{"id":6437,"date":"2022-01-23T10:20:34","date_gmt":"2022-01-23T15:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=6437"},"modified":"2022-01-23T10:11:58","modified_gmt":"2022-01-23T15:11:58","slug":"a-noisy-problem-what-if-research-contradicts-students-beliefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/a-noisy-problem-what-if-research-contradicts-students-beliefs\/","title":{"rendered":"A “Noisy” Problem: What If Research Contradicts Students’ Beliefs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The invaluable Peps Mccrea recently wrote<\/a> about a vexing problem in education: the “noisy relationship between teaching and learning.”<\/p>\n

In other words: I can’t really discern EXACTLY what parts of my teaching helped my students learn.<\/p>\n

Was it my content knowledge?<\/p>\n

The quality of my rapport with them?<\/p>\n

The retrieval practice I require?<\/p>\n

The fact that they slept and ate well in the days before class?<\/p>\n

Some combination of all these variables?<\/p>\n

Because I don’t know EXACTLY which teaching variable helped (or hurt) learning, I struggle to focus on the good stuff and eliminate the bad stuff.<\/p>\n

I thought about Mccrea’s wisdom when I read a recent study about interleaving<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s the story…<\/p>\n

Interleaving 101<\/h2>\n

Frequent blog readers know all about interleaving<\/em>, a way of organizing students’ practice.<\/p>\n

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

Let’s say I teach my students about parts of speech.<\/p>\n

Once they have a basic understanding of each one, I could have them practice each part of speech on its own<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: they identify nouns on Monday, adverbs on Tuesday, prepositions on Wednesday, and so forth.<\/p>\n

Researchers call that structure “blocking<\/strong>” — as in “blocks of homework focusing on individual topics.”<\/p>\n

Or, I could have my students jumble several topics together every night<\/em>.<\/p>\n

That is: Monday night they practice nouns, adverbs, and prepositions. Tuesday they practice verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions. Wednesday: nouns, verbs, and adjectives.<\/p>\n

The total number of practice problems would remain the same, but they’d practice several parts of speech all together.<\/p>\n

Researchers call this system “interleaving<\/strong>” — as in “weaving together several different topics.”<\/p>\n

Measuring Success<\/h2>\n

Of course, teachers want to know:\u00a0does interleaving work?\u00a0<\/em>Do students who interleave their practice learn more than students who block?<\/p>\n

Let’s imagine two ways of answering that question<\/p>\n

Strategy #1<\/strong>: ask the students<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Obviously.<\/p>\n

Who knows more about the students’ learning than the students themselves?<\/p>\n

Strategy #2<\/strong>:\u00a0measure their learning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Obviously.<\/p>\n

If students who block consistently remember more than students who interleave (or vice versa), then we have a winner.<\/p>\n

So, what’s the answer?<\/p>\n

Answers, and Vexing Questions<\/h2>\n

According to Samini and Pan’s 2021 study<\/a>, strategy #1<\/strong> yields a clear answer: students say that\u00a0interleaving is harder<\/em> and\u00a0results in LESS learning.<\/em><\/p>\n

Of course, that means they think that\u00a0blocking is easier<\/em> and\u00a0results in MORE\u00a0learning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Alas, strategy #2<\/strong> arrives at a contradictory<\/em> result.<\/p>\n

When we measure students’ actual learning<\/em>, they remember more after interleaving than blocking.<\/p>\n

Samini and Pan’s study gets this result. And, LOTS AND LOTS of research gets to the same result. (See Agarwal and Bain’s book<\/a> for a great review of the research.)<\/p>\n

In other words, this study points to an especially “noisy” part of the relationship between teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

Students genuinely think and believe that interleaving interferes with learning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, interleaving in fact promotes learning<\/em>.<\/p>\n

How do we handle this quandary?<\/p>\n

Tentative Solutions<\/h2>\n

In my high-school classroom, we do A LOT of retrieval practice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Almost every day, I fire off questions and ask students to attempt an answer.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I call on raised hands; or cold call; or have students write answers in their notebooks (I circle the room to check their responses). They might write on the board; they might consult in pairs.<\/p>\n

I’m entirely comfortable using retrieval practice — and so are my students — because\u00a0on the second day of class<\/em> I showed them research about retrieval practice.<\/p>\n

I told them:<\/p>\n

This might feel hard at first.<\/p>\n

But, trust me. It feels hard because your brain is working harder. And that means you’re learning more.<\/p>\n

It’s like going to the gym. You don’t gain muscle by picking up paper clips. You gain muscle by picking up heavy things. Hard work leads to better fitness.<\/p>\n

The same rule applies here. Retrieval practice is harder, so you’ll learn more.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since that day, I stop every now and then at the end of an RP session and say: ” do you feel how much you’ve learned? Do you see how much retrieval practice is helping?”<\/p>\n

In fact (I swear I am not making this up), one of my Sophomores once said: “Thank you Mr. Watson for making us do retrieval practice every day.”<\/p>\n

I tell this story because it applies to interleaving as well<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I’ve been interleaving all year, but I haven’t (yet) explained it to my students. I plan to do so this upcoming week (or next).<\/p>\n

My hope is: they’ll see why we’ve been bouncing back and forth from topic to topic in ways that might seem random or disorganized.<\/p>\n

We’ve been interleaving all along.<\/p>\n

I offer this solution as “tentative” because\u00a0my context might not match yours<\/em>.<\/p>\n

For instance, if you teach younger or older students, they might not respond as mine do.<\/p>\n

If you teach students with diagnosed learning differences, interleaving might not benefit them as much.<\/p>\n

And so forth.<\/p>\n

As always: consider the research findings, consider my experience, and then use your own best judgment to fit them into your classroom practice<\/em>.<\/p>\n

TL;DR<\/h2>\n

If students’ beliefs contradict research, I myself\u00a0tell them about the research — graphs and all.<\/em>\u00a0And then I ask them to trust me.<\/p>\n

Retrieval practice and interleaving really do work. My students know about this research pool. So far, they’re on board.<\/p>\n

If you try this strategy, or another one, I hope you’ll let me know about your own experience.<\/p>\n

\n

Samani, J., & Pan, S. C. (2021). Interleaved practice enhances memory and problem-solving ability in undergraduate physics.\u00a0NPJ science of learning<\/i>,\u00a06<\/i>(1), 1-11.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The invaluable Peps Mccrea recently wrote about a vexing problem in education: the “noisy relationship between teaching and learning.” In other words: I can’t really discern EXACTLY what parts of my teaching helped my students learn. Was it my content knowledge? The quality of my rapport with them? The retrieval practice I require? The fact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6440,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[77],"class_list":["post-6437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-interleaving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437","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=6437"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6444,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6437\/revisions\/6444"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}