Education Bookcast

Up till now, we've had several episodes looking at the question of "why do people do what they do?". Most recently, we asked and answered that question from the perspective of persuasion, in a sense addressing the sub-question "why are people persuaded to do what they do?". Now we get a chance to look at it with the lens of habit: "why do people do the same things so often? How do these habits form? And how can we get rid of them?" In case you think that habit is unimportant, my first priority would be to disabuse you of that notion. Psychologists estimate that around 40% of people's day-to-day behaviours are based on habit. To put that more strikingly, almost half of our day-to-day decisions *are not decisions*, but things that we do automatically. Doing things according to habit requires little or no willpower, whereas going against it quickly depletes that limited mental resource. People who appear to have strong willpower usually just have deeply ingrained good habits. Habits never really go away. (What?) It is possible to "break" an old habit, but only by replacing it with a new one. Now that you're convinced about the importance of the topic, it's time for me to persuade you to listen to the episode.  You're a smart, curious person. You're just the kind of person who would listen to this. And you've listened to other episodes of the podcast, and other podcasts about psychology and learning. (commitment & consistency) Thousands of people just like you have listened to it already... (social proof) ...and if you delay, the server will be overloaded and there will be none left! So hurry, while stocks last! (scarcity) I've spent all this time making it just for you, won't you do me the kindness of listening to it? (reciprocity) Professor Carol Dweck says you must listen to it. (authority) Nice phone, by the way. (liking) If you're confused about what just happened, try going back and listening to episode 14 again. If you need any more reasons, here are some episode 11-style attempts... Give me 10 reasons why you shouldn't listen to it. (cognitive difficulty) Listen to the Bookcast, it'll have you hooked fast! (cognitive ease) You have to admit, it has a nice logo. (halo effect / judgement by basic assessment) I know you. You pride yourself as an independent thinker, and do not accept others' statements without satisfactory proof. However, you have a great need for other people to like and admire you, and you tend to be critical of yourself. Luckily, you have a lot of unused capacity, which you are yet to turn to your advantage. This episode can help you with that. (Barnum effect) You've already spent so much time reading this, do you want all that time to go to waste? (sunk cost fallacy) Ok, ok, if you don't have time, just listen to the first hour. Oh alright, jeez! The first 20 minutes then! (anchoring) (contrast effect) Enjoy the episode.

So far in the podcast, among other things, we've looked at the topic of motivation. In the last few episodes, we've also started to look at human irrationalities and their consequences. In this episode, we look at a topic that combines "why people do things" with human irrationality: persuasion. Robert Cialdini spent most of his working life searching for the answer to one question: what is it that persuades people to do things that they wouldn't otherwise do? In this classic book, Cialdini summarises his findings over the length of his career as a psychologist. He focuses on the six key "weapons" of influence, as well as a number of specific techniques that "compliance professionals" (salespeople, negotiators, and the like) use to get better results. In particular, he also explains how some of these methods have been used by educators to great effect. And in explaining these methods to us, he gives us an insight into how people's minds work, and a more detailed look at people's irrationalities.  Enjoy the episode.

Last week, we saw the destructive effects of a psychological phenomenon not many people would have heard of known as "stereotype threat". This week, we look at some ways of mitigating the effects of stereotype threat. How can we stop children and students from stereotyped groups from underperforming in exams because of their knowledge of their own backgrounds? David Sherman and Geoffrey Cohen summarise the results of recent research showing that a technique called "self-affirmation" can be used to stop not only stereotype threat, but a host of other irrational behaviours, and gives us a new, different, and somewhat more optimistic view of people's irrationalities. Based on self-affirmation theory, people's irrationalities more often than not don't stem from a "lazy controller" as described by Daniel Kahneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow (see episode 11), but rather from a need to protect one's ego. For example, people will ignore evidence against what they currently believe not because of some in-built, immovable bias, but because the evidence is threatening to their sense of self. All that it takes for them to approach the new evidence rationally is to remind them that their sense of self is strong and multi-faceted enough that changing this one opinion won't lead to an identity crisis. So, were the self-esteem and self-help pioneers right in suggesting that we look at ourselves in the mirror and say how much we love ourselves? It turns out that the "self-affirmation" that Sherman and Cohen refer to is very different - indeed, almost diametrically opposed - to that which has been advocated by numerous self-help gurus. Self-affirmation works when it is *subconscious* and in a *different* field to the one in which one's ego is threatened; the gurus, meanwhile, suggest that we actively face difficulties in learning, for example, by saying "I am intelligent" to ourselves. In short, make sure you understand self-affirmation theory by looking at the evidence first, rather than jumping in with whatever sounds like it might work. An absolute gem that seems not to be much talked about, self-affirmation theory gives us both practical approaches to dealing with problems, and a fresh and surprising theoretical viewpoint on various issues in cognitive science. I hope you find it as fascinating as I do. Enjoy the episode.

Ethnic minorities and women are disadvantaged enough as it is. When considering why members of some ethnic groups tend to do badly in school, and why girls tend to do worse than boys in mathematics, people present all kinds of arguments, including economic, cultural, and sometimes even (very controversially) genetic reasons. A contributing factor that one seldom hears about is the pernicious psychological effect known as stereotype threat. Stereotype threat describes the unconscious tendency for people to worsen their performance in a task when they are reminded of a negative stereotype that a group to which they belong has. For example, when girls are made to put their gender on the front of a mathematics exam script, then they do worse than when they aren't so asked. This means that merely reminding girls of their gender is enough to make them be momentarily worse at maths, as if subconsciously trying to confirm the stereotype. This kind of effect has been repeated with other stereotyped-against groups, such as african american and latino children in the United States. Interestingly, the positive side of the effect seems to be very small - white children don't benefit from being reminded that they are white, for instance. The "reminding" mentioned here can be very subtle. The students don't need to be aware of what is going on - it's a classic subconscious process, like priming. For instance, even getting people to write down what part of town they're from is enough to activate racial stereotype threat. It should be obvious that there are serious practical implications. One in particular that is worth mentioning is that some examinations require students to write down their gender and/or their ethnicity before starting, which is shown to activate stereotype threat and thereby reduce performance. Apparently this is what happens in the USA with the SAT school-leaving test, although I have had trouble confirming this. This article describes the phenomenon, and discusses some potential ways of mitigating the effect. Michelle Goffreda originally wrote it as a blog post on the MIT Admissions blog (http://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/picture-yourself-as-a-stereotypical-male). With her permission, in this episode I read it out and add my own comments.

A classic book on people's irrationalities. Daniel Kahneman is a Nobel Prize-winning psychologist and cognitive scientist. Together with his late research partner Amos Tversky, he co-founded the field of cognitive heuristics and biases in psychology, and that of behavioural economics. This all stems from his investigations into the irrationalities of human thought.   In this book, he explains his findings from a lifetime of research.   NOTES In the introduction to the episode, I mention some PISA reports with international perspectives on education. Here are links to all six volumes of the 2012 report: Volume I: What Students Know and Can Do: Student Performance in Mathematics, Reading, and Science Volume II: Excellence through Equity: Giving Every Student the Chance to Succeed Volume III: Ready to Learn: Students' Engagement, Drive, and Self-Beliefs Volume IV: What Makes Schools Successful? Resources, Policies and Practices Volume V: Creative Problem Solving - Students' Skills in Tackling Real-Life Problems Volume VI: Students and Money - Financial Literacy Skills for the 21st Century The other figure I mention, who talks about education in international perspective with an anti-PISA stance, is Yong Zhao. His website is zhaolearning.com.

Discover the fascinating world of 'flow' as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, where utter concentration leads to peak happiness. Explore how intense focus in activities—from rock climbing to chess—creates timeless moments that enhance learning and fulfillment. Delve into the contrast between enriching pursuits and mundane tasks like watching TV, revealing why challenging activities elevate our well-being. Gain insight into the experiences of dedicated workers and how cultural factors shape our ability to achieve flow in daily life.

Writing in the 1970s, Timothy Gallwey comes eerily close in The Inner Game of Tennis to what modern cognitive scientists have discovered about the nature of the mind. He reminds me of medieval Buddhists whose descriptions of certain mental processes, particularly those to do with meditation, have been confirmed to be highly accurate by modern neuroscience*. Forty years isn't a thousand years, but it's still a long time in cognitive and brain sciences. Gallwey's basic point is that, when we reflect on our "selves", we are actually made up of (at least) two parts. "Self 1" is the voice in your head that actively decides to do things - call it "I". "Self 2" is that part of you that does things without you thinking about it - call it "myself". An example of the actions of Self 2 is when you are holding a pen and a sandwich, and try to eat the pen and write with the sandwich; or (if you're English) when you say sorry for something automatically even though it wasn't your fault; or when you drive all the way to work even though you were engrossed in thought about something completely different, and so, in a sense, weren't concentrating on the road. The relevance of this observation to tennis is that Self 2 should be doing all the work, and Self 1 should shut up. In reality, your bossy, self-obsessed Self 1 tends to try to dominate Self 2 and tell it what to do, which only leads to stress, wasted energy, and worsening outcomes. In other words, people both tend to overthink tennis and to try to "tell themselves" how to correct their problems, which mostly just stresses them out and doesn't produce improved results. What they should really do is just shut up and trust their body (i.e. their Self 2) to do what it needs to do. It might be uncomfortable to not feel "in control" at first, but ultimately greater improvements and a better experience await those who can manage this. Easier said than done, mind you. Of course, The Inner Game of Tennis has application far beyond tennis alone. The book has been popular and influential enough to spawn a veritable tribe of Inner Game books, including that of golf, music, work, and even stress.  The book serves as an experiential, non-technical look at things that we will have to look at the types of issues that we will have to look at in a more evidence-based, nuanced way in future. As well as having more than its fair share of applicable wisdom, it also introduces us to the important idea of our minds being modular, which is very important in looking at learning in general, and is a theme that we will return to. Enjoy the episode.   *Take a look at Daniel Goleman's Destructive Emotions for a more detailed discussion.

Psychological "urban myths" come in a few flavours. Some, such as the idea that high self-esteem leads to less violent behaviour, are so completely, hilariously, overwhelmingly, unambiguously wrong* that you'd be hard-pressed to make up something so deliciously ironic. Others, such as the idea of "motivating" people with contingent external rewards, are deeply flawed, though not utterly wrong under all circumstances**. Then there are the cases where the popular thinking may be more or less right, but the benefits have been overstated and costs overlooked. This article targets one such case.   The power of a clear goal is regularly extolled by people from fields as disparate as game design and life coaching, and has a significant body of scientific evidence going for it. In particular, specific and challenging goals are thought to be the best kind. Specific goals allow for clear feedback, another powerful feature of good learning and work environments. For example, "go to the gym three times a week" is something that you can be clear about whether you're achieving, in a way in which "exercise more" doesn't allow you to be. Challenging goals encourage you to stretch yourself, to get the most out of yourself while not being so difficult that you abandon hope of achieving them.   What could possibly be wrong with this? Lisa Ordóñez and her co-authors consider a number of problems. I counted seven, which neatly fits in with Snow White's seven dwarves, except that I had to give them different, rather more unfortunate names. Specific, challenging goals [dwarves] can do the following: 1. Degrade performance ['underachiever']; 2. Shift of focus away from other important goals ['absent-minded']; 3. Harm personal relationships ['tactless']; 4. Corrode organisational culture ['antisocial']; 5. Motivate risky and unethical behaviours ['thoughtless']; 6. Inhibit learning ['rigid']; and 7. Harm intrinsic motivation ['ennui'].   In reading the paper one thing in particular struck me: there were no nasty side-effects of goals that were challenging but not specific. It was the specificity of goals that was causing all the above problems. Challenge could cause specific goals to "go wild" even more, but on its own, challenge doesn't seem to be causing these ill effects.   So how do we square the above side-effects with the known benefits of specific, challenging goals? The authors give us the following analogy: although a strong medicine may be very good at curing a disease, giving it to a healthy person would only make them feel worse due to the side effects. Similarly, specific and challenging goals should be given out carefully, only in situations where they are needed and can fix a problem, rather than willy-nilly to everyone, even those who are already performing well.   Enjoy the episode.   *Relation of Threatened Egotism to Violence and Aggression: The Dark Side of High Self-Esteem. Roy Baumeister, Laura Smart, and Joseph Boden, Psychological Review, 1996. **See Drive (episode 2 of this podcast) and Punished by Rewards (episodes 5a and 5b).  

So far, we have seen a several books with messages relating to the psychology of motivation, particularly to the conditions under which people have greater motivations to do difficult tasks (Drive, Punished by Rewards), as well as what kinds of attitudes lead to greater learning and improvement (Mindset). In The Practicing Mind, we get a look at the phenomenology of these conditions, i.e. what does it feel like to be intrinsically motivated and have a growth mindset?   Thomas Sterner is a jazz pianist and piano restorer. As a child he found practice to be boring and frustrating, but with time he came to both enjoy it and see greater progress, which he puts down to an originally mostly subconscious understanding of how practice should be carried out. He was particularly struck by the need for a greater public understanding of practice when he took up golf in his mid-thirties.   On the golf course, he would see people who had been playing golf for ten or twenty years who still didn't look much better than beginners. They would be terrible at the game, and yet not know why, or how to change their game. He compares them to musicians who have been playing the piano for twenty years and yet still didn't know that they were supposed to play with their fingers, not their elbows.   Sterner shows us his philosophy of the power and meaning of discipline, focus, and the quieting of the mind. Laced with insights from eastern philosophies, the author shows us the futility of expecting perfection, and the contentment we can gain from an honest relationship with what we are doing. His ideas are applicable in almost any domain of life, if we are to believe, as he does, that "all of life is practice".   The Practicing Mind is something of an unusual book for this podcast in that it proposes ways of practicing better without any evidence other than the author's own experiences to back up its claims. In a bookshop, it would quite possibly be filed under "self-help" rather than "education". And yet, I find this first-person account to be refreshing after speaking about these issues at length from a detached, scientific standpoint. I hope that taking the personal perspective of this individual expert will be something that benefits you as much as it has me.   Enjoy the episode.  

Finally! An episode with the word "teacher" in the title. What kind of teacher is Andrei Toom? And what interesting comparisons does make between education in Soviet Russia and in the USA?   Andrei Toom is a mathematician, and "teacher" here refers to his teaching of undergraduates. The fact that he self-identifies as a teacher should already strike many as strange. In the US, and to some extent in the UK as well, university research staff generally see undergraduate teaching as a burden that is best minimised or gotten rid of, rather than a duty to be fulfilled, a chance to inspire the next generation, or a central part of their job description. Toom not only doesn't see things this way, but is rather disappointed that American professors do, which is one of the things that he communicates to us through his essay.   Starting us off with a description of the difficulties of being an intellectual in the highly censored, dictatorial environment that was Soviet Russia, he then discusses the strange paradoxes of being a professor or a student in a country held up as a paragon of freedom. US students and professors find themselves in an odd situation, he tells us, whereby "the market" seems to play a similar autocratic role to the one that "the system" played in the USSR.   For example, American undergraduates are usually only interested in gaining a piece of paper to certify that they have gained knowledge, not in actually gaining the knowledge - the kind of bureaucratic absurdity that he thought could only exist in a communist state, and yet in Russia students were actually interested in learning something. Not only this, American students seem to frame learning as a loss, in the sense that if they can get all their grades without learning anything, then they would much rather do so. It is as if they are "buying" their degree certificates with learning, rather than thinking of the learning itself as intrinsically valuable. And as with any transaction, the less they have to "pay", the better.   The knowledge that the students do get is brittle. It is only considered to be applicable within the context of exam questions, and ones structured exactly the same as the ones they had seen before. Any, even minor, deviation from what they have seen before is considered irrelevant or too difficult. Toom found that he needed to shore up students' basic mathematics to get them to be able to take the course they were enrolled in, but the students were mostly unwilling to cooperate. Their reaction of defiance rather than shame at not knowing basic maths leads him to question their apparent "right to ignorance".   And yet, the strange power dynamics of American universities mean that the situation stays this way. The students who only want the grades complain, but those who want knowledge don't. There have been cases where students have sued universities for better grades, but no cases where they sued them for more or better knowledge.   I felt that this would be a good time to have an episode on something a bit different to what we've had so far. The focus has been on psychology, and will continue to be for some time, as I feel that it's important to have a good grounding in psychology before going on to such topics as teaching methods and international comparisons. Here we can at least have a flavour of some interesting topics in higher education, international comparison, and the effect of the nature of society, to broaden our perspective and give us a little break from the subject of psychology and cognitive science. It should hopefully also convince you that we will be talking about teaching in this podcast, not just animals and management!   Enjoy the episode.