January 2004

Accelerated Learning newsletter, January 2004 In the first newsletter of 2004 we provide some predictions, lay bare some truths about horoscopes, provide a rationale for playing with the boxes those toys came in and give some tips for sleeping. Don't forget to visit our re-vamped website.

Our UK predictions for 2004

Innovation, personalisation and collaboration will be the DFES buzz words in 2004
Emotional intelligence will become a focus for serious debate in and around schools
Organised nation-wide protest using cellular phones and laptops will emerge again
The Thomlinson report will retain A Levels and fudge on the Baccalaureate
We will see more and more internet schools with those attending called 'notschoolers'
Learning to Learn will become a focus for serious debate in and around schools
Rockabilly will make a return
No Headteacher in their right mind will attempt to impose a £100 fine for taking holidays in term time
The government will compromise on top up fees
A multi-disciplinary approach to learning, based on problem solving, technology and group work will make a return
Big Brother will breathe its last
Testing regimes will ease
Fast Food providers will be asked to withdraw their products from schools
Adults, desperate to hold onto youth, will behave more and more like children, thus creating 'kidults'
ADHD will become a feature of legal appeals
Lifestyle choice and Health Education will become a focus for serious debate in and around schools

What does 2004 hold for you?

If you believe in horoscopes, you may not believe in this next item. Horoscopes have been proven by research to be falsifiable, yet people from all backgrounds still believe in them. The question is: why? Adrian Furnham scopes out the arguments.

The most plausible reason for the popularity of astrological interpretations, readings and the like is because they are vague, positive generalisations which are true of most people and yet are supposedly derived specifically for a named individual.

Psychologists call this the Barnum effect, whereby people will accept feedback about their personality, no matter how trivial or general, because they believe it is based on personality assessment procedures. The effect is named after Phineas T Barnum, a showman and circus owner in 19th-century America who claimed 'There's a sucker born every minute' and whose formula for success was 'A little something for everybody'. According to research on the Barnum effect, people believe in astrology because they fall victim to the fallacy of personal validation. In other words they take the generalised, trite, bogus descriptions, which are true of nearly everybody, to be specifically true of themselves.

Psychologists have been investigating the Barnum effect for about 40 years. During this time, they have isolated some of the circumstances that determine whether a person will be fooled by bogus feedback, the characteristics of those that are and are not fooled, and the type of things that people believe and trust in.

An early classical study took place in the late 1950s when Ross Stagner, an Ameican psychologist, gave 68 personnel managers a well-established personality test. But instead of scoring it and giving them the results, he handed each person a bogus feedback in the form of 13 statements derived from horoscopes, graphological analyses and so on. He then asked each manager to read the feedback (supposedly derived for him/herself from the 'scientific' test) and decide how accurate the assessment was by marking whether each sentence was:

amazingly accurate
rather good
about half and half
more wrong than right
almost entirely wrong

More than a third felt their profile was an amazingly accurate description, while 40 per cent thought it was rather good. Almost none believed it to be very wrong. In the late 1960s, a French psychologist advertised his services as an astrologer in various newspapers. He received hundreds of requests for his services, and replied to each letter with an identical copy of a single, ambiguous, 'horoscope'. More than 200 of his clients wrote back praising his accuracy and perceptiveness.

Belief in bogus feedback is influenced by various factors. Curiously, personality of the client and the analyst have little effect. Naive or gullible people are more susceptible. Men and women are equally likely to accept the feedback. . Studies show that when people receive general statements they think pertain only to them, their faith increases in the procedure and in the analyst.

A second crucial component of the Barnum effect is that humans tend to be hungry for compliments but sceptical of criticism. Feedback must be favourable. It need not be entirely positive, but if it is by and large favourable with the occasional mildly negative comment (that itself may be seen as a compliment) people will believe it.

This confirms another principle in personality measurement, the 'Pollyanna principle', which suggests that there is a universal human tendency to use or accept as true positive words or feedback more than negative words and feedback. In one experiment, Snyder and his colleagues showed that there were five times as many favourable as unfavourable statements in feedback that subjects found highly acceptable. The rarely accepted interpretations, by comparison, contained twice as many unfavourable as favourable statements.

Another factor is that it is often the troubled (worried, depressed, insecure) who visit astrologers, graphologists and fortune tellers. They are particularly sensitive to the supposedly objective positive and their future. Therefore, the very type of feedback and the predisposition of the people who seek it makes the acceptance highly probable.

People selectively remember positive statements about themselves rather than negative. So people are more likely to remember feedback that coincides with their own view of themselves than information that is less relevant or contradicted it. Also people have to pay for the services of an astrologer or graphologist. If you have paid for something, you are less likely to admit that you have wasted your money on inferior items. The more one pays the better. Perhaps one needs a wealth warning in every astrological statement.

Astrological readings have other attractions, particularly for people who are anxious or insecure. The readings not only give useful, 'fascinating' information about oneself, but they may also predict the future so reducing anxieties and uncertainties about what will happen. Also, unlike other forms of therapy that require effort (and often pain) in the form of recognising one's problems and/or modifying one's behaviour to obtain benefit, one merely has to supply the graphologist with a sample of handwriting or the astrologist with the time and place of birth. There is much to gain and little to lose.

Finally, there is one other reason why people validate astrology - the self-fulfilling prophecy. The statement, for example, that 'As a Virgo, you are particularly honest', may lead to you noticing or selectively recalling all or any, albeit trivial, instances that confirm this behaviour (such as pointing out that a person had dropped a bus ticket or returning excess change). The self-fulfilling prophecy may work on both a conceptual and a behavioural basis. And Virgos may not only come to include the trait of honesty in their self-concept, but also become slightly or occasionally more honest. Thus the predictions of astrology may come true in part because they dictate them.

Edinburgh launch

The City of Edinburgh launched its Learning and Teaching guidelines at Heriot-Watt University on 11th December. 150 Senior Managers from the City and Senior School Staff took part in a day led by an Alite team of Alistair Smith and Graeme Logan.

More about sleep

Last month's item on sleep aroused considerable interest. Here's some more

Researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel looked at the sleeping habits of 77 children aged between nine and 11, monitoring both the time they went to bed and the number of times they woke up in the night. They then asked the children to either spend an extra hour asleep for a few nights, or to give up an hour's sleep.

The results showed children who got an hour less were significantly more fatigued during the evenings and performed less well at various tests of mental sharpness, which measured reaction times and memory. Dr Avi Sadeh, who led the study, said: "Previous studies have suggested that children today are getting less and less sleep over the years."

A separate study published in the journal Pediatrics suggested a link between a
common sleep disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in
children. Dr David Gozal of the University of Louisville looked at five to seven year olds diagnosed with mild ADHD symptoms and found that a quarter of them snored - more than might be expected in a non-ADHD group. This, said Gozal, raised the suggestion that mild sleep apnoea - characterised by breathing difficulties during sleep - might be harming the quality of the children's sleep. This might be producing symptoms of attention deficit and mild hyperactivity in some of them.

Professor Jim Horne, of the Sleep Research Centre at Loughborough University,
says that younger children deprived of sleep tended not to show obvious signs of fatigue, but became hyperactive and irritable. He said that modern child lifestyles were increasing the risk of sleep deprivation. He said: "Bedrooms are changing from places of rest and tranquillity to places where there are lots of things to keep a child awake, such as computers and televisions. I would not allow a child to have a television or computer in their bedroom - or at least place firm limits on their use."

Sourced from BBC News online

TTT alumni get their own discussion forum

Graduates of the Alite Train the Trainer Programme now have their own discussion forum on the new Alite website. The forum will be an opportunity to exchange thoughts about using AL in a variety of training environments

Constructivists in the sandpit

Professor Pat Broadhead of Northumbria University found the amount of time left
for games had been cut by changes to the curriculum in England and that pre-school and primary school children are missing out on "vital" playtime in the classroom.

The study of schools in Leeds, Sheffield and York said play helped problem-solving and social skills. "Play-based learning gives children a sense of independence. It's a chance to explore and investigate the world. Children also determine the ways in which they work and use their experiences to solve problems."

Prof Broadhead said activities such as sandpit games, playing with model figures and using building blocks, had been ignored because of growing emphasis on literacy and numeracy targets. She added: "Play contributes to all aspects of development. I hope it regains its prominence in future. All the changes in primary schools have pushed back the amount of play for the younger children. If they are allowed to play, children can participate in building the curriculum themselves."

Prof Broadhead said the national curriculum had given teachers a "fear of non-coverage" of certain areas. This pressure had led to a barrowing of classroom activities. "We need more flexibility. The more experienced early-years teachers realise the value of play. The government should do the same."

Hartlepool

Hartlepool has been in the UK news recently over controversial proposals to break up three ships which may contain asbestos. Delegates to the Authority Accelerated Learning event had a less controversial time of it. Hartlepool are the latest LEA to begin involvement with our School Improvement Package

Camden in the Brewery

The Whitbread Brewery in the Barbican last saw hops in 1978. It is now a sophisticated conference centre and twenty-five years after the last drop left the premises, 400 Camden teachers had an alcohol free introduction to the Alite teaching and learning brew. Kay Bedford, Headteacher of Swiss Cottage School was instrumental in pulling the event together. Kay reports it was the best part of two years in the planning. We hope to have Kay contributing in her own right to the Alite 2004 Conference.