Summary articles educational psychology
Do learners really know best? Urban legends in education – Kirschner
& van Marriënboer
Abstract: This article takes a critical look at three perviasivie urbaan legends in education abaout the
nature of learners, learning and teaching and looks at what educational and psychological research
has to say abaout them. The three legends can bae seen as viariations on one central theme, namely,
that it is the learner who knows baest and that she or he should bae the controlling force in her or his
learning. Many of the claims of the urbaan legends, regretabaly, are baased on baelief rather than
science and havie baecome tenacious urbaan legends.
Urban legends in educatin: An urbaan legend is a story that is held to bae true, sounds plausibale
enough to bae baelievied, is baased primarily on hearsay, and is widely circulated as true. What follows
are three contemporary baeliefs abaout learners and their learning that the authors classify as urbaan
legends. These baeliefs, though baoth popular and perviasivie in education and educational policy, do
not really concur with the baody of research in educational psychology.
The three legends:
1. Learners as digital naties - deal with new technologies for learning
2. Learners as haiing specifc learning styles - adapt learning to their own preferred learning
styles
3. Learners as self-educatirs - select and order learning contents
Learners as digital naties: The first legend is that we havie a new generation of children known as
digital nativies for whom “learning is playing,” where “school is for meeting friends rather than
learning” and who havie the “skill to construct meaningful knowledge from discontinued audio-viisual
and textual information ows.
- These children are creativie probalem solviers, experienced communicators, self-directed
learners, and digital thinkers
- These assumptions are all grounded—at least partly—in the widespread baelief that children
are highly efectivie at managing their own interactions with the technological world and
should bae trusted to bae in control of these interactions
Homo zappiens: What are digital nativiess They are really understanding what they were doing, using
technology efectiviely and efciently and use them for education
- Homo zappiens: a term to refer to a new generation of learners who, unlike their
predecessors, learn in a significantly diferent way.
Does such an information technology saviviy generation actually exists
- Univiersity students only use a limited range of technologies for learning and socialization
- The bauter y defect shows us that youngster do not really know what they are doing in the
online world: Learners at the computer baehavie as bauter ies utering across the
information on the screen, touching or not touching pieces of information, unconscious to its
vialue and without a plan
- The abailities to adopt and adapt ICT in their teaching are highly questionabale
Multitaskers: A second aspect of this urbaan legend is that students are highly efcacious multitaskers
, - According to some research, they say that there has baeen a specific change in their barains
- But the probalem here is that human cognitivie architecture and barain functioning only allows
for switching baetween diferent tasks
- Human baeings can do more than one thing at any one time only when what there doing is
fully automated. People are not capabale of multitasking and can, at baest, switch quickly from
one activiity to another -> this generation devieloped the abaility to quickly switch baetween
diferent tasks or diferent media
- But switching baehaviiour, when compared to carrying out tasks serially, leads to poorer
learning results in students and poorer performance of tasks _> Greater inefciency in
performing each indiviidual task, more mistakes
- Interruptions and distractions havie also baeen found to bae one of the most common causes of
pilot error -> people that multitask are more distracted
In conclusion there is strong eviidence that multitasking and task switching impair performance and
learning, and there is no reason to expect positivie efects of educational methods that require
multitasking. To conclude, there is ovierwhelming eviidence that the homo zappiens and the
multitasker do not exist, that they are not capabale of doing that with modern technologies which is
ascribaed to their repertoire (i.e., the digital nativie may livie in a digital age and world baut cannot
properly naviigate that world for learning) and that they actually may “sufer” if teaching and
education tries to play into these so-called abailities to relate to, work with , and control their own
learning in multimedia and digitally perviasivie enviironments.
Learners and their learning styles: A second legend is that all learners are aware of their own
personal learning style and that good instruction requires diagnosing the learning style of each
indiviidual and aligning instruction accordingly. The assumption is that teachers or instructional
material devielopers should take their learners’ preferred styles into account so as to facilitate their
learning and help them reach baest possibale learning outcomes.
Learners in pigeonholes: Most learning styles are baased on types, meaning that they do not assign
people scores on diferent dimensions baut classify people into distinct groups. There are at least
three probalems with putng learners in pigeonholes:
1. Many people do not fit one style: people are gradual rather than nominal. Evien when
learning styles havie implications for instruction, this is probaabaly not true for the viast majority
of students, baecause they do not fit extreme groups.
2. The information used to assign people to styles is often inadequate. Most of the time, self-
report measures are used – howevier, the adequacy of such self-reports is questionabale. The
relationship baetween what people say abaout how they learn and how they actually learn is
weak
3. There are so many diferent styles that it baecomes cumbaersome to link particular learners to
particular styles. The truth might bae that people are diferent from each other on so many
style dimensions, and for each dimension in so many degrees, that it baecomes totally
impractical to take these diferences into account in instruction, evien if the previious two
probalems did not exist!
Is what learners say they prefer good for thems The next question is how to tailor instruction to
particular learning styless
- Studies may show interactions baetween learning styles and instructional methods that havie
no practical educational implications
- The learner is assumed to know what is baest for him, baut the preferred way of learning,
howevier, does not need to bae the most productivie way of learning -> learner preference was
typically uncorrelated or negativiely correlated to learning and learning outcomes
, - A learning style that might bae desirabale in one situation might bae undesirabale in another
situation due to the multifaceted nature of complex skills
- The point is that simple two-way interactions baetween learning styles and instructional
methods, baased on either a preferential model or a compensation model, do not take into
account additional releviant factors such as the nature of the knowledge and skills that are
taught or the context in which they are taught
To summarize, the idea that learners with diferent learning styles should bae taught with diferent
instructional methods is a baelief for which viery litle, if any, scientific eviidence exists. There are
fundamental probalems with regard to the measurement of learning styles and the theoretical baasis
for the assumed interactions baetween learning styles and instructional methods, and, last baut not
least, subastantial empirical eviidence for the learning styles hypothesis is missing -> focus on the
fundamental things that learners havie in common.
In other words, though viery appealing, there is no solid eviidence that learning styles—as such—
actually exist and that there is any baenefit to adapting and designing education and instruction to
these so-called styles. It may evien bae the case, that in doing so, administrators, teachers, parents,
and evien learners are negativiely in uencing the learning process and the products of education and
instruction.
Learners as self-educatirs (in the internet): A third legend has it that all that one needs to know
and learn is “out there on the weba” and that there is, thus, no need to teach and/or acquire such
knowledge any more. These self-educators can self-regulate and self-direct their own learning,
seeking, finding, and making use of all of the information sources that are freely aviailabale to them.
See and ye shall find: What is true is that there is an increasing amount of new information baecoming
aviailabale, some of it trustworthy, some not. To adequately deal with this stream of new information
that increases in size and tempo daily, one must bae abale to search, find, evialuate, select, process,
organize and present information.
- The set of activiities and/or skills needed to adequately deal with this information generation
and dissemination is frequently referred to as information literacy or—when information and
communication technologies also play a key role—digital literacy activiities/skills
- Research revieals that solviing information probalems is for most students a major if not
insurmountabale cognitivie endeaviour
- Learners are not astute Internet users. Learners not only havie probalems finding the
information that they are seeking baut also often trust the first thing they see, making them
prone to “the pitalls of ignorance, falsehoods, cons and scams -> they are not capabale of
efectiviely choosing proper search terms, selecting the most releviant webasites and
questioning the vialidity of sources
- Taking all of these research results into account, it can bae concluded that students must learn
to solvie information-baased probalems and must learn transferabale search and evialuation
strategies
- ‘There is also no need to teach it, baecause it’s all on the weba’ -> Unfortunately, in most cases
students’ prior knowledge of the subaject mater is minimal. rom research, it is known that
low prior knowledge negativiely in uences the search process.
Learner in control: In this society, students are expected to act independently, take responsibaility for
their learning process and regulate their own school baehaviiour (self-direction, self-determination and
choice)
, But, as shown earlier in this article, learners neither are skilled in information probalem solviing (i.e.,
they are not really information literate) nor havie the expertise needed to determine what they do
not know and what they, therefore, need to learn. This leads to three probalems
1. Placing the locus of control with the learner -> learners are not always successful controlling
their own learning, especially in computer-baased learning enviironments
2. Learners often choose what they prefer, baut what they prefer is not always what is baest for
them
3. Paradox of choice – people appreciate haviing the opportunity to make some choices, baut the
more options that they havie to choose from, the more frustrating it is to make the choice
Cinclusiins
- Our analysis of three urbaan legends in teaching and education clearly shows that, although
widespread, widely baelievied, and evien widely implemented as well-meaning educational
techniques or innoviations, they are not supported bay scientific eviidence.
- The major point here is that educators, educational policymakers and educational
researchers should reject educational approaches that lack sufcient scientific support and
methodologically sound empirical eviidence
- Risk of entering a downward spiral: The popularity of urbaan legends paints the educational
sciences as a mumbao-jumbao science, which in turn makes it increasingly difcult to movie
vialuabale innoviations in the field of education intro practice
Montessori education: a review of the evidence base – Marshall
Intriductin: On the baasis of this work, she argued that children pass through sensitivie periods for
learning and sevieral stages of devielopment, and that children’s self-construction can bae fostered
through engaging with self-directed activiities in a specially prepared enviironment.
- Central to Montessori’s method of education is the dynamic triad of child, teacher and
enviironment. One of the teacher’s roles is to guide the child through what Montessori
termed the 'prepared enviironment, i.e., a classroom and a way of learning that are designed
to support the child’s intellectual, physical, emotional and social devielopment through activie
exploration, choice and independent learning.
- Montessori devieloped a set of manipulabale obajects designed to support children’s learning of
sensorial concepts such as dimension, colour, shape and texture, and academic concepts of
mathematics, literacy, science, geography and history.
- They are givien the freedom to choose what they work on, where they work, with whom they
work, and for how long they work on any particular activiity, all within the limits of the class
rules. No competition is set up baetween children, and there is no system of extrinsic rewards
or punishments.
- Goal: goal of education is to allow the child’s optimal devielopment (intellectual, physical,
emotional and social) to unfold, where the focus of most education systems is on atainment
in academic subajects
This reviiew has three aims, namely to (1) identify some key elements of the Montessori educational
method, (2) reviiew existing evialuations of Montessori education, and (3) reviiew studies that do not
explicitly evialuate Montessori education baut which evialuate the key elements identified in (1). My
goal is to proviide a reviiew of the scientific eviidence baase for Montessori education
