THE ROUGH GUIDE TO PSYCHOLOGYIT’S NOT ONLY ABOUT IQ
Of course, academic success doesn’t just rest on external factors, such
as teachers and class size, it also depends on a child’s own traits.
Intelligence is the most obvious factor linked to school success, and
unsurprisingly many studies have shown that IQ-test performance is an
accurate predictor of later grade-achievement – although not the only
relevant factor. Recently, for example, there’s been a surge of interest and
evidence pointing to the role of working memory – a child’s capacity for
holding and manipulating information mid-task.
Lessons from educational psychology
T The importance of testing Once a pupil has successfully recalled
an item of information in a test, thus suggesting they’ve learned
it, this shouldn’t be regarded as the end point. Neither should
they simply revise what they’ve already learned. Instead, further
studying and repeated testing of the same material will help
consolidate the earlier learning, leading to deeper memorization.
(see also p.88 on the importance of spacing in study).
T Concrete examples aren’t always helpful Common sense tells
us that successful teaching depends on an ability to invoke inter-
esting concrete examples to explain abstract concepts. In fact, such
examples can be counter-productive, at least when it comes to
maths. Jennifer Kaminski at Ohio State University showed this in a
2008 study in which students learned the rules governing mathe-
matical relations between three items in a group. Students taught
with the help of pizza and tennis-ball metaphors were able to
learn the rules, but were unable to transfer them to a novel real-life
situation. By contrast, students taught using abstract symbols not
only mastered the mathematical relations but were able to transfer
what they’d learned to a new context.
T Museum visits really are beneficial Class trips to the local
museum seem like a good idea, but do pupils really learn much?
According to Julien Gross at the University of Otago, the answer
depends on how the children are tested. He published a study
in 2009 involving pupils who visited the Royal Albatross Centre
in Dunedin. Confronted afterwards with a standard comprehen-
sion test, the children didn’t seem to have remembered much.
However, when they were simply asked to freely recall as much as
they could from the day, it was clear that they’d retained a huge
amount. This was especially the case if they were allowed to use
drawings to help convey what they’d remembered.