The Learning Scientists. Further Education (FE), Post-16. Seminal Papers in Educational Psychology. Paul A. Kirschner As an experienced researcher, reviewer, and supervisor/mentor of hundreds of young academic researchers, I have experienced a problem, namely that young academics often don’t “know the masters”.
Without this knowledge, they often redesign many wheels and aren’t able to really stand on the shoulders of giants and bring the field further. To this end, I crowdsourced a question a while ago to colleagues in the community, namely: What article or articles do you feel are seminal articles in our field that every (young) researcher should be aware of? What follows is a cleaned-up, alphabetical list of what I received, each with an abstract or short annotation and where possible, a link to the document itself.
It doesn’t pretend to be complete nor definitive. Maybe it’s better to call it an educated beginning. Atkinson, R. Ausubel, D.P. (1960). Ausubel, D. (1963). Baddeley, A. & Hitch, G. (1974). Bandura, A. (1977) Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Research that changed my teaching. In the first of a series in which educators explain how research has transformed their practice, English and media teacher Hélène Galdin-O’Shea tells us about one paper that changed everything for her classroom. Research paper: ‘Why minimal guidance during instruction does not work: an analysis of the failure of constructivist, discovery, problem-based, experiential, and inquiry-based teaching’Authors: Kirschner, Sweller and Clark, 2006.
The end of my first decade as a teacher was nearly the end of my career as a teacher. I had become so frustrated with the way in which ‘outstanding’ teaching was defined and enforced that I was ready to give up. When the focus of lesson planning becomes ‘What can I do in order not to explain this explicitly?’ After 13 years on the job, I went online, connected with many colleagues, and started reading.
The aim of all instruction is to alter long-term memory. See Paul Kirschner’s article for more on this research paper. References Kirschner, P. The one thing you need to read. Dr Efrat Furst, postdoctoral fellow and the learning incubator in the school of engineering and applied sciences at Harvard University. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, P. C., Roediger, H. L. and McDaniel, M. A. ‘Chapter 1: Learning is Misunderstood’ Why?