this field is required » teaching

learning styles, individual differences, and responsibility

pamela — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 19:34:15 +0000

Recently, I came across this video: “Learning Styles Don’t Exist,” by psychologist Daniel T. Willingham of the University of Virginia. Willingham argues that learning style theories fail to predict the differences in learning that we would expect to see if they were correct (you should go watch, he explains it better than I could). Learning styles theories entail that teachers should figure out students’ learning styles (auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc) and modify their teaching methods to fit them. If learning styles don’t exist, then demanding that teachers do this doesn’t make sense.

There’s also an important followup to the first video: “Re: Learning Styles Don’t Exist.” Here, Willingham emphasizes that there are in fact plenty of individual differences that are relevant to education, such as differences in students’ interests and motivation. Teachers can and should take these legitimate differences into account, just not the mythical “learning style.”

But why do so many people think that there are learning styles, when there aren’t? First of all, the theory has popular opinion on its side. Willingham reports that 90% of University of Virginia students believe that they exist, for instance. Second, although the theory’s applications to the classroom are misguided in the way the first video suggests, it’s actually true that people can learn things in different ways. Third, and maybe most importantly, confirmation bias leads us to inappropriately interpret ambiguous education situations as confirming the theory.

I’m interested in two further reasons why learning styles theory may have become so popular:

It could allow students to deny the existence of genuine individual differences in intelligence ;
It could allow students to externalize responsibility for learning failures.

Sometimes teaching is described as if, were the teacher to say or do something magical, it would unleash the immense learning potential of even the least apparently intelligent student. This student allegedly just has some special, particular learning style, a style that is not currently being acknowledged by the teacher. But all this is wrong. Sometimes people are just not good at certain types of activities or at learning certain types of content (we can leave open whether the cause of these differences is nature or nurture).

For example, I am pretty good at learning content from lectures (in fact, I often ignore talk handouts, which I often find distracting). I am not so good at spatial tasks (maps & directions). It is not the case that, had only my geography teachers verbally described the maps to me, I would have learned that spatial information more easily. Rather, there is a genuine individual difference between me and my classmate who has great spatial skills.

But who really wants to hear that they are just kind of bad at something? It can be psychologically more comfortable for a student to externalize responsibility for failures in learning and blame the teacher instead. Learning styles theory facilitates this, because it purports to provide a scientific basis to justify the demand that we receive an education customized just for us. When no such custom education is forthcoming, we can point to learning style theory and complain that the system has failed us.

These are not good reasons to accept learning style theory. Like it or not, there are cognitive individual differences. Like it or not, some of the responsibility for learning lies with you. Learning style theory fails, in that it represents not only apparently sketchy science but also a reification of wishful thinking.

PS — It seems that I have a bad habit of titling posts with a three word list. I have decided not to resist this tendency, and to add an Oxford comma. I hope I don’t lose readers over this :-)

what's in a name? - labels and tracking

pamela — Fri, 28 May 2010 15:10:12 +0000

Yesterday, I discussed the issue of whether work-related language is appropriate for describing learning. Here’s another language in education controversy that has made it into the news lately:

‘At hope’ kids better than ‘at risk’?: Washington state lawmaker wants to banish negative labels

The bill is motivated by the good-hearted desire for disadvantaged children to see themselves more positively, and for their teachers and others to focus on the children’s potential instead of on their deficits. This change would probably have not merely symbolic importance: psychological experiments provide some reason to believe that the labels we use to describe people actually have effects on their behavior. From a recent Psychology Today blog post:

The long-term consequences of labeling a child like Hannah “smart” or “slow” are profound. In another classic study, Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson told teachers at an elementary school that some of their students had scored in the top 20% of a test designed to identify “academic bloomers”–students who were expected to enter a period of intense intellectual development over the following year. In fact, the students were selected randomly, and they performed no differently from their unselected peers on a genuine academic test. A year after convincing the teachers that some of their students were due to bloom, Rosenthal and Jacobson returned to the school and administered the same test. The results were astonishing among the younger children: the “bloomers,” who were no different from their peers a year ago, now outperformed their unselected peers by 10–15 IQ points. The teachers fostered the intellectual development of the “bloomers,” producing a self-fulfilling prophecy in which the students who were baselessly expected to bloom actually outperformed their peers.

Opponents to the bill object to spending money and time changing just the language of education policy. Rather, they stress the importance of actual reforms, expenditures, programs, etc. for the benefit of these children, whatever we call them. There is also the predictable charge of this being a manifestation of excessive “political correctness.”

I think that everyone’s sort of correct. The “at hope” language could really prevent children from thinking as badly of themselves as the “at risk” label might. However, it would almost certainly fail to bring about the “paradigm shift” in education that its proposer has in mind. So the bill’s opponents are right that the label change in itself won’t revolutionize the treatment of the children, and they’re also right that there might be more important places to spend money than on passing the bill and changing the label. But, at the same time, it would cost relatively so little to make the change that it may well be worth it — such a small amount of money would be unlikely to do as much good elsewhere in the education budget.

At the end of the day, though, this raises what is essentially a question about the “tracking” of students, which is just what it sounds like — placing them on different academic paths based on their abilities or apparent potential. There are plenty of problems with tracking, and this case gets at an important one: even when implemented with the best of intentions, dividing up student in this way may have negative social and academic consequences, possibly even to the point of outweighing the advantages. Part of the negative social and academic consequences could arise on account of the particular label used, such as “at risk.” But it seems to me that many of the negative consequences are inherent to the practice of tracking, and cannot be eradicated by renaming the groups. Kids aren’t stupid — they will very quickly figure out who are the smart or privileged ones among them, and begin behaving accordingly. And teachers will, of course, still know who the smart and/or privileged kids are. This will tend to affect their behavior towards the groups students (if subconsciously), which can very easily lead to self-fulfilling prophecies about the “at risk” or “at hope” children doing poorly.

Therefore, the apparently benevolent legislators behind programs for “at risk” or “at hope” children are fighting against powerful human psychological tendencies. They need for children to be separated into groups so that some of them can be given special attention, instruction and resources. Maybe that is theoretically just and good. But, in forming the requisite groups, one also nearly unavoidably forms a hierarchy and opens the door for the marginalization of groups with low status. It will be difficult to decide in advance whether any particular educational enrichment program’s actual effects will further the goals that its crafters had in mind.

plagiarism, ignorance and responsibility

pamela — Mon, 24 May 2010 16:20:52 +0000

Here’s the third post in a series on cheating/academic dishonesty in college (first post, second post).

A year and a half ago, I taught an introduction to philosophy course independently. The lectures were in person, but the tests were online because the class only met once per week and I didn’t want to use up a whole week’s worth of lecture for each test. The students were repeatedly instructed, both in class and on the test itself, not to use any sources other than their notes and textbooks.

Upon grading the first test, I discovered that a few students had copied and pasted answers or parts of answers directly from Wikipedia and Yahoo! answers. This was very disappointing, and I dreaded having to deal with the situation. I arranged times to speak with the students, planning to deal with them pretty harshly.

However, when I spoke to them, I was surprised by what I heard. At least two of them seemed kind of baffled that what they had done was wrong, as if they didn’t know that it constituted plagiarism and/or as if they had done the copying and pasting totally unthinkingly. This fit with the fact that the rest of their tests were quite good — there was no need for these students to cheat out of fear of failing. It seems that, in today’s internet culture, it didn’t even occur to them that there could be anything wrong with the casual, undocumented use of online sources.

I was, and continue to be, torn about what to do in these cases. On the one hand, I did plainly forbid the use of other sources in the test’s instructions. Taking a test constitutes tacit consent to its terms, and I would have been well within my rights to give the students a zero on the test, or worse.

On the other hand, though, I’m sympathetic to these students on account of the fact that they appear not ever to have had a respect for academic honesty and a crippling fear of accidental plagiarism instilled into them. Babies don’t pop out knowing about plagiarism, after all. Given the sorry state of education, many of my students probably never learned about plagiarism — what counts as plagiarism, how to cite things properly, what the consequences of committing it can be. And if they didn’t have the relevant knowledge, then there is a case to be made that they are less than fully responsible for their acts of plagiarism.

On the other hand (you have three hands, right?), a lack of knowledge concerning plagiarism doesn’t immediately imply that these students have no responsibility for their acts. They could be responsible for not taking the initiative to learn about plagiarism on their own, such as by reading the whole student handbook or the materials made available on the school’s library’s website. This is a kind of second-order responsibility; failing to take these steps reveals a blameworthy deficit of concern for the academic terms to which one has agreed and amounts to a form of negligence.

Furthermore, a lack of knowledge concerning plagiarism also doesn’t immediately imply that the students ought not to be punished for acts of plagiarism. Punishments, blameworthiness, and responsibility are interrelated in complicated and controversial ways. Sometimes there are prudential or moral reasons not to punish someone who is responsible for a bad act and blameworthy for it (punishment would be too expensive, or the person is now old and sickly, or not punishing the person would somehow or other maximize utility). And sometimes there are prudential or moral reasons to punish someone who was not fully responsible for a bad act, and/or who is not properly blameworthy for it. In the plagiarism case, it’s very difficult to tell who did or didn’t know what constitutes plagiarism or that plagiarism is wrong. Maybe it is better to send a message that there is “zero tolerance” for plagiarism of any kind — willful, ignorant, or willfully ignorant. This has the added benefit of saving teachers all the time and trouble of deliberating endlessly about the particulars of a plagiarism incident.

Yet, I remain undecided on this kind of case. Plagiarism is obviously unacceptable, but the circumstances surrounding can differ widely and seem to matter. I hope that in the future, I either never encounter plagiarism again (fat chance) or that it is so egregious that I can punish it without qualms (but isn’t that kind of a weird thing to hope for?)

the wrongness of cheating

pamela — Mon, 17 May 2010 21:42:22 +0000

Last time, I discussed some problems with the theory that, when you cheat, “you’re only cheating yourself.” Today, I have a few things to say on the wrongness of cheating. These are by no means comprehensive or ground breaking, just some food for thought.

First, I’ll backtrack just a little and say that there is a meaningful respect in which you “cheat yourself” when you cheat. Many people agree that there is something intrinsically valuable about an education, apart from its value as a means to a career and a livelihood. As such, in cheating, you may keep yourself from life-enriching educational opportunities that would have had intrinsic value. The line between prudence and morality is not firm or easily defined, however, so it may be difficult to tell whether or not the “cheating yourself” line is more of a distinctively moral aphorism or more of an appeal to a students’ self-interest. You can read my last post as a defense of the latter interpretation. I suspect that people provide this advice to students as a kind of backup motivation for not cheating, in the case that they don’t see the moral force of other-oriented considerations, or just don’t care.

But here are some of those other-oriented considerations, ordered from those typically involving the most to the least harm:

Your fellow students: These are the people who you harm the most when you cheat on a test or on a paper. Even though your professor may not deliberately “curve” grades, he or she surely grades at least somewhat relatively to the abilities and performance of the class. It is very common for a professor to look over the test or papers to get a feel for them before marking any scores. Particularly in a small class, one or two cheaters could skew the grades all by themselves. Further, as Adam notes in this comment, enough cheating can ultimately end up devaluing diplomas. Finally, even if your cheating does not affect anyone else’s grade or diploma, the existence of cheaters negatively affects all students via the effects it has on your teacher (more on this below).
Your teacher: I had no idea of how much cheating (including plagiarizing) harms teachers until I personally began teaching about two years ago. Previously, I figured that it would be kind of fun to catch cheaters and punish them mercilessly. Actually, it hasn’t been like that at all, at least in my experience. I have come to dread reading any work that students have done at home, for fear of finding plagiarism. When I copy and paste a sentence of a student’s work into Google, I brace myself for the results. I didn’t really have an awesome “gotcha!” feeling when I caught someone with a crib sheet during a test. Because cheating and plagiarism happen with quite some frequency, I now approach all students as potential cheaters and must investigate all students’ work (perversely, especially the best work) for evidence of academic dishonesty. This attitude is detrimental to the relationship that teachers ideally ought to have with students: one marked by cooperation, congeniality, goodwill and mutual respect. Beyond a teacher personally being harmed in having to play cheating detective and then deal with the offenders, the negative effects on a teacher can easily trickle back down to the students in changing the way they are treated by a teacher for the worse.
The author: Honestly, I doubt that authors whose work has been plagiarized are often materially or substantially harmed by the plagiarism. In the kind of courses I’ve taught (critical thinking, intro to philosophy, biomedical ethics), very few of the students are headed for academia, and the assignments are not of the type that one could go on to publish. But harm to authors can and does occur, probably mostly when one academic plagiarizes work from a lesser known academic and gets all the credit for it.

I’d really like to hear from anyone else who has teaching experience, either to confirm or disconfirm (2) above.

Also, there are probably even more reasons why cheating is wrong. I want to hear them!

"you're only cheating yourself"

pamela — Mon, 10 May 2010 16:07:09 +0000

As a graduate teaching assistant and course instructor, I’ve encountered cheating and plagiarism a number of times. I know that many of my friends encounter similar issues as well. So, to mark the end of this semester, I thought I’d start a mini-series of posts on the subject.

First up: the “you’re only cheating yourself” perspective on academic dishonesty

Two questions:

1. Does this perspective adequately explain the badness/wrongness of cheating?

2. Does this perspective adequately explain why we enforce academic dishonesty policies?

“You’re only cheating yourself” might explain one aspect of the badness of cheating, albeit in an awkward way. Ordinarily, “cheating” is used to express an act involving fraud or deceit. While academic cheating does involve fraud or deceit, they are not directed towards oneself, as the saying suggests. (And, while it is possible to deceive oneself, cheating and plagiarism are not usually accurately described as self-deceit). Other bad features of cheating do affect oneself, though: cheating (and plagiarism) involve basically telling a lie about the origin of one’s work, and this threatens a person’s integrity. It also cheapens the value of a student’s word, as everyone at least implicitly agrees to some academic misconduct policy by enrolling in courses at a college. But of course, it is much catchier to say “you’re only cheating yourself” than “you’re only harming yourself,” for instance.

But the reformulation of “you’re only harming yourself” starts to make clear what’s wrong with the “you’re only cheating yourself” perspective on academic misconduct — it’s plainly false. While there surely is some sense in which you are cheating/harming yourself, there are also plenty of other people you could be harming, typically including but not limited to the author(s) from whom you stole work and your teacher who has to deal with the problem.

So basically, “you’re only cheating yourself” tries to make cheating look like it’s not in your self-interest and therefore is an imprudent thing to do. But, beyond being imprudent, cheating is typically immoral. As such, “you’re only cheating yourself” provides only an incomplete account of the badness/wrongness of cheating.

But let’s just pretend that “you’re only cheating yourself” were true, and that cheating does not harm anyone other than yourself. It would still be a misguided perspective to hold on cheating, because it can’t convincingly explain why anti-cheating policies are enforced. After all, students do tons of things that are inconsistent with fulfilling their academic potential: drinking too much, not paying attention in class, skimming or skipping assigned readings, etc. Cheating is only one among many such practices, and it is not obviously worse in terms of imprudence or “cheating yourself.“Maybe you’re a student who conscientiously comes to class and reads the textbook, but you’re having trouble writing one little section of a paper and so you plagiarize it. Or, you’ve studied well but you draw a blank on an important test question and so you cheat off of your neighbor. Why are these academic misconduct scenarios necessarily any morally worse than a person who always spaces out or falls asleep in class? In terms of harms to oneself, they are actually better.

It would be seriously and inconsistently paternalistic to enforce academic misconduct policies on the grounds that a student is cheating herself, while not enforcing all other similarly self-harmful student behaviors. Enforcement only makes sense on the assumption that some other people are harmed or have their rights violated when you cheat. More on this next time.

selling philosophy as quasi-science: a parable

pamela — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:32:48 +0000

I came across an interesting post by Adam over at Sophistpundit called Being a Scholar When You Can’t be a Scientist. The author argues that, although disciplines like history and philosophy are not sciences, there exist relevant virtues to be honored in their practice: humility, transparency of method, engaging extensive sources, and clarity of presentation.

I basically agree with all of this. But I have kind of a pragmatic objection to biting the philosophy-isn’t-science bullet all the way, at least in my capacity as a philosophy teaching assistant. Allow me to illustrate this reservation with a virtual skit.

Scene: Philosophy Teaching Assistants’ office. Late afternoon. A young woman, casually dressed, spins in a chair in her cubicle, fiddling with an iPhone.

Enter, stage left. An even younger women, carrying a large backpack, approaches the cubicle and tentatively takes a seat.

TA: Hi, are you here for office hours? What can I help you with?

Student: Well, I studied really hard for the last test, but I only got a B. I thought I knew all the right answers but apparently they just aren’t good enough!

TA: (looking at blue book) Well, on this first question here, you were supposed to show that you know that some things just might be valuable intrinsically, apart from anyone’s beliefs or choices. Do you remember when we discussed that in class?

Student: Um, kind of, I don’t know. I try to take good notes to memorize later but (bracing self) it’s just all so SUBJECTIVE. I’m an engineering major, and in science there are facts. In philosophy, it’s like everyone is just MAKING STUFF UP.

TA: (getting excited) Oh no, it’s not like that at all! So you know how scientific experiments work, right? You come up with a hypothesis and then test it?

Student: (meekly) Yes…

TA: (getting a little too excited) Well it’s actually alot like that in philosophy! We started with a theory — or hypothesis — about the origin of moral value. We decided to test whether all value is necessarily subjective. But then, we did an experiment of sorts! A thought experiment! And we found evidence that subjectivism might not be true! Because we had intuitions that it’s good that a beautiful planet exists, even if no one knows about it!!!!!

Student: Oh, I see now! Philosophers disagree on matters, and they have methods for testing which theories fit the relevant data better!

TA: Hallelujah!

Student: It all makes sense! I love philosophy now! (kissing TA’s feet)

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

teaching philosophy: possibility vs. plausibility

pamela — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:22:14 +0000

Here’s something with which I’ve noticed intro to philosophy students tend to struggle: the difference between it being possible that a theory is true, and the theory’s being plausible. Example:

In the course I’m TAing this semester, one of the topics we discussed is the nature of value. In virtue of what does anything have value, or what is the source or cause of things being valuable? Most of the students have never taken philosophy before, and it seems that many are pre-theoretical subjectivists about value. Very roughly, subjectivism is the view that things get their value from people valuing them. The main alternative to subjectivism is objectivism about value. Objectivism, again roughly, is the view that all or some things just are valuable, independent of anyone’s beliefs, attitudes, choices, etc.

So, in the class, we do this thought experiment where the professor taps students’ intuitions by asking them about the status of a beautiful planet containing a well-functioning ecosystem. By stipulation, no one knows that this planet exists. Is it better that the planet exists than if it didn’t exist? If you had the power and choice to bring such a planet into existence at no cost to yourself and then would forget about it forever, do you have any reason to choose to create the planet?

You’re supposed to get the intuition that you should create the planet. The bigger conclusion to draw is that it’s at least possible that the planet, and maybe other things, could just be valuable, period, regardless of whether anyone cares or even knows about them. Whether subjectivism or objectivism about value is the better theory, all things considered, is a separate question.

But, when asked: “Is it possible that something could be valuable even if no one values it?,” quite a few students, presupposing subjectivism, say no — it is only possible for things to get value from people valuing them. This is false. What they mean is that it is only plausible to think that things get value from people valuing them.

To correct this, you have to teach the student what “possible” means, philosophically speaking. And before you know it, you’re talking about alternate possible worlds, and the laws of physics, and mathematical truths, and it all goes downhill from there. While I always do my best to help students in this sort of case, I can’t help but conclude that the way critical thinking is handled by conventional educational institutions is just far too little, far too late.