New evidence on the limits of retrieval practice, phone bans that don't move test scores, ChatGPT as cognitive crutch, and why early vocabulary growth tells us surprisingly little about later reading
From what I can see Carl, the comparison was Yondr pouch schools, to schools with varying cell phone policies, such as backpacks, lockers, etc.
I hope people don’t see this as a comparison between pouches and no restriction policy schools. It’s also a little early in the game to expect significant effects from cell phone restriction.
It does seem to be good pseudo experimental design, I’m going to dig a little deeper into it.
"The mechanism often proposed is that mixed-attainment teaching raises expectations and improves access to high-quality instruction, particularly for lower-attaining pupils. That may be true in principle..." Why would it be true in principle? I'd have thought this was a purely empirical question.
If students can simply transfer their phone habits to their school devices, we aren’t going to see learning gains. If they’re still addicted to their phones the other 9-11 waking hours of their day, we aren’t going to see learning gains. Research demonstrates that even when other students are using devices in the classroom, it is distracting to students who are not. We have a long way to go.
Strongly agree—my point is not to highlight something kids are doing wrong but to demonstrate the way their attention continues to be manipulated for profit.
I agree that it's too early to expect any significant gains from cell phone restriction. In the case in which there seemed to be a negative impact on test scores, we have to keep in mind that students were likely using their cell phones to cheat on assessments before cell phone bans were enacted, so we should expect to see lower scores in the short term.
I have a special interest in the interleaved practice paper here, although all are interesting.
I apply the interleaved principle to both my history and literature lessons (secondary school). Every lesson of mine starts with a recall of assorted topics (here is the interleaving), spanning across the curriculum, often with no relation to the new material the lesson will focus on later on. My aim is to make sure that no part of the curriculum is lost. When one follows the curriculum linearly, the older topics typically fall into oblivion. By reading, say, neo-classical, Romantic, baroque, and renaissance sonnets in the same lesson, all the literary ages they represent come alive to the mind of the students.
In addition to revision, I often revive older topics by adding more details or going deeper (new documents, new texts, new pages to study, and so on). There is something resembling Bruner's spiral curriculum, here, in some way. I am under the impression that, so far, my students have been able to manage an ever-growing body of historical or literary knowledge relatively well without losing the larger picture or forgetting the older topics.
It must be said, though, that I only move to a new topic when the older one has been well understood. The structure of the study might have shown a possible flaw in the architecture of interleaved practice: if knowledge (both declarative and procedural) has not been grasped solidly enough, it is pointless to move across different topics, none of which has been secured. One might rather want to start with some crude repetition, before mixing everything up.
Of course, one could argue, why bother with interleaved practice, if blocked practice does secure learning? Maybe there can be different degrees of mastery, and one should start with interleaving when once the the foundations of a topic have been laid, but a lot of work is still ahead.
The advantage of interleaving, I think, is not that one just have to recall more stuff from long term memory. (although this is surely important) I think the real thing is that one is forced to make continuous comparisons across different topics, finding similarities and differences, and deeply reasoning on them as a consequence. But if there is no way to make a meaningful analysis of the knowledge at hand, no learning can happen: all you have in your head is a great confusion.
The reason why collaborative/social learning offer greater gains might be that some collaboration might help ease the cognitive burden, as there's plenty of reciprocal help, but I am not sure the paper clarify enough what they mean by collaboration. A session of DI might well be considered collaborative.
From what I can see Carl, the comparison was Yondr pouch schools, to schools with varying cell phone policies, such as backpacks, lockers, etc.
I hope people don’t see this as a comparison between pouches and no restriction policy schools. It’s also a little early in the game to expect significant effects from cell phone restriction.
It does seem to be good pseudo experimental design, I’m going to dig a little deeper into it.
"The mechanism often proposed is that mixed-attainment teaching raises expectations and improves access to high-quality instruction, particularly for lower-attaining pupils. That may be true in principle..." Why would it be true in principle? I'd have thought this was a purely empirical question.
If students can simply transfer their phone habits to their school devices, we aren’t going to see learning gains. If they’re still addicted to their phones the other 9-11 waking hours of their day, we aren’t going to see learning gains. Research demonstrates that even when other students are using devices in the classroom, it is distracting to students who are not. We have a long way to go.
Strongly agree—my point is not to highlight something kids are doing wrong but to demonstrate the way their attention continues to be manipulated for profit.
I agree that it's too early to expect any significant gains from cell phone restriction. In the case in which there seemed to be a negative impact on test scores, we have to keep in mind that students were likely using their cell phones to cheat on assessments before cell phone bans were enacted, so we should expect to see lower scores in the short term.
I have a special interest in the interleaved practice paper here, although all are interesting.
I apply the interleaved principle to both my history and literature lessons (secondary school). Every lesson of mine starts with a recall of assorted topics (here is the interleaving), spanning across the curriculum, often with no relation to the new material the lesson will focus on later on. My aim is to make sure that no part of the curriculum is lost. When one follows the curriculum linearly, the older topics typically fall into oblivion. By reading, say, neo-classical, Romantic, baroque, and renaissance sonnets in the same lesson, all the literary ages they represent come alive to the mind of the students.
In addition to revision, I often revive older topics by adding more details or going deeper (new documents, new texts, new pages to study, and so on). There is something resembling Bruner's spiral curriculum, here, in some way. I am under the impression that, so far, my students have been able to manage an ever-growing body of historical or literary knowledge relatively well without losing the larger picture or forgetting the older topics.
It must be said, though, that I only move to a new topic when the older one has been well understood. The structure of the study might have shown a possible flaw in the architecture of interleaved practice: if knowledge (both declarative and procedural) has not been grasped solidly enough, it is pointless to move across different topics, none of which has been secured. One might rather want to start with some crude repetition, before mixing everything up.
Of course, one could argue, why bother with interleaved practice, if blocked practice does secure learning? Maybe there can be different degrees of mastery, and one should start with interleaving when once the the foundations of a topic have been laid, but a lot of work is still ahead.
The advantage of interleaving, I think, is not that one just have to recall more stuff from long term memory. (although this is surely important) I think the real thing is that one is forced to make continuous comparisons across different topics, finding similarities and differences, and deeply reasoning on them as a consequence. But if there is no way to make a meaningful analysis of the knowledge at hand, no learning can happen: all you have in your head is a great confusion.
The reason why collaborative/social learning offer greater gains might be that some collaboration might help ease the cognitive burden, as there's plenty of reciprocal help, but I am not sure the paper clarify enough what they mean by collaboration. A session of DI might well be considered collaborative.