how teaching changes the student's receptivity
Schuyler
from an article that tests something John Holt found. They don't say they are
doing that, but I remember himdoing similar things and recording them in How
Children Fail or How Children Learn. Anyhow, the article is How Babies Think
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-babies-think for the intro
and an option to buy the rest) and it's in the July 2010 issue of Scientific
American and I'm just going to type out the bit that I thought was so cool:
--------
In other recent research my group found that young children who think they are
being instructed modify their statistical analyses and may become less creative
as a result. The experimenter showed four-year-olds a toy that would play music
if you performed the right sequence of actions on it, such as pulling a handle
and then squeezing a bulb. For some children, the experimenter said, "I don't
know how this toy works--let's figure it out." She proceeded to try out various
longer action sequences for the children, some that ended with the short
sequence and made music and some that did not. When she asked the children to
make the toy work, many of them tried the correct short sequence, astutely
omitting actions that were probably superfluous based on the statistics of what
they had seen.
With other children, the experimenter said that she would teach them how the toy
worked by showing them sequences that did and did not produce music, and then
she acted on the toy in exactly the same way. When asked to make the toy work,
these children never tried a shortcut. Instead they mimicked the entire sequence
of actions. Were these children ignoring the statistics of what they say?
Perhaps not--their behavior is accurately described by a Bayesian model in which
the "teacher" is expected to choose the most instructive sequences. In simple
terms: if she knew shorter sequences worked, she would not have them the
unnecessary actions.
-----------
So, what they've found is that taking on the role of
she-who-holds-all-the-knowledge shuts down any tendency someone else has to
explore other means of using the item. I know I've done that.
Schuyler
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
doing that, but I remember himdoing similar things and recording them in How
Children Fail or How Children Learn. Anyhow, the article is How Babies Think
(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-babies-think for the intro
and an option to buy the rest) and it's in the July 2010 issue of Scientific
American and I'm just going to type out the bit that I thought was so cool:
--------
In other recent research my group found that young children who think they are
being instructed modify their statistical analyses and may become less creative
as a result. The experimenter showed four-year-olds a toy that would play music
if you performed the right sequence of actions on it, such as pulling a handle
and then squeezing a bulb. For some children, the experimenter said, "I don't
know how this toy works--let's figure it out." She proceeded to try out various
longer action sequences for the children, some that ended with the short
sequence and made music and some that did not. When she asked the children to
make the toy work, many of them tried the correct short sequence, astutely
omitting actions that were probably superfluous based on the statistics of what
they had seen.
With other children, the experimenter said that she would teach them how the toy
worked by showing them sequences that did and did not produce music, and then
she acted on the toy in exactly the same way. When asked to make the toy work,
these children never tried a shortcut. Instead they mimicked the entire sequence
of actions. Were these children ignoring the statistics of what they say?
Perhaps not--their behavior is accurately described by a Bayesian model in which
the "teacher" is expected to choose the most instructive sequences. In simple
terms: if she knew shorter sequences worked, she would not have them the
unnecessary actions.
-----------
So, what they've found is that taking on the role of
she-who-holds-all-the-knowledge shuts down any tendency someone else has to
explore other means of using the item. I know I've done that.
Schuyler
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]