5 Ways Science Informs My Teaching
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Teachers often don’t pay enough attention to the science of teaching. I know this because I used to be one of these teachers.
As a journalist, I frequently write about science and health, and am fascinated by the cutting edge of human knowledge. However, for the first half-decade or so of my teaching career as an adjunct professor, that interest did not extend to the science of teaching. I wasn’t against using evidence-based strategies in the classroom, those approaches just weren’t on my radar.
That all changed when I started writing for Tech & Learning and regularly interviewing educational scientists. Before this, I taught primarily by intuition and through a grab bag of ideas learned during my own time as a student or gleaned from colleagues and supervisors. The good news is much of what I did already matched with strong educational science — my intuition, like that of most teachers, has been generally pretty sound. But not everything I or my colleagues did made sense, according to the latest science.
Over my years of teaching, I’ve come across department-mandated practices that have been debunked as ineffective, and have seen things I did in my own teaching that were unlikely to be helpful for my students. Today, I do my very best to avoid these mistakes and try to keep up with the latest teaching research. I’m certainly not perfect in this regard, but I’m hopefully always improving.
Here are some of the main ways in which science now informs my work in the classroom.
1. Avoiding Learning Styles
When I was in college, one of my professors had every student in class complete a learning style questionnaire. According to the questionnaire, I was a "visual learner.” Later, as a teacher, I thought about how I needed to make sure my lectures appealed to visual, audio, and other types of learners. These efforts were at best a waste of time since learning styles are a myth.
The idea of learning styles was popularized by an Australian educator in the 1990s based on his anecdotal observations. Subsequent research has repeatedly failed to find any evidence that learning styles are real. So, needless to say, I no longer take these into consideration when preparing for a class, and instead prioritize my time around teaching strategies that actually work, such as providing individualized feedback.
Unfortunately, I do still find myself interacting with students and colleagues who bring up learning styles, and I am trying to devise better strategies for informing them about the research. Right now I worry that when I contradict people who believe in learning styles, I come off like a jerk.
2. Better Utilization of Video
Sending a student a link to a video explanation of a concept, say comma usage, can feel like a cop out. My thinking used to run like this: “The student is paying the university and, therefore, me, for my expertise, and won’t I do a better job explaining the concept than a YouTube link?”
The answer is actually, “No.” Students will probably learn better from a high-quality YouTube lesson than from me. That’s according to a 2021 study that found students learn better from video lectures than in-person lectures. With this study in mind, I don’t shy away from assigning and sharing vetted videos with students based upon specific knowledge gaps I notice in their work
Dr. Michael Noetel, lead author of this research and professor of psychology at The University of Queensland, told me last year that I wasn’t the only one who worried I was taking a shortcut with video. “For a while, I think educators saw videos as the lazy way to teach, or they thought students only liked videos because they found reading hard,” Noetel says. “That’s starting to change.”
3. More Pretesting
As a student, I hated the stress caused by high-stakes tests. So as a teacher, I’ve mostly avoided these in favor of projects — this is easy to do since I teach writing, which naturally lends itself to projects (papers) better than tests.
These days, however, I’m exploring a new type of testing: pre-testing. This counterintuitive strategy has professors giving ungraded tests to students before they have a chance to learn the material. This may feel weird and counterintuitive, except pretesting has been shown to boost learning.
Being tested in an unfamiliar subject with can be frustrating for students, but when you explain the cognitive benefits, they tend to understand the theory behind it and come around.
4. Less Lecture
I’ve become a big fan of active learning, which research suggests can be more effective than traditional lectures. But again, I used to feel bad about not lecturing as that was what felt the most "school-like” to me.
Now, with active learning in mind, I’m dedicated to devoting more class time to in-class writing and other writing-related projects. I used to worry about not lecturing enough, but now I worry about lecturing too much.
Of course, I have not abandoned direct instruction, as that has strong evidence to support it as well. I have, however, gone away from the idea that true teaching means standing in front of the classroom and imparting wisdom to students. I’ve learned to trust my instincts that the best way to teach students to write is to have them spend as much time as possible — including during class — actually writing.
5. Fighting AI-Generated Papers
I’ve always been against work for work’s sake. Unlike some teachers, I encouraged my students to use automated citation tools, as I didn’t buy any of the arguments against using these, especially for undergrads. So I like the idea that generative AI tools can save students time and believe these are great for helping with spelling and grammar.
That being said, I’m firmly against AI writing replacing student writing even if AI writing gets good enough that students won’t need to write in the future. That’s because of the positive ways in which the writing process is linked to cognition, thinking, and learning. This is well-documented and something most of us have experienced. For example, it’s why you remember a high school history paper or other written projects. And while writing this article I learned more about my relationship to research in the classroom because sitting down to do it forced me to really think about it and remember how I've grown and evolved as a teacher.
Consequently, the research is clear: Students will be robbed of these types of critical thinking experiences if they outsource writing to AI.
