And the winner of the 2024 Dunning-Kruger Expertise Generalisation Syndrome prize in Education is…
…and the winner of the 2024 Dunning-Kruger Expertise Generalisation Syndrome prize for Perceived Excellence in Education are the authors of the article ‘The neuroscience of active learning and direct instruction’ published in Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
Here just a few gems:
Direct instruction (DI) represents traditional pedagogy based upon transmission or transfer theory or the banking model.”
OK, is it DI from Zig Engelmann or di -actually explicit instruction- from Barak Rosenshine? Whichever it is, neither meets the definition the authors give. Have they ever seen a lesson given by Zig or listened to/read Barak?
They continue:
DI focuses upon traditional information transfer pedagogies like lecturing. The instructor organizes and delivers content that students listen to, annotate, hopefully internalize and then recognize appropriately or manipulate on a high-stakes exam. The roles here are clear: teachers deliver knowledge and students absorb it. The immediate value of acquiring the day’s knowledge portion may be low compared to the distal goal of finishing the course in good standing.
Holy strawman Batman!
They continue:
The critical contrast between AL [active learning] and DI pedagogical approaches is whether the student is an active agent during class. In DI, the instructor actively delivers course content and students passively receive the material. In contrast, AL pedagogies require the student to actively manipulate and explore the disciplinary space. In DI, students only become truly active agents when and if they study by purposefully recalling or manipulating the material, usually outside of class, and/or rephrase and summarize during note-taking.”
I thought that this straw man was burned years ago. When I read such things I really don’t know the authors intentionally define it this way or if it’s just plain ignorance. In any event, any self respecting journal with expert reviewers should have desk-rejected this drivel out of hand.
And as icing on the cake they cite people like Karpicke, Roediger, Agarwal, Bjork, Fiorella as being proponents of active learning and opponents of explicit instruction!
Tip for instructors:
If you want to see/show how researchers design a study by setting up a strawman so that they can easily prove what they want to prove, then read this study! An epitome |(see elaboration theory from Charlie Reigeluth) for all instructors to use to show their students what they shouldn’t do!
Dubinsky, J. M., & Hamid, A. A. (2024). The neuroscience of active learning and direct instruction. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 163, 105737. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2024.105737
