Old-school ways of teaching more effective than making class fun
MAKING lessons fun does not help children to learn, a report has found.
The widely held belief that pupils must be happy in order to do well is nothing more than a myth, according to the Centre for Education Economics.
A report published by the think-tank today, titled The Achievement–wellbeing Trade-off in Education, argues that traditional teaching methods may not be particularly enjoyable for pupils but are the most effective.
These include direct instruction, where a teacher stands at the front and presents information; drilling, where pupils repeat words or phrases after the teacher; and memorisation.
The report says that these methods are “crucial for successful learning” because they allow pupils to transfer information from their working memory to their long-term memory. But they are “neither fun nor inspiring”, and are now considered to be old-fashioned “teacher-centred” techniques.
They were replaced by “child-centred” learning, which became popular in the Sixties and Seventies and focuses on pupils’ enjoyment and well-being.
Child-centred methods have also been characterised as allowing pupils to proceed at their own pace and make discoveries independent of the teacher. The report points to a US study, in which teenagers carried a pager and recorded their happiness level when it beeped. Pupils were the least happy at school or doing homework, but were far happier the rest of the time.
Meanwhile, numerous studies demonstrate that spending more time in school and doing homework raises attainment levels. “In other words, there appears to be a trade-off between achievement and well-being at a very general level ... if pupils do not attend school, or do any work, they are unlikely to learn anything but they may be happier,” the report says.
The belief that when pupils are happier their school results improve stems from a misunderstanding of Jeanjacques Rousseau’s book Emile, or On Education, the report says.
“Rousseau actually highlighted the crucial importance of pupil suffering as a key pedagogical tool to force pupils to learn from their mistakes,” the report says. “Furthermore, he did not equate happiness with joy or pleasure, but rather saw it through the lens of the classic idea of human flourishing. Happiness, he believed, is a goal of education, not its means.”
Gabriel Heller-sahlgren, the report’s author, said the idea that pupil wellbeing and achievement go hand in hand has become “deeply entrenched” in schools.