Education Bookcast

Education Bookcast is a podcast covering one education-related book or article per episode. Support: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast.

156. Entrepreneurial expertise 01/25/2024

155. How experts see 12/18/2023

154. Mindsets everywhere 12/11/2023

153. Comparing learning different dance styles: Argentine Tango vs. Ballroom & Latin (Dancesport) 11/26/2023

152. [VIDEO] Education and generative AI: conference video for STEM MAD Melbourne, October 23 11/19/2023

151. 8 years, 150 episodes 11/13/2023

150. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin 10/26/2023

148. You Know the Fair Rule by Bill Rogers 08/18/2023

147. Large language models (LLMs) - interview with Dr Guy Emerson 07/24/2023

146b. Lessons from EdTech - The 90% Rule 05/07/2023

146a. Lessons from EdTech - the Fundamental Duality of Educational Materials 04/30/2023

145b. How to be a better lecturer (practice) - a message for Guy 04/22/2023

145a. How to be a better lecturer (theory) - a message for Guy 04/22/2023

144. Developing Talent in Young People by Benjamin Bloom 04/15/2023

144. Developing Talent in Young People by Benjamin Bloom Benjamin Bloom is best known for Bloom's Taxonomy, a scheme for categorising ways of thinking about or interacting with learning content on a scale from less to more sophisticated. However, the project he led investigating the lifelong development of expertise should be much more famous. The book's full title makes it feel as though it was published in 1685 rather than 1985: The dramatic findings of a ground-breaking study of 120 immensely talented individuals reveal astonishing new information on Developing Talent in Young People. Bloom's team looked at extraordinary achievers in six domains: pianists, sculptors, swimmers, tennis players, mathematicians, and neurologists, so that he had two each from artistic, athletic, and academic pursuits. He was trying to understand the life circumstances during childhood and adolescense - particularly the practice routines and social milieu - which led to the development of the subjects' expertise. Their research methods were unusual. Rather than using a large sample and taking quantitative data (which would have been difficult anyway due to the lack of a large number of exceptional people, by definition) or presenting qualitative interviews of individual case studies, Bloom's team interviewed around 20-30 people from each domain and then summarised the findings of these interviews. It leaves us with a sense of the qualitative experience of going through their learning processes, while also reducing the chances of over-generalising from a single case. Pianists were the main focus of discussion where Bloom and his colleauges tried to generalised the findings, although all six categories had a full exposition as to the findings for their domain in particular. The pianists followed an especially clear pattern which is worth starting from, and subsequently comparing with the others. In the context of an abundance of information about how people think and learn on shorter timescales (from seconds to weeks), having information about how people develop over the lifespan is invaluable. I will definitely be referring to this book a lot in future. Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES This book is related to the development of expertise, which I talk about on a lot of episodes, but the one specific one I mentioned in the recording was: 22. The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle SUPPORT You can support Education Bookcast and join the community forum via Buy Me a Coffee using the following link: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast. /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/26550588

143. Talent, revisited 03/19/2023

142. Season 2 of the Pedagogue-Cast is out now! Taster: Music and Learning 03/11/2023

141+. Feedback on constructivism 03/10/2023

141. Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism - a message for Zoë 02/25/2023

141. Behaviourism, Cognitivism, Constructivism - a message for Zoë My friend Zoë (hi Zoë!) is taking a course on learning design. In it, she heard about Behaviourism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism, and while she said that she found it confusing, her main takeaway is that "you need a bit of each". I recorded this episode to help her have a clearer sense of what these three words really mean, and that "a bit of each" is emphatically not the right message. I thought that others might benefit from the same summary. This is a frequent topic in education courses, and I think it generally gets a pretty poor treatment. Hopefully this will clear things up for a lot of people. Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES Note how the distribution of episodes reflects the importance of topics. Behaviourism is important to know about but it really isn't current as a way of thinking about learning, it's more of a historical relic with some lasting applicability to animal training. Constructivism is a mistaken and misleading theory that keeps negatively affecting educational practice and never seems to go away, so I keep having to talk about it. Cognitivism is a really effective approach which deserves to be known more widely - it took me a long time to find out about it, hence why the episodes about it tend to be more recent. Behaviourism: 3. Don't Shoot the Dog! The New Art of Teaching and Training by Karen Pryor Constructivism: 42. Do Schools Kill Creativity? by Ken Robinson; 65. Beyond the Hole in the Wall by Sugata Mitra; 87. Experiential Learning by Colin Beard and John Wilson; 88. The Failure of Constructivist, Discovery, Problem-based, Experiential, and Inquiry-based Teaching; 90. Discovery learning: the idea that won't die; 124. The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences Cognitivism: 79. What learning is; 80. The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters; 82. Memorable Teaching by Pepps McCrea; 85. Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham; 95. The Reading Mind by Dan Willingham; 132a. Direct Instruction and Project Follow Through; 132b. Direct Instruction: the evidence; 135. Professional writing expertise; 136. Congitive architecture and ACT-R; 136+. Interview with Prof. Christian Lebiere on ACT-R and Cognitive Architecture REFERENCES I mention the following article as one where the authors (eminent figures in cognitive architecture, one of whom is a Nobel Prize winner) ask Constructivists to stop misrepresenting their work and saying things in direct contradiction to the evidence. Anderson, Reder, & Simon (1999). Applications and Misapplacations of Cognitive Psychology to Mathematics Education. SUPPORT You can support the podcast and join the community forum by visiting /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/26044881

140b. Political economy pt. II: The Invisible Hook 01/30/2023

140b. Political economy pt. II: The Invisible Hook In the previous recording, I was speaking about political economy using the example of prison gangs, taken from David Skarbek's book Social Order of the Underworld. In this recording, I give the example of 18th-century Atlantic pirates, as discussed in Peter Leeson's The Invisible Hook. (It's a pun on Adam Smith's "invisible hand of the market".) We may have an image of pirates as fearsome, but this is at least somewhat deliberately manufactured by the pirates themselves. They wanted to have such a reputation so that their victims wouldn't resist as they looted their ships. There are parts of the pirate lifestyle, such as democracy and voluntarism, that we don't tend to discuss because they were part of life on a pirate ship but not something that they felt the need to advertise widely. What is most notable is that pirates' way of life seemed to be significantly preferable, and their governance significantly more "progressive", than that on merchant ships, which tended to be highly autocratic and abusive. It also provides a different perspective when we realise that sailors went into piracy at a time of labour market oversupply due to the ending of the War of Spanish Succession, when the British Navy didn't have the funds to keep on so many sailors, and yet this was the career of tens of thousands of young men who now had to find a job elsewhere. Overall, in these two recordings, I hope to have shown you that thinking about people's motivations and situations from the perspective of political economy makes a lot more sense, and builds a much richer picture, than merely psychological or sociological explanations (such as childhood trauma, psychopathy, or people's fundamental evil or violent nature). With this in mind, I hope that in future we can use more of this thinking when considering education, so that we can understand better how it works and how to improve it. Enjoy the episode. /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/25760286

140a. Political economy pt. I: The Social Order of the Underworld 01/29/2023

140a. Political economy pt. I: The Social Order of the Underworld Please be advised that this episode contains mentions of violence and may be unsuitable for some listeners. I'd like to flesh out what I've been saying before about the power of economic analysis in explaining people's actions. Whereas when we normally think about motivation we think in terms of psychology, economists naturally think in terms of incentives. This kind of thinking is generally missing in educational discourse. There are two books that I found particularly fascinating and instructive on this point: The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System by David Skarbek; and The Invisible Hook by Peter Leeson. This recording focuses on the former. David Skarbek's book is fascinating and rich in both detail and theoretical explanation, so I focus on what I find most compelling and most relevant to transfer over to thinking about other contexts. First of all, he introduces existing criminological theories that aim to account for the rise in prison gangs, namely Deprivation theory and Importation theory. The former suggests that inmate behaviour is a result of the pain of imprisonment, and the latter focuses on pre-prison beliefs and experiences that are brought into prison. Skarbek departs from both of these theories, grounding his own analysis in political economy. He introduces us to the basic assumptions of economics - that people are self-interested and respond rationally to incentives - and goes on to describe the role of governance in society. His fundamental thesis is that prison gangs provide governance, meaning that they provide a form of public good which enhances personal safety and opportunities for trade (mostly in drugs). While I'm yet to fully apply the ideas of political economy to education (except for reading about it inThe Beautiful Tree, China's Examination Hell, and Education and the State), I feel that digging in to some examples like this can help us appreciate the reasons why people do things. Crucially, they are not all psychological. Enjoy the episode. /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/25760190

139. Reflections after 7 years 01/01/2023

138. The science of self-belief, part II: self-efficacy 11/14/2022

138. The science of self-belief, part II: self-efficacy This is the second episode concerning self-related beliefs taken from chapters of The Cambridge Handbook of Motivation and Learning. Here I talk about self-efficacy, which concerns how much you believe that you can do something specific, e.g. solve a particular kind of maths problem. Self-esteem, self-concept, self-efficacy - it's easy to get confused with so many "self-words" flying around. There are even other words which aren't used by academics but are in common parlance, such as self-belief. I go into more detail and give more examples of the difference in the recording, but basically, whereas self-concept concerns your attitude to an entire domain (e.g. how good you think you are at sports), self-efficacy refers to how likely you think you would be to succeed in a specific class of activity (e.g. do you think you could run a marathon). Like self-concept, self-efficacy has been found to be strongly correlated with a bunch of positive behaviours, such as perseverance, but also outcomes, such as academic interest and academic performance. Unfortunately causality doesn't seem to have been established (as far as I can tell from the article), which blunts my enthusiasm about it somewhat. Nevertheless, this is definitely something to keep an eye on. The article also explains the sources of self-efficacy beliefs, which are four: mastery experiences (succeeding or failing); vicarious experiences (watching another person suceed or fail); social persuasion (including encouragement); and physiological state (e.g. anxiety). This list suggests interventions that can be used to increase self-efficacy, namely encouragement and the presentation of models (i.e. peers who can also succeed, possibly after some struggle). One thing I forgot to mention in the recording: in Chinese culture, it is common to tell children stories of famous successful people both from China and from around the world who struggled through great difficulties to achieve their life goals. Marie Curie seems to figure particularly prominently in these biographies, being somebody who had to move to a foreign country (France) to study, breaking the mould as a woman in science, being famed for her extraordinary work ethic, and going on to be the first person to ever achieve a Nobel Prize in two different disciplines (Physics and Chemistry). While there are many ways to interpret the details of how such stories would affect people, it might in part have a self-efficacy effect, by showing young people that it is possible to succeed even in difficult circumstances. Enjoy the episodes. *** RELATED EPISODES 13. The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory by David Sherman & Geoffrey Cohen 45. The problem with self-esteem 46. Self Compassion by Kristin Neff SUPPORT If you would like to support the podcast and join the community forum, you can visit https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast. /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/24707721

137. The science of self-belief, part I: self-concept 10/31/2022

137. The science of self-belief, part I: self-concept Among the huge academic tomes that I've been ploughing through recently is The Cambridge Handbook of Motivation and Learning. I've long felt that my understanding of motivation is superficial and incomplete, and I wondered whether motivation was understood at all by anybody in the academic literature, or whether remained a mysterious and convoluted problem. The Handbook has shown me that there is much good research that has been done that sheds light on motivation, interest, curiosity, and how they relate to learning. The Handbook starts off with five chapters on "The Self and Its Impact". I have previously covered a number of self-related concepts on the podcast, such as self-esteem, stereotype threat, self-affirmation theory, and self-compassion, but my conclusion was that raising self-esteem does nothing to help people academically or to improve their character, and in fact could lead to narcissism, which is now at epidemic levels following the self-esteem movement that began in California in the 1980's. However, the Handbook has shown me that a closer look at self-related beliefs paints a more positive picture, and shows that such beliefs are central to students' academic success, as well as to people's life outcomes. I have had to radically change my understanding of the role and impact of this kind of belief, as well as greatly increasing how important encouragement seems to be for young people to flourish. In this first of two episodes on the science of self-belief and beliefs relating to the self, I will discuss self-concept, which is similar to self-esteem but domain-specific rather than global. For example, somebody might have a high self-concept for physical appearance (i.e. they think they are handsome / beautiful), but a low self-concept for physical performance (i.e. they think they are bad at sports); or a high self-concept for English (i.e. they think they are good at those classes) but a low self-concept for Mathematics (they think they are bad at maths). This domain specificity allows us to see through experiments where self-esteem interventions seem to do little, as often they do a lot for one specific self-concept, while not affecting the rest, thus making it seem that globally not much has changed, when in fact there has been a major positive impact. Overall, self-concept seems to be a very important concept (ha) for understanding what makes people successful, and a vital lever to pull in helping people reach their potential. Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES 13. The Psychology of Self-Defense: Self-Affirmation Theory by David Sherman & Geoffrey Cohen 45. The problem with self-esteem 46. Self Compassion by Kristin Neff SUPPORT You can support the podcast and join the community forum by visiting https://www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast. /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/24707619

136+. Interview with Prof. Christian Lebiere on ACT-R and Cognitive Architecture 10/16/2022

136+. Interview with Prof. Christian Lebiere on ACT-R and Cognitive Architecture In this interview, I have the honour to speak with Professor Christian Lebiere, researcher in cognitive architecture, co-author of The Atomic Components of Thought, and one of the main developers of the ACT-R architecture. We talk on a range of topics relating to cognitive architecture, cognitive modelling, and psychology. My questions are listed below, by theme. A note on cover art: this is a diagram of ACT-R version 2.0 from 1993. More modern versions of ACT-R contain somewhat different components, but we discuss this diagram in the interview so I have shared it here. OVERVIEW. What is cognitive architecture? What is ACT-R? Why should we care? EVIDENCE. What evidence is there for ACT-R? How much evidence is there? What sort of human activities can it model? Can it model non-goal-driven behaviours such as daydreaming, for instance? Has ACT-R been tested with people of different ages (children vs. adults vs. the elderly)? Has it been tested with people of different cultures? SCOPE & ELEMENTS. ACT-R version 2.0 had no working memory component - why not, and what were the circumstances that led to it being introduced? How does ACT-R deal with consciousness? How is ACT-R being extended to deal with emotions? APPLICATION. When did ACT-R become mature enough as a theory for you to move from basic science and theory-building to application? What are the educational applications of ACT-R? PUBLIC RELATIONS. It took me over 7 years before I found out about cognitive architecture as a field. Nobody in education, or in the general public, seems to know about it, and it seems to never be mentioned by the vast majority of psychologists either. Given its achievements in modelling human cognition, why do so few people know about it? Enjoy the episode. *** RELATED EPISODES 79. What learning is 80. The Chimp Paradox by Prof Steve Peters 82. Memorable Teaching by Peps McCrea 85. Why Don't Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham 95. The Reading Mind by Daniel Willingham SUPPORT You can support Education Bookcast and join the community forum by visiting http://www.buymeacoffee.com/edubookcast. /episode/index/show/educationbookcast/id/24703827

136. Cognitive architecture and ACT-R 10/11/2022

135. Professional writing expertise 10/10/2022

134. Philosophy for children 10/05/2022

133. Patterns are fast, rules are slow 08/20/2022

I have a new podcast! 08/10/2022

Education Bookcast

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