双语:Education Technology: Brain Gains
发布时间:2018年01月04日
发布人:nanyuzi  

Education Technology: Brain Gains

教育技术:增长才智

 

Together, technology and teachers can revamp schools

技术和教师联手可以改进学校教育

 

In 1953 B.F. Skinner visited his daughter’s maths class. The Harvard psychologist found every pupil learning the same topic in the same way at the same speed. A few days later he built his first “teaching machine”, which let children tackle questions at their own pace. By the mid-1960s similar gizmos were being flogged by door-to-door salesmen. Within a few years, though, enthusiasm for them had fizzled out.

 

1953年,斯金纳(B.F. Skinner)旁听了女儿的数学课。这位哈佛心理学家发现,所有的学生都在用相同的方式以相同的速度学习相同的内容。几天后,他发明了他的第一件“教学机器”,让孩子们按自己的节奏解答问题。到了60年代中期,推销员开始上门兜售类似的小玩意。不过没过几年,人们对这些产品的热情就已消失殆尽。

 

Since then education technology (edtech) has repeated the cycle of hype and flop, even as computers have reshaped almost every other part of life. One reason is the conservatism of teachers and their unions. But another is that the brain-stretching potential of edtech has remained unproven.

 

此后,教育技术就一直在重复这种从大热到沉寂的循环,尽管与此同时电脑已经几乎重塑了生活所有其他方面。原因之一是教师及其工会因循守旧,但还有一个原因是教育技术提升才智的潜力尚未得到证实。

 

Today, however, Skinner’s heirs are forcing the sceptics to think again. Backed by billionaire techies such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, schools around the world are using new software to “personalise” learning. This could help hundreds of millions of children stuck in dismal classes – but only if edtech boosters can resist the temptation to revive harmful ideas about how children learn. To succeed, edtech must be at the service of teaching, not the other way around.

 

然而,今天斯金纳的后继者正迫使怀疑者重新思考这个问题。在马克·扎克伯格和比尔·盖茨等技术派亿万富豪的支持下,全球各地的学校正在使用新的软件将学习“个性化”。这能帮助到被困在沉闷课堂中的亿万孩子,但前提是教育技术的推动者能够抵挡住诱惑,不让那些有关儿童如何学习的有害见解卷土重来。教育技术要成功,必须要服务于教学,而不是支配教学。

 

Pencils down

放下铅笔

 

The conventional model of schooling emerged in Prussia in the 18th century. Alternatives have so far failed to teach as many children as efficiently. Classrooms, hierarchical year-groups, standardised curriculums and fixed timetables are still the norm for most of the world’s nearly 1.5bn schoolchildren.

 

传统的学校教育模式始于18世纪的普鲁士。迄今为止,各种替代方案都未能达到学校教育那样的规模和效率。对全球近15亿学童中的大多数而言,课堂教学、年级分段、标准化课程和固定的课程时间表仍是常态。

 

Too many do not reach their potential. In poor countries only a quarter of secondary schoolchildren acquire at least a basic knowledge of maths, reading and science. Even in the mostly rich countries of the OECD about 30% of teenagers fail to reach proficiency in at least one of these subjects.

 

有太多学生没有充分实现他们的潜力。在贫穷国家,只有四分之一的中学生掌握了最基础的数学、阅读和科学知识。即使在大多为富裕国家的经合组织成员国中,也有大约30%的青少年未能熟练掌握其中至少一门科目。

 

That share has remained almost unchanged over the past 15 years, during which billions have been spent on IT in schools. By 2012 there was one computer for every two pupils in several rich countries. Australia had more computers than pupils. Handled poorly, devices can distract. A Portuguese study from 2010 found that schools with slow broadband and a ban on sites such as YouTube had better results than high-tech ones.

 

过去15年里,这一百分比几乎没有变化。而在此期间,数十亿美元已被投入到学校的信息技术上。2012年,在少数几个富国中,每两名学生就配有一台电脑。在澳大利亚,电脑的数量比学生还多。但如果利用不善,技术设备反而会分散学生的注意力。2010年葡萄牙的一项研究发现,相比IT条件优越的学校,在宽带速度慢且禁止访问YouTube等网站的学校里,学生的成绩更好。

 

What matters is how edtech is used. One way it can help is through bespoke instruction. Ever since Philip II of Macedon hired Aristotle to prepare his son Alexander for Greatness, rich parents have paid for tutors. Reformers from São Paulo to Stockholm think that edtech can put individual attention within reach of all pupils. American schools are embracing the model most readily. A third of pupils are in a school district that has pledged to introduce “personalised, digital learning”. The methods of groups like Summit Public Schools, whose software was written for nothing by Facebook engineers, are being copied by hundreds of schools.

 

关键在于如何使用教育技术。让它发挥作用的一种方式是因材施教。马其顿王国的腓力二世(Philip II)聘请亚里士多德培养儿子亚历山大,助他日后开创伟业。这之后,有钱的父母便开始聘请家庭教师。从圣保罗到斯德哥尔摩,全球各地有很多改革者认为,教育技术可以让所有学生都获得个体化的关注。美国学校最热衷采用这一模式,有三分之一的学生所在的学区都已承诺引进“个性化、数字化学习”。Facebook的工程师为Summit Public Schools免费编写了学习软件,成百上千的学校正在复制这类机构的教学方式。

 

In India, where about half of children leave primary school unable to read a simple text, the curriculum goes over many pupils’ heads. “Adaptive” software such as Mindspark can work out what a child knows and pose questions accordingly. A recent paper found that Indian children using Mindspark after school made some of the largest gains in maths and reading of any education study in poor countries.

 

在印度,约半数小学毕业生无法读懂一段简单的文字,很多学生听不懂上课内容。Mindspark之类的“自适应”软件可以推断出一个孩子的知识范围,并提出相应的问题。最近有一篇论文发现,在对穷国进行的各类教育研究中,在课余使用Mindspark学习的印度孩子在数学和阅读方面取得的进步最大。

 

The other way edtech can aid learning is by making schools more productive. In California schools are using software to overhaul the conventional model. Instead of textbooks, pupils have “playlists”, which they use to access online lessons and take tests. The software assesses children’s progress, lightening teachers’ marking load and giving them insight on their pupils. Saved teachers’ time is allocated to other tasks, such as fostering pupils’ social skills or one-on-one tuition. A study in 2015 suggested that children in early adopters of this model score better in tests than their peers at other schools.

 

教育技术辅助学习的另一个途径是让学校教育变得更有成效。在加州,一些学校正在利用软件来改革传统教育模式。学生不用教科书,而是使用“播放列表”访问在线课程并接受测试。软件可以评估学童的进步,减轻教师阅卷打分的工作量,加深老师对学生的了解。教师可将节省出来的时间花在其他任务上,如培养学生的社交技能,或提供一对一的辅导。2015年的一项研究表明,在率先采纳这种教育模式的学校,学生比其他学校的同龄学生成绩更好。

 

Pay attention at the back

留心负面因素

 

Such innovation is welcome. But making the best of edtech means getting several things right. First, “personalised learning” must follow the evidence on how children learn. It must not be an excuse to revive pseudoscientific ideas such as “learning styles”: the theory that each child has a particular way of taking in information. Such nonsense leads to schemes like Brain Gym, an “educational kinesiology” programme once backed by the British government, which claimed that some pupils should stretch, bend and emit an “energy yawn” while doing their sums.

 

这样的创新是受欢迎的。但是,要最有效地利用教育技术,就要做好以下几件事情。首先,“个性化学习”必须依据学童的实际学习方式,而不能成为重启某些伪科学理念的借口。“学习风格”(learning styles)就是这样一种伪科学理论,声称每个孩子都有自己接受信息的独特方式。这样的无稽之谈催生了一些无益之举,比如英国政府曾经支持过的一个“教育运动学”项目——健脑操(Brain Gym)。该项目称有些学生在做算术练习时应该做做拉伸弯弯腰,再打个“提神呵欠”。

 

A less consequential falsehood is that technology means children do not need to learn facts or learn from a teacher – instead they can just use Google. Some educationalists go further, arguing that facts get in the way of skills such as creativity and critical thinking. The opposite is true. A memory crammed with knowledge enables these talents. William Shakespeare was drilled in Latin phrases and grammatical rules and yet he penned a few decent plays. In 2015 a vast study of 1,200 education meta-analyses found that, of the 20 most effective ways of boosting learning, nearly all relied on the craft of a teacher.

 

另一种影响较小的错误论调声称,技术发展意味着儿童不再需要学知识或向教师学习——上Google搜一搜就可以了。一些教育学家更进一步,认为知识妨碍了创造力和批判性思维等能力的发展。但实际情况恰恰相反,一个装满知识的头脑才能促进这些能力的发展。莎士比亚从小接受的是拉丁语短语和语法规则训练,但却写出了几部像样的戏剧。2015年,一项包含1200项教育元分析的大型研究发现,最能有效促进学习的20种方法几乎全部依赖老师的教导。

 

The second imperative is to make sure that edtech narrows, rather than widens, inequalities in education. Here there are grounds for optimism. Some of the pioneering schools are private ones in Silicon Valley. But many more are run by charter-school groups teaching mostly poor pupils, such as Rocketship and Achievement First – or Summit, where 99% of graduating pupils go on to university and laggards make the most progress relative to their peers in normal classes. A similar pattern can be observed outside America. In studies of edtech in India by J-PAL, a research group, the biggest beneficiaries are children using software to receive remedial education.

 

第二个必行之举是确保教育技术会缩小而不是扩大教育不平等。在这方面有些值得乐观的理由。先行引入教育技术的学校中,有一些是硅谷的私立学校,但更多的是特许教育机构开办的学校,招收的也主要是贫困学生,例如Rocketship和Achievement First,或是Summit。Summit毕业生的大学升学率高达99%,成绩落后的学生与普通学校的后进学生相比,取得的进步也最大。在美国之外也可以看到类似的情形。研究机构J-PAL在印度开展的针对教育技术的研究发现,教育技术最大的受益者是利用软件接受补习的儿童。

 

Third, the potential for edtech will be realised only if teachers embrace it. They are right to ask for evidence that products work. But scepticism should not turn into Luddism. A good model is São Paulo, where teachers have welcomed Geekie, an adaptive-software company, into public schools.

 

第三,只有被教师接受,教育科技才能实现其潜力。教师要求提供教育技术类产品发挥作用的证据,他们是对的,但怀疑态度不应转变成卢德主义。圣保罗是个不错的范例,那里的教师欢迎自适应软件公司Geekie进入公立学校。

 

In 1984 Skinner called opposition to technology the “shame” of education. Given what edtech promises today, closed-mindedness has no place in the classroom.

 

1984年,斯金纳称反对技术是教育的“耻辱”。鉴于今天教育技术显现出的潜力,课堂中已容不得固守成见了。


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