The first piece this week shares some really core findings from the research on self-explaining. I delved into this research in order to get a better idea of whether I should be supporting my students to better self-explain the worked-examples that they’re studying. It was really helpful, I hope you find my research summary helpful too.

Secondly a handy little article, again on revision.

Third, Dan Willingham explores what the heck learning is? (Is it a change in LT memory? Is it moving from surface knowledge to transfer?)

Finally, I recommend all those interested or involved in teacher education have a read of Peps McCrae’s report on ‘expert teaching’. It’s well worth checking out.

Enjoy : )

(all past TOTs here), sign up to get these articles emailed to you each week here.

Self-explaining: How and when does it work?

Recently I’ve spent a bunch of time looking into self-explanation. I was prompted to look into this as some of my current students seem to be having a great deal of trouble effectively studying. Dunlosky et al.’s summary of learning techniques suggest this could be fruitful.

After examining some papers from the 80’s and 90’s, I came across a great summary of the research that was published just last year. Authors Rittle-Johnson and Loehr’s suggests that self-explanation works via two main mechanisms, as outlined below.

But the focus of their article,’Eliciting explanations: Constraints on when self-explanation aids learning’, was to determine the necessary preconditions for self-explanation to have a positive impact. I’d summarise these constraints as: domain, content, prompt, opportunity cost

Domain: Because the efficacy of self-explanations is based in part upon guiding attention towards structural features, & thereby prompting generalisations and transfer, the self-explained concept must originate form a domain based upon consistent principles, with few exceptions

Content: This makes a lot of sense. If students self-explain something that’s correct, they’re more likely to remember it and make connections between this new info, an pre-existing knowledge. But beware, self-explaining something incorrect can do the same for incorrect info.

During a class discussion, we’ll often provide space and time for a student to justify their position, even if it’s incorrect, e.g., incorrect solution to an equation. Could providing this space actually hinder learning? (Ignoring possible +ve maieutic effects of such dialogue)

Opportunity cost: Speaking of trade-offs, it’s important to consider self-explanation against alternatives. Dunlosky included self-explanation in their list of study of ‘techniques that could be implemented by students without assistance’, but what if assistance is available? Here are some findings from the research that compares self-explanation to viable alternatives.

Thus… many questions remain.

At this point, my conclusion is that I’m not going to focus a whole heap on supporting my students to better self-explain the content that they study. Instead, I’m going to provide more scaffolding for them to work through practice problems, to review worked solutions, and to close the knowledge gaps that such practice highlights to them. This will likely look like a simple flow-chart that struggling learners can use to guide their study. If anyone already has one I’d love to see it, I’ll likely soon share whatever it is that I develop.

The five R's of revision, via @joeybagstock

(Somehow I managed to push ‘T' instead of ‘R' when I wrote the initial tweet… oh well.

Daniel Willingham on ‘what is learning?'

Institute for Teaching shares their vision of expert teaching, via @pepsmccrea

I admire @ifteaching and @pepsmccrea for putting out a paper that outlines what they think constitutes expert teaching, and how they plan to support its development. The 10 pager is well thought out and referenced, starting off by defining ‘impact’ (drive.google.com/file/d/1j2XBAA…)

It then goes onto define four teacher behaviours that constitute expert teaching: Perception, observing and seeing the most relevant elements of a class/lesson; Simulation, successfully anticipating how students will react; Execution, fluency and precision of action, and; Conservation, expert teachers have automatised many of the core processes of teaching, opening up mental space for more flexibility and responsiveness in the classroom.

The paper is itself backwards designed, stepping from the goal to more and more actionable steps. Thus, @pepsmccrea next addresses the mental-models that undergird the aforementioned expert teacher behaviours. Here it’s suggested that expert teachers have deep knowledge about curriculum sequence (path), pupil knowledge and affect, pedagogy, and themselves (self-regulation, one could also use the word ‘reflexivity’ here). It’s suggested that this meaningful and extensive knowledge is organised by expert teachers in such a way as to be actionable, with fluency.

Finally, @pepsmccrae asserts that problem-oriented, incrementally sequenced, and supportively stretching training that supports teachers to study, practice, and iteratively improve their knowledge and skills holds real promise for the development of expert teachers. To my mind, the sharing of what we could call @ifteaching ‘s ‘Theory of Change’ represents an important step in the evolution of research-informed teacher education, and the development of this field more broadly. (Theories of change: ) (worldfellows.yale.edu/sites/default/…)

Related