Education Bookcast

Edward de Bono is an expert on creativity, author of over 40 books on the subject. He invented the term "lateral thinking" in the 1960s, which is now a part of common parlance. Over his long career, he has worked with numerous large corporations such as Microsoft, Apple, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Siemens, Bose, HP, LinkedIn, and Texas Instruments, as well as schools, charities, and governments. His basic premise is that creativity can be taught by direct teaching of thinking skills and techniques, and that this kind of thinking is not a normal part of culture, but that it should be. Controversially, although highly scientifically and mathematically trained, he does not work on scientifically validating his own ideas, only on trying to develop them and promote them, and on making them accessible to a general audience. However, his ideas are nothing if not interesting and original, and I am persuaded enough by much of what he writes that I find it sensible to share it on this podcast. He is also rather top

This is the second part of the episode about Brain-Based Learning. In the previous part, I discussed the chapters concerning relative lateralisation (left/right hemispheres), rhythms (such as circadian rhythms), gender, physical activity, stress and threat, and the senses (vision, touch, taste, smell, and sound). In this episode we look at the chapters on emotions, teacher communication, motivation, attention, teaching how to think, memory, meaning making, and enriching the brain. Enjoy the episode. Music by podcastthemes.com.

Eric Jensen is a former teacher with a PhD in Human Development from Fielding Graduate University. In 1981, he co-founded "the United States' first and largest brain-compatible learning program"[1], and he has been the head of Jensen Learning, a company that trains teachers what he calls "brain-friendly" or "brain-compatible" teaching and learning principles, since 1995. Brain-Based Learning is one of the first books that I read as I was getting into finding out more about education research several years ago. I am quite disappointed with this book. It's not very good. The problems with it are numerous.  Firstly, it does not appear to have any central guiding principles. Generally, a good book will give you ideas in the form of kernels which will be applicable in many situations, and it will show you how those central ideas operate so that you can understand their power and generality. In Brain-Based Learning, Jensen sets out what he wants to tell the reader as essentially a list. This makes it difficult to m

This is an episode which requires little justification for its relevance to education - the title says it all. How We Learn presents a selection of cognitive science's more recent findings, some of which are rather counterintuitive, and gives several "tips" for how one might study more effectively based on these. Topics covered include the importance of forgetting (!) for learning; the effect of context on learning, and the idea that varied context provides for better learning by enhancing the number of cues for memory retrieval; the power of spaced repetition; test-taking as a study method; and incubation and percolation, two ways of enhancing creativity and problem-solving by making use of downtime and the subconscious mind. The idea that seems to run through everything most strongly is desirable difficulty, not a phrase that the author himself uses, but one that he explains in his own way. If there's one key take-away, it's "make learning hard". Personally, most of the topics covered make me think of my ap

I've spent some time thinking about the past 50 episodes of the podcast, and I've identified a number of themes - why people do things; how people get good at things; inner states and beliefs; mathematics education; and educational myth-busting, to name a few. But I decided that this episode would be more interesting and helpful if it linked as many ideas as possible under a single umbrella. So, what's the most important idea that I talked about these past (almost) two years? To my mind, many episodes focused on the interaction between the subconscious and the conscious in learning. This led to considering the optimal interaction between the two - flow - and the best known conditions for encouraging flow, both externally (games) and internally (process orientation).  In this episode, I remind the audience of these ideas and their connections to try to produce an overview of much of the past 80 or so hours of audio. Hopefully it will be a good review for those who have been listening thus far, and it might be

Explanations can broadly be categorised according to two adjectives: nomological and mechanistic. Mechanistic explanations are to do with cause and effect, and focus on events and causes that immediately precede the fact that we desire to explain. Nomological explanations are based on general principles. The following is the definition of the word "nomological": nomological. adj. Relating to or denoting principles that resemble laws, especially those laws of nature which are neither logically necessary nor theoretically explicable, but just are so. Here are some word pairs that I came up with that are near-synonymous to the above two terms, and help to clarify their meaning: NOMOLOGICAL vs MECHANISTIC. Why vs How. Simplifying explanations vs Causal explanations. Morals of stories vs Stories themselves. General laws vs Causal systems. Strategy vs Tactics. Atemporal vs Temporal. Essence vs Origin. Solution vs Process. Intuition vs Calculation. Cutting the knot vs Untying the knot. Whole vs Parts. "Abstract" vs

Josh Waitzkin was the international under-18 chess champion at age 18, only to quit chess at age 22 and pursue Tai-chi Push Hands, the martial application of Tai Chi. He became world champion in this martial art at age 28, and won the title several more times since then. As an accomplished competitor in two fields - one mental, one mostly physical - a book written by him about how he learns is obviously going to contain some interesting ideas. The main themes of what he writes about are two: learning by focusing on principles and deeply understanding the fundamentals; and how to increase concentration and overcome distraction. Interestingly, many of the things that Waitzkin writes in his own personal way square with a lot of findings of cognitive science, many of which we already talked about in other episodes of the podcast. Ideas such as the role of the subconscious, chunking, and expert blindness all appear in his writing, but he usually refers to these by other names. Two quotes from the book didn't make

This book is about shame. Shame is a taboo emotion in our culture. It is not talked about, which is part of what makes it so powerful, and part of its essence - it is an emotion of disconnection, or feeling rejected or not worthy of the group. It can affect students as well as teachers, almost always negatively. Students can experience it coming from teachers (often with good intentions), or coming from other students as a form of bullying. In an educational or work setting, shame is often used as a motivator. It doesn't work, though. Guilt can be a motivator, because guilt is about regretting something that you have done; but shame is about regretting who you are, which does not spur one on to action. Guilt and shame can be seen as the growth- and fixed-mindset versions of the same psychological mechanism (this last is my conclusion, not Dr Brown's). Shame is also distinct from humiliation. Humiliation is when you don't believe that you deserve the undermining of your dignity that has occurred; whereas shame

In this episode, we will look at the article Seeing the Glass Half Full: A Review of the Causes and Consequences of Optimism by Mary Forgeard and Martin Seligman. (The name of the article was so long that I thought it might be better to give the episode a to-the-point, minimalistic title.) Since we just looked at self-esteem and at self-compassion, I thought it might be good to take a look at another concept within the same general psychological area: optimism. Is optimism good for you? What causes it? And how does it affect academic performance? This episode is a very short one, the reason being that the answers to many important questions about optimism remain unanswered. Optimism does appear to be good for you, but there is no clear answer on whether it is good for academic achievement; and the article's answer to "what causes it?" is the academic writing equivalent of saying "y'know, stuff".  Having a look through Google Scholar also didn't bring up many papers that were answering my questions. So, in sho

We've seen in the previous episode how trying to increase one's self-esteem is a dangerous proposition, and how having high self-esteem is not necessarily a good thing. Now it's time to look at another approach to the self which is a lot more promising. Self-compassion is an idea taken originally from traditional buddhist psychology, but now studied fairly extensively with the scientific method. In a word, it's being nice to yourself. It is trying to be your own "best friend" by thinking about how a good friend would relate to you in moments of difficulty, and adopting that behaviour towards yourself. This is in sharp opposition with self-criticism, which is most people's response when something is going wrong in their lives. There are three main components of self-compassion: mindfulness, common humanity, and kindness. Mindfulness is about being aware of what is happening in the present moment, rather than getting lost in thoughts about the past, the future, or hypothetical events. Common humanity is the ide

Self-esteem is a psychological concept that has penetrated everyday language. In many Western countries, it is generally understood that high self-esteem is essential to health, happiness, and success. Is this really the case? And how did this idea spread? So much was the excitement about self-esteem in the early 90's that the California state legislature set up a Task Force to Promote Self Esteem and Personal and Social Responsibility, with an annual budget of over $700,000. All it took was some politicians with unusual metaphysical beliefs and flexible interpretations of the words of scientist ("The news most consistently reported is that the association between self-esteem and its expected consequences are mixed, insignificant or absent" was somehow re-interpreted to mean "self-esteem is the social vaccine" and "a giant step for mankind"). Add a media frenzy and the drowned-out voices of dissenters and you have the beginnings of a highly misleading movement. High self-esteem does not cause what it was expe

I spent a month in summer in Lithuania on a language course. Some events while I was there prompted me to realise something about education that I had heard before, but never quite understood. The music played in this episode is Lietuvos istorijos repas by Šventinis bunkuchenas. Enjoy the episode.

It reduces productivity, prevents learning, reduces effective IQ, disrupts relationships, undermines creative thinking, and saps self-control. It increases the risk of depression, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, and ADHD.  What is it? Lack of sleep. Sleep is essential for learning. We spend around a third of our lives in this state, and yet we take up much less than one third of our time thinking about how to make it better. In Night School, not only can we learn all about how sleep works, but also we can find out how to get better at sleeping. The "sleep problem" around the world is quite serious. Over 30% of British and American adults and around 80% of American teenagers do not get the sleep they need. 1 in 10 British adults takes some form of medication to help them sleep. Lack of sleep is responsible for $150 billion of lost productivity per year, and about 100,000 road deaths per year, not to mention the increased rates of heart disease and other ailments mentioned above. But this

Sir Ken Robinson's TED talk Do Schools Kill Creativity is the most popular TED talk ever given, with just under 45 million views at the time of my writing this. It is so influential that Robinson has a page on his website devoted to feedback forms about how the talk changed people's lives. It is also nonsense. And yet, somehow, I was also convinced by it when I first heard it. The weakness of Robinson's arguments combined with the powerful effect he seems to have on people are testament to his incredible skill as a public speaker. The talk demands closer scrutiny even if only to take notes on how to give persuasive presentations. Almost all of Robinson's claims given in the talk are either given without any supporting evidence or argumentation, or are demonstrably wrong. A large portion of his statements are of the "I strongly believe that..." form, reminiscent a church pastor or of George W. Bush. The remaining time is padded out with well-chosen jokes and anecdotes, which appear to support his case, but, mo

I thought it was about time to cover something about books on this book-related podcast! Keith Stanovich and Annie Cunningham are two researchers who have spent their careers working together to understand the effects of reading on knowledge. Their research aims to answer a few questions in particular: 1. How much does reading matter in increasing people's knowledge? Is amount of reading irrelevant, since amount of information absorbed depends so much more strongly on innate intelligence than it does on exposure to more information? 2. How does reading compare to other sources of knowledge? Is reading particularly important or special in some way, or do people tend to gain as much and as high-quality information from other sources? The answers to these two sets of questions are very clear from Stanovich and Cunningham's research: 1. Reading is a much more important factor than innate intelligence, as far as knowledge is concerned. Extent of exposure to print even in literate societies varies greatly between i

11% of children and 4% of adults in the US are said to have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Dr Richard Saul has been a specialist in attention and learning problems in children and adults since the 1970's. He says that there is no such thing as ADHD.  What, then, are all these children and adults suffering from? Dr Saul answers this question very thoroughly. It could be any of the following: Vision problems Sleep disturbance Substance abuse Mood disorders (bipolar disorder, depression) Hearing problems Learning disabilities Sensory processing disorder Giftedness Seizure disorders Obsessive-compulsive disorder Tourette's syndrome Asperger's syndrome Neurochemical distractibility/impulsivity Schizophrenia Fetal alcohol syndrome Fragile X syndrome Poor diet Iron deficiency Allergies Hyperthyroidism Pituitary tumour Prematurity Heavy metal poisoning If you or someone you know has been suspected to have ADHD or been diagnosed with it, then you might be interested to find out what is at the root

This continues the episode about The Geography of Thought, looking at more ways in which the cultural differences manifest themselves in differing psychologies of people from different parts of the world. Themes include: Visual perception; Descriptions and understandings of the self; Attitudes to choice; "Fitting in" versus uniqueness; Attitudes to the law and contractual agreements; Factors affecting motivation; Preference for different types of reasoning; and Approaches to blame and causality. I also answer some questions posed at the beginning of last episode, namely: Why do modern Asians excel at science and maths, and yet have few Nobel prizewinners? Why were the ancient Chinese good at algebra and arithmetic, but bad at geometry, which the ancient Greeks excelled in? Why did the West outpace the East in science and technology, given how far ahead China was in the fourteenth century? The big idea here, as before, is that our thinking about psychology and education may be less universal than we realis

Unlike many books that I cover, this is one that I read recently and felt an urgent need to share its contents even before I got to the appropriate theme in a series of episodes. It hit me right where it hurts - in my fundamental assumptions about human nature. As I research the field of education and produce this podcast, I have been generally assuming that people are more or less the same everywhere in their fundamental modes of thinking and feeling. I presumed that the topic of motivation, for example, or that of cognitive biases, can be covered in a more or less general way. However, this book has had me realise that different people from different places think in very, very different ways... and that I (and the majority of my listeners) are among the people on the extreme end of a spectrum that runs from East to West. People in the East and West think differently from each other in fundamental ways. Consider the following: Which two of these three would you consider to form a natural group: monkey, cow,

I've received a lot of messages from listeners (as well as from an author!) in the past few days. Several of these messages are things that I would like to share, and there are two in particular that I would like to talk about since I imagine there may be many listeners who have the same questions. Firstly, I talk about my interactions with the folks at Reacting to the Past, and in particular with Mark Carnes, who emailed me within a day of the release of the episode about his book (Minds on Fire). I then talk about homeschooling, as I had a request from a listener for information on this topic, as she is considering homeschooling her children. Although I plan to cover homeschooling and unschooling in some detail on the podcast, I do not have plans to do this for some time as there are other topics to cover, and so I thought it would be good to have a quick summary for those who are bursting to hear about it. Finally, I talk about social media, and in particular its use at university. A listener contacted me

The words "theory" and "fun" in such close proximity may make you suspicious. Or, they may make you curious. "Fun" is one of those ideas that is so natural and intuitive, and yet for that very reason is so hard to pin down. Raph Koster has a somewhat peculiar view of what fun is: "Fun is just another word for learning." As the head of Sony Online Entertainment, I'm inclined to believe him. If fun is learning, how do we ensure everyone in education gets more of it - and the right kind? This book is a meditation on certain central themes in the theory of games and play, and provokes us to think about why games aren't used more in education. (Correction: I try to provoke you to think this, based on some concepts taken from the text.) The problem seems not to be whether games teach, as they always do. They problem is that they aren't teaching the right things. We go in with questions. We come out with an understanding of the central problem of game design for education. Not a bad way to spend an hour. Enjoy the e