Learning, Thinking, Doing, Remembering, Memorising and Performing.
A blog by Toby P-C @CREducATE
At the school I work in we are busy re-designing our KS3 curriculum. I’m going to be blogging about that on my school website. As I talked with some parents after our launch evening for Year 7 in September 2019, I found myself thinking about how little we – and all schools – really talk about the purpose of education; about learning, thinking, doing, remembering, memorising and performing. About what really goes on in schools. So, I thought I’d use the titular words above to explain a little bit about the inner workings of our current educational system. Welcome to my first meandering edublog…
First of all: Learning. This is what we go to school for, isn’t it? Learning. Learning to learn. It is all about the learning. Yes it is, but there is a small problem. Well, actually quite a big one: Learning is invisible. You can’t see it happening. You can’t easily measure it. Despite huge advances in neuroscience, cognitive psychology and a plethora of educational research we still have no idea how it happens, or exactly where (inside our brains) it happens. A popular educational researcher in the US called Daniel Willingham describes learning as a change in long-term memory, i.e. something being irreversibly stored in our minds. Something learnt, known, understood. That seems fair.
What we do know in education is that learning, real learning; deep learning takes time. Complex ideas, concepts, processes and facts do not magically imprint themselves upon our minds. Tiny incremental nuggets of knowledge are required in order to piece together the really complex stuff we may grapple with at A-level, university or beyond. And yet those incremental nuggets can seem so abstract, so alien, so pointless, we often drift off and dream of football, Fortnite or friendship issues instead.
So why do we need to learn so much stuff at school? It is a good question. A lot of our learning is cultural, and ultimately about shoehorning as many people into a democratic, yet controlled society. Schools, universities and governments decide what is important to pass on, or what is essential to underpin deeper learning and application of knowledge and skills later in life. It is also interesting to note that most of our most important learning (how to walk, how to speak, how to parent and how not to crack up) is not learnt in school. It is learnt by experience: by looking, by copying, by listening, by interacting, by absorbing and by endless practice. Children and parents would do well to remember that the steepest gradient of our learning curve is before we start school.
I’m with Einstein. That school and university is all about teaching us how to think. We learn at school, so we can think as adults. Not just think about the football, or about TV, or about the weather; but think about things people have never thought about before; or thinking to allow the solving of cultural, political, economic, scientific, emotional, environmental, technological, ethical and moral problems we have never encountered before. Einstein has been misquoted by progressive educationalists for years, stating, “Education is not the learning of endless facts, but the process by which we learn to think.” Unfortunately there is a paradox in that we cannot think without facts. We need prior knowledge in our heads, in our long-term memories, before we can think about complex problems no one has ever thought about before. But what facts; what knowledge? That is the key question. Culturally we can agree on the importance of basic literacy and numeracy but after that it gets a bit tricky – we can debate the relevance of the The Vikings, Vernalisation, Viscosity, Volcanoes and Victorian writers for all.
Ultimately, we know that both critical and creative thinking are immensely important in the adult world; yet we’re not sure if we can teach them directly or not. While lessons titled “critical thinking” and “creative thinking” are a pipe dream for progressive teachers, I’d suggest they are circa 20 years from anything approaching routine adoption. There is a lot of life left in the subject based model of education. However, I’d suggest children need the chance to practise logical reasoning, data analysis, divergent thinking etc via the medium of curriculum subjects occasionally, and via initiatives like P4C (Philosophy for Children).
While traditionalists reluctantly acknowledge the long-term application and need for such skills, they suggest there is no place in schools for them; and that creativity and problem solving skills are based upon deep, domain specific knowledge, acquired over years of compliant graft at school and university. They do have a point. Multi-step problem solving is introduced much earlier in the modern maths curriculum than it ever used to be; frequently addling the minds of competent young mathematicians. The problems are often patronisingly unrealistic too. I find this argument quite compelling, and entirely logical: that in order to think and solve problems or to create new ideas we need some rock solid concepts cemented into our minds first: times tables, basic algebra, some context behind real world problems and issues.
On the flip side, the reluctance of many children aged 9 – 13 to break a problem or issue down into its constituent parts; to ask open questions; to persevere with a challenge; to accept that the route to an answer is more important than the answer itself; to see things in shades of grey rather than black and white and to accept the narrowness and shallowness of their insight and experience can be incredibly infuriating. Pupils get used to being told. They seem to subscribe to the idea that their teacher is the fount of all knowledge. They frequently just want to complete the task and get out the door and do something more interesting, or less challenging, instead.
So I tend to think that it is my job to make them think. Even if that means we go around in circles for endless lessons; because in my opinion until they are willing to think – to properly think – for themselves, rather than simply completing a task, they’re not really learning very much of use to them anyway.
This brings me on to the subject of doing. Most of our time in school is spent doing, rather than thinking. We are doing maths, or doing art, or doing reading, or doing science, or doing sport, or doing walking between lessons, or doing break time, or doing silent prodding of your neighbour’s thigh during assembly, or doing messing about in the changing rooms. The school day is basically a relentless, rollercoaster of doing lots of really different, disconnected stuff. Yes, of course a great teacher will occasionally coax a little bit of thinking out of us, but mostly they are happy if children are doing. Because when children are doing, they are behaving and it looks like they are learning. But, remember learning is invisible. I can cite several children who have spent one hour a day doing sport, five days a week, with very little skill or fitness improvement. I can cite a significant portion of children who spend about 5 hours a week in maths lessons, busy doing, but learning very little. Doing dominates. Doing keeps us busy. Doing prevents disorder, frustration, unrest and anarchy. But what doing doesn’t guarantee is that there is thinking going on, and if there is no thinking, there probably isn’t any learning going on either.
Yet, it is ridiculous to suggest that school children can be thinking, (or learning) every minute of every lesson. Even though they are young, and full of verve and vigour, they would be exhausted if they really were learning all the time. They need periods of intense, rigorous learning followed by rest, or less challenging activity. The classic mix of head, hand and heart. Also, practice and repetition is important. Repetition starts to – metaphorically – wire those neurons. So, some repetitive practice; some lightweight doing with just a tiny morsel of thinking is an important part of learning.
It is important to note that a doing activity, like making a collaborative poster; or origami volcano making is not necessarily an efficient route to understanding exactly how a volcano works. Which is absolutely fine, if the children know that they’re not actually learning anything about volcanoes; rather they are practicing their cutting, gluing and sticking skills; or developing their team-working skills and working collaboratively. Some doing to break up the thinking at school is important, but we should be more explicit about it; explicit that they are now having a rest from thinking, or that they are now working collaboratively, or cutting and sticking and that this precise moment has absolutely nothing to do with volcanoes.
A bigger problem with all this doing is when teachers and children think the activity they are engaged with is helping them to learn or acquire knowledge. For example, the completion of a fill in the blanks worksheet. Now if they’ve carefully read some information, or had it explained to them and then they are asked to fill in the blanks in a worksheet independently, they may be engaging in retrieval practice which may lead to learning (the acquisition of long-term knowledge) and the later development of thinking skills. However, if they are just randomly choosing words to fill the blanks, or discussing with their neighbour – who is telling them which word goes in each blank – they are simply doing, simply completing a task, and not learning at all. So a completed worksheet can never be evidence of learning, unless you know it was completed in silence, and independently of all other external influences (peers, teachers, teaching assistants, parents).
Worse still, in my opinion, are endless match the numbers colouring worksheets. These are designed as an engaging, visual and fun way to learn number bonds or times tables. But really – if we are honest – they are, at best acts of mindfulness, or just simply colouring in. Keeping children busy. Keeping them quiet. Making them feel like they are learning maths, when really all they are doing is colouring in and briefly – at best – recognising the occasional trend or pattern. Such worksheets are the product of two misplaced concepts in education: making learning maths fun and differentiating by task (to create the mirage of learning for measurement or observation). So, be a little wary if your child’s exercise books are full of completed, or partially completed worksheets; as they are little evidence of learning, merely evidence of doing. Personally, I think the only way times tables can be learnt (or anything else abstract and conceptual for that matter) is either by endless oral repetition (“…three times seven is twenty-one; four times seven is twenty-eight…”) or by repeatedly writing down: 3 x 7 = 21, 4 x 7 = 28 (and saying it to yourself at the same time). If these methods don’t make them stick, then either the pupil isn’t spending enough time on it, or they have a some form of working memory processing impairment. Too frequently, the working memory or mental processing impaired individual is given the colouring in option, oblivious to the extra cognitive overload of the task. The distractions of colouring in or matching pairs distracting from the gradual “wiring of the neurons.”
Where doing can make a big difference is in the practising of a generic skill. If we want children to develop better collaboration, or communication then regular doing of collaboration, or doing of communication helps. Regular doing of science practical skills (as long as this is the learning objective) can develop those skills, so long as there is an explicit objective. So doing is great if we are explicitly developing doing skills, but doing (engaging or accessible) activities – are not particularly efficient if we want new knowledge to be acquired; or abstract concepts grappled with for the first time.
Yet, if we want to remember things, then doing is the way forward. If you are a mathematician, you probably can’t remember exactly where, or exactly when, you first encountered algebra or mastered your seven times table, or first encountered the concept of Pi. Likewise as a trained and experienced industrial chemist, I have no precise recollection of when I first grasped the concept of an atom, or chemical formulae, or the structural notation for a molecule of Benzene; or exactly when I first collided with covalent bonding. This is because our deepest held concepts and intellectual foundations are semantic memories. The concepts are so deeply embedded within our minds, we apply them all the time; yet we can’t really ever remember the learning of their nuts and bolts – even though we know we must have done so.
The same principle applies to learning to write; learning to read; learning to talk; learning to walk. We know how to do these things very well. We know we learnt something about reading and writing in school (and at home), we can probably pin down a year group or two, or maybe an instrumental teacher, but I’m pretty sure you can’t remember the specific moment you learnt to read. Partly because your reading skills have improved over a long period of time, but also because – however much you love reading – the process of learning to read is not a one off, highly engaging event. It was – at the time – hard graft and for many, not always fun. Learning the nuts and bolts which propel our varied learning journeys through life cannot always be fun. Grrr. This word, fun. No. Learning isn’t fun. Getting better at stuff isn’t fun. It is hard graft. But its consequences can be fun; its applications fun too.
What we do remember from school are some funny events with friends, maybe a particularly enjoyable sports day, football match, inspirational visiting speaker, school trip, off timetable workshop, pond dipping or forest school. These are episodic memories. Episodic memories are closely related to nostalgia. These are the stand out events of our childhoods. An episodic event is probably not a deeply learnt concept. It probably isn’t a weekly spelling or times table test. Our episodic memories are the stories we tell, they are the remembered remnants of our lives, the easily retrieved memories which seem so prevalent in our lives. Episodic memories are normally of fun events, things we enjoyed, activities or events where we were having fun.
An episodic event is great if you want to inspire someone, great as a hook to engage children with learning; but if we – as teachers – fall into the trap into making everything a great big episodic whizz bang science show edutainment festival then children will remember the excitement, the friendship, the laughter but they won’t necessarily remember a single thing about the concept, the rule, the technique or the theory you actually wanted them to learn about. So, in school, we probably need an episodic : semantic ratio of approximately 1:9, where all the fundamental, hard graft, foundational knowledge and skills which underpin a purposeful and fulfilling life are semantic, occasionally offset by something amaaaaazzzzing and episodic to make it fun, enjoyable and tangible.
Remembering is the retrieval of long-term learning. Oh I remember that, that was really funny. Or, I remember all the key battles of the Hundred Years War (Why)? Or, I remember my times tables (a little slower than they used to be) but 9 x 6 = 54 is deeply engrained. But what of memorising? Well, I see memorising as a short-term version of learning. Memorising is what children do to cram for a test. Or some last minute revision. Memorising creates false positives. Children who don’t properly know things; don’t properly understand things, can often take their books home for a weekend or two, cram for a test or exam and gain a great score in said test. This creates a mirage for teachers, parents and – worst of all – children that they have learnt more than they really know.
Our education system is full of those “gaming the system” with short-term memorisation. This is why I am so anti judging people on grades alone. Sure you can’t get straight 9s at GCSE or a plethora of As at A level without some hard graft, and a reasonably high level of intelligence but grades in exams are only ever a measure of short-term memorisation, not long-term understanding and application. Unfortunately many schools, universities and the Department for Education haven’t fully sussed this out yet. Employers in industry and business have. It is why they harp on about skills and application – what you can do with your knowledge. If we only measure people on their short-term memorised knowledge, you may acquire a compliant memoriser rather than a flexible thinker.
Where an exam or test is a good thing, is that you have to retrieve information from memory. The process of regular retrieval of shallow knowledge can gradually convert it to deep knowledge. The problem with many high stakes exams, is that there is an awful lot to memorise; and once you stop retrieving it on a regular basis, most of it is forgotten. Forever.
As we have become increasingly obsessed with judging people on their memorised grades at GCSE and / or A level; we have become embroiled in the over-measured world of modern education. We measure achievement, attainment and progress based upon exams or formal assessments. Then we scrutinise books, observe lessons and look for evidence of learning in books and in lessons. This is a big challenge, because what we do as teachers and as parents is that we start to “game the system.” We perform. But in truth, as learning is invisible, what we really observe, scrutinise and measure is performance and NOT learning.
A really engaging and exciting lesson is performance. Sure, we need to be entertained sometimes. A whizzbang wonder of a lesson is great occasionally, but not all the time, and certainly not if you want some really nitty gritty mathematical or scientific concept to be studiously grappled with.
A child, quietly communicating and collaborating as they cut and paste facts from the provided information sheet onto a colourful and well-presented poster is performing.
A beautifully presented exercise book, full of ornately copied annotated diagrams is performance.
A beautifully marked exercise book, up to date with targets and regular written feedback is performance.
A quiet, well behaved, compliant classroom full of children answering questions they already know the answers to while the teacher walks menacingly up and down the aisles is performance.
A lot of how we measure, observe and scrutinise education is performing. Occasionally performance = learning, but an awful lot of the time what we describe as learning is performing, or playing the game, or playing along with the system, or maintaining the status quo.
Before we plan to tweak, liberate, revolutionise, re-design, preserve, or re-invent school education the above is worth bearing in mind. Learning matters. It underpins everything. Yet, how we get there remains a bit of a mystery. To varying degrees performing, memorising, remembering, doing and thinking have their place. They all play their part in a rich, varied, enabling and empowering education but it is learning that really matters. And that takes time. But it lasts a lifetime.
CREducATE 