The hot, of-the-moment education-related article, which ran in Thursday's New York Times, reports on a study from the journal Science that found testing to be the surest path to learning. The key, according to researchers, is struggle:
?The struggle helps you learn, but it makes you feel like you're not learning,? said Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College. ?You feel like: ?I don't know it that well. This is hard and I'm having trouble coming up with this information.'?
Another interesting bit from the Times piece:
Howard Gardner, an education professor at Harvard who advocates constructivism?the idea that children should discover their own approach to learning, emphasizing reasoning over memorization?said in an e-mail that the results ?throw down the gauntlet to those progressive educators, myself included.?
?Liam Julian, Bernard Lee Schwartz Policy Fellow