Gdp2 2013 14-7

TeachingTHE TEACHER EFFECT

IMPACT OF TEACHER TRAINING ON TEACHER QUALITY

RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE TEACHING: TUTORING, PEER TEACHING, COOPERATIVE LEARNING

SOCIAL LEARNING MECHANISMSIS TEACHING A NATURAL COGNITIVE ABILITY?

The teacher effect

• Studies show that primary education has a long-term impact on pupils, which goes beyond school results

• It seems to be the case that the quality of the teacher plays a role in this impact

• The impact of teachers is difficult to evaluate

• The characteristics of the teacher that might account for the effect are not clearly identified

BUT

• Follow up study 1985-1989 Tennessee

• 11571 pupils – Random distribution into classes (K-3)

• Link experimental data with administrative records (tax returns)– Control for family socio-economic

level: age mother had 1st child, retirement savings

– Search correlations between classroom indicators (number of pupils per class/teacher quality/classroom quality) & socio-economic indicators when adults (earnings at 27, college attendance, homeownership, retirement savings)

• Increase in tests scores at end of K is positively associated with earnings at 27, college attendance, house ownership, savings

• Small class size (small classes = 13-17) positively correlates with college attendance, but not with earnings

• More experienced teacher positively correlates with earnings

• Classroom quality positively correlates with college attendance, earnings & other criteria

Chetty et al. (2011) HOW DOES YOUR KINDERGARTEN CLASSROOM AFFECT YOUR EARNINGS? EVIDENCE FROM PROJECT STAR

– 2,5 M students– Grades 3-8– 18 M tests

(English+Mathematics)– 20 years (1989-2009)– Control for family socio-

economic level: age mother had 1st child, retirement plan

• Teacher VA is predictive of the students’ results– Once the family effect is

controlled, the effect of the teacher on school results remains

• Teacher VA is predictive of long-term results in life– Students assigned to

teachers with high VA (1DS) for at least 1 year, at age between 9 and 14 show positive correlation with• College attendance• Salary, Savings• Quality of neighborhoods• Negative association with

teenage pregnancy

Chetty et al. (2011) THE LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF TEACHERS: TEACHER VALUE-ADDED AND STUDENT OUTCOMES IN ADULTHOOD

Teacher Value-Added = evaluation of the quality of teaching by measuring the teacher’s impact upon students’ tests’ scores

• The arrival of a new teacher with high VA (top 5%) in a school correlates with better results of the school at the tests as compared to previous years; the leaving of a teacher with high VA correlates with less good results that previous years

• The teacher value-added effect is present in situations in which teachers do not receive primes and other forms of incitation for results• The risk is otherwise that of

teaching for the test

Teacher VA seems to have an impact both on the students immediate results at tests and long-term extra-academic effects

• Some bizarre facts– Once the teacher changes, results at the tests

of the successive years are not affected – They become visible again only at the level of

the extra-academic long-term impact!

• Maybe– Impact on non-cognitive aspects that are

significant for success in adulthood but not for tests’ scores in following years (?)

• difficulties in evaluating teacher impact upon pupils, even in the short term

What causes the effect?• Studies are mostly not experimental

(excluded the one cited above)• Children are not necessarily

randomly assigned to classes• Even if some variables are

controlled for (such as family socio-economic level), other variables aren’t (such as pupils’ motivation)• It can be the case in the

USA, but not in France• One cannot easily infer the

existence of a causal effect

• Pupils, Classroom, School: how to distinguish whether the effect is produced by the one or the other?

• One needs to check the results of the same teacher with different classrooms and of the same classroom with different teachers

• It is not the case in France, at least simultaneously, only on a sequence of years

• Is there a real effect? • How to evaluate pupils’

performance?• Test results are not

enough: they do not take into account the progression of the student

• Once these difficulties are taken into account• There still seems to be something like a teacher

effect• Teacher quality might account for 10%-15% of

the variance between the results of pupils assigned to different teachers

• This effect is greater than the school effect and the reduction of the size of the classrooms

• It drops down quickly when the teacher changes, but is present at adulthood

• It is not equal for any discipline: more relevant for mathematics than for language

Cusset (2011) Que disent les recherches sur l’“effet enseignant” ?

• Depuis quatre décennies, un ensemble de recherches menées dans le domaine de l’éducation a pu confirmer l’intuition de nombreux parents : les progrès de leurs enfants dépendent de manière significative du talent et des compétences de leurs professeurs.

• En tenant compte de l'influence des autres variables explicatives, notamment le niveau initial et la catégorie professionnelle des parents, 10 % à 15 % des écarts de résultats constatés en fin d’année entre élèves s’expliquent par l’enseignant auquel l’enfant a été confié.

• Ces études livrent d’autres résultats intéressants :

Chetty et al. 2001Chetty et la 2011Nye et al (2004)

• l’ampleur de l’“effet enseignant” est supérieure à celle de l’“effet établissement” : le professeur a davantage de poids sur la progression des élèves au cours d’une année donnée que l’établissement dans lequel ces derniers sont scolarisés ;

• la portée d’une augmentation de l’efficacité pédagogique d’un enseignant est aussi potentiellement supérieure à celle d’une diminution de la taille des classes ;

• l’effet de l’enseignant qu’a eu un élève une année donnée s’estompe assez vite une fois que l’élève change d’enseignant ; mais les impacts des enseignants successifs peuvent se cumuler.


• Si l’existence de “l’effet enseignant” est aujourd’hui solidement étayée, il reste que l’efficacité d’un enseignant ne se laisse pas prédire par des éléments aisément objectivables tels que son niveau de formation initiale ou son ancienneté. C’est dans l’interaction avec les élèves que se joue l’essentiel des différences.


Which teachers’ characteristics are predictive of teachers’ impact upon pupils?

• Only 9 out of 1300 studies selected, of which– 3 non-published PhD theses– 5 experimental studies

• Effects concern teacher training, not teacher trainers

• Positive effects exist only for training actions > 14 hours

• Training actions are varied (length, contents, modalities): it is difficult to say what works even when it works – no regularities can be extracted

Yoon et al. (2007) Reviewing the Evidence On How Teacher Professional Development Affects Student Achievement

Good studies are rare

Experience?Certification, training?

Selection effect

• An administrative forecasting mistakes (in France) has allowed to compare the differential impact of teachers with and without certification– Experience

• Only limited to the first years of teaching, after which no more difference

– Certification, training• Only limited to the first years of

teaching, and in particular to certain disciplines such as mathematics

• The impact of teachers’ training seems to be limited

Bressoux et al. (2008) Teachers’ Training, Class Size and Students’ Outcomes: Learning from Administrative Forecasting Mistakes.

Experience?Certification, training?

• Need better measures– MET : Measures of Effective Teaching – (2009 – )– 3000 teachers (primary/secondary) – 5 measures of the impact of teachers

• Students’ results at standardized evaluations + reasoning & conceptual understanding tests

• Classroom observations• Adoption of specific scales e.g. Quality Science Teaching,

Stanford Unviersity http://scale.stanford.edu/teaching/qst, UTeach Teacher Observation Protocol (UTOP), University of Texas-Austin

• Evaluation of pedagogical capacities• Students’ evaluation of the classroom & teacher• Teachers’ evaluation of the environment and support

http://scale.stanford.edu/teaching/qst

http://scale.stanford.edu/teaching/qst





Bloom (1984)

2-sigma problem

Comparison of:- Conventional teaching- Mastery learning (conventional + formative tests)- Tutoring + formative tests

Slavin (1996) Cooperative learning

Research on cooperative learning is one of the greatest success stories in the history of educational research.

Hundreds of studies have compared cooperative learning to various control methods on a broad range of measures, but by far the most frequent objective of this research is to determine the effects of cooperative learning on student achievement.

Further, cooperative learning is not only a subject of research and theory, but it is also used at some level by millions of teachers.

While there is a growing consensus among researchers about the positive effects of cooperative learning on student achievement as well as a rapidly growing number of educators using cooperative learning at all levels of schooling and in many subject areas, there is still a great deal of confusion and disagree- ment about why cooperative learning methods affect achievement and, even more importantly, under what conditions cooperative learning has these effects.

Slavin (1996) Cooperative learning

• What works?• It is not the case that any kind of cooperation works

• Group goals and individual accountability• But the presence of both conditions might be unnecessary in

• Structured controversy, Solving complex problems• Presence of external goals• Structured reciprocal tutoring• ..

• Why it works?• Motivation• Social cohesion• Mental processing of information

• Zones of proximal development partially overlap• Explaining a concept to others helps understanding through

elaboration

Research is needed

Research is needed

Hole in the wallhttp://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/index.html

Reciprocal teachingPeer-teachingPeer educationPeer tutoring

Palincsar & Brown (1984)

Peer tutoring is an opportunity for you to connect with a student who has previously done well in your course. Among the reasons students seek peer tutoring are the chance to work through problem sets, develop a better understanding of concepts, prepare for an exam, and build confidence in understanding course materials in a supportuve environment with a fellow student. Most tutoring is one-on-one, but occasionally tutors also work with groups of students. Over 5,100 hours of peer tutoring take place under the Bureau's auspices each academic year. Last academic year, approximately 400 peer tutors fulfilled requests from more than 600 tutees in over 175 courses.

http://bsc.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k73301&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup141100

Goldin MeadowCook, Duffy, Fenn (2013) Gestures

Children who observe gesture while learning mathematics perform better than children who do not, when tested immediately after training. How does observing gesture influence learning over time? Children (n = 184, ages = 7-10) were instructed with a videotaped lesson on mathematical equivalence and tested immediately after training and 24 hr later. The lesson either included speech and gesture or only speech. Children who saw gesture performed better overall and performance improved after 24 hr. Children who only heard speech did not improve after the delay. The gesture group also showed stronger transfer to different problem types. These findings suggest that gesture enhances learning of abstract concepts and affects how learning is consolidated over time.

Baumard (2013)Cahuc & Algan ()

Horizontal/Vertical Teaching

Les auteurs ont comparé l’effet de l’enseignement dit « vertical », où l’enseignant fait cours du

haut de l’estrade et garde une distance importante avec les élèves, et l’effet de l’enseignement «

horizontal », où la distance entre l’enseignant et les élèves est moindre, et la part de travail en

groupes plus importante. L’étude montre que plus l’enseignement est horizontal, plus les enfants

font confiance aux autres élèves, aux membres de leur société, ainsi qu’aux différentes

institutions.We use several data sets to consider the effect of teaching practices on student beliefs, as well as on organization of firms and institutions. In student level data, teaching practices (such as teachers lecturing versus students working in groups) exert a substantial influence on student beliefs about cooperation both with each other and with teachers. In cross country data, teaching practices shape both beliefs and ‐institutional outcomes. The relationship between teaching practices and student test performance is nonlinear. The evidence supports the idea that progressive education promotes social capital.





“Child development is today conceptualized as an essentially social process, based on incremental knowledge acquisition driven by cultural experience and social context. We have “social” brains.” (Goswami, 2008, p. 1)

Social learning mechanisms FROM LESSON 2

Imitation

FROM LESSON 2

Cooperation Testimony

FROM LESSON 2

HumansPrimatesOther animals

What does evolution have to say about social learning& teaching?

Lessons from animal teaching

• Some forms of social learning are recognized to be present in several species• Nevertheless, some continue to consider that humans are special in what

concerns social learning

In particular:

• Teaching has often been considered as being specific to humans• Teaching has been considered as being related to the intention to teach• A flexible, generalizable ability facilitated by the ability to make

assumptions about others’ knowledge (mind) • This consideration is under revision, but in a surprising way

Thornton & Raihani(2008)

Hoppitt et al. (2008)

Several social learning mechanisms can be observed in many taxa

Blue titsJapanese macaquesChimpanzees

If culture is defined in the most general way as behavioral conformity spread or maintained by nongenetic means, then these means must involve either social learning or social influence.Social influence and stimulus enhancement appear to be widespread among birds and mammals (see Heyes & Galef, 1996), and thus so do cultures, defined in this way

Whiten (2000)

Social learning mechanismsObserved in several taxa

Situation: In a similar situation, animal A does the same thing than primate B

What has happened?

Individual learningNon social process: A & B have Independently found the same solution

The solution is prompted by the situation & available in the cognitive kit of primates: social interaction not required

Social influence: e.g. exposure - Because B tends to be with A B is exposed to the same to the same situation

Social learning: e.g. stimulus enhancement/observational conditioning – A’s action draws B’s attention on the situation e.g imitation/emulation - B learns the FORM/CONTENT from A’s behavior Whiten (2000)

The solution is prompted by the presence of another individual of the same species

Humans are social animals. But one can go further than that: there are ways in which we are more deeply social than any other species on earth in our cognitive makeup. This distinctive social ‘depth’ in human cognition includes extensive penetration of each other’s minds (‘mindreading’ or ‘theory of mind’), learning major swathes of what we know and do from the culture we inherit (cultural learning), exploiting cooperation to achieve much greater things than we could individually, and communicating through language …In these zoologically extraordinary social achievements may lie key explanations for the heights human intellect reaches and the particular ways in which our cognitive system functions.

Whiten (2000)

Social learning& the Evolution of culture

But distinctive as they are, these human abilities have evolved from prehuman primate foundations

Whiten (2000)

Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate relatives.The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a species-specific set of social- cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large numbers of two of humans’ closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting the hypothesis that humans simply have more “general intelligence,” we found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social world.

Herrmann et al. (2007)

The cultural intelligence hypothesis

Debate aboutcultural learning in humans and other primates

Human cultural learningCan exploit true imitation= recognize intentions

Can other primates Mind read, share intentions?

Mind reading

Shared attention/intentions

Tomasello, Kruger, Ratner (1993)Tomasello & Herrmann (2010), Tomasello et al (2005), Jherrmann et al. (2007)

Motivation forcooperation

Human cultural learningCan exploit motivation for cooperation

Are they motivated forcooperation?

It has been suggested that there are two main classes of behaviour that

accomplish the transfer of these cultural forms across individuals: imitation (or,

more generally, observational social learning), in which the recipient is solely

responsible for the successful acquisition of knowledge, and teaching, in which

the donor has an active role in the transmission of cultural information [1].

Although various forms of observational social learning are widespread in non-

human animals [2], it is generally assumed that teaching is a human-specific

activity [3–5]. However, this consensus has now been brought into question.

Csibra (2007)Natural pedagogy


Why teaching is considered to exist in different taxa?


• Revision of the definition of teaching• Hauser & Caro (1992) have proposed a functional definition of teaching,

based on observational criteria• Before:

• teaching requires intention to teach (Difficult to ascertain on animals other than humans)

• Flexible & generalizable, adjustment to the learner’s change in knowledge


Thornton & Raihani (2008)

Galef (1992)Premack & Premack (1996) Tomasello (1994)

Olson & Bruner (1996)Hauser & Caro (1992)

Is there teaching in non-human animals? Hauser & Caro (1992)

1. It occurs only in the presence of a naïve observer2. It is costly and does not provide any immediate

benefit to the teacher 3. It facilitates knowledge acquisition or skill learning

in the observer

Do these criteria satisfy what we would call human teaching? Is there something specific to human teaching?

Functional criteria for teaching:

Multiple forms of teaching in animals. E.g:• information donation via scaffolding or

opportunity teaching• information donation via punishment /

reward or coaching

Babbling birdsTandem AntsMeerkats…

Animals of certain taxa are considered to teach

What the ants and the babblers do could be considered as charitable information donation, whereas the meerkat helpers’ behaviour seems to be a good example of what is called ‘scaffolding’ (modifying the environment to support individual learning) in developmental psychology.

However, the prototypical human teaching is neither pure expression of episodic information nor just environmental scaffolding but a type of social learning that transmits generalizable (semantic) knowledge from the teacher to the pupil through (not necessarily linguistic) communication.

Typical examples of human teaching are demonstrations of useful means actions, or expressions of information about hidden properties of objects (e.g. unpalatability of food).

By contrast, the ants and the birds in these studies provided information about an episodic fact … this information does not enable them to find food sources more efficiently in the future and is unlikely to be worth passing on to the next generation …

Csibra (2007)Animal vs Human teaching

We propose that humans are adapted to transfer knowledge to, and receive knowledge from, conspecifics by teaching. This adaptation, which we call 'pedagogy', involves the emergence of a special communication system that does not presuppose either language or high-level theory of mind, but could itself provide a basis for facilitating the development of these human-specific abilities both in phylogenetic and ontogenetic terms. We speculate that tool manufacturing and mediated tool use made the evolution of such a new social learning mechanism necessary. However, the main body of evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from developmental psychology. We argue that many central phenomena of human infant social cognition that may seem puzzling in the light of their standard functional explanation can be more coherently and plausibly interpreted as reflecting the adaptations to receive knowledge from social partners through teaching.

Csibra & Gergely (2006)Natural pedagogy

We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals. Such a communication system, which we call ‘natural pedagogy’, enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque cultural knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on purely observational learning mechanisms alone. We argue that human infants are prepared to be at the receptive side of natural pedagogy (i) by being sensitive to ostensive signals that indicate that they are being addressed by communication, (ii) by developing referential expectations in ostensive contexts and (iii) by being biased to interpret ostensive-referential communication as conveying information that is kind-relevant and generalizable.

Csibra & Gergely (2009)Natural pedagogy

Human beings are biologically adapted for culture in ways that other primates are not, as evidenced most clearly by the fact that only human cultural traditions accumulate modifications over historical time (the ratchet effect). The key adaptation is one that enables individuals to understand other individuals as intentional agents like the self. This species-unique form of social cognition emerges in human ontogeny at approximately 1 year of age, as infants begin to engage with other persons in various kinds of joint attentional activities involving gaze following, social referencing, and gestural communication. Young children’s joint attentional skills then engender some uniquely powerful forms of cultural learning, enabling the acquisition of language, discourse skills, tool-use practices, and other conventional activities. These novel forms of cultural learning allow human beings to, in effect, pool their cognitive resources both contemporaneously and over historical time in ways that are unique in the animal kingdom.

Tomasello (1999)Culture & the ratchet effect

Debate aboutcultural learning in humans other primates& other animals

Human cultural learningCan exploit teaching

Can other primates teach?Close primates?

Can other animals teach?

Teaching

Caro & Hauser (1992)Strauss (2005)

Csibra (2007), Csibra & Gergely (2006, 2009, 011), Gergely & Csibra (2008)

Whiten (1999)

Which capacities are involved/required for teaching?

What is teaching?

Why we teach?

Is teaching an adaptation?


Information donation Scaffolding Capacity to detect naïves

Capacity to adjust to the learner on the basis of specific cues

Some form of Adjustmente.g. coaching

Teaching with cues

Teaching(S)

Adaptation for social interactionsMaybe for passing informationNot especially flexible

Social capacities

Special reaction to naïves

Attentional skills(Joint attention)

BasicMind reading skills

Teaching(S)

Teaching with (basic) ToM

Information sharing

Adaptation for social interactionsflexible

Motivation to share information

Social capacities

Active teachingIntentional teachingInstructive learning

With adjustments based on mind reading

Teaching with demonstration-imitation

Intentional imitationskills

Teaching(S)

Selective information sharing

Detection of knowledge gap

Adaptation for social interactionsflexible

Teaching with (higher-level) ToM

Social capacities

With smooth adjustments

Detection of mistakes (false beliefs)

Empathy (cognitive)based on motivation for filling another’s knowledge-gap

Altruism

Teaching(S)

Adaptation for teaching?

Teaching with ToM & with natural pedagogy

Social capacities

Transmission of generalizable knowledgeThat is worth passing from one generation to another

Special forms of communication On both sides/learner & teacher

Teaching with language


Teaching might not be the same in different taxa


• Teaching have evolved from the different forms of social learning & inadvertent teaching that exist in different taxa (but not all taxa)• Teaching introduces a new dimension (the dimension of the tutor) in the

function of learning from others (the dimension of the naïve)• Several taxa teach, but teaching is not based on one and the same kit of

capacities• Different taxa teach with different sets of capacities, according to the

social learning kit they have evolved

• Humans might be the only one to teach with ToM/imitation & other mechanisms


Some forms of teaching, variously referred to as ‘active teaching’ (Caro & Hauser

1992), ‘intentional teaching’ (Byrne 1995) and ‘instructive learning’ (Tomasello et al.

1993) may require mental state attribution.

This may alter the nature of teaching in humans, for example, by allowing greater

flexibility, but simpler mechanisms based on responses to behavioural cues from pupils

may suffice in many contexts (Thornton & McAuliffe 2006).

Indeed, many forms of human tuition do not require teachers to impute mental states to pupils. Parents, for example, pro- mote learning of motor skills in children by encouraging and supporting infants’ attempts, modifying their behav iour in response to behavioural cues from the child rather than an awareness of the child’s changing knowledge about the world (Whiten & Milner 1984). Similarly, as Barnett (1968) pointed out, university lecturers may simply use one set of lectures for first-year undergraduates and another for advanced classes without being aware of what individual students know.

Thornton & Raihani (2008)

The evolution of teaching

In summary, instead of being seen as a separate set of mechanisms for

information transfer, teaching can use fully be regarded as introducing another

dimension to social learning, corresponding to whether the role of the

demonstrator is active or passive. Because many of the processes thought to

underlie social learning in animals do not rely on human-like mechanisms, such

as intentionality, the same should hold for teaching.

This categorisation helps us to understand how teaching could evolve; teaching

will often arise as signals, or responses, given by tutors that take advantage of

pre-existing social learning mechanisms.

Hoppitt et al. (2008)Lessons from animal teaching

Our hypothetical evolutionary pathway from inadvertent social learning to teaching leads us to predictions regarding the taxonomic distribution of different types of teaching: we expect teaching to have evolved only where the relevant social learning mechanism was already in place, a prediction that can be tested using comparative statistical methods. This reasoning provides a guide for future research. For instance, we would not expect to find teaching by imitation in meerkats or other carnivores, because imitation has not been found in the Carnivora, but we might expect teaching by imitation to occur in the parrot family (Psittacidae), where there is such evidence [29,30]. By contrast, teaching by observational conditioning, which is merely reliant on classical conditioning, is likely to be less taxonomically restricted.


In debates over whether animals exhibit culture, sceptics have argued that human and animal culture differ qualitatively, partly because the former uniquely relies on teaching, whereas advocates of animal culture have suggested that teaching in animals is currently underestimated and have defended comparative arguments. In fact, both might be correct: teaching could be common in animals, yet reliant on completely different underlying mechanisms from human teaching. Indeed, we expect teaching in other animals not to resemble that in humans, because they will typically be unable to exploit the same learning processes.


We do not suggest that the transition from social learning through inadvertent cues to teaching by active signals is inevitable. Teaching must evolve in the tutor, but its immediate benefits, the learning of a skill or acquisition of information, are for the pupil. Because it is a costly behaviour that benefits others, teaching can be understood in a similar way to altruism. As with altruism, we would expect teaching behaviour ultimately to benefit the tutor’s inclus- ive fitness, either through kin selection [31] or because the tutor benefits directly from the pupil learning [32]. In the case of kin selection, teaching will evolve according to Hamilton’s rule: if the fitness cost to the tutor (c) is less than the fitness benefit to the pupil (b), multiplied by the degree of relatedness between them (r), or c < br [31].


TEACHING IS AN EVOLVED CAPACITY

TEACHING HAS EVOLVED IN A CERTAIN EVOLUTIONARY NICHE

TEACHING IS A SPANDREL OF OTHER CAPACITIES RELATED TO THE DEVELOPMENTOF SOCIAL LEARNINGAND SOCIAL COGNITION

TEACHING IS ROOTED IN BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION

TEACHING EXISTS IN OTHER ANIMALS

FOR HUMANS THE NICHE IS NO MORE THE SAME

WHAT KIND OF CULTURAL ADAPTATIONSHAVE BEEN ADOPTED/ARE TO BE ADOPTED FOR MATCHING THE HUMAN NEEDS IN TERMS OF CULTURAL TRANSMISSION?

WHAT KIND OF ABILITIES ARE REQUIRED/NO MORE REQUIRED/NEED TO BE DEVELOPED?

Teaching, or folk pedagogy, the social transformation of knowledge from one person to another or the attempt to engender it in others, is one of the most remarkable of human enterprises. I propose that teaching, which is central to education in the broad sense of that term, can also be seen as an essential domain of inquiry for the cognitive sciences. This is also because, as I attempt to show, teaching may be a natural cognitive ability and is essential to what it means to be a human being. Furthermore, I believe that a search for the cognitive underpinnings of teaching may lead to a description of some of the fundamental building blocks of human cognition and its development. …A broad view of teaching includes at least four levels of explanation for the cognitive machinery in the mind associated with teaching: an evolutionary adaptive problem that machinery solved, the cognitive programs that solve that problem, the neurophysiological infrastructure that serves as a base for the cognitive program, and the cultural underpinnings that are deigned by and support the above.

Strauss (2005)Teaching as a natural cognitive ability

1. First … teaching with ToM may be species-typical. The cognition underlying teaching among some species of animals and human beings has not been thoroughly examined. There is little controversy that chimpanzees, our closest relatives, and other primates do not teach with a theory of mind…


2. A second motivation for teaching as a natural cognitive ability is that although other primates do not seem to teach with a ToM, it is incontrovertible that teaching with a ToM is universal among human beings. This means that, with few exceptions, every person in every society has taught (toddlers and some autistic individuals may be exceptions here) and has been taught by others… These are universal activities that take place in everyday life in the home, the streets, the workplace, and the fields. There is considerable cross-cultural variation concerning the amount of teaching that takes place … and the content of what is taught … The importance of the claim of universality is twofold. It means that everyone is exposed to teaching, which is to say that everyone has the possibility to learn to teach by virtue of that exposure, and that very universality suggests that is may be a characteristic of human’s biological and cultural endowments.


3. Third, teaching is an extraordinarily complex enterprise that has much to do with mind, emotions, and motivation-reading. …

4. Fourth is the poverty of the stimulus argument. One of the many remarkable aspects of teaching is that so much of it is invisible to the eye. The visible part is the external acts of teaching… the visible part of teaching is quite impoverished in comparison to the depth of what underlies it, the part that is not revealed to the eye, and what is invisible is the inferences teachers make and the mental processes that lead to these inferences…

5. Fifth, teaching is a specialized social interaction, unlike others. Yet it shares some aspects of other kinds of social interaction…. What stands at the heart of these social interactions is the intentionality of the individuals involved in the social interactions…


6. Sixth, although teaching is universal among human beings, it seems to be learned without formal education, or even education of the informal kind. A sliver of the 6 billion inhabitants of planet earth has been taught how to teach; yet all know how to teach. All have been exposed to pedagogy; they have been taught but, with few exceptions, they have had no instruction about how to teach. … The fact that people have not been taught how to teach does not mean it is not learned.

7. Seven, very young children teach. There are two kinds of evidence that bear on this matter: Toddlers may request teaching and youngsters teach.


Folk pedagogy

Olson & Bruner (1986)Strauss (2001)

What do teachers think about teaching?

How this affects their way of teaching? How this affects students’ learning?

Are there myths about teaching?

Gdp2 2013 14-7

Education

teacher effect teacher

teacher impact

teacher valueadded effect

teacher effect studies

teacher changes

teacher valueadded

new teacher

experienced teacher