Whether we like it or not, some kids do better at school than others. A good part of this is beyond our control, determined by their genetic inheritance. In his book ‘Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are’ Robert Plomin finds that on average, between 60 and 70% of educational achievement is down to genetics. This still leaves a significant 30-40% determined by the environment which schools, parents and peers can affect. Obviously educational achievement is strongly informed by intelligence and a useful way to look at it, conceived and researched by the psychologist Raymond Cartell, describes it as consisting of two parts – fluid intelligence and crystallised intelligence.
Fluid intelligence is the genetically determined part and consists of our working memory capacity and ability to use logic and reason to solve new unfamiliar problems without depending on prior knowledge. It is worth noting that nobody has yet found a way to improve fluid intelligence, despite the intensive effort to develop cognitive training programs. Crystallised intelligence consists of the knowledge you have in long term memory – what you know. It is this second part that parents and schools can affect, and as David Didau argues so persuasively in his book ‘Making Kids Cleverer – A manifesto for closing the advantage gap,’ increasing crystallised intelligence should be the principle aim of schooling.
One reason for the achievement or advantage gap is the amount of knowledge and vocabulary students enter school with. Students that have been read to extensively, been part of many dinner time conversations, talked at more by adults, taken on trips to libraries, museums etc., have a significant advantage. These students have more crystallised intelligence. This prior knowledge permits them to understand and retain a greater percentage of everything the teacher says, both instructions for activities and explanations of concepts. It is as if their minds possess intellectual velcro or stickiness.
Because significant numbers of children arrive at school without this useful prior knowledge or mental stickiness it is important for teachers to do two things:
- teach a knowledge-rich curriculum explicitly
- employ specific strategies to help students remember what they learn
Teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum ensures any cultural knowledge deficits are ameliorated as much as possible. Explicit teaching means not setting up learning activities which privilege students with more prior knowledge, such as inquiry based learning or semi-discovery approaches, but carefully breaking down topics and explaining them directly to students, questioning to check understanding and giving lots of guided practice using the knowledge.
Whether they admit it or not, every teacher wants, and aims for students to remember lesson content, however few take deliberate steps to help students remember what they learn. An exception would be teachers who believe they are teaching transferable general skills and that detailed content can be looked up on google as required so there is no point in remembering it, but cognitive science is very clear that we can only think with the information we have in our long term memory, making this approach more than a little flawed.
Strategies to help students remember learning such as key vocab, definitions and procedures can include frequent low-stakes tests or student self-quizzing using knowledge organisers, chorusing responses and online games such as Kahoots. The aim is for the knowledge to be transferred into student’s long term memories permanently, not just for an exam or end of topic test. To this end cumulative rather than modular end of topic tests which include content from previous topics helps cement learning.
Exploring Education 