Why doing is NOT learning? Revisiting history-cued and means-ends strategies
In education, learning should be efficient and effective, with a clear direction. From this idea, learning intentions and success criteria were born. Yet, some theories suggest that learning by doing or immersing students in activities, provides at the very least, similar achievement outcomes as traditional teaching. When students are ‘doing’ the learning, teachers can ‘see’ their students learning; they are completely engaging in the activity and heading toward the goal, even if they are unsure of exactly where they are going.
The theory of the learning pyramid supports the position that learning by doing is more beneficial than learning by listening. The learning pyramid suggests that when students learn by doing, approximately 75% of learning is retained. The relationship between retention and ‘doing’ is also supported by the cone of learning, which suggests that if students say and do the learning, it can lead to approximately 90% of learning retention. The implications of these studies have coloured curricula all over the world, including the new Australian curriculum, and the teaching strategies teachers use to promote knowledge building. Teachers shifted slightly away from teaching and began incorporating activities that were perceived as more fun and seemingly promoted more learning, like role playing, investigations, and experiencing the real thing. The theories that promote ‘doing’ over thinking are affecting student achievement.
It was said that thinking is the residue of learning, but when students are doing, aren’t they also thinking? Therefore, isn’t doing also the residue of learning? According to early studies by Manu Kapur on productive struggle, this statement would be accurate. When students are ‘doing’ or struggling to do, more accurately, they are learning more deeply than if they were not struggling and doing. Similarly, misinterpretations of Bjork’s desirable difficulties has mutated into intentionally designing learning activities that promote error. The promotion of error, erroneously, improves knowledge as students need to find the correct answer, making the correct answer more memorable. The notion of promoting error to improve learning has also been supported by poor neuroscientific research, concluding "Our research found evidence that mistakes that are a 'near miss' can help a person learn the information better than if no errors were made at all.” However, these studies fail to consider the mechanisms and function of the brain that underpins learning.
According to Cognitive Load Theory, cognitive resources are limited, directed and indivisible. Each cognitive resource, let’s say a neuron, has a direction. If the direction is to build a bridge, then the neuron will build a bridge, if the direction is to explore the brain, then the neuron will explore the brain. Although, while some neurons can build and some can explore, one neuron cannot do both – they are indivisible. To put this into practical terms: asking students to review an article for grammatical errors focuses neurons on grammatical errors. If we tested students on the content covered in the grammatical sheet, they would perform poorly as they have diverted their cognitive resources to developing editing skills, not learning the content. The idea that students can divert neurons to two sources simultaneously is yet to be supported by the research.
A forgotten study by Sweller, Mawer, and Howe (1982) supports the claim that cognitive resources might only be able to divert cognitive resources to one task at a time – learning or doing, not both. In a series of experiments, the researchers found that when students “learn” how to complete a task, they can complete tasks more accurately and more efficiently. On the other hand, if students are required to “do” an activity without learning what they are doing, they make more mistakes and sometimes do not complete the task. The implications of this are that students might be able to complete tasks by themselves with limited direct teaching, but the likelihood that they have learnt almost anything from completing the task is unlikely. This assumption would be the same for students investigating and locating information, instead of learning information.
A consequence of investigating information is related to the amount of cognitive resources being deployed to find information. Some research suggests that when students discover information, it utilises a significant proportion of their cognitive resources, limiting the amount of resources required to build learning. From this, teachers, policy makers, and curriculum developers should seriously consider how they teach and the verbs used in curriculum documents. With an understanding of cognitive architecture, the promotion of knowledge building in school should be prioritised, instead of inefficient use of student cognitive resources. A way to promote knowledge building is by telling students the answers and increasing the difficulty for students to remember them. This can be achieved by teachers increasing the number of items students need to remember when learning.
For example, if a student is learning about different types of emotions, would it be more cognitively efficient to have students search the internet for a range of emotions or would it be more cognitively efficient to tell students a range of emotions and then complete some retrieval practice on those emotions? Unpacking the first scenario, the teacher asks students to find 7 different emotions for happy sad, angry and embarrassed. The student uses their cognitive resources to scour the internet looking for other emotions. At the end of the 10 minute period, the teacher asks the students what emotions they found for happy sad, angry and embarrassed. All the students found 7 emotions, and the teacher moves on. In this scenario all the cognitive resources were deployed for exploration, not for learning.
In the other scenario, the teacher tells the students 4 emotions for sad, asks them to remember the four emotions and then warm calls the class (pair share, then cold call). Then the teacher adds 3 more emotions and asks students to remember all 7 emotions. The teacher then warm calls the class. This process is repeated until all the emotions have been completed. In this scenario, the teacher deploys cognitive resources for learning, not searching.
Therefore, the argument for why learning is not doing is centred around a deep understanding of cognitive resources. The understanding that cognitive resources are limited, directed and indivisible. When policy makers, teachers, and curriculum promote doing instead of learning, it is an inefficient use of student cognitive resources and this is a serious issue that has been overlooked for far too long.
References
Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care. (2018, June 11). Making mistakes while studying actually helps you learn better: When learning something new, there are instances where trial and error helps rather than hinders, according to recent findings by Baycrest researchers. ScienceDaily. Retrieved April 1, 2023 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180611133437.htm
Sweller, J., Mawer, R. F., & Howe, W. (1982). Consequences of history-cued and means-end strategies in problem solving. The American Journal of Psychology, 455-483.
https://theeffortfuleducator.com/2017/11/29/the-pyramid-of-myth/
Kapur, M. (2015). Learning from productive failure. Learning: Research and practice, 1(1), 51-65.
Trninic, D., Sinha, T., & Kapur, M. (2022). Comparing the effectiveness of preparatory activities that help undergraduate students learn from instruction. Learning and Instruction, 82, 101688.