Cause or effect? Grey matter and dyslexia…

water-drop

“He is not good at math.” Or as Carol Dweck would say, “He’s not good at math yet.” There is a world of difference. In the first senstence it is already almost a final conclusion. He has tried everything and now we can conclude that he is not good at math. At least in Carol Dweck’s case it is still an optimistic observation. He could still become good at math.
We can then look for causes. We can find them undoubtedly in brains, genes, and, of course, also in the environment. And no doubt we will find causes. With dyslexia scientists also found something. Apparently a cause. People with dyslexia have less gray matter in the brains. Grey matter has the function to process information. That might mean that there is a biological cause for dyslexia. For learning this conclusion has a lot of consequences. Does it make sense to practice a lot if you know that your brains are differently than those without dyslexia? Just ask someone with dyslexia. They often think that dyslexia is an ongoing situation which you can improve a little but not much. For motivation to really practice this biological cause almost seems deadly. The “not yet” of Carol Dweck is skillfully demolished with such a cause.

There are a lot of fallacies in this “gray matter” observation. The first is that what seems a cause according to recent research sometimes may actually be an effect:

“Many dyslexics were not born with less gray matter, according to a surprising recent study. Dyslexics’ grey matter may have developed less because they read less.”

(meer…)

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Oorzaak of gevolg

donderdag 16 juli 2015

water-drop

“Hij is niet goed in rekenen.” Of zoals Carol Dweck zou zeggen: “Hij is nog niet goed in rekenen.” Er zit een wereld van verschil tussen. In de eerste zin is het al haast een eindconclusie. Er is van alles geprobeerd en nu blijkt dat hij niet goed in rekenen is. Carol Dweck maakt er in ieder geval nog een optimistische constatering van. Het kan nog goed komen.

We kunnen vervolgens op zoek gaan naar oorzaken. We kunnen zoeken in hersenen, genen en natuurlijk ook naar de omgeving. En ongetwijfeld vinden we wat. Bij dyslexie is ook wat gevonden. Schijnbaar een oorzaak. Bij mensen met dyslexie is er sprake van minder grijze massa in de hersenen. Grijze massa heeft als functie het verwerken van informatie. Dat zou betekenen dat er een biologische oorzaak is voor dyslexie. Voor leren heeft dat nogal wat consequenties. Heeft het zin om veel te oefenen als je weet dat je hersenen anders in elkaar zitten dan mensen zonder dyslexie? Vraag maar eens door aan iemand met dyslexie. Zij denken vaak dat dyslexie een permanente situatie is waar je misschien wel iets aan kunt verbeteren maar niet veel. Voor de motivatie om echt te oefenen lijkt het me haast dodelijk. Het “nog niet” van Carol Dweck wordt er vakkundig uitgesloopt met zo’n oorzaak.

Er zitten nogal wat denkfouten in deze “grijze massa” constatering. De eerste is dat wat een oorzaak lijkt volgens recent onderzoek weleens een gevolg kan zijn:

“Many dyslexics weren’t born with less grey matter, according to a surprising recent study. Dyslexics’ grey matter may have developed less because they read less.”

Dat zou weleens voor veel meer dingen kunnen gelden. Hij is niet zo goed in … omdat hij er minder tijd aan besteed heeft. Of omdat hij er minder slim op geoefend heeft. Cognitieve geschiedenis. Deliberate practise.

Bovendien zegt gedragswetenschapper en psycholoog Hasselman in de Volkskrant dat er allerlei oorzaken zijn aan te wijzen en moet vooral niet gezocht worden naar één unieke verklaring. Hij ziet de volgende mogelijke verklaringen voor dyslexie:

‘De moedertaal. In Finland en Italië zijn het gesproken en geschreven woord vrijwel identiek en komt dyslexie nauwelijks voor. Onderwijs speelt ook een rol, denken we. Er zijn leraren die nooit een dyslectisch kind in de klas hebben gehad. Dat duidt erop dat een bepaalde aanpak van het leesonderwijs dyslexie voorkomt. Een systematische benadering om te begrijpen hoe dyslexie ontstaat, zou naar grammatica, taalonderwijs, sociale omstandigheden, genetische factoren, hoorproblemen en breindefecten moeten kijken. En hoe de factoren elkaar versterken of juist afzwakken.’

Tja, oorzaak of gevolg.

Voor het onderwijs lijkt het me haast een morele keus om de beinvloedbare factoren te belichten. Voor het leren is het van belang de cognitieve geschiedenis van de student te benadrukken als oorzaak voor succes of falen. Ik denk niet dat we in het onderwijs behoefte hebben aan vrijwaringsbewijzen.

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Calculus (English)

zondag 7 september 2014

He’s a 12 year old boy and he is having problems with multiplication. Here and there he’s still adding and subtracting instead of multiplying. The timetables are not automatised yet even though this has been practised at school for years.There is a scent of dyscalculia around him. He doesn’t have much faith that this problem could be resolved. He is avoiding it as much as possible.

I work at a school for vocational education. In this school there is a department where we (students and teachers) are building resources to learn from. A few months ago we build this exercise:

Schermafbeelding 2015-07-13 om 11.59.54kopie

All the timetables are there and the exercise is counting your mistakes and keeps track of the amount of time you need to finish to finish them all. You have to correct every mistake before you can continue. The record right now is at 4 minutes and 37 seconds and it is in the hands of a fanatic colleague.

The first time the 12 year old tried this exercise it took him 15 minutes with a lot of mistakes. He didn’t work on it with a lot of focus. He didn’t really want to do it and he probably thought that it was not possible to get any better at and that he had reached his potential. His mom gave him a “high expectation” to do it in less than 8 minutes within a week. He had to do the exercise at least once a day and keep track of the results.

A week later on a Friday morning I received an app. He finished the exercise in 7:43 with only 6 mistakes. He was proud. Two of my colleagues and some students decided to try and beat his score which was pretty tough. They did not get his results the first time. We apped the scores back to him. In the end there was only one colleague who was faster. And then we received another app from the boy’s mum that her son kept at it and was now finishing in 6:49 minutes with only 4 mistakes. His mother told us the boy was jumping with excitement. He doesn’t have dyscalculia. He just needed to find his focus and put in the effort.

Somewhere between this first attempt and him beating the 7 minutes mark we looked at the numbers he had problems with, where he made mistakes or which took him a long time. They were 32, 54, 56, 63 and 64. Strangely enough almost everybody trying this exercise runs into problems with these numbers. Which multiplication leads to 56? Do you know? We trained on those numbers and eventually that led to 6:49 with only 4 mistakes. This is deliberate practise. Analyse the things that you are not good at and specifically train on those.

We ask almost everybody who comes here to do this exercise and it is surprising what is happening. Almost everybody tells us that some sort of anxiety arises, a sort of extra focus. I think this is partly because others know you are doing this exercise and because of the clock and the counting of your mistakes. You’re competing with others but also yourself. You really want to make as less mistakes as possible in as little time as possible. And I have heard several colleagues curse when they made a mistake or when they got stuck on a number. A lot of people started over again and again.

I also think that our brains are trying to find a strategy to finish this as fast and as accurate as possible. I noticed that the first time I did the easiest sums (1×9 instead of 3×3 – 1×20 instead of 5×4) and that I tried to fill squares close to each other to keep the board as clear and organized as possible. And the brains think of using a mouse instead of the track pad. My colleague told me his brains divide the numbers. With numbers below 50 he looks at the left-top side of the board and above 50 at the right-bottom side. And with a lot of those strategies the brains are working this way without really realising this. Only when asked you realise that you are using and adapting strategies.

A few weeks later I am at a conference about literacy and learning. I tell this story to a German scientist. She is interested and she starts using the exercise. First attempt: 11:43 and 5 mistakes. 1,5 hours later she scores 6:07 with 3 mistakes. She did the exercise 5 times and her “problem numbers” are 32, 54, 56, 63, 64. A few days later she sends another result. She can’t let go. She knows it can be done in 4,5 minutes and so she wants to achieve this.

Automatising timetables isn’t fun. It can be an enormous challenge. But it can be done. The boy saw that he became faster and made less mistakes each time he tried. And that’s what made him realise he wasn’t at his limit. That’s what made him put in the hours that were necessary to automatise timetables. It is all about a challenge and deliberate practice. The program with the fast feedback gave the boy a very effective opportunity to train and the possibility to see the progress. Perhaps most important, the boy started to believe that it was possible. And that’s what is worrying. The label dyscalculia might just have the effect that it crushes the believe that it is possible.

In the meantime the German scientist went on. She now has the record. She scored 4:21 with 0 mistakes. Can you beat that?

The record is now 2:02 with 0 mistakes… And you can download the program for free as an app if you have an IPad.

 

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