When you can only learn new things using things you've already learned
My next bit of education research
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SINCE I started researching education—beginning with the question of why some (young) people feel more motivated to learn than others—I've come across the following ideas, which I'd like to recap:
The most widely regarded modern theory of motivation is Self-Determination Theory (SDT), which says that humans will experience their highest levels of healthy and sustainable motivation when:
they have a high degree of personal agency (autonomy) in their lives
they have opportunities to develop a lot of knowledge and skill (competence) in domains that matter to them
they do all this whilst being closely connected to a social group that depends on and values them (relatedness)
So, from this particular perspective, my question has been: how do we create the conditions that foster plenty of autonomy, competence and relatedness in our education?
One way seems to be giving people a choice. I found the story of a music teacher whose class attendance ballooned from 50 to 200 after she implemented SDT, which included allowing students to make some impactful choices both individually and collectively.
Individually they were able to choose (and re-choose) their instrument, choose how to teach their music skills to others, and choose when to take their final exam.
Collectively they were able to choose which songs to practice during term, which performances they would give as a group, and which competitions they would enter to represent the school.
The result was that every student played the instrument they most wanted to play, and they got a taste of what it's like owning high-stakes decisions.
It's a great example of the ripple effect of giving people this kind of agency: if people like the work they're doing, and they feel ownership of it because they chose it, then naturally they're more likely to work at it, get good, and be embraced by their peers (+1 for autonomy, competence and relatedness).
Inspired by SDT and the story of this music class, I spent some time daydreaming about what homes and schools might look like if they were designed entirely around the principles of autonomy, competence and relatedness.
Interestingly one of those daydreams turned out on reflection to look very similar to project-based learning, a concept I've known of for a while but never actually dug into in any depth. I decided it was time.
What are its principles?
How does it work exactly?
What are some good and bad examples of it?
Who are its leading allies and enemies?
Lots of questions.
It was immediately clear that in order to fully understand project-based learning, in order to evaluate it and potentially work with it, I'd first need to learn some fundamental principles of how people learn at all. What's going on between our ears when we’re thriving as learners? And what is it specifically that project-based learning lends itself so well to (or not)?
The book How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School was the suggested starting point in the research report I asked ChatGPT for. The book was published at the turn of the millennium, so it's not exactly new. But I get the impression there isn't much in the way of newer research to complement or supplant it. As far as I can tell, the book does a good job of bringing together a range of emerging theories from cognitive psychology, developmental research, social psychology, and neuroscience—and then contextualising them all under one umbrella survey.
It's not quite "How People Learn: for Dummies" but I do find it relatively accessible and it is helping me understand some of the basic building blocks of effective learning.
I won't attempt to share everything in this post, obviously. But I will share the biggest thing I’ve found so far that made me sit up and pay attention.
It is this:
We can only learn new things using things we've already learned.
Just stop and think about that for a second. It may sound obvious and simple, but it’s not.
The academics and educators would call this a “Constructivist” theory of learning; new knowledge is constructed on top of existing knowledge.
Granted, it is only a theory and, as such, I don’t want to set my watch by it. But I did do a bit of research to find out what other theories it’s in cahoots with, and Constructivism appears to be well-substantiated, longstanding, and cognisant of the latest research.
Constructivism replaced the “Behaviourist” theory of learning which had dominated from roughly the 1920s through the 1960s. Behaviourist learning theory assumed students were passive recipients who absorbed information through repetition and reinforcement (and punishment and rewards), whereas constructivism sees learners as active meaning-makers who build new understanding on top of existing foundations.
One neat way to understand Constructivism is to say that we only understand new ideas through a lens that is made of existing ideas.
To make this more concrete, the authors recount the story of Fish Is Fish, a kids book about a fish whose frog friend comes back to the ocean after spending time ashore. As the frog describes the birds, cows and human beings he hung out with on land, the book shows illustrated representations of what the fish imagines them to look like.
The images are largely bird-, cow- and human-like, but they each have fishy traits too: fins, tails, gills and scales. The moral of the story, obviously, is that Mr Fish cannot picture what these strange land-faring creatures look like outside of his own fish paradigm—a metaphor for how we humans can’t conceptualise ideas outside of those we already have.
It gives renewed credence to the saying: We don’t experience the world as it is, we experience the world as we are.
This has some pretty significant implications when you think about it. It means that it’s possible that knowledge we already have could hinder, as much as help, our ability to learn.
In fact, the authors provide an example of this from maths education. The first maths concepts most kids encounter are based around counting numbers, which establish the foundational concept that numbers are discrete and sequential. Each number represents a single, indivisible unit. And every number has a clear "next" number.
But some time during secondary school kids are introduced to fractions, and fractions have a very different conceptual underpinning. They can't be counted in sequence like whole numbers can and, so, many kids try to work with fractions using their existing conceptualisation of math, which obviously does not work, and then struggle to understand fractions.
The important point that falls out of this is that it’s imperative to first understand what prior notions, ideas and beliefs people have before you try getting them to learn new things. You want to do this so that you have a chance to correct any misconceptions they have and ensure they’re not led astray or left behind altogether.
It’s funny, I can’t help but think back to my own school days, hearing the teachers bang on and on about “showing my working out!” I always used to think they were only insisting on that so they could prove I hadn’t cheated by copying the answers from the back of the book. But now I can see it was probably also so they could make my existing knowledge visible.
That was the only way to truly meet me where I was.
Reflecting on all this, I found myself thinking about class sizes. It’s clearer to me now why 1:1 tutoring, or at least small classes, benefit kids so much. Among other things, there’s more opportunity for teachers to make the student’s prior knowledge visible—through conversation, questioning and regular assessment—and then address any misconceptions that would otherwise hamper their learning.
It also makes more sense to me now why an Ali Abdaal video I once watched (sorry, I can’t find it now) recommended students draw a mind map of everything they already think they know about a topic before setting out to learn about it.
And so, this is the first building block of effective learning: What you already know shapes what you can/will know.
I find it both scary and exciting. And I think understanding this will come in handy when it comes to mastering project-based learning.
There’s plenty more I need to understand first, including concepts like recall, interleaving, spaced repetition and more. But in the spirit of making my existing knowledge visible early on, here’s a list of stuff I think I already know about project-based learning.
Perhaps if you’re clued up about the topic you can correct any misconceptions or faulty assumptions I may have:
My current understanding of project-based learning is that instead of school subjects being taught in separate classes, they’re taught together as part of a unifying project. So for example, the kids might be given the project of building a railway network. To do this, they learn how engines work in Science, they learn about fuel consumption and business models in Math, and they write all the publicity and manage the organisational communications in their Language classes.
Project-based learning is standard practice in some of the Scandinavian countries, especially in Finland where I think it hails from.
Project-based learning is cool because it turns potentially boring subjects into something interesting and relevant for kids.
Project-based learning seems like an approach that would greatly enable the transfer of skills and knowledge from one domain or situation to many others. Transfer is another key concept in learning design, which I'll be coming back to at some point.
Project-based learning mirrors the real world more closely than subject-based studies. The world, at least as I’ve experienced it, is nothing if not an endless series of projects. Why not help kids get accustomed to this as soon as they’re able?
I’m assuming that project-based learning is the sort of thing that would naturally involve people of all ages and walks of life, as opposed to just the few same-age boys and girls who happen to be in your class. In other words, I can imagine that project-based learners emerge from school with better social skills and confidence as they’ve simply had more practice communicating and collaborating with adults in the real world.
This, I’m guessing, also means that project-based classrooms can and do include kids of different ages—another building block of learning that I instinctively like the sound of and want to research more at some point.
I don’t know who comes up with the projects in the first place (could the kids design them??), or what best practices look like, but I can imagine it’s a pretty cool job. “Hey! I’m a project-based learning designer. I design curricula-wide projects for K6-K12 students that have a particular focus on community engagement, mental health, technology, and art.”
There's a review circulating about that crazy new 2-hour school called Alpha. In it, the writer-parent shares some of the projects his kids have to complete each term. The review doesn’t explicitly call it project-based learning, but it seems to have the hallmarks. One example he cites is the class collectively managing a real Airbnb somewhere in the U.S. Think interior design. Think advertising. Think budgeting. Think guest management. The kids are doing it all and they’re not teenagers yet.
It's super cool stuff. Super cool stuff with real-world impact. And I can only imagine how motivating it must be.
See you next time.
Harrison 👨🎨
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