Planning Science of Learning in Initial Teacher Education: Processes and Precepts

Planning Science of Learning in Initial Teacher Education: Processes and Precepts
Paul Howard-Jones and Konstantina Ioannou
20-9-18
This report was compiled as part of the Science of Learning for Initial Teacher Education (SoLfITE) project carried out at the School of Education, University of Bristol. SolfITE was funded by the Wellcome Trust. The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the Wellcome Trust or of any other body. Errors and omissions in the interpretation of research findings or interviews remain the responsibility of the authors.
Executive Summary
This is the first of two reports on the Science of Learning for Initial Teacher Education (SoLfITE) undertaken at the School of Education(SoE), University of Bristol between 2017 and 2018. This provides a general outline of the likely processes and things to think about. It focuses on how SoL can be incorporated in ITE and the steps, in general terms, that might be taken. In the second report, we describe what concepts arose from following such a process in the specific context of our own institution.
Based on insights arising from SoLfITE, we propose 5 key areas of action that should be considered when ITE institutions introduce the Science of Learning into their curriculum:
Introduction
Dialogue between educational and scientific research communities has blossomed in the last 2 decades. This dialogue has helped identify genuine insights from the sciences of mind and brain that can inform teachers’ understanding and practice1,2. Consequently, there has never been a better time for providers of initial teacher education to integrate a scientific understanding of learning into the ITE curriculum.
We have written this guidance to support ITE providers in achieving this integration. There is no one “correct” way of incorporating SoL into ITE but we hope, in reflecting on our experience, we have identified some general issues and aspects of planning they may wish to consider. Here, we use the term Science of Learning (SoL) to refer to insights about learning derived from Cognitive Neuroscience, which considers how human behaviour, including learning, arises from underlying processes involving mind and brain.
Assembling a team – expertise, language and perspectives on learning
Attempts to work across education and cognitive neuroscience will benefit from engaging experts from both disciplines in dialogue3-5. Such dialogue is key for arriving at an understanding of learning that is both scientifically valid and educationally relevant. Scientists and educators who possess a Master’s qualification in Neuroscience and Education (such as currently offered by the University of Bristol, and the Institute of Education/Birkbeck College in London) are in a particularly strong position to contribute to such discussions.
Developing a team with educational and scientific expertise is not only helpful when developing a suitable curriculum, but will also support addressing the queries, questions and issues that may arise from staff and students during its delivery.
The professional aims of scientists and educators differ in some important respects6. Therefore, sharing and understanding the motivations of individual team members at the outset can help develop an enduring basis for collaboration. While educators may be chiefly concerned with improving the quality of student teachers’ theory and practice in the classroom, scientists may be interested in developing partnerships for exploring and communicating the societal significance of their field and work. Collaborating with educators can help scientists obtain evidence of the impact of their findings and help them explore the relevance of their concepts in complex real-world contexts. To these ends, many scientists already spend time in classrooms and may already be experienced in forming positive collaborations with schools and educators.
A useful starting point for discussion amongst the team is to compare understanding of common terms such as “learning”, “attention” and “motivation”, etc.
For me, kids are paying attention when they looking interested in what I’m saying…..
Attention? – it’s all about allocating mental resources….
This discussion may lead to an awareness of how the educational and scientific use of these terms is often different but can, to greater or lesser extent, be interrelated1.
Teachers constantly observe and often monitor behaviours related to learning amongst their students, assessing their apparent engagement and understanding, and adapting their practices accordingly7,8. This can be represented as an interaction between the behaviours of the learner and teacher – as below in Fig. 1.
Fig. 1 At a purely behavioural level, the teacher’s practices changing in response to the observed behaviours of the student (e.g. the appropriateness of their response to tasks and questions), which in turn change in response to the teacher’s practices.
Beneath this concrete and visible world of the learner’s behaviour and the teacher’s approach, the behaviour of the learner is being influenced by and is influencing the learners’ invisible thoughts and mental processes (see Fig. 2). For example, the learner may think they should open a book, but this behaviour of opening a book will then influence the learner’s thoughts. In turn, their mental world of thoughts and feelings is being influenced by and is influencing their brain function. For example, their desire to open the book may arise from processes of engagement involving their brain’s reward system, but the new thoughts they experience when reading the book will remembered due to changes in their brain’s connectivity.
In short, learning can be understood by considering its underlying processes at different levels of analysis. Understanding learning at cognitive and neural levels, like behavioural and social levels of understanding, have a role in tethering our understanding to a reality that will always exceed the concepts we have access to 9. We found this “levels of analysis” approach was helpful in highlighting the unique contribution made by neuroscience, psychology and education to understanding learning10. It emphasises their complementarity, and how no single perspective is sufficient for understanding entirely how learning proceeds.
Fig. 2 The interaction between teacher and learner is underpinned by bidirectional interaction between the students’ mental processes and their behaviour (i.e. their thoughts impact their behaviour, their behaviour impacts their thoughts) and between their brain and their mental processes (i.e. their brain impacts on their thoughts, their thoughts impact on their brain). Ideally, the practices of the teacher should inform, and be informed by, consideration of these processes.
Also, in “bidirectional” fashion, on the right-hand side of the diagram, the teacher’s selection and adaptation of their practices is being influenced by and is influencing, their understanding of the learner’s underlying processes 11. Through advances in technology that allow us to view how the brain functions when we learn, we are now gaining insight into this invisible world of learning. Beginning with the SolfITE project, our aim here been to encourage and support our student teachers to draw on this insight when seeking critical understanding of practice, and so support them in selecting and adapting practices for their classroom.
Developing the curriculum
Curriculum time in initial teacher education is always limited, making it important the key aims of the curriculum and the factors considered critical for shaping the selection of concepts are identified at the outset.
Arising from the broad aim of providing students with a scientific basis for deepening their understanding of everyday practice in the classroom, we would propose 6 qualities of a SoL curriculum that are important for its success (see Table 1).
A SoL curriculum should….
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Support effective practice
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Concepts should be selected to provide a coherent scientific basis for reflecting upon, planning and evaluating ‘evidence-based’ classroom practice. This can be assured by mapping the relevance of candidate SoL concepts to educational practices that are supported by reviews of educational evidence.
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Possess an assured scientific basis
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Communication will require judicious development of messages in accessible language. An interdisciplinary team can help ensure this process does not “boil down” the science in such a way as to generate misunderstanding and further neuromyth. The team can also develop suitable limitations upon interpretation of the SoL concepts that can be made accessible to students and ITE staff.
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Discourage prescription
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Rather than provide prescriptions for effective learning, a SoL curriculum can provide a useful set of tools for teachers to critically understanding of the learning that is (and is not) occurring in their classrooms, and so aid their successful selection and adaptation of practices. By providing insight into why practices are and sometimes are not effective, Sol has the potential to support student teachers in moving away from prescriptions to an informed and reflective process of adaptation.
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Help dissipate neuromyths
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There are many myths about how the brain learns. An initial SoL curriculum offers an excellent opportunity to dispel prominent neuromyths likely to impact on practice. SoL can provide student teachers with a “first line of defense” against the types of unscientific “brain-based” ideas and programmes often promoted to educators by entrepreneurs.
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Provide a foundation for building further understanding
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The development of student teachers’ scientific understanding of educational issues will continue beyond the introduction to SoL they experience as part of their ITE. This may occur through further reading, discussion with colleagues and through professional development as teachers. The SoL they experience during their ITE should provide a useful foundation on which to progressively build, over their professional career, a scientifically-informed understanding of their daily practice.
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Interrelate SoL with traditional perspectives of learning
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Sol can complement traditional perspectives on learning provided by, for example, Piaget and Vygotsky. Rather than conflict with these perspectives, SoL can furnish students with an updated understanding of their significance, contributing to students’ critical understanding of learning from multiple and, in many respects, complimentary perspectives.
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Table 1. Proposed qualities for a SoL curriculum in ITE.
Delivering the Curriculum
A SoL curriculum cannot deliver concepts suitable for prescribing a single best approach to teaching. Rather than offering a direct route from brain scan to lesson plan, it provides insights that, combined with a teachers’ understanding of the specific contexts, can inform planning decisions and help interpret outcomes. It follows, therefore, that no single approach can be prescribed for the successful delivery of SoL concepts to student teachers but whatever approach is taken should itself be scientifically informed. And, through careful planning, the delivery of a SoL curriculum can provide an excellent vehicle for a practical exploration of SoL concepts. In other words, delivery of the concepts can be arranged to support experiential learning and informed discussion of the concepts. This allows opportunities for staff to refer to students’ own experience of learning when relating SoL concepts to classroom practice. For example, in one of our lectures, we encouraged our students to mark their understanding of how learning proceeds on a paper “net” of the brain12. This included bidirectional interaction between subcortical and cortical regions, activity in the frontal regions of the working memory network, and arrows indicating how consolidation distributes representations of knowledge across the cortex. In other words, we asked them to mark on their paper brains the schemata described in the second report, alongside additional notes about brain anatomy and function arising from their lectures. We then asked the students to assemble these into a 3D representation during the lecture using scissors and sticky tape. Using the 3D resource they had created, the students reflected on the success of this strategy in terms of the underlying processes they had just been introduced to. These included processes related to enactment13,14, and the possible activation of the reward system arising from shared attention to a novel task15. It also provided an opportunity to reflect on the potential disadvantages of this teaching approach – again in terms of underlying learning processes. These disadvantages included the distraction and working memory burden of the ensuing noise and chatter generated by the activity.
Given the potential value of SoL in providing insight into everyday teaching and learning, the scheduling of SoL sessions also requires thought. A balance needs to be struck between students having sufficient experience for discussion about practice to be meaningful, and the potential benefits of early exposure for developing good habits of thinking and reflection about learning in their classrooms. Achieving this balance may not be straightforward, and we comment further on our experience with this issue in our second report.
Many aspects of any existing ITE curriculum are likely to be enriched by SoL insights (e.g. classroom management, special educational needs and pastoral care). There is, therefore, significant advantage in mapping the connections between identified SoL concepts and the broader ITE curriculum. This can help support the meaningful integration of SoL concepts into the ITE course, as a prelude to the adoption and promotion of coherent, scientifically-informed messages across the course.
Large plenary sessions (involving students learning to teach a range of different subjects) can be an efficient means to deliver core SoL concepts and an understanding of the underlying processes by which educational learning generally occurs within and beyond the classroom. However, we found discussion and working in smaller groups focused on particular areas of the school curriculum to be very valuable. Smaller group sessions provide opportunities to consider aspects of SoL that are of particular interest to specific subject areas (e.g. creativity in areas such as Music, English). Smaller group sessions can also include exercises aimed at applying SoL concepts to classroom practice, and these exercises can help scaffold students to think critically about why a particular approach may or may not sometimes be effective. Such exercises also provide opportunities to monitor student understanding more carefully, which is essential for assuring the quality of SoL provision.
Monitoring and assuring student experience and understanding
It cannot be assumed that introducing good science will necessarily and automatically lead to good classroom practice, or even improved ideas about classroom practice. The dangers of such assumptions have been highlighted by the study of common neuromyths e.g. 16. Planning multiple opportunities for students to apply and communicate their understanding of SoL in relation to the classroom can help assure positive outcomes. These can offer a range of different ways to monitor the possible impact of the SoL curriculum on their ideas and practices.
Initial expectations and understanding can be gauged by first inviting student teachers to express their ideas of what SoL will offer them. At the beginning of the SoLfITE project, these initial conversations were used to inform some changes to the planned SoL curriculum.
In terms of evaluating the impact of the SoL components of the course, it is possible to use self-report surveys to assess apparent changes in students’ general understanding and attitudes in relation to learning. These can provide some sense as to whether students thinking about learning is becoming more scientifically-informed due to their SoL studies. In the SoLfITE project, we administered a survey twice during the course, to measure changes in the usefulness students attributed to a range of scientific and unscientific ideas about learning processes 17.
Exercises that require student teachers to critique vignettes of teaching styles can also help explore their understanding of how to apply SoL concepts to provide insight into the effectiveness, or otherwise, of different teaching approaches 17. A natural extension of such tasks is to ask student teachers to bring along examples of their own lesson plans and critique them in a similar fashion, so exploring the relevance of SoL concepts to their own practice. In some of our smaller group sessions that focused on specific curriculum areas, we also experimented with a more structured approach to encouraging students to apply SoL to lesson planning. We asked students to annotate exemplar lesson plans with notes interrelating planned activities with SoL concepts 18. In addition to encouraging a theorised basis for planning decisions suitable for informing subsequent lesson evaluation, this annotation allowed staff to evaluate student’s understanding of the potential practical application of SoL concepts. Also, these small group sessions provided an excellent forum to analyse exemplar lesson plans and outcomes from multiple perspectives (Vygotskian, Piagetian, SoL) and to interrelate insights arising, providing an opportunity to scaffold and evaluate student understanding of the potential complementarity of these perspectives 19.
Finally, there may be value in supporting student teachers to voice their ideas and views more broadly about the issues and opportunities associated with introducing SoL in ITE. We received an enthusiastic response when we encouraged student teachers to attend discussions and debates around ethical concerns at the interface of neuroscience and education. Discussions around, for example, “Should adolescents should be held responsible for behaviour associated with immature brain development?” can be an engaging way to encourage students to investigate and talk about their understanding of the relationship between brain, mind and teenage behaviour.
The provision of opportunities for student teachers to apply and express their understanding of SoL is an important part of supporting student teachers to acquire a deep and practical understanding of SoL suitable for enriching their practice. However, given the seductive allure of neuroscience and the ease with which even irrelevant brain-based ideas can provide satisfaction20, they also serve another very important purpose. They serve as a means by which staff can monitor the development of student’s ideas and ability to apply SoL in practice, informing their teaching and the implementation of SoL on the ITE course more broadly. The provisions of such opportunities should, therefore, be considered a generally important part of incorporating SoL into ITE. We provide more details of the specific approach we took to this quality assurance in our second report, which focuses on our work incorporating SoL into ITE in the specific context of our own institution.
References
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12 Howard-Jones, P. A. & Ioannou, K. A 3-dimensional paper brain to supporting understanding of the Science of Learning. (University of Bristol, Bristol, 2018).
13 Macedonia, M. & Mueller, K. Exploring the Neural Representation of Novel Words Learned through Enactment in a Word Recognition Task. Frontiers in Psychology 7, 14, doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00953 (2016).
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15 Schilbach, L. et al. Minds Made for Sharing: Initiating Joint Attention Recruits Reward-related Neurocircuitry. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 22, 2702-2715, doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21401 (2010).
16 Howard-Jones, P. A. Neuroscience and education: myths and messages. Nature Reviews Neuroscience 15, 817-824, doi:https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn3817 (2014).
17 Howard-Jones, P. A. & Ioannou, K. Monitoring the understanding and application of SoL using a Learning Survey and Vignettes. (University of Bristol, Bristol, 2018).
18 Howard-Jones, P. A. & Ioannou, K. Mapping activities in an exemplar KS3 Geography lesson plan to Science of Learning concepts. (University of Bristol, Bristol, 2018).
19 Howard-Jones, P. A. & Ioannou, K. Vygotsky, Piaget and SoL: Student teachers’ categorisation of insights according to perspective. (University of Bristol, Bristol, 2018).
20 Weisberg, D. S., Keil, F. C., Goodstein, J., Rawson, E. & Gray, J. The Seductive Lure of Neuroscience Explanations. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 20, 470-477 (2008).
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