127. Necessary Conditions of Learning by Ference Marton

06/27/22 • 59 min

A listener of the podcast by the name of Malin Tväråna (senior lecturer at Uppsala University's Department of Education) requested in a review of the podcast that I cover this book, and so here it is!

Ference Marton is a professor of Education at Göteburg University. His big idea is about discernment of important features of a situation (what he calls "critical aspects") being a (the?) key element of learning, and therefore the importance of the nature and quantity of variation in instruction. He explains his ideas in theory at length, after which he provides a number of examples of experiments that provide evidence for his interpretation.

This is one of those cases of a simple and apparently obvious idea being particularly fruitful when thoughtfully applied. Of course we can't learn something if we can't notice it, and of course it's difficult to notice something if it's always the same - hence the classic "fish in water" problem. But this retrospectively obvious principle can be used to make learning more effective, and, among other things, is partly responsible for Chinese students doing so well at mathematics.

The book also brings a few other interesting ideas to light, such as starting a lesson from "discovery learning" with a problem and following up with instruction causing a kind of pre-testing effect (I have elsewhere on the podcast spoken about the danger of the former and the value of the latter); and the bizarre case of "generative learning", where people do better on a delayed test than on an immediate test. Marton uses his own theory in trying to explain these and other anomalies (who could blame him?), even in cases where I would find it more natural to reach for a different kind of explanation, but I'm grateful for hearing about these counterintuitive tidbits regardless.

Thank you again Malin! Were it not for you, I wouldn't have known about this author or this book.

Enjoy the episode.

Thank you again Malin! Were it not for you, I wouldn't have known about this author or this book.

Enjoy the episode.

Previous Episode

126. The Master and his Emissary by Iain McGillchrist

"Are you left-brained or right-brained?" Brain lateralisation has been known about in neuroscience since the early days, but it has been a taboo over the past few decades since pop science sources distorted the literature and made the topic disreputable. Neuroscientists could detect differences between the hemispheres in different activities, but they were having trouble understanding the big picture of why there was asymmetry at this fundamental level of brain structure.

Iain McGillchrist used to be an academic of English literature at the University of Oxford, but after becoming frustrated with what he saw as the over-analysis of poetry so as to make it lose its implicit meaning, decided to change career entirely and pursue medicine. Since that time, he has taken ten years to research and write this book about brain lateralisation and its importance to life, culture, and our moment in history.

For me personally, reading this book made me realise that my most commonly used approach to thinking about the mind - cognitive load theory, dividing long-term memory from working memory, and describing the structure and schemata of long-term memory in order to understand the nature of knowledge and learning - never included any reference to brain lateralisation, despite, as it turns out, enormous differences between the two sides. I also had some takeaways regarding my own philosophy and ways of thinking.

In this episode, we will be focusing on McGillchrist's characterisation of the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, with references to many findings from scientific papers, as well as overall themes that emerge from this synthesis. While I can see no real practical insights regarding what to do in a classroom, I believe that this book is a major contribution to our understanding of the mind, the brain, and humanity, and therefore it should interest many listeners.

Enjoy the podcast.

Next Episode

128. Nuance

I wanted to talk a bit about some areas in which my thinking about education has improved with the addition of nuance, and about the ways in which thinking can be more nuanced.

Desirable difficulty - a case where quantification and the awareness of countervailing forces / costs improved my initial, flawed understanding.
Cognitive load theory - a case where I was so enamoured with the power of the model that I had started to equate the it with truth (or confuse the "map" with the "territory"), but a well-put listener comment made me realise that there are phenomena that the theory cannot account for.
Motivation - a case where perspectives offered from other cultures and other disciplines undermined my initial confidence in the findings of psychologists.

I also discuss the idea put forward by Ference Marton in discussing the following questions:

Is learning by yourself better than learning by being taught?
Does homework enhance learning?
Is problem-based learning better than lectures for big classes?
Is individualized learning preferable to group work?
Is project work a good idea?

Marton writes:

The problem with questions of this kind is that they cannot be answered. It is not that they cannot be answered yet, and it is not because of a scarcity of research funds or a scarcity of good ideas. They are simply imponderable because of the degree of generality. Asking these questions is like asking whether pills are better than operations, or whether a hammer is better than a screwdriver, or whether eating is good for your health.

While I do believe that there are some ideas that can be flatly considered wrong or unhelpful, there is something to say for Marton's view. Ultimately a mature understanding requires a well-developed worldview or philosophy, which can't be transmitted in a single sentence. Questions at the level of generality of "Is eating good for your health?" demand a structure to be put in place explaining the nature of human nutrition and digestion, not simply a "yes" or "no" answer.

Enjoy the episode.