Teachers' intuition: when can you trust your gut?

Teacher intuition:

when can you trust your gut?

David Didau Festival of Education

23 r d June 2016

Are you sure?

We don’t know when we’re wrong

Shepard’s ‘Turning the tables’

We don’t know when we’re wrong

Shepard’s ‘Turning the tables’

We think we can see causality

Michotte’s perception of causality

We think we can see causality

Michotte’s perception of causality

We think we can see causality

Michotte’s perception of causality

If it looks like a duck…

The Necker Cube

Barriers to expert intuition

• Opportunity cost

• Institutional mindsets

• The power of practice

What we know about developing expertise

• Frequent, low-stakes observations

• Much better feedback on learning

• Guided, purposeful practice

• A codified body of knowledge.

Do teachers just get better?

Rivkin, Hanushek & Kain, Teachers, Schools, and Academic Achievement (2005)

Do teachers just get better?

Years of experience

Teac

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s on

stud

ents

ac

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Kraft & Papay (2014)

Do teachers just get better?

Kini & Podolsky (2016)

• Maybe we’ve used the wrong statistical models? (fixed effects vs. cross-sectional analyses)– “Teaching experience is positively

associated with student achievement gains throughout a teacher’s career.”

– “For most teachers, experience increases effectiveness”

Does experience usually lead to expertise?

[The finding that teachers don’t improve with experience] seems counter-intuitive, given the evidence that professionals in a wide range of contexts improve their performance with experience. For example, a surgeon’s improved performance is associated with increased experience gained at a given hospital. An increase in a software developer’s experience working on the same system is associated with increased productivity. What is common sense in the business world—that employees improve in their productivity, innovation, and ability to satisfy their clients as they gain experience in a specific task, organization, and industry—is not the commonly accepted wisdom in public education.

Kini & Podolsky (2016)

It

When can you trust the experts?

"Whether naïfs or experts, mathematicians need to confront people who misuse their subject to intimidate others into accepting conclusions simply because they are based on some mathematics.”

Ewing (2011)

Kind vs. wicked domains• A ‘kind’ domain provides accurate &

reliable feedback (leads to expertise)

• A ‘wicked’ domain is one where feedback on performance is absent or biased (leads to over confidence)

Hogarth (2003)

Kind vs. wicked domainsKind domains Wicked domainsFire fighters Financial & political

analystsEmergency room nurses

Radiologists

Pilots Surgeons

Teachers?

Hamre et al (2009)

Performance

Learning

A definition of learningLearning is:• the long-term retention of knowledge

and skills• the ability to transfer between

contexts

Retention = durabilityTransfer = flexibility

WarsawMIMICRY

Learning is invisible• We can only infer learning from

performance

• Current performance is a poor indicator of learning

• Reducing performance might actually increase learning

Robert A Bjork, UCLA

“It works for me!”• How do you know?

• Are there any conditions in which you would accept you were wrong?

• Faith ≠ feedback ≠ learning

7 ways to improve intuition?1. Select and/or create our environments by

‘apprenticing’ ourselves to experts2. Seek feedback through “intelligent

sampling of outcomes” 3. Impose “circuit breakers” 4. Acknowledge emotions 5. Explore connections 6. Accept conflict in choice 7. Make scientific method intuitive 

Hogarth (2003)

@LearningSpywww.learningspy.co.u

[email protected]

Coming

soon!

For what a man had rather were true he more readily

believes.