Teachers: How effective are they?
Contents
Teachers: Not just about academic teaching
The Jigsaw Classroom Technique
How a student learns is important because it allows researchers to gain an understanding as to what motivates an individual and any extraneous variables which impact learning. A vast amount of research highlights how to create optimal learning environments for children and adults alike (Prosser & Trigwell, 1999). However, the need for a teacher is often assumed to be vital within the learning process, with the majority of studies focusing on what qualities make a good teacher (Harris & Sass, 2010; Chingos & Peterson, 2011). Recently researchers (Chi et al, 2009; Mitra, 2010) have been exploring the extent an individual can learn without the aid of a teacher, as in how much knowledge an individual can gain through the use of self-organised learning or with the presence of a ignorant mediator. This Wiki page attempts to review evidence presented by Mitra & Dangwal (2010), whilst highlighting limitations and identifying the most important aspects to consider when critically analysing this area of study.
Professor Sugata MitraProfessor Sugata Mitra is a long term educationist and is best known for his “hole in the wall” experiments initially conducted in 1999 in a slum area in India. Mitra’s interests were in the concept of unsupervised learning and his investigations have contributed to a body of research proposing that trained teachers are unnecessary for successful, efficient learning. The initial “hole in the wall” experiment was carried out in 1999 in a slum area of New Delhi where a computer with internet access was installed in a hole in a wall overlooking the area. The children living in the area were allowed unsupervised access to the computer and their behaviours were video recorded over a one month period.The video recordings revealed that the children had taught themselves how to use the computer and furthermore, had learned some basic English and mathematic abilities. Mitra believes that this process of learning without the need for good teachers will be extremely beneficial in remote, poor areas across the world where the presence of primary and secondary schools with highly trained teachers is limited.
In this more recent experiment Mitra, S., & Dangwal, R. (2010 ) the “hole in the wall” method was employed in a remote Indian village to investigate the ability of children to learn basic biology without a trained teacher. Training material on basic molecular biology was downloaded onto the computer placed in the village of Kalikuppam and children within the village had unsupervised access to the computer and the material.Key Experimental Result: “Limits to self-organising systems of learning - the Kalikuppam experiment”
After 75 days of unsupervised access to the computer in the wall, a mediator with no knowledge on molecular biology was introduced to the children. The mediator was a young woman whose purpose was to praise the children for any gained knowledge within the subject of molecular biology and to encourage the children to carry out further research. The mediator used a “grandparent” model of encouragement and said phrases such as “I wish I could do that” and “I could never have understood that” when interacting with the children. The children interacted with the mediator and the computer for another 75 days.
A random sample of 34 children age 10 to 14 years old were selected for assessment in the investigation. The sample of children completed a pre-test at the beginning of the experiment, a post-test after 75 days of unsupervised access to the computer and a post-test after another 75 days including interaction with the mediator. The results of the tests were compared to results of the same tests completed by children at a nearby average performing state school and children at a high performing private school in New Delhi. Mitra & Dangwal (2010 ) found that the test scores of the sample of children in the village of Kalikuppam after 75 days of unsupervised access to the computer were comparable to the test scores of the children at the local state school. Furthermore, with an additional 75 days of interaction with the mediator and the computer, the village children produced scores on the second post-test similar to that of the children attending a high performing private school in New Delhi.
In India and many other countries across the world, highly trained teachers avoid working in poorer rural areas for many reasons, including a lower salary in comparison to working in urban schools in highly affluent areas. Mitra & Dangwal (2010 ) propose that the findings of the investigation reveal a potential solution for this problem in which effective learning can occur without the presence of a highly qualified teacher. Within the presence of the computer containing all the relevant sources the village children demonstrated an ability to organise themselves into self-learning groups. The addition of a friendly mediator, who provided encouragement but not teaching, enhanced learning further to a level similar to that of children attending a high performing school. The village children were able to reach a level of knowledge and understanding similar to that of children who were taught by trained and experienced teachers and this finding is a key piece of evidence for the concept that teachers are not necessary for effective learning to occur.
"The hole in the wall: self organising systems in education" Keynote speech by Sugata MitraAlthough Mitra's work provides important insights into self organised learning, it is important to consider limitations when interpreting the results.
Method:
The use of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQs) provides a quick, inexpensive and effective way of gathering information pre and post learning. However, there are some limitations to the use of this method, for instance it is difficult to distinguish between deep and surface learning. Within this paper, students identified one correct answer out of four but no explanation was required as to why the student thought this answer was correct. For instance, a student may answer the question shown below correctly (c. DNA) but might be unable to explain fully as to why the answer is DNA.
12. There is a biological molecule given to you. The number of A + T = Number of G + C. Identify the most likely molecule:
a) RNA [1]
b) tRNA [1]
c) DNA [1]
d) MRNA [1]
When the children who were unsupervised were asked whether they understood molecular biology, the “children confirmed that they knew nothing,” (Stamp 2012) however, the children still answered 30% of the questions correctly. This could be due to chance, by using MCQs there is a theoretical chance of guessing the right answer, this could mean that unsupervised simply guessed the answers to the questions without understanding much of the content.
As only 2 computers were available within the community peer interaction occurred when using the resources. The benefits of peer interaction have been well-documented (Chi et al 2008). By engaging with the material students develop their own ideas and reasons for learning the material which leads to a better understanding of the subject. It is clear that Mitra adopts a Vygotskian (1978) approach to learning, that is, peer interaction is vital for active learning. The use of a kiosk in a playground would entice children to touch, play, and interact with the computer, however, would this intervention work for longer durations? Would the novelty wear off?
It would be interesting to see if the same affect would be found if students were only allowed to access the computers individually, in this case it would be expected that unsupervised solo students would perform poorly in comparison to supervised solo students.
As mediation is a part of a teacher’s role (see section below), it is clear that the supervised student’s benefited greatly from the presence of an ignorant facilitator, who encouraged learning and questions regardless of being naïve towards the subject matter.
Theory
This research does not dismiss the need for a teacher but rather highlights the benefits of self-organised learning. As no structure to learning within this paper, children spend a large proportion of time playing games and roughly 20% of time was spent ‘looking at things’. A vital role of a teacher is to ensure that children are taught a wide range of necessary knowledge up to an acceptable level i.e. a child may choose to learn geography from a computer rather than English; however a good knowledge of English is required to learn a variety of subject and may be necessary in learning geography. Learning without adequate support may only occur up to a point, i.e. the subject matter might become difficult to self-teach and the student might give up. (see section below)
Within this paper, although children who were supervised learned the same level of biology as children with trained teachers in schools, the children in school will also have likely learned about various other topics within this time scale. The use of self-organised learning might not be as quick and effective within teaching numerous subjects in a school setting.
However, this initiative is not always successful; within a Central Himalaya community of Hawabagh feedback about the project highlighted a few limitations, it was found that the computers had been barely touched by the community. One of the problems highlighted is that there were no instructions available for individuals who were computer illiterate; this might also have been a problem within Mitra’s study as children asked for help from individuals with prior computer knowledge (Arora 2010). There also appeared to be no upkeep of the facilities and interest eventually dwindled.
'A good teacher has changed from "one who explains things so well that students understand" to "one who gets students to explain things so that they can be well understood"'. Steven C. Rhinehart.
The role of a teacher within education is changing, no longer is it enough to dispense information for students then to regurgitate at a later date, rather they attempt to create active learners. Active learning is when an individual is mentally engaging with the study material, this can be achieved through group discussion or debate/ a talk or writing a short essay. This type of learning has found support, Chi et al (2009) found that students who used peer interaction (discussion and feedback on ideas) learned more than student who did not.
Active learning can be encouraged by the teacher through: how the information is delivered, for example, an enthusiastic teacher can illicit higher levels of intrinsic motivation and engagement within students; what information is being taught and expressed, for example each students has a different learning style, one individual learn well using visually stimulating material i.e. the use of diagrams, where as another might learn better actively writing and rewording the same material ; and how the information is taught, a teacher who uses a variety of methods and learning activities will enhance engagement within subjects and student autonomy.
Thaman et al (2013) implemented active learning techniques within 1st year medical students and compared results to a traditional learning environment. Student who used active learning performed significantly better on an identical test than traditional learning. A student who engages actively within their studies often gains a high level of motivation and a deep understand of the topic.
However, arguably a teacher’s role extends beyond simply teaching material, they also facilitate learning. Teachers are not omniscient, they do not know the answer to every question that may be asked. For instance, a student may ask a question to which the teacher does not know the answer and the question might be set as a homework task or the student might be asked to go and find out independently. Mitra & Dangwal (2010) found that an individual with little to no prior knowledge of a subject could positively impact learning, it can be argued that a vital role for a teacher is to act as a mediator between learning and the learner. A teacher also acts as a motivator for the child or adult to expand their knowledge. Within Mitra & Dangwal's (2010) paper the supervised group of learners gained significantly better results than the unsupervised group, therefore the importance of a mediator within this context to encourage learning is apparent.
It is clear that children are able to learn to some extent without a teacher. However, self-organised learning does have its limitations children often give up when a task becomes too difficult and learning can only progress up until a specific point. Teachers are vital to learn some subjects, it would be extremely difficult to learn to read and play piano music without first knowing how to read music and what each note corresponded to. Therefore it is unlikely that the sole use of self-organised learning would lead to higher mastery of a specific skill or subject.
Above Mitra and Dangwal (2010) paper has been discussed in relation to the importance of children in underdeveloped countries, self-teaching via a computer based programme. This study showed promise for the children in these villages, where teachers are in short supply, while demand for learning is high, but what this study does not suggests is how this may be relevant for education as a whole. For example, would this type of learning have the same positive outcomes for children in more developed societies? If so, would this type of learning become more or less effective the higher up the educational ladder a person goes? There have been numerous amounts of research in to the influence of computer based learning, all with mixed views on the effectiveness of this, but if a student is to become successful in life and achieve academic success, is computer based learning enough? Does the effectiveness of the teacher stop at academic teaching?
The theory behind this section is that the effectiveness of the teacher does not rest solely on the academic achievements of the learner; the role of the teacher is to give social and emotional support throughout a person’s academic career. This could explain why the higher up in education, the less important the teacher becomes for individual learning. What will be discussed in the section is research to support this theory and if there is support for this theory, in what way does the teacher become less vital in the learning process.
Children when entering primary school have mostly been involved in informal education, by parents, grandparents, siblings etc. For many children this step into formal education is the first of many life changing steps into parental independence. For this reason it is easy to make the assumptions that the relationship between child and teacher is important on a social, emotional and educational level. In support of the theory Birch and Ladd (1997) study investigated that effect the teacher-child relationship on primary school age children. Their results suggested that a close relationship with the teacher was highly correlated with successful academic performance, but not only was this important for academic achievement; they also showed that a positive relationship with their teacher encouraged children to interact with peers better and explore their environment more. Attachment theory has been suggested by others to be the one of the reasons to why teachers are vital to the early childhood educational experiences. Lynch and Cicchetti (1992) suggest that teacher take on a role of a secondary caregiver to children of a young age in this transition period and positive attachment to teachers in vital in early education as it is important that the child feels safe in their environment. Although this study focused on the effect of teacher relations on children who have suffered maltreatment before school age, it is equally as important to the wider population as the majority of children entering school formed strong attachments to a primary caregiver and the need to quickly and securely form attachment to a teacher is vital for their social and emotional development. The role of attachment to teachers could also explain why teachers become less important but not necessarily less effective, the further the children progress in education. Thus, the effectiveness of the teacher not only supports the children’s academic achievements in school but also is effective in their social and emotional development as well.
The higher up the educational ladder a student goes the effectiveness of the teacher is still relevant, but in very different ways. As children mature the teachers approach to their educations need to mature alongside them. As Klem and Connell suggest young people need to feel like they are in control of their education. Students in this study reported that the teacher is effective in keeping them engaged with their learning process by giving the support and guidance when needed, which is linked with increased academic achievements.
As young people reach higher education these social and emotional skills that have been developing throughout their schooling, becomes vital if they are to be a successful student in university. Academic teaching is designed to give students an overview of a particular topic and students are then encouraged to take the teaching further. This type of learning is often been referred to as self-directed learning (Garrison 1992), this type of learning involve the student being able to show the maturity to make decision own their own work and have the social skills to be interact with other students as part of group work exercises. This supports what has been discussed above, that the effectiveness of the teacher does not stop at the academic concepts of education alone, it does in fact stretch beyond academia, that follow students beyond school and influences student throughout their life choices.
Group and Individual Learning
As Mitra and Dangwal (2010) paper only had two computers for the children to share meant that the children naturally formed groups to learn. However, what it failed to show was whether the learning process was affected by the groups or if the children were learning individually. Individual learning encourages self-teaching, investigation skills and allows individuals to learn at their own pace. Group learning encourages social interactions, peer discussions, debates and allows students to bounce ideas off each other to give different perspectives on the topic in question, thus encouraging critical thinking and deeper learning (Shimazoe and Aldrich, 2010). With the benefits of group learning it is important to see why this was an important measure to control for. This section will be discussing the benefits of group learning in comparison to individual learning, to help understand the importance of including these as a measure, if a full understanding of the topic is to be had.
Let’s begin by looking at a paper on group verses individual learning in relation to Mitra and Dangwals (2010) study. Kirschner, Paas and Kirschner (2009) investigated the effect of individual learning verses group leaning. What they showed was that when individual learn information on their own, they show better information retention when being tested on their knowledge, than if they were working in groups. This could explain the initial learning stages of the children’s learning, as they would have had to use the computer themselves, found the information and study it, just to grasp the basic concept thus, having an effect on the post test results. As the children worked in groups as the only had access to one computer, it is only natural to assume that some form of group learning had taken place, even if it was unintentional. Kirschner et al (2009) suggested that group work shows more effective transfer of knowledge on to different tasks and real life situations. Mitra and Dangwals (2010) state that the children showed remarkable transfer of their biology lesson to relate them to situation in the real world. For example, children could explain the reason to why milk curdled or how toothpaste helped clean your teeth. This could be explained by the group interaction that had taken place during the learning process, which allowed the children to discuss the implications of biology in context of their own environment.
A later paper conducted by Kirschner, Paas, Kirschner and Janssen (2011), investigated further into learning in groups and individual learning. This further supported what have been discussed above. This study showed that group learning in more effective when students are face with problem solving tasks, such as relating knowledge to the real world and that individual learning was more efficient when learning structured coursework, i.e. individual going through the computer based learning programme.
This brief discussion on the effect of group learning and individual learning has shown that both group and individual learning has their own advantages as group learning, facilitates transfer of knowledge and better retention to real life situations, whereas individual learning facilities more effective retention for test and structured learning concepts. However, Mitra and Dangwals (2010), paper conclusion suggested that children learnt biology to the same level of children being taught by teachers, this discussion is in no way disputing their findings. What this section has hope to have shown is that they method of learning was not solely down the computer based learning approach, but could have been influenced by the group based learning as well as the individual learning that these children were involved in and this effect warrants further investigation, if the true effect of non-teacher based learning is to be fully understood.
In the Kalikuppam experiment carried out by Mitra & Dangwal (2010 ) a mediator, with no knowledge of the subject that the children were learning, was employed simply to praise the children for their efforts and encourage further investigations. The mediator used a “grandparent” model of encouragement by using expressions such as “how on earth did you figure that out?” when interacting with the children. Mitra & Dangwal (2010 ) discovered that as a result of the phrases used by the mediator the children taught her about what they were learning. Attempting to teach material of a subject that you are trying to learn has been found to be a very effective way of learning and understanding that material. One form of student generated teaching which links to the findings in the Kalikuppam experiment is the Jigsaw Classroom technique first discovered and used by Elliot Aronson in the early 1970’s.
Overview of the Technique
Similar to the work by Mitra the Jigsaw Classroom 
technique does not require a teacher to teach the subject content as the stude nts carry out independent research. The Jigsaw Classroom techniq ue invol ves div iding a class of students into groups of five or six with each grou p m emb er carrying out research on one aspect of t he class topic for example; one group member may research the concentration camps within the class topic of World War 2. To increase the accuracy of the work carried out each student of a jigsaw group meets with students in other jigsaw groups who are researching the same topic. Information on the topic is collated and students become experts on their assigned topics. Each student will then try to present what they have found on their assigned topic to the rest of their jigsaw group. This student generated teaching method is known as the Jigsaw Classroom technique because each group member acts like a jigsaw piece which makes up the whole jigsaw puzzle (the jigsaw group). Aronson applied this technique in city schools across Austin in Texas, and his investigation showed that this technique was a very effective way of learning material and enhanced positive social interaction between all class members.
Applications of the Technique
Empirical evidence has demonstrated that co-operative learning techniques such as the Jigsaw Classroom technique can enhance learning and learning experiences. The Jigsaw Classroom technique was originally implemented in schools by Professor Aronson and was found to improve academic performance and attendance of pupils. However, the technique has also produced positive effects within higher educational settings. Perkins, D. V., and Saris, R. N., (2001) applied the Jigsaw Classroom method in a class of undergraduate statistics students by using a worksheet divided into two to four steps. Each step was assigned to a group of students who worked together to complete the step, then students collaborated with classmates working on different steps to complete the full worksheet. The students in the undergraduate statistics class reported that the co-operative learning technique helped them to understand statistical processes, used class time efficiently and increased the variety of learning experiences by providing an additional learning experience to lectures. The academic performance of students in the investigation was as good as or better (in topics such as ANOVA) than that of students from previous years on the statistics course.
Another example of a successful application of co-operative learning techniques is demonstrated in a case study carried out by Jim Baxter at the University of Strathclyde. Undergraduate psychology students were assigned to six person online discussion groups and each group was given three assignments with each assignment to be completed over a week. After completion of the assignments, students completed a survey and evaluated this learning technique very positively. Students agreed that they read more about psychology topics than they would have without the group assignments and that the contributions from others in the group helped their understanding of the topic. The research demonstrates significantly positive effects of the Jigsaw Classroom method on both academic performance and learning experience and supports the argument that subject matter can be learned as efficiently in a collaborative setting without a teacher. The Jigsaw Classroom technique does appear to be closely linked with Sugata Mitra’s work as both involve learning of subject matter independent of a teacher as students are required to carry out research independently. However, within Aronson’s collaborative learning technique the teacher is still necessary in the learning process as they are teaching students how to learn effectively by teaching active learning techniques.
Key Paper:
References
Aronson, E., Blaney, N., Stephan, C., Sikes, J.,&Snapp, M. (1978). The jigsaw classroom. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage
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Thaman, R. G., Dhillon, S. K., Saggar, S., Gupta, M. P., & Kaur, H. (2013). Promoting active learning in respiratory physiology-positive student perception and improved outcomes. National Journal of Physiology, Pharmacy and Pharmacology, 3(1), 27-34.
Shimazoe, J. and Aldrich, H. (2010). Group Work Can Be Gratifying: Understanding and Overcoming Resistance to Cooperative Learning. College Teaching. 58. 57-57.
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Other resources: http://www.jigsaw.org/