Five-year-olds whose pretest performance showed that they had not mastered number conservation were presented four training sessions:
Some were just given feedback on their number conservation performance; others were given feedback and asked to explain their reasoning; yet others were given feedback and asked to explain the reasoning that led to the experimenter’s judgment. Being asked to explain the experimenter’s reasoning produced considerably more learning than either of the other two procedures.
Number conservation is kind of hard:
The Bulletproof Musician summarizes the results:
The kids who were asked to imagine what the expert’s perspective might be ultimately got 62 percent of the questions correct over the course of their four testing sessions. Whereas the group that provided their own reasoning for the answer only got 48 percent of the problems correct. And those who provided no rationale got 49 percent correct.
The best way to increase children’s intelligence is to ask them questions.
So, focusing the kids on pleasing the teacher got them to please the teacher more effectively than not focusing the kids on pleasing the teacher.
Is that what happened?
… Aaaand (now having watched the video), yep.
The video had two kids, one of whom is not a native English speaker – yet – the other of whom is. WTF did the adult mean by “more candy”? Or, more exactly, how many more meanings of “more candy” can you think of? More than the educator?