:08

and the other thing I loved, because you bring up science is, and it was so true, like labs. They're set up in such a way where it's predictable. The students are aware of what the outcome is going to be. They just have to make it happen. Whereas experts, when they're doing labs, they don't know what the outcome is.

Rachel: 17:24

I wrote that down myself in my notes, So yeah, you, you get the, basically students are doing labs to see if they did it. and, and that's not realistic. You know, all through, I, I didn't know what my outcomes were expected to be during my PhD when I was, when I was working in a research lab. And that was a good thing. And you know what, you also, when you didn't experiment, if you got something that was unexpected, like that's the best result you can get because then you can dig into it and try and figure out what it actually means. And that was the fun part. Of doing research. So yeah, you're right. Students are not exposed to that, and that's always been one of my, well, how can I simulate that in my classroom? But after reading this chapter, I don't know if I even necessarily wanna fully go there yet.

Katie: 18:15

Yeah. And, and he also talks about how experts. Have a lot of knowledge, a lot of proceduralized knowledge and don't require the work, like your working memory. And we can't expect that of students yet. And so our job is to help them build that knowledge and give them some, like some authentic opportunities to think through, but it has to be really guided and really kind. We need that reminder. They're not there yet. They're not experts because they're not yet experts and it's going to require time and practice.

Rachel: 18:45

He did make a comparison, like take a new teacher in classroom management versus an experienced teacher in classroom management is like the, the experienced teacher has eyes in the back of their head, right? They know everything that's going on around them. And that's because they got that deeper understanding of that background knowledge of the pedagogy of, you know, all of those different classroom management strategies and all of that has actually. A bit automatized because it's become part of our background knowledge that we can then pay attention to the more sort of subtle things that are going on in the classroom. And I thought that was like a really interesting way to, to think about about this.

Katie: 19:24

Agreed

Rachel: 19:25

I think the other thing that was interesting was that about like how experts think about things versus novices. So experts tend to cluster things together or think in terms of functions or deep structure versus novices who are just like trying to. I don't know. Basically just figure out the thing,

Katie: 19:45

Yeah, they're just trying to understand the thing. Forget about, analyze the thing. And I think that's, I mean, and that's where our students are at. They just need to under, like, they're just working to understand. They don't yet have enough knowledge to be able to analyze it and make sense of it.

Rachel: 20:00

in terms of classroom implications from what we've learned from this chapter really just kind of understanding that students are, are at that stage where they're ready to comprehend and understand knowledge, but not necessarily to create knowledge. So if you think in terms of like thinking like a scientist, like they can understand the basic. Underlying principles of the science. They can understand results they get from a lab, from something that's expected, but they can't actually then take unpredictable outcomes and be able to come up with new theories in order to be able to explain that science thing that they've seen.

Katie: 20:39

Yeah. And so you've summed up one of the, the other implications. Don't expect novices to learn by doing what experts do as well,

Rachel: 20:46

Right?

Katie: 20:47

But yeah, so I think there's some really good takeaways from this chapter, and a lot of it is grounding teachers and reminding. that we're dealing with novices, we're not dealing with experts and we have lofty goals. We want them to be able to think like experts, but we have to help them build up that knowledge and understand how to understand the world around them and the, and the facts around them in order to make sense of it.

Rachel: 21:08

And the other thing, uh, the other classroom implication, I really like that kinds kind of goes along with this, is just that. Just because students can't create like experts doesn't mean that they shouldn't create. And uh, there were some really cool examples in that section. So we talked about science fair projects and how most of the time they're terrible, which made me think of IB and the ias that our students do in science. They are terrible for the most part, or they're not very creative. But even though you know it, it might not go well and it might be a flop or whatever. It's still. good practice. It's still great for motivation. I don't know about the IAS being motivating very much for our students, but uh, like a science fair project can still be pretty motivating for students. So it doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Katie: 21:54

And it is learning for them. Like even if it's not successful, they're still thinking. They're still analyzing. They're still trying.

Rachel: 22:02

Practice makes progress.

Katie: 22:03

Yeah. And that's chapters four through six.

Rachel: 22:05

Yeah. That was a whirlwind.

Katie: 22:07

I know we went so quickly through it, but um, some great little tidbits and definitely worth a read if you haven't started yet.

Rachel: 22:14

Yeah. And so what we'll do is we'll put any of the links or resources we talked about here today in our show notes. You can access our show notes for this episode@edugals.com slash one 17. That's edu G A l s.com/one 17.

Katie: 22:30

And if you like what you heard, then feel free to share it with a colleague or a friend. And don't forget to subscribe on your favorite podcast app so that you don't miss out on any future content.

Rachel: 22:38

And as always, we'd love to hear from you. So if you have any thoughts, any ideas you'd like to share with us uh, you can go onto our flip at edu gals.com/flipgrid and leave us a video message there. Or you can go onto our website@edugals.com and leave us a written reply.

Katie: 22:56

Thanks for listening and see you next week.