Dr Mark Carter, senior research fellow at MultiLit and Dean of the Academy for the Science of Instruction, has proposed our own cognitive biases have essentially allowed flawed teaching approaches – and many ideas about learning with no evidence behind them – to take root in our teacher education faculties and schools.
“Certainly, controversial claims and interventions are not unusual in education,” he tells EducationHQ.
“In fact, we’ve provided a pretty fertile ground for lots of pseudo-science over the years. And what we often see is people take very highly polarised positions.
“And in some cases, they adopt practices that don’t really have any supporting evidence and sometimes even continue these practices when we have evidence that they are either not optimal or, in some cases, not effective at all.”
One prime example of this, Carter says, is the enduring whole language approach to literacy instruction – a widely discredited pedagogy that has endured for decades in Australian schools, albeit under a rebranded ‘balanced literacy’ banner.
“This was despite being at odds with decades of scientific research on reading, and how children acquire reading, and the most effective ways of teaching reading.
“It’s a really classic example of something that’s been extraordinarily persistent, despite the fact we’ve had evidence for many, many decades that it’s not a particularly good approach…” Carter notes.
Education departments and the ITE sector have also long pushed ‘guide on the side’ approaches to teaching novice learners, which have been seen in the ‘various flavours’ of discovery learning and constructivism that have seeped into classrooms, Carter says.
“This is inconsistent with large bodies of research about the way that novices learn, and also the ways we can provide effective instruction to learners who are acquiring these foundational skills.
“Fortunately, there’s a wind of change at the moment, but these approaches have actually persisted for decades and do remain widely endorsed either covertly or overtly.”
The learning styles myth is yet another baseless idea that’s flourished, the expert says.
“And this is really intuitively appealing, and it’s really widely accepted by educators.
“In fact, there’s research across the world that suggests that a very large proportion of teachers actually believe [in this myth].”
Despite a considerable body of evidence showing students in fact do not learn better when locked into a particular learning style, Carter says the theory is a deceptively alluring one.
“You can understand why people are very attracted to the idea, it’s really appealing and it really [seemingly aligns] with our daily observations. But in practice, it just doesn’t work.”
Dr Mark Carter says misguided ideas about what works best in teaching and learning have taken hold largely because decisions have been made on intuition, not evidence.
A former teacher, Carter has a long-held interest in identifying the cognitive origins of bad decisions in education and how two people can look at the same information and draw conclusions that are at complete odds.
The expert has concluded it all comes down to the various biases we hold.
“All of us, including myself – although I don’t like to admit it – we have a range of inherent cognitive biases, which are consistent tendencies that lead us to misperceive, misinterpret, or misunderstand what we see in the world,” he explains.
“And that results in our poor decision making and ultimately in poor choices.”
Confirmation bias is an obvious one that’s plagued the sphere of education academia, Carter contends.
“[This is] where we tend to favour information that confirms with a view that we already have – and you’ll see people seek out information that’s consistent with what they already believe.
“They will often look at information and only see what they’re really looking for, and not see the information that’s consistent with, or inconsistent with, that view.
“And also, we tend to remember the things that are consistent with what we already believe.”
The result is that where confirmation bias exists, those that hold a particular view about education will have a very hard time changing their mind about it, Carter says.
“And most of us don’t,” he adds.
In recent years education academics have faced increasing criticism for promoting constructivist-inspired views and approaches to teaching and learning that don’t work on the ground in schools and are at odds with the evidence.
Carter says he’s seen cases where people’s own identity has become fused with specific ideas. This makes any criticism or prompt for change quite personal, he notes.
“It becomes part of people’s worldview, so it’s almost like asking someone to change religion, to switch from being Hindu to being Muslim, for example.
“And when you’re challenging (their) evidence, you challenge what they’re doing, it feels like an attack on their worldview.
“So, it’s something that they tend to react to and they defend their position, often quite strongly.”
Cognitive biases are precisely the reason we need to ensure education decision-making is based on solid research, Carter asserts.
The cost of not doing so is significant, he warns.
“Often there’s a substantial financial investment in these sorts of ideas for sub-optimal benefits, and for no benefit in some cases.
“And … [poor decisions] tend to waste time and resources that could be devoted to options that are much more likely to be effective and to improve learning for students.”
Carter warns that every time we run with a flawed approach in education we are ultimately adding fuel to a harmful fire.
“Each time we propagate the flawed thinking processes and the institutional decision making that results in these sorts of programs or approaches being adopted.
“I think that really makes it more likely that we make similar mistakes in future.”
While ‘extraordinary positive’ shifts toward teacher-led instruction and the science of learning are underway within state and federal education departments as well as some universities, Carter stops short of saying it will be smooth sailing from here.
“There’s still a lot of resistance to a more evidence-based approach in education, so exactly how it’ll shake out in the long term I’m not sure...”
Dr Carter will be presenting on ‘Evaluating controversial claims in education: Why we make mistakes and how to avoid them’ at an upcoming MultiLit Summit in May.
