From the Laboratory to the Classroom

Translating Science of Learning for Teachers

Jared Horvath, Jason Lodge, John Hattie, Jared Cooney Horvath, Jason M. Lodge, John Hattie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317271918
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Over recent years the field of Science of Learning has increased dramatically. Unfortunately, despite claims that this work will greatly impact education, very little research makes it into teacher practice. Although the reasons for this are varied, a primary concern is the lack of a proper translation framework.

From the Laboratory to the Classroom aims to consolidate information from many different research disciplines and correlate learning principles with known classroom practices in order to establish explanatory foundations for successful strategies that can be implemented into the classroom. It combines theoretical research with the diverse and dynamic classroom environment to deliver original, effective and specific teaching and learning strategies and address questions concerning what possible mechanisms are at play as people learn. Divided into five sections, chapters cover:

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• A Framework for Organizing and Translating Science of Learning Research

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• Motivation and Attention as Foundations for Student Learning

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• Memory and Metamemory Considerations in the Instruction of Human Beings

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• Science of Learning in Digital Learning Environments

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• Educational Approaches for Students Experiencing Learning Difficulties and Developmental Characteristics of Gifted Children

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• Brain, Behaviour and Classroom Practice

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• Forging Research/Practice Relationships via Laboratory Schools

This fascinating text gathers an international team of expert scientists, teachers, and administrators to present a coherent framework for the vital translation of laboratory research for educational practice. Applying the Science of Learning framework to a number of different educational domains, it will be an essential guide for any student or researcher in education, educational psychology, neuropsychology, educational technology and the emergent field of neuroeducation.

Section 1 The How and Why of Science of Learning

1 A Framework for Organizing and Translating Science of Learning Research

Jared Cooney Horvath and Jason M. Lodge

Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne

DOI: 10.4324/9781315625737-1

Introduction

The term science of learning (SoL) encompasses a broad range of scientific disciplines, from basic neuroscience to cognitive psychology to computer science to social theory. Despite this wide array of interests, however, the goal of many SoL programs is the same, namely to determine and develop methods that teachers and students can use to improve the learning experience.

As with any multidisciplinary endeavor with the ultimate aim of “application”, an important consideration concerns how the knowledge obtained from disparate research programs fits together to form a coherent and useful whole (Glasgow et al., 2003). As can be inferred, trying to determine how data obtained at micro-scales link to data obtained at macro-scales is not a trivial task. Furthermore, it is far from clear whether these types of links are meaningful or in any way beneficial for the larger goals of classroom education (Bruer, 1997). For instance, what support is there to suggest that knowledge of calcium-driven potentiation at the neural synapse can influence a typical teacher trying to help a student to differentiate between the numerator and the denominator in a fraction?

In order to ensure that research findings are correctly applied and educators are presented with only the most solid ideas, a coherent and structured framework through which relevant information can be localized, interpreted, understood, and built is required. It is a long way from the neuron to the neighborhood (Shonkoff & Phillips, 2000); more specifically, there is a tremendous gap between biochemical processes which occur in isolated regions of the brain and the socio-cultural interactions that help students to become good, educated citizens. What is needed is a clear pathway from the former to the latter that takes into account the contexts in which teachers apply their practice. This pathway is what we hope to build here.

Different Types of Translation

The primary aim of many SoL programs is successful translation. In the applied sciences, translation typically refers to the process of interpreting information and/or ideas devised during “research” into a form that relevant consumers can understand and utilize. The most obvious example of this translation process at work is in healthcare. Clear mechanisms are in place to translate findings from the basic sciences of chemistry, biology, and physics into meaningful processes and procedures that can be readily implemented by medical practitioners (Sussman et al., 2006). With regard to SoL, this translation process similarly means adapting outcomes elucidated in the laboratory into a form that practicing teachers and students can easily grasp and apply to their own practices (however, there is a large and important difference between medical and educational translation, which will be further explored later in this chapter).

Although it is often spoken of in singular terms, translation can be divided into at least three unique types.

The first type of translation is termed prescriptive. Prescriptive translation aims to specify activities and/or behaviors that teachers and students can undertake to best ensure specific learning outcomes—essentially addressing the question “What should I do?” For instance, the concept of priming (whereby the presentation of specific information or activities prior to a lesson serves to scaffold how later material is interpreted and understood) has been well elucidated in SoL research, and several specific, prescriptive strategies are emerging that can be incorporated into daily teaching and learning practices (Wilde et al., 1992).

The second type of translation is termed conceptual. Conceptual translation enables teachers and students to understand educational phenomena through the lens of varied scientific theories—essentially addressing the question “Why does this work?” It is important to note that this type of translation does not offer advice on what unique practices individuals should undertake; it merely contextualizes and offers a theoretical explanation as to why the said practices are (or are not) effective. For instance, although some educators may be inspired by the concept of neural adaptation and use that framework to justify the success or failure of specific activities, this interpretation does not affect the content, structure, or outcome of the activity itself (Walsh & Anderson, 2012).

The third type of translation is termed functional. Functional translation enables direct alterations of physiology to expand or restrict the number and type of educationally relevant practices that an educator or learner can successfully undertake. Again it is important to note that this type of translation does not advise on what practices an educator or learner should undertake. For instance, if a learner were to suffer damage to the auditory cortices, leading to deafness, all future learning activities would then need to utilize visual or other sensory modalities. Here it is important to note that damage to the auditory cortices does not instruct the teacher or learner with regard to which non-auditory activities to undertake, how best to undertake them, or how to measure their impact.

As the distinction between prescriptive and functional translation may be somewhat unclear, it might be helpful to clarify it further using a specific example. Some students who suffer from disorders of attention, such as attention deficit disorder/attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADD/ADHD), use pharmaceuticals in order to alleviate their symptoms, which in turn can lead to improved educational performance (Loe & Feldman, 2007). At first glance the ingestion of drugs may appear to be prescriptive. However, a closer examination reveals that, although taking a pill may enable an individual to interact more effectively with learning activities, this does not engender learning itself. Pharmaceuticals do not inform an individual as to which activities to undertake, how to structure them, or how to measure them in order to learn language, math, or geography. Accordingly, pharmaceuticals represent functional translation rather than a prescriptive translation.

As can be inferred, the most widely demanded form of translation from SoL research is prescriptive (Pickering & Howard-Jones, 2007; Hook & Farah, 2013). Although conceptual and functional translation are no doubt important, they are already extant in some form within many classrooms around the world. With regard to conceptual translation, educators and learners at all levels utilize ideas from many different SoL fields, such as neuroscience (plasticity; Ansari, 2012), biology (evolutionary theory; Geary, 2008), and computer science (information coding; Pressley et al., 1989), to explain why certain practices do or do not work, even though these concepts do not instruct the individual how to specifically structure, perform, or measure these practices. Similarly, with regard to functional translation, educators and students at all levels are utilizing interventions, such as drugs (e.g. Ritalin; McCabe et al., 2005), energy drinks (e.g. Red Bull; Malinauskas et al., 2007), and therapies (e.g. deep breathing; Birkel & Edgren, 2000), to directly modulate brain and body function in order to enhance educationally related behaviorial and/or cognitive performance, even though these interventions do not indicate which behaviors and/or cognitions need to be undertaken in order to engender learning.

In this chapter we shall be exclusively considering the issue of prescriptive translation.

Characteristics of Prescriptive Translation

Attempts at prescriptive translation cannot aim to provide precise formulae that guarantee all students will achieve the intended learning outcomes in a variety of contexts. If the nuances of the educational setting are not taken into account, it can be deceptively simple to conjure up highly specific teaching and learning approaches that seem valid based on research in the laboratory, but suffer from a lack of generalizability. Any translation approach that aims to provide prescriptions for teachers to implement in their classes must therefore be mindful of the context in which teachers find themselves, rather than use the rigor of laboratory research to give the illusion that there is a “one size fits all” solution to a pedagogical issue.

Unfortunately, the desire and pressure to generate highly specific prescriptive translation of SoL research has led many to prematurely champion ideas which ultimately prove useless in the classrooms. In fact, most concepts that tend to be referred to as educational or neuromyths (e.g. “individuals have unique and specific learning styles”; see Lodge et al., 2016) represent ideas that originated in a laboratory and were rushed to prescriptive application without proper and effective translation.

Ideally, SoL prescriptive translation serves to provide evidence-based advice for teachers that enables them to make informed decisions about what will work for them and their students in the unique contexts in which they find themselves. For this reason, rather than being overly dictatorial, effective prescriptive translation will necessarily remain moot on the point of specific implementation within specific contexts. Rather, the final stages of applicability (“where the rubber meets the road”, so to speak) and iteration will always remain fluid and require the input, ideas, and professional judgement of individual teachers within individual settings.

This all serves to highlight the importance of developing a robust translation framework by which laboratory results can be explored further and prescriptive classroom applicability established in a meaningful fashion. This type of framework would be important not only to researchers (as it can guide them in the move towards applicability), but also to educators (as it can clarify what teachers can meaningfully expect from the laboratory).

Levels of Organization, Emergence, and Incommensurability

In order to understand the framework developed, there are several scientific and philosophical concepts that must first be elucidated.

The first important concept is that of levels of organization. Within a living system (e.g. humans), the most common definitions of levels of organization are compositional (Oppenheim & Putnam, 1958; Wimsatt, 1994; Kim, 1999). More specifically, each “level” that constitutes a living system is composed of the material extant in the preceding levels. For instance, within biology, levels of organization typically progress as follows:

Cellular  Tissue  Organ  Organ Complex  Organism  Population.

In this instance, tissues are composed of cells, organs are composed of tissues, and so on. It is commonly held that as compositional levels increase (from cell to tissue to organ, etc.), so too does complexity (in this case, complexity is simply defined as any increase in the quantity of individual parts that interact to form a “whole”; for a review, see Lewin, 1999). For instance, a tissue is composed of many different collaborative cells, thereby making a tissue more “complex” than a single cell. Similarly, an organ is composed of several varied yet interacting tissues, which in turn are composed of many different collaborative cells, thereby making an organ more complex than an isolated tissue or single cell.

The next concept to undergird our framework is emergence. This is the process whereby novel and coherent structures, patterns, and/or properties arise at ascending levels that are neither exhibited within nor predicted by preceding levels (for a discussion of this topics, see Bedau & Humphreys, 2008). As a simple example, the eventual unified size, shape, and functional coherence of an entire ant colony cannot be explained or predicted by observing the behavior of an individual ant (Johnson, 2002).

In order to address increasing complexity and emergence at ascending levels of compositional complexity, a number of unique scientific specialties have been developed. Interestingly, as different specialties approach topics from different levels, each necessarily utilizes a unique set of questions, definitions, tools, and success criteria (Pavé, 2006). To explore this, let us consider measles as an example. At the cellular level, cytologists might map proteins at the viral–cell interface using crystallography to characterize the measles virus binding process (Tahara et al., 2008). At the tissue level, histologists might explore viral infolding using an eyepiece micrometer to characterize the susceptibility of different lymphoid tissues to measles (White & Boyd, 1973). At the organ level, post-mortem gross pathologists might directly measure necrosis patterns to characterize measles development and progression within the lung (Kascbula et al., 1983). At the population level, epidemiologists might map the prevalence of measles across a country using aggregated medical record data to characterize viral spre...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction
• Section 1 The How and Why of Science of Learning
• Section 2 Domain-General Issues and Classroom Strategies
• Section 3 Domain-Specific Issues and Classroom Strategies
• Section 4 Special Student Groups
• Section 5 Looking Ahead—The Future of Educational Research
• Index