The Learning Model Delusion

I’ll warn you now, get a cup of tea, this may take a while; this is an unusual post, it’s a post for nerds, however it’s also a post for organisations to recognize that if you are going to entrust your leaders learning and development to an external provider, then perhaps the following might be true.

Learning needs to come from people who are genuinely mentorable by their own behavior and mind set; allowing the participants to have a deep belief in not only the content that is being shared with them, but in the integrity, depth, innovation, and credibility of the person delivering it.

Trainers tell you the facts as they have been led to understand them, facilitators bring a depth of challenge and in the moment reality to the learning and thought leaders bring in a new landscape. What I do is bring in teams that change the landscape.

At this point you might want to jump to the end summary in this post: Why a business should care about this.

What follows next is both very dull and very exciting, it is dull because it is a job of work to read it, it is exciting because it’ll shake your brain if this is of interest to you.

Oh and the only thing you can trust in this article is me and here’s a model to prove it, an actual model, no joke.

You can always trust a quote….right?
Let me start with that great quote “there are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”, it a great quote by Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881).

His point, well made, being that you can prove anything you want with statistics and that’s coming from his era. However, that’s not the point of my commentary, I’d like to talk about how eager people are to validate themselves through a model, especially those in the learning space, in my experience there is an abundance of lazy thinking, validation by association and a kind of submission to the ‘well if you are referring to a model……it must be true’. The truth as usual is ‘sometimes’.

So as some as you may well know it wasn’t Disraeli that said this, it was actually Mark Twain (1862-1910).

Which makes a little more sense as he was such a prolific commentator, so this quote is now very much more valid as we know who said it. Phew.

But of course it wasn’t Mark Twain that said it! I know, I know, incredible right?! It was and I mean this with all seriousness as I’m using a quote to validate myself, Baron Courtney of Penwith (1832-1918), ‘To My Fellow-Disciples at Saratoga Springs,’ The National Review [London] 26 (1895) 21–26 at page 25, this was quoted soon afterwards in the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society in the following terms:

“We may quote to one another with a chuckle the words of the Wise Statesman, lies, damned lies and statistics”

Right well thank goodness that is cleared up, luckily for me you can trust everything you read. However, we aren’t fooled, not you and me, no way, if you want to know who actually said it click here: https://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/lies.htm.

One reason why a lot of Leadership Development isn’t very good
Leadership Development is more often than not delivered by people who are actually delivering some form of management training, lots of nice models all based on models of learning and scientific fact, the problem is that facts are often not per se, actually factual, they are made up of the following (which is of course a fact):

• They are correct with what we know right now
• They are made up
• They are half right but have had a subjective element added to them
• They are right but misunderstood
• They are touted as correct, but aren’t and never were, the learning world gets a bit excited as it sounds so cool, this means everyone is talking about it, so it must true

At this point I’m not going to offer you any stats on how the above breaks down, you are either with me at this point or you need a model to make sense of it.

The problem is twofold, when you get people in development that rely on models and tools and techniques they pass on learned behaviour that frames the issue through the model etc. Please understand I am all for a good model, however I use it, it does not use me, it is tool in my toolbox, it isn’t a frame for the world (I have an upcoming post on the Cult of Psychometric, that shares this issue). Models reference a point of view, an issue, they can of course be fabulously useful, at the same time they can create a belief system that hampers the individual and the culture that abides by that frame.

Let’s look at few models that are actually myths, there’s a build-up on myths in learning and a few with the jury still out, some of the best ones are:

Left and Right Brain
Yes to a point your brain is associated with certain activities, but it’s not how you learn, the reality of this is you aren’t right or left brain you are whole brain (?Me), which is in my mind a far healthier way to look at things, it does away with self or imposed smallness.

Personal case in point, I used to say I wasn’t very good at maths, then right and left brain thinking gave me the get out of jail free card of it being hemispherical preference, but it’s not really that, it’s really that I don’t care about maths past basics, I prefer other things and I am better at them, in fact I’ll make an equation out of that:

"The conventional wisdom from a long time ago is that there was hemispheric specialisation, one hemisphere was responsible for things such as language, and the other for spatial ability, and that never the two would ever meet," explains Larry Alferink, a professor emeritus of psychology at Illinois State University. "What developed out of that was a view that you should teach to one hemisphere or the other depending on what you were trying to teach."

For example, you would teach to the left hemisphere by making students read and write, and use visualizations to teach to the right hemisphere.

Along with that came the idea that different genders had different dominant hemispheres-left-brained girls versus right-brained boys. (You know, because boys are better than girls at math.) Based on these types of supposed brain differences between boys and girls, for instance, a Kentucky school segregated its classrooms by gender in the early 2000's.

"The science underlying that is really, really suspect," Alferink says.

Many of the early studies that the idea of left-brain/right-brain learning were based on, looked at individuals who had a severed corpus callosum-the band of fibers that connects the two hemispheres of the brain. "The problem is, most of us don't have that corpus callosum severed," Alferink says. When scientists looked at the brains of healthy people, they realized that both hemispheres are involved in most processes. Even in damaged brains, there's not necessarily a left/right dichotomy of function. "It's also the case that the hemispheres, if they're damaged, the other hemisphere can pick up some of the functions that are necessary," in what's called brain plasticity. "The hemispheres are not completely specialized." 

The left-brain, right brain is a hard one to get rid of, the reference still goes strong, it’s almost development folklore, it exists as a frame, that doesn’t exist.

Learning styles
We are all individuals, we are fingerprints, unique and as such we cannot be pidgeon holed, “no way, not you, not me, nor your people”. Some need to hear it, some see it, some feel it….in a report entitled ‘Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning’, the following was stated: "This report critically reviews the literature on learning styles and examines in detail 13 of the most influential models. The report concludes that it matters fundamentally which instrument is chosen. The implications for teaching and learning in post-16 learning are serious and should be of concern to learners, teachers and trainers, managers, researchers and inspectors".

 
Frankly that gives me a headache just thinking about it, I have to confess I have more psychometric qualifications than I need, you can have one of mine….I jest ye not.

The theory and the wisdom is that with this learning hypothesis in mind, trainers and facilitators should approach the learner through the lens of the relevant learning style, sounds sensible? Though frankly good luck.

The problem with all of this is that the majority of the evidence is that basing your approach to learning through this lens has more or less no more impact than well to put it bluntly……..as not bothering to take account of it at all.

Hal Pashler, a psychology professor at the University of California, San Diego, led a review study on learning styles in Psychological Science In The Public Interest in 2009. He and his co-authors found little evidence to suggest teaching to a specific learning style improves a person's education. More precisely, to prove that there's a learning style that you can teach to, you have to prove that people have a harder time learning if they are taught to a style that is not their style. And few studies even test that hypothesis.

"It takes a fairly particular sort of research design to really test whether learning styles really have any utility," Pashler tells Popular Science. "There are hundreds of articles on learning styles--practically none, a small handful, that used appropriate research design. Their results tend to be negative." Most assessments that identify what a person's learning style might be are based on self-reported surveys, where people describe how they learn best. 

But "self-report really doesn't work very well if you're trying to get into psychological traits," says Paul A. Kirschner, an educational psychology professor who directs the Learning and Cognition program at the Open University of the Netherlands. People might prefer to learn a certain way--or think they prefer a certain way--but that isn't necessarily what's best for them.

"The evidence is a great big zero" for learning styles, Pashler says. Given that, "it's kind of astonishing that people would pursue this notion."

Granted you might well want to factor in a development protocol that balances out the different mediums of delivery but other than that crack on. What’s really required here is a diagnostic to understand who the learners are? Start there.

"Ensure you have a holistic approach, of course approach learning with multiple lenses to engage, however there’s no need to try to validate the approach you are taking through that lens, it basically doesn’t exist"
- Guy Bloom, Leadership Futurist

We only recall 10% of what we learn
Can I just start with a personal comment, “really…? I mean really?”, this was to be frank the first model that set me on the path of myth busting.

Hermann Ebbinghaus carried out the first experimental investigations of memory in Germany from 1879 to 1895. He discovered that our ability to recall information shows a rapid decrease over a very short space of time. After just a few hours, more than 60% of information is lost. A frightening thought! The decline in recall then eases slightly but, even so, within a month, more than 80% can no longer be recalled. His now famous results are known as the Ebbinghaus Curve of Forgetting. So you see, it's not necessarily the training itself, it's just the natural human trait of forgetting.

Now we all use this and get very excited, and I was a few years ago in a sales presentation, where a colleague quoted this and the reaction of the client? Was exactly what mine would have been, “Well what's the point of doing the training then?”. My colleague was trying to say that the model proved that there was a need for constant review and cementing of the learning (now of course everyone refers to Neuroscience, to prove that what they just said is correct), in the client’s eyes, he was thinking, “well how much is this going to cost? how long will it take? how much time am I going to have to release people for?”. Frankly he had a point, when I corrected the statement, I was looked at with a slightly quizzical look and, "well it's true, I read it, and everyone quotes it". The client at this point was treated to a free opportunity to witness in the moment feedback and we got the business.

Ebbinghaus, himself, (wait for it) was the only subject in his own study. Yes, let me just repeat that for dramatic effect, “was the only subject in his own study” a fact which limited the study’s validity to almost zero and farcical and makes it almost pointless as a reference to the general population.

And when you read that the test he ran on himself was a ‘rote memorization of nonsense words', which had no meaning or context to his life, it’s hardly surprising he got the results he did.

I am not sure about you, unless you are one of those lucky ones that can just on-board information, however for me if I am supposed to learn something I know nothing about or care nothing about then I basically am not learning it. So in this context you could argue this work is correct, in fact the model should be re-framed to being ‘The Model of the Dis-engaged Learner’. So if your people don’t want to be there, the topic is of no interest or relevance to them and the training is by rote, then this is what will probably happen, though if you need a model to validate your opinion on that you really are in the wrong job.

The way we learn is the amount we retain
Consider this research from a study, by the National Learning Laboratories, the infamous Learning Pyramid, still widely referenced.

To be frank, the moment I looked at it on a course years ago I thought, “that’s rubbish’, I remember thinking, “it depends on the complexity, the familiarity, the reference points, the benchmarks, the opportunity to practice, my motivation” so me being me, I start to look into these things and guess what.....

it was totally kosher…….NO of course not.

The National Training Laboratories, in response to an email request from a member of the Academic Computing Department at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, stated the following about the pyramid:

“It was developed and used by NTL Institute at our Bethel, Maine campus in the early sixties when we were still part of the National Education Association’s Adult Education Division. Yes, we believe it to be accurate – but no, we no longer have – nor can we find – the original research that supports the numbers. We get many inquiries every month about this – and many, many people have searched for the original research and have come up empty handed. We know that in 1954 a similar pyramid with slightly different numbers appeared on p. 43 of a book called Audio-Visual Methods in Teaching, published by the Edgar Dale Dryden Press in New York. Yet the Learning Pyramid as such seems to have been modified and always has been attributed to NTL Institute.”

Okay so back in the day someone basically borrowed, well plagiarized someone else’s work and then passed it off as their own, pre-internet that was pretty easy, even if these days it’s no less common. So a bad judgement was made but it is okay for the National Education Authority to state, “we believe it to be accurate” as it is still based on research?

That’s a relief! We can all rest easy in our beds and get back to quoting models, because they are 1. In a published work 2. Then in a book 3. Also in articles 4. Quoted on course and 5. Validated by national organisations such as the NTL.

But PAUSE, think about this, what rigor did the NTL apply to the statement “we believe it to be accurate”, when they themselves say, “we no longer have, nor can we find the original research that supports the numbers” (which means it doesn’t exist as it would be 1. On file 2. Accessible through the creator of the model from within their own organisation) and when they say, “the Learning pyramid as such seems to have been modified and……. attributed to the NTL Institute” it feels as if they just said, “that’s where is comes from”.

So it looks to me as if the NTL paid a deep, deep, deep homage to the work of Edgar Dale…. let’s see where that takes us!

Edgar Dale was a US educationist and professor of education at Ohio State University.  In 1946 he developed his most famous model, the Cone of Learning.

Since then it has been quoted frequently, far and wide as the definitive evidence for how we retain information when delivered in various styles and mediums and has informed how to design training courses in specific ways.

Here are the most popular figures in a typical illustration of the whole model:

There are some variations on the theme, quoted with the same level of authority as the ones above. This one is typical:

• Lecture: 5%
• Reading: 10%
• Audio Visual: 20%
• Demonstration: 30%
• Discussion group: 50%
• Practice by doing: 75%
• Teaching others or immediate application of learning: 90%

Source: Kurt Lewin - National Training Laboratories

So here is the issue
It was called the “Cone of Experience” not “The Cone of Learning”

Every single percentage associated with the various levels is wrong. Yes, let me say that again:  “Every single percentage associated with the various levels is wrong”

When Dale first published his cone there were no numbers associated with the model at all. There was no research used to generate it and Dale even warned his readers not to take the model too literally.

“In the last version of his model published before his death it still had no numbers. Many people, including Chi, Wiman and Meierhenry are credited (or blamed #awkward) for first publishing the percentages attached to Dale’s original cone but investigations undertaken by the blog “Myths and Worse”, indicate that most likely, the bogus percentages were first published by an employee of Mobil Oil Company in 1967, writing in the magazine Film and Audio-Visual Communications.

In 2006 Michael Molenda, a professor at Indiana University, tried to track down the origination of the bogus numbers. His efforts have uncovered some evidence that the numbers may have been developed as early as the 1940′s by Paul John Phillips who worked at University of Texas at Austin and who developed training classes for the petroleum industry. During World War Two Phillips taught Visual Aids at the U. S. Army’s Ordnance School at the Aberdeen (Maryland) Proving Grounds, where the numbers have also appeared and where they may have been developed.”

This is interesting as it indicates that the numbers came first, then Dale’s model and then someone bunged the two together.

Of one thing we can be certain, while Dale’s cone may give us some useful indicators as to the best way to generate retention, his was not a scientific research study and he made no claims what-so-ever about the percentages.

70-20-10 learning
Morgan McCall and his colleagues working at the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) are usually credited with originating the 70:20:10 ratio.

It’s another one of those ‘sounds great must be true as Harvard Lecturers quote it and Google espouse it, in fact Google: ‘70-20-10 Google’ and you’d be hard pressed to not believe anything you are doing that isn’t aligned to this makes you an idiot.

“Kyle Westaway, a Harvard lecturer, attorney and thought leader, outlined these ideas succinctly in a PowerPoint presentation, which he shared in Las Vegas at Tony Hsieh's inaugural Speakers' Series.

In his presentation, Westaway included a chart inspired by Google's 70-20-10 model for innovation. He says everyone should use this chart as a career roadmap, devoting 70 percent of their time to their core competency, 20 percent on related projects, and 10 percent to learning new skills and working on side projects”

Well that’s a slam dunk if ever I heard it.

But no, in fact, it has no science behind it, and though meant as a frame of reference for a perspective came from work that was so context specific and from questions not designed to create the end result of a definitive statement on learning, it’s almost a wonder how the connection has been made. The question asked was:

“When you think about your career as a manager, certain events or episodes probably stand out in your mind—things that led to a lasting change in you as a manager.  Identify at least three “key events” in your career:  things that made a difference in the way you manage now.”

Note the way the question is constructed, “certain events or episodes.” One could argue that specific language doesn’t exactly lead one to think of a classroom course experience like we offer, so the question seems stacked against that kind of response

The actual results from the research were categorized in the following way:

• Hardship (34%) This was the single biggest experience mentioned by this group and supported by subsequent CCL studies. This included: business failures and mistakes, demotions, missed promotions, lousy jobs, and personal trauma. Not exactly sure how we should go about building this into our experiences
• Challenging Assignments (27%) Includes change in scope, fix-it, starting something from scratch. Many organizations hang their hat on this and rightfully so
• Learning from Others (22%) This includes role models, mentors and peers.
• Other Events (17%) In addition to coursework, this included purely personal events, early work experience including first supervisory position

So 70-20-10 should really be 34-27-22-17

So 70-20-10 should really be 34-27-22-17, where the leading thing you should do to develop people is to create an incredible hardship for them. Now that would be a fun job!! Somewhere in the process, some meaningless averaging went on that resulted in 70-20-10.

1. Subsequent studies included a more diverse population of men and women and a more global sample. Those studies showed a range anywhere from 12% to nearly 30% for “learning from others.” So, not only is 70-20-10 incorrect, it also doesn’t represent gender/geographical differences
2. This research is primarily a survey about life changing events – not causal. There was no supportive peer reviewed research.
3. 70-20-10 gets interpreted with behaviourist assumptions (Ring the bell, the dog will salivate) without the science to back it up. 70-20-10 makes underlying assumptions about the worth, autonomy, dignity, and the unique values of the human person

Still there?
Well done if you are. There is a point to all this, believe it or not.

Why a business should care about this
I’m only interested in having people on my team who can think for themselves, who are genuinely curious, insightful, challenging and a bit bloody minded.

As client why should you care? Because you want the output of the brain surgeon, you want to know the following:

• That they have done the learning
• That they have made sense of it for themselves
• That they have challenged the status quo in case its needed challenging
• That they have a strong sense of what is right
• They are surrounded by peers who constantly challenge them
• They accept nothing as fact until they have deconstructed it
• That everything that withstands the rigor is respected

You want people in the room with your top teams, who can:

• Train when knowledge is required
• Coach when challenged is needed
• Mentor when experience needs to be brought to bare
• Counsel as wisdom may prove its worth
• Facilitate in order to help the answer be discovered
• Bring the outside in as new ideas and challenge find their place

I care and so do the people I work with
I’m a bit fanatical, I make no apologies, I’m a bit belligerent, I make no apologies, what you can trust though is that any team of mine come ready to bring the change, as we refuse to be less than our best with your people and that’s what wins the day, when your leaders enter a room with our thought leaders, then you’ll see the change you want.

When your leaders experience 'expertise' rather than ‘well trained’, they shift a gear, they focus and connect to conversations that take them to new places.

You want people in the room who will not just be offered a model, but a way of thinking, a mindset. You want the people who train your leaders to be stood with them at peer level, so they will be heard. One of the ways I find people who can do this is to move away from the ‘opinionated learner’ and to look for the ‘insightful learner’, the ones who fight for clarity, truth and clear understanding.

These are the people that will then be accepted by leaders in your business.

Top Tips to Challenge the Status Quo of Thinking around ‘Thinking’

1. Does it sound right?
2. Do I have evidence in my own experience, or in the observation of the experience of others that indicates this is right/wrong?
3. How old is the research? Anything over 5 years, is worth checking, anything over 50 years, you really need to check it out
4. Is there counter evidence? If so how recent is it? If it is from the same time period, it may well be just another opinion, which may well be valuable if it reinforces my own subjective evidence. If it is more recent, peer reviewed and from an academic source then it may well be what we are looking for.
5. Don’t believe it even if its valid, it probably is wrong in some way.
   
   

Top Tips to Select a Leadership Learning Provider
There’s a lot more to choosing a quality learning provider than I can cover here, however in the top 3 of this list has to be a solid, investigative, curious, non-accepting, challenging and intellectually virile team, the outcome of which is:

• Quality learning content
• Respected facilitators
• Buy in from the leadership tier
  
  

So what to do, as a company looking to utilise learning methodologies?
Take the models that appear to make sense, be as certain as you can be. Then use them as a way to make the point you want to make, however don’t allow them to become a set frame, as if you do that the model owns you.

It’s like with leadership facilitators:

• Good ones use models, tools and psychometrics to validate what their experience has shown them to be true
• Bad ones use the models, tools and psychometrics to validate what they are saying is correct, regardless of them knowing if it is, they are validating their delivery of facts

They are quite different.

So who can you trust?
Your own common sense. If you are offered a model and it just doesn’t ring true, I say don’t accept it, it doesn’t matter who is telling you it is the way to go, as leaders in any business we have to trust our instincts and use models to help what we believe to be true, not to suppress our instincts in order to utilize a model…..that has never worked out, anywhere, ever.

Thoughts

• Just because it's written down doesn't make it true
• Experts are people, both completely brilliant and completely fallible, often both at the same time
• What makes an expert? That’s hard to tell, but for what it is worth I think an expert has learned to trust their instincts, they know they are more valid if well calibrated and then they find facts to confirm or challenge their gut

I find, develop and train people who are more than the status quo, people that bring their ‘A’ game to your business, your brand and your reputation.

And to bring a final bit of levity to a complex post……. it’s a fact that there has been an increase in global warming in line with the reduction of Pirates, but I don't think having more Pirates will help global warming, or will it???!!!

 _______________________________

I have taken liberally from the work of: Shaunacy Ferro-Mental Floss, Department of Mathematics-University of York, Sloan Weitzel-Duke Corporate Education

 _______________________________

Guy Bloom is a Leadership Evolutionist with a commitment to bring the future of leadership into the present day and help businesses create a sustainable, legacy driven, commercially savvy environment.