WHY ‘ONE SIZE FITS ALL' IS A MYTH?

That ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to learning, is a well-known myth, but why?

Learning Techniques

Teachers vouch for one technique or other but despite the promise of many of these techniques, there are questions about their efficacy, applicability in multiple situations, as well as about their potential limitations. Some of the techniques for which there is well-established literature, or which are generally tried by teachers, or students have been listed below.

1. Rereading: Restudying text material again after an initial reading
2. Highlighting/underlining:     Marking potentially important portions of to-be-learned materials while reading
3. Summarization:       Writing summaries (of various lengths) of to-be-learned texts
4. Keyword mnemonic:             Using keywords and mental imagery to associate verbal materials
5. Imagery for text:     Attempting to form mental images of text materials while reading or listening
6. Elaborative interrogation:   Generating an explanation for why an explicitly stated fact or concept is true
7. Self-explanation:    Explaining how new information is related to known information, or explaining steps taken during problem-solving
8. Practice testing:       Self-testing or taking practice tests over to-be-learned material
9. Distributed practice:              Implementing a schedule of practice that spreads out study activities over time
10. Interleaved practice:             Implementing a schedule of practice that mixes different kinds of problems, or a schedule of study that mixes different kinds of material, within a single study session

Multiple categories of variables

‘One size fits all’ can be a reality if any one of these techniques (or any other technique) shows a general applicability across multiple categories of variables. Now the question is what are some of the categories of variables that we are talking about? The below table gives a good representation of the variables, classified under 4 categories.

Does any of these learning techniques have generic benefits across all four categories of variables—materials, learning conditions, student characteristics, and criterion tasks? (The choice of these categories is inspired by Jenkins’ model.)

Material:            Materials pertain to the specific content that students are expected to learn, remember, or comprehend. Materials vary from simple concepts to mathematical problems to complicated science texts (even moves in dance and sports techniques).

Learning conditions:     Learning conditions pertain to aspects of the context in which students are interacting with the to-be-learned materials. These conditions include aspects of the learning environment itself (e.g., noisiness vs. quietness in a classroom, studying alone or in a group), as well as the way in which a learning technique is implemented. For instance, a technique could be used only once or many times (a variable referred to as dosage) when students are studying, or a technique could be used when students are either reading or listening to the to-be-learned materials.

Student characteristics:               Student characteristics include variables such as age, ability, and level of prior knowledge and influence the effectiveness of a given learning technique. For example, in comparison to more advanced students, younger students in early grades may not benefit from a technique. Students’ basic cognitive abilities, such as working memory capacity or general fluid intelligence, may also influence the efficacy of a given technique.

Domain knowledge may enable the use of some of the learning techniques (In an educational context, domain knowledge refers to the valid, relevant knowledge a student brings to a lesson). For instance, the use of imagery while reading texts requires that students know the objects and ideas that the words refer to so that they can produce internal images of them. Students with some domain knowledge about a topic may also find it easier to use self-explanation and elaborative interrogation, which are two techniques that involve answering “why” questions about a particular concept (e.g., “Why would particles of gas expand when heated?”). Domain knowledge may enhance the benefits of summarization and highlighting as well. Nevertheless, although some domain knowledge will benefit students as they begin learning new content within a given domain, it is not a prerequisite for using most of the learning techniques.

Criterion tasks:               Criterion tasks include different outcome measures that are relevant to student achievement, such as those tapping memory, problem-solving, and comprehension.

To understand the degree of efficacy of each learning technique across long retention intervals and its general applicability, students’ objective performance on any number of criterion tasks is measured.

Criterion tasks vary with respect to the specific kinds of knowledge that they tap. Some tasks are meant to tap students’ memory for information, others are largely meant to tap students’ comprehension, and still others are meant to tap students’ application of knowledge. Bloom and colleagues divided learning objectives into six categories, from memory (or knowledge) and comprehension of facts to their application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation

How to evaluate a technique?

How a technique performs, must be measured by students’ comprehension, application, and transfer of knowledge, not just by measuring their memory.

To acknowledge the important interplay between memory for a concept on one hand and the ability to comprehend and apply it on the other it must be noted though that although gaining factual knowledge is not considered the only or ultimate objective of schooling, efforts to improve student retention of knowledge is essential for reaching other instructional objectives; if one does not remember core ideas, facts, or concepts, applying them may prove difficult. Students who have forgotten principles of algebra will be unable to apply them to solve problems or use them as a foundation for learning calculus (or physics, economics, or other related domains).

Beware of the differences

Even though most of the time students are being taught the same material, under same learning conditions, and are being evaluated using the same criterion still one factor no one can argue to be the same is student characteristics. Because of the wide difference in this variable even though the material and the conditions are the same, the performance on the same criterion will still be very different and must be taken care of.

To each its own

Some learning techniques are largely focused on bolstering students’ memory for facts (e.g., the keyword mnemonic), others are focused more on improving comprehension (e.g., self-explanation), and yet others may enhance both memory and comprehension (e.g., practice testing).

Thus, our review and analysis of any learning technique must describe how it can be used, its effectiveness for producing long-term retention and comprehension, and its breadth of efficacy across the categories of variables listed above- then only we would come to know if it is effective, and if ‘yes’ then for what kind of material, under which conditions, and for which student characteristics, and for which kind of criterion tasks.

There is hope

But whether we have the definitive answer in terms of best learning techniques we must use them as per the applicability for the appropriate variable. Some of the things which make the condition better are the availability of psychological tests and career counselling to match the material and learning conditions with the students’ characteristics, and adaptive testing when it comes to criterion task.

I have been accumulating quite a bit of domain knowledge and now I think it is 
time to share. something in the series. more to come...
         Neeraj