I know it’s not the focus of the piece but I would love to hear more of your thinking about this: “One thing I’ve learned working in the evidence-based/science of learning space is that evidence is not enough.”
What else is needed? I would love your take and please point me to anything you may have already written about it.
I wonder if there is a connection between this and the study that eventually became "Minds of Our Own": https://www.learner.org/series/minds-of-our-own/. The idea that basic misconceptions can become embedded in understanding reminds me of the way trees at Angkor Wat have, over the decades, wrapped themselves around the temples, continuing to thrive. For me, the key takeaways are that teachers should have access to assessments which are designed to surface misconceptions, and that when teaching new concepts, we should explore examples and non-examples with the students. Often, it is the non-examples that bend our thinking towards the correct conception.
Wow! So much to digest. I'm thinking about how many well-organized misunderstandings apply to whole-language instruction, like this: "robust misconception problem", in other words, misconceptions that are "not only 'in conflict' with the correct scientific conceptions, but moreover, they are robust in that the misconceptions are difficult to revise, so conceptual change is not achieved."
Plus, the retrospective miscue analysis assessment devised by the Goodmans is essentially built to find these misconceptions and how they interfere with comprehension.
You should check it out; you might find it useful.
From Listening to the Experts Doesn’t Mean Giving Them the Last Word:
“To recap: A neuroscientist, educational psychologist, and cognitive psychologist—an interdisciplinary team—walk into my headspace and articulate the concept of orthographic mapping. I learned from these experts sharing their expertise about how we learn to read, which helped me with lessons that teach this process, using my best judgment regarding how to impart this knowledge to my students. They supply the sentences, but I get the last word.”
Here’s the first scientific conception that the Retrospective Miscue Analysis Assessment runs up against: “And high-quality miscues don’t need to be corrected because they don’t disrupt meaning making.” The problem with bypassing the word level in the service of “meaning making” is that it denies the brain the opportunity to orthographically map the misread word to make it automatically available for the next encounter (Reid Lyon says decoding is the onramp to word recognition). Reading “mom” instead of “mother” preserves meaning but undermines OM. In Listening to the Experts Doesn’t Mean Giving Them the Last Word I discuss how the importance of orthographic mapping has been revealed by neuroscience (Dehaene), cognitive science (Seidenberg) and educational research (Ehri). This is the science that whole language ignores. It’s a theory in search of research to support it.
Fantastic post thank you well what you write is undoubtedly true for Fantastic post, thank you.
What you write is undoubtedly true for many students. But even more worryingly, I have observed frequently - especially in primary (elementary) education, and especially in science - many teachers have robust misconceptions and category mistakes deeply embedded in their understanding. This means that they consciously and deliberately mis-teach these category mistakes and misconceptions to their students. It makes the task of specialist teachers later in education so much harder, because not only do they need to identify, challenge and undo the misconceptions, but in doing so they also have to challenge the trust that students frequently have in their elementary teachers: "How could this possibly be wrong? After all, that's what Miss or Sir taught me!" Teacher training needs to make teachers aware of the possibility of they themselves holding damaging robust misconceptions and category mistakes.
What an incredible piece!
I know it’s not the focus of the piece but I would love to hear more of your thinking about this: “One thing I’ve learned working in the evidence-based/science of learning space is that evidence is not enough.”
What else is needed? I would love your take and please point me to anything you may have already written about it.
🙏🏻
This is why questions are the answer.
From Daphne Russell's blog, she relates this conversation with a student:
One day a teacher friend noticed a student kept writing "they" and "thay." Rather than just marking every 'thay' as wrong, she asked his reasoning.
"Well it depends!" he said.
"Depends on what?" she asked.
"Depends whether they're male or female, of course!"
Brilliant!
"I also notice that you sometimes write 'ful' and other times write 'full.'"
"Well, 'ful' is half 'full.'"
Brilliant! It's wrong, but it's kinda smart.
I wonder if there is a connection between this and the study that eventually became "Minds of Our Own": https://www.learner.org/series/minds-of-our-own/. The idea that basic misconceptions can become embedded in understanding reminds me of the way trees at Angkor Wat have, over the decades, wrapped themselves around the temples, continuing to thrive. For me, the key takeaways are that teachers should have access to assessments which are designed to surface misconceptions, and that when teaching new concepts, we should explore examples and non-examples with the students. Often, it is the non-examples that bend our thinking towards the correct conception.
And sometimes it's a teacher's conception that needs to "get bent."
Wow! So much to digest. I'm thinking about how many well-organized misunderstandings apply to whole-language instruction, like this: "robust misconception problem", in other words, misconceptions that are "not only 'in conflict' with the correct scientific conceptions, but moreover, they are robust in that the misconceptions are difficult to revise, so conceptual change is not achieved."
Here's a good start:
https://open.substack.com/pub/thefutureofeducationisevolution/p/questions-are-the-answer?r=hcim&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Plus, the retrospective miscue analysis assessment devised by the Goodmans is essentially built to find these misconceptions and how they interfere with comprehension.
You should check it out; you might find it useful.
https://www.retrospectivemiscue.com/rma-faq
From Listening to the Experts Doesn’t Mean Giving Them the Last Word:
“To recap: A neuroscientist, educational psychologist, and cognitive psychologist—an interdisciplinary team—walk into my headspace and articulate the concept of orthographic mapping. I learned from these experts sharing their expertise about how we learn to read, which helped me with lessons that teach this process, using my best judgment regarding how to impart this knowledge to my students. They supply the sentences, but I get the last word.”
Well, I always let you have the last word. If I didn't, we'd be going back and forth forever.
Here’s the first scientific conception that the Retrospective Miscue Analysis Assessment runs up against: “And high-quality miscues don’t need to be corrected because they don’t disrupt meaning making.” The problem with bypassing the word level in the service of “meaning making” is that it denies the brain the opportunity to orthographically map the misread word to make it automatically available for the next encounter (Reid Lyon says decoding is the onramp to word recognition). Reading “mom” instead of “mother” preserves meaning but undermines OM. In Listening to the Experts Doesn’t Mean Giving Them the Last Word I discuss how the importance of orthographic mapping has been revealed by neuroscience (Dehaene), cognitive science (Seidenberg) and educational research (Ehri). This is the science that whole language ignores. It’s a theory in search of research to support it.
Thanks. I think your response here demonstrated our host's premise.
https://open.substack.com/pub/harriettjanetos/p/listening-to-the-experts-doesnt-mean?r=5spuf&utm_medium=ios
Fantastic post thank you well what you write is undoubtedly true for Fantastic post, thank you.
What you write is undoubtedly true for many students. But even more worryingly, I have observed frequently - especially in primary (elementary) education, and especially in science - many teachers have robust misconceptions and category mistakes deeply embedded in their understanding. This means that they consciously and deliberately mis-teach these category mistakes and misconceptions to their students. It makes the task of specialist teachers later in education so much harder, because not only do they need to identify, challenge and undo the misconceptions, but in doing so they also have to challenge the trust that students frequently have in their elementary teachers: "How could this possibly be wrong? After all, that's what Miss or Sir taught me!" Teacher training needs to make teachers aware of the possibility of they themselves holding damaging robust misconceptions and category mistakes.
This is a super article, Carl!