Kostyrka-Allchorne K, Holland A, Cooper NR, Ahamed W, Marrow RK, Simpson A. What helps children learn difficult tasks: A teacher's presence may be worth more than a screen.
Trends Neurosci Educ 2019;
17:100114. [PMID:
31685123 DOI:
10.1016/j.tine.2019.100114]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.2] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/12/2019] [Revised: 05/12/2019] [Accepted: 07/05/2019] [Indexed: 11/29/2022]
Abstract
AIMS
What helps children learn: is it a presence of a live teacher or an interaction with the learning materials? Addressing this question, we manipulated a teacher's presence (on-screen vs. present) and activity (observing vs. doing) while teaching children about the properties of geometric shapes.
METHOD
Five-year-olds (n = 215) completed two shape-sorting tasks in which they distinguished between typical, atypical and non-valid shapes. In between these tasks, they took part in one of four training sessions: doing teacher-present, observing teacher-present, doing teacher-on-screen and observing teacher-on-screen.
RESULTS
Although children's shape knowledge improved across all training conditions, learning showed an interaction between teacher presence and task difficulty. In a teacher's presence, children learned more about the most difficult (atypical) shapes, irrespective of activity. It may be the social interaction, associated with a teacher's presence, that enhances learning. Conversely, physically taking part in interactive touchscreen training did not result in more learning than passive screen viewing.
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