Author: Jeffrey D. Holmes
Publisher: Wiley Blackwell – John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
ISBN: 9781118709382 (hardback)
Pages: 209
Price: $84.95 Hardcover; $24.95 Paperback; $16.99 E-book
Reviewed by: Kim Coffman, PhD, Miami Dade College
In “Great Myths of Education and Learning”, Jeffrey D. Holmes (2016) has added to the Wiley Publisher’s “Myth” series of books that attempt to dispel commonly held inaccuracies about implications of research findings from various areas of psychology. Holmes, through his writing, identifies and debunks 16 general misconceptions held by some educators, students, members of the general public and individuals with policy decision-making authority regarding what teaching tools, modalities and strategies undergird effective learning by students, how well students understand and can apply effective learning strategies, and how accurately students can describe their own learning and knowledge. Holmes’ readers also gain an understanding that an additional intent of his writing was to educate those of us who educate, by reminding us of the following statement that he made in the introduction, “One of the most meaningful insights I acquired while researching and writing this book is that the line of belief between adherents and skeptics is often the same line that separates those who conduct the research in a particular area from those who do not” (Holmes, 2016, p. x). Thus, Holmes’ audience includes seasoned professionals in academia with an interest in incorporating current research regarding teaching and learning, new part-time and full-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants with invested interest in incorporating instructional design and strategies that foster active student learning, undergraduate and graduate students with foci on maximizing their understanding of the implications of psychological research findings for their learning, members of the general public with anecdotal yet inaccurate knowledge of how they and their children learn most effectively, and individuals with influence over public policy decision-making as it relates to education.
Current research in the field is incorporated as evidence within each of the 16 chapters to both challenge existing beliefs about education and learning and to provide just-in-time knowledge about what actually does work to foster effective educational policies, practices and student learning.
Holmes entices the reader in Chapter 1 by demonstrating, through research, that students struggle with their meta-level understanding of what they have learned, how adequately they will retain material studied, and how effectively they will likely recall and apply what they have learned in future situations. Research findings discussed by Holmes in this chapter regarding students’ meta-cognitive awareness were generally indicative of a pattern of over-confidence in and estimation of acquisition of knowledge, writing skills, and course success, as success relates to grade estimates, for lower-performing students. Related findings for higher-performing students were mixed, with these students accurately estimating their abilities or somewhat underestimating them (Holmes, 2016). Holmes (2016, p. 8) closed the chapter with this concern: “This pattern creates a paradox, in that lower-performing students might improve their self-evaluation if they more effectively mastered course content, but their deficient self-evaluation skills make learning more difficult.”
In chapters two through five, Holmes discusses the results of several studies that failed to support the commonly-held beliefs by those in academia and by members of the general public that shifting away from traditional lecture and incorporating such strategies as PowerPoint provision, adapting teaching methods to identified student “learning styles,” and providing minimal guidance in order to foster self-discovery through learning enhance most students’ learning. Holmes began this comparative discussion by citing evidence in Chapter 2 of the dearth of scholarly research that demonstrated enhanced learning when students’ identified learning styles were targeted, despite the commonly held belief that instructional strategies should encompass multiple learning styles of students. When discussing research findings regarding the learning performance and reported satisfaction of high-performing vs. low-performing students in terms of classroom style in Chapter 3, Holmes shared the provocative concern that, if one moved to active learning strategies and away from traditional lecture, the learning experiences and self-reported satisfaction of high-performing students may suffer as a result. In Chapter 4, Holmes also summarized research findings that generally indicated that the provision of PowerPoint prior to, during and subsequent to class sections provides minimal, neutral or detrimental effects in terms of students’ course performance, regardless of students’ self-reported estimations that the provision of PowerPoint enhanced their learning. Holmes closed this series of discussions regarding the efficacy of shifting away from traditional teaching strategies in order to positively influence students’ demonstrated learning by sharing a critique of the assumption that non-guided learning is generally superior to guided learning. In this fifth chapter, Holmes reminded the reader that several theories associated with memory and memory development, including premises underlying short-term memory, working memory and cognitive load, were not yet posited when the principle work addressing the efficacy of non-guided over guided instruction was published, and that related premises for these theories of memory and memory development would run counter to the efficacy of reliance on primarily non-guided instructional techniques.
In his later chapters, Holmes addressed current public discourse regarding multiple intelligences (Chapter 9), self-esteem and its relation to performance (Chapter 10), and left-brain / right-brain dualities (Chapter 8). Additionally, Holmes shared findings that demonstrated students’ deficit effects on performance when multi-tasking (Chapter 7), adopting repetition-only study strategies (Chapter 11), relying on commonly-held assumptions and thus avoiding changing answers during multiple choice exams (Chapter 13), and in anticipating an enhanced benefit of acquiring coaching prior to taking standardized exams (Chapter 14). He further shared equivocal findings regarding some educators’ distrust of the adequacy of multiple choice exams in detecting higher-order learning (Chapter 12) and in educators’ avoidance of externally rewarding students in order to instead emphasize students’ reliance on intrinsic motivation (Chapter 6). Holmes’ discussions also challenged support of current, publicly reduced reliance on the efficacy of standardized testing in the prediction of future academic performance (Chapter 15) and in related expectations that these tests inherently are biased against certain minority groups (Chapter 16).
In summary, Holmes implied for the reader the importance of the critical evaluation of theoretical predictions regarding learning enhancement across multiple modalities and with varied student populations prior to implementing instructional strategies that may, inadvertently, neutrally effect or potentially harm student learning opportunities. In his Introduction, Holmes hinted to the reader that the strong influences of “cognitive bias,’ “social influence,” and the “sheer repetition” of ideas does not equate to accuracy and usefulness of ideas underlying education and learning. His collection of chapters provide highly relevant, well-supported, current and provocative food-for-thought for seasoned and new educators, students, the general public, and policy-makers regarding the strategies most effective in fostering student learning in the future.