{"id":5053,"date":"2019-10-16T08:00:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-16T13:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=5053"},"modified":"2019-10-13T09:21:53","modified_gmt":"2019-10-13T14:21:53","slug":"advice-it-is-better-to-give-than-receive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/advice-it-is-better-to-give-than-receive\/","title":{"rendered":"Advice: It Is Better to Give than Receive"},"content":{"rendered":"

When students struggle, we typically offer them advice. It seems obvious to think that\u00a0receiving<\/em> advice might help them learn.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What if we tried a different approach? What would happen if we thought that\u00a0giving<\/em> advice might help students learn?<\/p>\n

Several researchers–including Angela Duckworth–recently tried this approach<\/a> in a large high-school study. Almost 2000 students participated.<\/p>\n

Working at a computer, students offered advice to “an anonymous younger students who was hoping to do better in school.” Specifically, they answered 14 questions on how and where to study.<\/p>\n

They also wrote a brief motivational letter.<\/p>\n

The Theory Behind The Practice<\/h2>\n

Duckworth & Co. hypothesized that this brief advice session might help advice-giving students for three reasons:<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>: they might actually believe the advice they offer. (Psychologists call this the “saying is believing” effect.)<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>: when they offer this advice, they might come up with specific plans to apply it to their own studying.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: “giving advice, unlike receiving advice, can increase confidence.”<\/p>\n

So, what happened?<\/p>\n

When Small Effects Aren’t Small<\/h2>\n

The researchers kept track of grades in two courses: a) math, and b) a course that students themselves identified as one in which they particularly wanted to improve.<\/p>\n

The students completed the advice exercise at the beginning of the 3rd quarter. Would that make a difference, compared to the control group, at the\u00a0end<\/em> of the 3rd quarter?<\/p>\n

The short answer: yes, a little bit.<\/p>\n

On the graphs, the 3rd quarter grades in the advice group look about 1 point higher than those in the control groups. In stats terminology, Cohen’s d was 0.12 for the class the students chose, and 0.10 in math class.<\/p>\n

Did those effects last? Not really. By the end of the 4th quarter, the differences were no longer statistically significant.<\/p>\n

At first, these data seem quite discouraging. The intervention didn’t make much of a difference, and didn’t make a lasting difference.<\/p>\n

Duckworth’s team, however, feels much more optimistic.<\/p>\n

First, most interventions have no effect at all. A small effect is better than none.<\/p>\n

And, second, most interventions cost a lot. This one cost … [does quick calculation on back of envelope] … practically nothing. Even the opportunity cost is small: the whole exercise lasted eight minutes!<\/p>\n

What’s Next?<\/h2>\n

I suspect that other researchers will pick up on this approach, and we’ll see other studies exploring it. (Joshua Aronson tried a similar strategy<\/a> to combat stereotype threat back in 2002, and had similarly good results.)<\/p>\n

In the meantime, what should teachers do?<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, I think we can adapt this approach to our own work. If our schools have a mentoring program, or a buddy system–or, heck, if our students have younger siblings, we’ve got a natural opportunity for this confidence-building approach.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>, I think we ought to offer students some guidance about the advice they give. If the “saying is believing” effect consolidates beliefs about learning styles, for example, that would be counter-productive<\/a>. A small menu of suggestions might be good for everyone involved.<\/p>\n

Third<\/strong>: if an eight-minute intervention had an effect that lasted a few months, surely we could create more than one<\/em> opportunity to give advice. Repeated doses of this educational medicine might be lots more helpful than just one.<\/p>\n

If you try this approach in your classrooms, I hope you’ll let me know about your results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students benefit not only from receiving advice, but also from giving it. This low cost strategy can build confidence and promote learning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":5056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[15,38],"class_list":["post-5053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-emotion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5053"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5058,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5053\/revisions\/5058"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}