Monthly Archives: August 2012

August 29, 2012 · 10:21 pm

Put ‘brain’ on it and people will believe it (research)

Last week I discovered this wonderful lecture by Dorothy Bisshop that everybody interested in research should take time for.

In her lecture she mentions several research-papers and 2 are definitely worth a closer look.

First there is this 2008 research by Weisberg et Al. from which this is the abstract:

Explanations of psychological phenomena seem to generate more public interest when they contain neuroscientific information. Even irrelevant neuroscience information in an explanation of a psychological phenomenon may interfere with people’s abilities to critically consider the underlying logic of this explanation. We tested this hypothesis by giving naïve adults, students in a neuroscience course, and neuroscience experts brief descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of four types of explanation, according to a 2 (good explanation vs. bad explanation) × 2 (without neuroscience vs. with neuroscience) design. Crucially, the neuroscience information was irrelevant to the logic of the explanation, as confirmed by the expert subjects. Subjects in all three groups judged good explanations as more satisfying than bad ones. But subjects in the two nonexpert groups additionally judged that explanations with logically irrelevant neuroscience information were more satisfying than explanations without. The neuroscience information had a particularly striking effect on nonexperts’ judgments of bad explanations, masking otherwise salient problems in these explanations.

So, if we have a bad theory that no-one in his or her right mind would follow, put we put some neuro-mumbo jumbo on it, people will start to believe it. And maybe we could add some nice brain-images? Good idea to convince people, this we learn from the second research article by McCabe and Castel (2008):

Brain images are believed to have a particularly persuasive influence on the public perception of research on cognition. Three experiments are reported showing that presenting brain images with articles summarizing cognitive neuroscience research resulted in higher ratings of scientific reasoning for arguments made in those articles, as compared to articles accompanied by bar graphs, a topographical map of brain activation, or no image. These data lend support to the notion that part of the fascination, and the credibility, of brain imaging research lies in the persuasive power of the actual brain images themselves. We argue that brain images are influential because they provide a physical basis for abstract cognitive processes, appealing to people’s affinity for reductionistic explanations of cognitive phenomena.

Don’t get me wrong, neurologists are doing great jobs and neurology is a booming field of research. But at the same time be careful with why you believe something!

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Filed under Education, Marketing

August 18, 2012 · 7:53 pm

Copy Paste or inspiration? Comparing countries in education

We like to compare. How many medals does your country pick up at the Olympics? How far did you travel? Comparing educational systems can have several reasons, but lately it is often inspired by economical motives. A country that scores higher on e.g. the PISA-tests is working on smarter kids and will win the race in a knowledge society. So, what does everybody do if they want to do better? Look at the top to see how they do, off course. That is why everybody nowadays is looking at Finland, being at the top of the PISA-rankings most of the time. Btw, Poland can also be of interest as they have successfully adapted a change in education.

This post is not to say that Finland are wrongly at the top (I do think they are doing a great job, actually), but to describe the difficulty to pinpoint a reason for success.

First of all, what does it mean to have a successful educational system?

The background of PISA is economical and they look at how pupils in regions do at math, language or sciences and possible influences. Means being good at these topics that your education is good? Good question, but what about feeling good? Some of the countries at the top of the PISA-rankings are also on the top of youth-suicide (this does not mean that there is a causal relation).

Secondly education is embedded in a society with specific characteristics and traditions. Some examples. Is the country rich or not? A very young population or rather old? A tradition of free schools or public schools? Btw, ‘free schools’ can have many different meanings depending the region or country.

This is a third problem, words can sound and look the same, but have sometimes very different meanings. I took part myself in several international educational projects and quite often there is a phase of defining what everything means to each other.

These are just 3 problems you can encounter, 3 of many more. Just to say, blind copying an approach or parts of an approach can be very dangerous. Finland has a comprehensive education system but one can’t say for sure this is the success factor, because other ‘comprehensive countries’ are doing much worse even with systems very close to what Finland does.

No, comparing is for inspiration and inspiration can only be found if you thoroughly analyse the educational system including as much of the context from the country or region you can get.

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August 10, 2012 · 12:56 pm

Do ‘digital natives’ need another kind of instructional design than boomers or GenX? Guess what?

First of all, for everybody who thinks that digital natives exist, do read this. But the real question is if different generations need different forms of instructional design. Many people do think this is the case, but what does research says?

Jeroen Janssen (@J3ro3J) tweeted this review by professor Thomas Reeves yesterday and although there are differences, the need for different approaches is not that certain to say the least.

From the conclusion:

“Although there are certainly many doubters, the consensus of scholarship and opinion is that there are generalizable generational differences that are worth taking into consideration in the “knowledge worker” or professional workplace and other contexts such as higher education. For example, there are differences with respect to attitudes, work habits, and motivators that anyone managing cross-generational teams should understand. Managers and workers should also be aware that generational differences in attitudes toward the balance between work and other parts of life such as family may vary to some degree by gender. However, it is definitely not recommended to make assumptions about any one individual, regardless of gender or other factors, based upon his/her membership in a chronological generational cohort.”

“The major question addressed in this review is whether generational difference is a variable important enough to be considered during the design of instruction or the use of different educational technologies. At this time, the weight of the evidence is negative. Generational differences are evident in the workplace, but they are not salient enough to warrant the specification of different instructional designs or the use of different learning technologies.”

Still the authors keep a door open:

“That said, there are some intriguing areas for further research, especially with respect to the design and use of interactive games and simulations.”

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Filed under Education, Myths

August 5, 2012 · 9:26 am

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs - Is the pyramid a hoax?

Reblogged from Literacy, Languages and Leadership:

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I'm a big believer in going back to original sources, rather than relying on secondary sources.

Recently I was reading Maslow's original 1943 article, "A theory of human motivation". I was curious about his hierarchy of needs and wanted to learn more about it. When I began poking around on the Internet, I found that the pyramid was commonly cited as being from either his 1943 article or his 1954 book.

Read more… 901 more words

The article is not stating that the pyramid in itself is a hoax, but they couldn't find any reference by Maslow that describes the pyramid as such. Interesting stuff, if someone has more information, do share!

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August 1, 2012 · 6:48 pm

How I gave pretty low-tech feedback in a +100 class using text-messages

(For the dutch readers, I posted this already a long time ago here)

Because I tweeted it in short this morning, I want to tell in this post the whole approach how I used text-messages to give feedback in lectures for groups with a size +100. The idea is in fact pretty simple.

After every half hour I projected the following message ‘Work in groups of 3. Try to summarize the past 30 minutes in 1 text-message (160 digits) and text it to <my number>”.

After class I collected all the text-messages and imported them into my computer. I made 3 categories:

  • cat 1: correct and to the point
  • cat 2: correct but besides the question
  • cat 3: wrong (+ correction from my part)

This all was put in a document and I uploaded it on the digital platform (you know that thing teachers use but only a couple of students visit to copy to content onto Facebook). It took my +/- 1 hour per lesson for a class of 2.5 hours with 120 students.

Why did I work with groups of 3? First of all, because I didn’t want to have too many messages, but also to make sure that there wouldn’t be problems as ‘I don’t have a cell phone on me’, ‘I don’t have any money left prepaid ‘,…

I didn’t use twitter because I learned from our students that it is still a minority thing, and in Belgium the students do have smartphones, but mobile internet is less common at that time (actually, it is still only 1 in 3 who has mobile internet).

Bad thing was that I couldn’t give the feedback rightaway, but I still could gave feedback as I saw some misconceptions and helped my students to know what’s important and what less. At the same time my students ‘crowdsourced’ a summary of the class.

I also used another question in other classes, namely try to make up a test-question about the past half hour. Again the answers through text-messages were put in the same 3 categories.

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