Deconstructing educational research

Preliminary (short) report solicited by Renata Mannheimer from Eric M. Weiler, Director, Applied Cognitive Science Institute at CMU)

I want to first acknowledge and admire the New Bretten cognitive neuroscience workgroup. You have mastered a huge amount of mind-brain science knowledge in a relatively short period of time. That feat is particularly impressive given your isolation and limited resources. I sometimes think that given an opportunity to work without many voices shouting suggestions from all directions can be a huge benefit in making advances in science and its application.

Your website manger LAK was reluctant to publish some of my personal notes to you. I can well understand that. On the other hand your plea for help and understanding were so poignant that I had to respond here and will do so in greater detail (to you personally). Yours is a remarkably tight knit community and therefore how could it not be devastating to have your husband of 22 years leave you and your adolescent kids and run off (a few hundred yards away) with a young New Bretten biologi9st. To have a day to day working and communal relationship with someone who has been so hurtful and deceitful must be unbearable. I know you will move on. I will be as supportive as I can from half way around the world. ‘Talk to you’ more later.

One other thought. Sometimes knowing something about the neurobiological basis of constructive and destructive emotions may be helpful. There has been a virtual flood of research considering the brain circuitry that is underpinnings of emotions such as disgust, romantic love, passion, jealousy. I will send you some of the references and perhaps one of your colleagues can write a posting covering brain mechanisms of common intense emotions.

You contacted me and asked whether I would comment on how educational research might lead the way in establishing a more useful, potent, effective educational culture. At the outset I am optimistic that the world of education is slowly changing although at present it remains in a sorry state, not just in the US but in many other parts of the world. The reasons for the demise of effective public and private education are wide ranging and dysfunctional educational research is more a symptom than a cause. No doubt you are familiar with the fact that gifted women used to become teachers but that talent pool has jumped at the many professional and other opportunities that have opened up for them during the past many decades. A host of political, social, economic, factors have furthered the demise of strong educational systems and that includes not only schools for the economically disadvantaged but also available in urban and middle class communities. Many books have been written about some of these issues and by now I am overfilled to the point of being bored out of my mind by the many voices sounding off on why our schools fail.

For now let me briefly address one facet of the problem of the dysfunctional education culture namely the state of education research. While there are some exceptions the quality of that research is dismal. Most scholars, researchers agree with that assessment. All of the features of sound research are missing in studies of topics such as how we learn, readiness to learn, acquiring problem solving and conceptualization skills, learning of executive functions such as planning and self-evaluation. Poor research leads to a state in which what is learned is not knowledge that can become the foundation for new knowledge and therefore nothing learned from research is cumulative. Educational researchers are forever going back to square one in their search for answers to the questions they are asking.

What is missing from educational research? The most damaging feature of much of educational research is that the questions being asked are poorly stated. Sound research is doomed from the start by questions that make no sense or that are in a form that cannot be answered. Educational  research is frequently also flawed by poor designs, lack of adequate control groups, weak and unreliable measures, manipulations that are almost never model based and therefore findings are therefore often uninterpretable. This same educational research culture is also a weak context for keeping up with and translating findings from fields that are relevant to education.

One reason why educational research is so weak is because schools of education are professional schools mandated to graduate certifiable teachers. Therefore these schools do not promote sound research and scholarship. All of this is slowly changing. An education culture most promote and demand solid research.

What are just a very few of many well developed research themes that can be translated  into applied research followed by  implementation in how we teach learn and make use of what we have learned.

1. False knowledge-It is not just in learning science that previously acquired false knowledge is a ‘gift’ that keeps on giving. Whether we are looking at how we learn facets of history or simple concepts in physics like the action of gravity it is clear that students bring knowledge to what they are learning that prevents them from learning new information. How many students believe that heavy spheres fall faster than lighter spheres?  We know a great deal about false knowledge and its impact on learning. Part of what we know is relevant to how knowledge is organized and the extent to which knowledge structures are extensively connected to other nodes of knowledge
2. How is knowledge organized and how much knowledge is in place when trying to learn new material?-We know a great deal about how to access how knowledge is organized and its impact on new learning. We also know a good deal about the development of knowledge starting in infancy. For example we know that disadvantaged very young children have vocabularies that are often ½ of that of advantaged middle class children. The more extensive the knowledge (including vocabulary) that is brought into play when learning something new the more effective, deeper, more connected is the new learning. Learning is often about reorganizing what we know rather than learning new information.
3. The nature of expertise-When we have expertise relevant to what we are learning then the learning and thinking proceeds very differently from the same learning that is accomplished without relevant expertise. Take reading history, or a story, or directions. Without the expertise of knowing how to read valuable limited cognitive resources must be used for the mechanics of reading rather than extracting and learning new information from what is being read. We know a great deal about how expertise and I have noted that on your website you have several articles about expertise.

Renata, enough for now. I will expand on some of these ideas in the future (if you want me to). In the meantime, be patient. You will heal. By the way, don’t forget to have someone write a piece on the neurobiology of common human passions.

Best regards,

Eric M. Weiler