the question. That probably happens because the question is obvious to us. But of course it's not obvious to students, and as the information in this chapter indicates, it's the question that piques people's interest. Being told an answer doesn't do anything for you. You may have noted that I could have organized this book around principles of cognitive psychology. Instead I organized it around questions that I thought teachers would find interesting.
When you plan a lesson, you start with the information you want students to know by its end. As a next step, consider what the key question for that lesson might be and how you can frame that question so it will have the right level of difficulty to engage your students and so you will respect your students' cognitive limitations.
Reconsider When to Puzzle Students
Teachers often seek to draw students into a lesson by presenting a problem that we believe will interest the students. For example, asking, “Why is there a law that you have to go to school?” could introduce the process by which laws are passed. Another strategy is to conduct a demonstration or present a fact that we think students will find surprising. In either case, the goal is to puzzle students, to make them curious. This is a useful technique, but it's worth considering whether these strategies might be used not only at the beginning of a lesson but also after the basic concepts have been learned. For example, a classic science demonstration is to put a burning piece of paper in a milk bottle and then put a boiled egg over the bottle's opening. After the paper burns, the egg appears to be sucked into the bottle. Students will no doubt be astonished, but if they don't know the principle behind it, the demonstration is like a magic trick – it's a momentary thrill, but their curiosity to understand may not be long-lasting. Another strategy would be to conduct the demonstration after students know that warm air expands and cooling air contracts, potentially forming a vacuum. Every fact or demonstration that would puzzle students before they have the right background knowledge has the potential to be an experience that will puzzle students momentarily and then lead to the pleasure of problem solving. It is worth thinking about when to use a marvelous device like the egg-in-the-bottle trick.
Accept and Act on Variation in Student Preparation
As I describe in Chapter 8, I don't accept that some students are “just not very bright” and ought to be tracked into less demanding classes. But it's naïve to pretend that all students come to your class equally prepared to excel; they have had different preparations, as well as different levels of support at home, and they will therefore differ in their abilities, as well as their perception of themselves as students. Those factors, in turn, affect therefore their persistence and resilience to failure. If that's true, and if what I've said in this chapter is true, it is self-defeating to give all of your students the same work. The less capable students will find it too difficult and will struggle against their brain's bias to mentally walk away from schoolwork. To the extent that you can, it's smart, I think, to assign work to individuals or groups of students that is appropriate to their current level of competence. Naturally, you will want to do this in a sensitive way, minimizing the extent to which some students will perceive themselves as behind others. But the fact is that they are behind the others, and giving them work that is beyond them is unlikely to help them catch up and is likely to make them fall still further behind.
Change the Pace
We all inevitably lose the attention of our students, and as this chapter has described, it's likely to happen if they feel somewhat confused. They will mentally check out. The good news is that it's relatively easy to get them back. Change grabs attention, as you no doubt know. When there's a bang outside your classroom, every head turns to the windows. When you change topics, start a new activity, or in some other way show that you are shifting gears, virtually every student's attention will come back to you, and you will have a new chance to engage them. So plan shifts and monitor your class's attention to see whether you need to make them more often or less frequently.
Keep a Diary
The core idea presented in this chapter is that solving a problem gives people pleasure, but the problem must be easy enough to be solved yet difficult enough to take some mental effort. Finding this sweet spot of difficulty is not easy. Your experience in the classroom is your best guide – whatever works, do again; whatever doesn't, discard. But don't expect that you will really remember how well a lesson plan worked a year later. Whether a lesson goes brilliantly well or down in flames, it feels at the time that we'll never forget what happened; but the ravages of memory can surprise us, so write it down. Even if it's just a quick scratch on a sticky note, try to make a habit of recording your success in gauging the level of difficulty in the problems you pose for your students.
One of the factors that contributes to successful thought is the amount and quality of information in long-term memory. In Chapter 2 I elaborate on the importance of background knowledge to effective thinking.
Notes
1 * A more eloquent version comes from eighteenth-century British painter Sir Joshua Reynolds: “There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
2 † And in fact people's driving is more impaired than they realize when they multitask. Don't try this at home!
3 ‡ If you couldn't solve it, here's a solution. As you can see, the rings are marked A, B, and C, and the pegs are marked 1, 2, and 3. The solution is A3, B2, A2, C3, A1, B3, A3.
Further Reading
Less Technical
1 Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education. (2015). Top 20 principles from psychology for preK-12 teaching and learning. https://www.apa.org/ed/schools/teaching-learning/top-twenty-principles.pdf (accessed 13 July 2020). A brief, easy introduction to applying knowledge from psychology to classrooms, and a free download.
2 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. New York: Harper Perennial. The author describes the ultimate state of interest, when one is completely absorbed in what one is doing, to the point that time itself stops. The book does not tell you how to enter this state, but it is an interesting read in its own right.
3 Didau, D., & Rose, N. (2016). What Every Teacher Needs to Know About Psychology. Melton, UK: John Catt. Brief chapters on a broad sweep of topics, including evolution, creativity, motivation, and more, very much from a teacher's perspective.
4 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. (2018). How People Learn II: Learners, Contexts, and Cultures. National Academies Press. https://www.nap.edu/catalog/24783/how-people-learn-ii-learners-contexts-and-cultures (accessed 13 July 2020). Intended as an overview of cognition applied to education, this book sometimes overreaches, moving into peripheral topics, but it's worth the read, and it's a free download.
5 Willingham, D. T. (2019a). The high price of multitasking. New York Times (15 July), p. A21.
