The idea that different kinds of learners (such as “auditory learners” and “visual learners”) learn best when they are taught in their preferred learning style modality has had a tenacious grip in classroom settings in recent decades. Here is yet another report, this one commissioned by Psychological Science in the Public Interest, that condemns the use of learning styles in school settings. Frankly, it’s interesting if you are a teacher, trainer, parent or employed in the vast industry of learning style assessments, but it is less interesting if you are a learner or interested in personalized learning in non-structured settings. School is such a narrow slice of the learning landscape, and it distressing to hear of all the resources spent on promoting a suspect proposition, then again to quell it. These findings are not relevant to unstructured learning environments, and the strict type of randomized research designs advocated (e.g., classify learners into categories, then randomly assign the learners to use one of several different learning methods and assess effectiveness of the learning methods with a test given to all participants) is a steep hurdle. Thanks to Will Thalheimer for pointing to the study.
The Internet Explorer 6 Dilemma
Vaccines, The Lancet retraction and open scientific debate
Last week, the prominent British medical journal The Lancet formally retracted a deeply flawed 1998 study that linked childhood measles-mumps-rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. Despite a wealth of research that concludes there is no link, a decade of anti-vaccine sentiment is proving more difficult to retract. In an interview for On The Media, The Lancet’s editor Dr. Richard Horton weighs in on the state of open scientific debate:
We used to think that we could publish speculative research which advanced interesting new ideas which may be wrong, but which were important to provoke debate and discussion. We don’t think that now. We don’t seem able to have a rational conversation in the public space about difficult controversial issues without people drawing a conclusion which could be very averse.…The 19th-century days where you could sit in the salon at the Royal Society and have a private conversation amongst your fellows just doesn’t exist anymore. So I think yeah, too much information in this particular case is a bad thing, which seems to go against every kind of democratic principle that we believe in. But in the case of science, it seems to be true.
But it is not. I can’t help but wonder if we had had this conversation, in public, ten years ago when the study was still “speculative research” we may well have averted the flawed decision to publish it in the first place. We need more information, not less, and more inclusive conversations, not narrowly confined to the medical community. The public may well have to engage the medical community in the public space “difficult conversations without drawing a conclusion that could be very averse…”
Information Abundance
Real body language
Natalie Angier reviews recent studies in the field of embodied cognition, which recognizes that we process information not only with our minds but with our entire bodies. For example, a person who thinking about the future may lean forward slightly, and person reflecting on the past my tip backwards. It seems the body can be very literal-minded. Someone holding a warm drink is more likely to think well of other people than if they were holding a cold drink. Gesturing can help children master math. Our Cartesian mindset insists that thinking is the brain’s domain, but these studies hint at a nuanced two-way communication with the body.
Surprising gaps in your self-knowledge
Jeremy Dean frequently highlights classic social psychology research that helps us understand why we think and act the way we do. He turns to self-schema theory and a 1977 study by Hazel Markus for insight into why many of us are blissfully unaware of certain aspects of our personalities. Self-schema refer to the beliefs we have about ourselves. We use them to understand and explain our behaviour, especially when that behaviour is significant to our self-conception. Once we have developed a schema, it is remarkably resilient. In this study Markus examined women who identified with independent/dependent schema and those who did not (that is, aschematic). Some of the participants believed they were independent, some did not, and the others didn’t know or, apparently, did not care. The aschematics are the most interesting category because they did not seam to realize whether or not they were independent — a surprising gap in their self-knowledge. Markus’s original paper is available at PyscNET.
Atoms to bits
Tuned in as I am to A History of the World in 100 Objects and the notion that humans make tools and tools remake humans, I couldn’t help but notice Chris Anderson claim that everyone now has the power to make complex things. In the DIY culture of the internet, manufacturing will be radically democratized; in the next industrial revolutions, “atoms are the new bits.” What was once mass produced will become mass personalized. Think on the ways in which we manage our daily lives, through our education systems, work practices, community services and governance, all of which are designed and coordinated with tools we have had at our disposal. What will these tools look like in the DIY model when collaboration, crowdsourcing and great ideas attracting like-minded individuals? The garage/basement examples Chris Anderson provides remind us that the manufacturing revolution is very much confined to hobbyist and boutique markets, not mainstream industry. But the whole notion of moving from mass production to mass personalization is rather intoxicating.
The cold hard facts of freezing to death
Peter Stark could have simply defined hypothermia as the condition in which the body is at abnormally low body temperatures, one that needs treatment at body temperatures of 35℃ and becomes life threatening below 32.2℃. Certainly that is what most trainers would do. Instead he embeds the cold hard facts of freezing to death in a story that begins:
When your Jeep spins lazily off the mountain road and slams backward into a snowbank, you don’t worry immediately about the cold. Your first thought is that you’ve just dented your bumper. Your second is that you’ve failed to bring a shovel. Your third is that you’ll be late for dinner. Friends are expecting you at their cabin around eight for a moonlight ski, a late dinner, a sauna. Nothing can keep you from that.
It is an engrossing read. Narrative experiences can be so powerful. Some will transport you to another place and time in a way that is so compelling it seems real. A narrative like this could provide the structure for an entire training program. The story offers an organizing structure for new experiences and knowledge. It could shift the focus from a rote memorization of facts in a textbook to a diagnosis of a real-world condition.
Telling a history of the world with objects
This past week I’ve been taking A History of the World in 100 Objects for a spin in my mp3 player. It is an extraordinary, inspiring, and slightly crazy British Museumm/BBC co-production based on the belief that objects can open up news ways of understanding two million years of human history. It revolves around a series of 15 minute radio spots that take one artefact, tell its story about the people who made it, and tell new stories reinterpreted by subsequent generations. I’m at episode four, and the narratives are gripping. The plot emerging is not the history of any one nation or people, but rather of the interconnections and common ground they all share. Amartya Sen explains this in the first episode:
I think what is really very important to recognize is that, when we look at the history of the world, we’re not looking at the history of different civilizations truncated and separated from each other. They’ve a huge amount of contact with each other, there is a kind of inter-connectedness. So I’ve always felt, not to think of the history of the world as a history of civilizations, but as a history of world civilizations evolving in often similar, often diverse ways, always interacting with each other. And this is a very different view from the clash of civilizations to which we were exposed some years ago, as a way to understand enmity in the world. Enmity has not been the general condition of the relationship between people across the world in history.
The programme is fully socially mediated, both online and offline with regional museum programs; it will be interesting to see if the stories sustain the momentum generated in these first episodes.
There are facts that don’t change, like the height of Mount Everest, and facts that change a lot, like the weather. Then there are mesofacts, facts that are neither fast nor momentus, and so don’t receive the same scrutiny, but are still worthy of your attention. For example, the Periodic table has added 12 elements since 1970. 400 new extrasolar planets have been discovered since the first one in 1995. The world’s population stands at 6.8 million. Many dinosaurs were swift and warm-blooded. “Updating your mesofacts,” says Samuel Arbesman, “can change how you think about the world.” (And, I’m always drawn to insights that change how I think about the world):