Professor Emeritus Paul A. Kirschner Full Circle: From knowledge, astute, and wisdom to arts and heritage

3-Star learning experiences

Mirjam Neelen

On Friday, December 13, 1991, Paul A. Kirschner defended his PhD thesis on Practicals in Higher Science Education at the Open University of the Netherlands (OUNL). Exactly 28 years later, the same Paul A. Kirschner, now professor emeritus, delivered his farewell address at the end of a vibrant and memorable day.

The morning…

In the morning there were three workshops for Master of Educational Sciences students at the OUNL. I had the honour of facilitating one of the workshops on evidence-informed learning design. The students had really good ideas on how to improve a one-day face-to-face course design, backed up by strong evidence from the 4C/ID model which is a part of their curriculum. They also asked excellent questions and it made me realise again that there’s a big difference between what we know works and how things work in practice (also see Tim Surma’s theme below).

After…

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The Butterfly Who Denied Ever Being a Caterpillar: A Modern Day Educational Fable

3-Star learning experiences

Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

Did you hear the story about the butterfly who denied ever being a caterpillar? Well, there was once a beautiful, well-developed butterfly who refused to accept that he once was a caterpillar and that going through the stages from pupa to caterpillar to beautiful butterfly was responsible for his current state…

Almost weekly, we encounter (or are asked to comment on) some new, modern, progressive, child friendly, innovative approach to education. Usually, advocates for these approaches have a strong distaste for knowledge acquisition, fact learning, memorisation, and practising skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, spelling, handwriting or writing essays (Who needs all of these things in real life? We have pocket computers for this, and, who writes essays these days?). They find these things to be old-fashioned, demotivating, and extremely mind-numbing. They believe in the child’s own initiative to drive learning as they perceive…

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Chess in Schools: Holy Grail or Snake Oil?

3-Star learning experiences

Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

‘Armenia makes chess compulsory in schools’, according to this article in the Guardian. Armenian authorities claim that chess is the key to success in school and life. By playing chess, children not only learn how to think creatively and strategically, they also get better at solving problems and become more intelligent. Even better (notice the slightly sarcastic tone here), this creativity, problem-solving, and other similar good stuff, isn’t just specific for chess. The promise is, that it will generalise to other subjects AND to life in general (near and far transfer). In other words, chess seems to be the holy grail!

What the Armenian authorities actually claim is that learning how to play chess on the one hand is the key to developing generic skills (in particular problem-solving) and on the other hand is a vital element when it comes to generic traits…

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Logical Fallacies: Don’t Let Them Fool You

3-Star learning experiences

Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

Sometimes people use bogus arguments in the form of logical fallacies (arguments where the conclusion does not follow from the premises) to oppose facts or viewpoints and, ultimately to bamboozle a discussion. Below you’ll find a nice overview of twenty most often used type of ‘luring’ fallacies. We’re writing this blog hoping that you’ll learn to spot them and kick ’m in the butt instead of letting them fool you (or worse, using them yourselves)!

Let’s look at some examples.

Basically, the strawman is an intentionally misrepresented response that’s set up as an easy way to defeat the opponent’s true argument. In other words, the person throwing in the strawman doesn’t respond to the actual point that an opponent makes but to a caricatural version of it.

In the learning space, there are some common strawmen. For example, in response to the argument that…

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Direct Instruction Gets No Respect (But It Works)

3-Star learning experiences

Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

Robert Pondiscio, Senior Fellow and Vice President for External Affairs at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in the US, recently published a blog (overall worth a visit!) in which he called direct instruction the Rodney Dangerfield of curricula. Rodney Dangerfield was an American comedian who constantly complained that he didn’t get any respect, no matter what he did. Poor Rodney.

The same seems to be true for direct instruction, which is sad.

First, let’s explore what direct instruction is. To begin, there is not one, but rather two types! The first is Direct Instruction (with capital DI). This is a model for instruction that emphasises well-developed, carefully planned lessons, focussing on small learning steps with clearly defined and prescribed learning tasks. This model was founded by the American Siegfried Engelmann (Oregon University).

His theory is that clear instruction should eliminate misconceptions and will/could…

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Why Myths Are Like Zombies

3-Star learning experiences

Paul A. Kirschner & Mirjam Neelen

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a zombie as “a person or reanimated corpse that has been turned into a creature capable of movement but not of rational thought, which feeds on human flesh”.

While except in the most primitive cultures zombies are fictional, in education they are real, they exist and they thrive! You see them as approaches to teaching and learning (educational myths) that continue to exist and even spread though they have long been proven to be untrue. Paraphrasing the definition above, an educational zombie is “a reanimated myth that has been turned into an educational intervention/approach that moves both in time and place, is capable of influencing how we teach, but is not based on rational thought and which feeds on human learning”. And what’s more, they seem almost impossible to eradicate!

But why are educational and learning myths so stubborn?…

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On Self-Quizzing Homework

The Learning Profession

One of the best things we’ve done this year is introduce self-quizzing – an idea I took from reading Joe Kirby’s chapter in ‘Battle Hymn of the Tiger Teachers: The Michaela Way’ entitled ‘Homework as Revision’. I thought, after the reaction to a couple of tweets I’ve posted about it, I’d write this post explaining our approach to self-quizzing homework and share a few examples.

Not only does retrieval practice homework complement our approach to homework (activities which have value but require no marking) but we’ve also seen students’ knowledge improve as well as their confidence. Our girls really know their stuff – we know they’re learning and retaining the information on the knowledge organisers we’ve given them because most lessons begin with a 5-a-Day retrieval practice starter and we’re seeing more and more students achieving 5/5. Students’ confidence is improving too because they can see how much more they now know – unlike so many…

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Where Are the Learning Sciences in Learning Analytics Research?

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Mirjam Neelen & Paul A. Kirschner

In his LAK 2016keynote in Edinburgh Paul Kirschner answered the question ‘What do the learning sciences have to do with learning analytics (LA)?’ with a firm: ‘Just about everything!’ He also noted that in most LA projects and studies, the learning scientist and learning theories are conspicuously absent, which often lead – in his words – to dystopian futures.

The trigger to write this blog was far and foremost a statement that Bart Rienties made in his keynote at EARLI17 (summary and slides here), in which he said that research shows that learning design[1] (LD) has a strong impact on learner behaviour, satisfaction, and performance. This, in itself, isn’t earth shocking for us (we’d expect effective LD; that is LD based on evidence from learning sciences, to positively impact learning and ineffective LD to harm it). However, it’s of tantamount…

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Teaching to the Top: Attitudes and strategies for delivering real challenge.

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Image Lenovo.com

Teaching to top has been a long-standing principle of effective teaching from my perspective.  One of my early blogs was ‘Gifted and Talented Provision: A Total Philosophy‘ and it remains one of the topics I am asked to talk about most often in CPD sessions.  I no longer think that Gifted and Talented is a helpful label – it never was – but the principles are the same.  I’ve also covered this topic The Anatomy of High Expectations.

As I’ve said previously, I firmly believe that too many students are systematically underchallenged at school, especially in the years furthest away from high-stakes tests.  I also think that, if you crack this, you crack most other things too; the bar is raised for everyone.  This blog is based on the CPD I usually deliver on this topic.

The secret to doing this well is to think about…

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