Retiring educational psychologist shares research lessons on designing learning projects

On a snowy day of January 21, 1987 I arrived  to Washington, D.C. from Greece to work as an education specialist.  During the first week, a venerable educator named Ralph Romain asked why I wanted to work at the World Bank. I said that by the time I retire, perhaps I would have helped to build at least 10,000 schools.  He found it unlikely and gave me a stern lecture because “we” do not implement; governments do.

Ralph was only half right.  Governments make decisions, but enthusiastic development staff with strength of conviction can influence them.  In the early years of my work, I saw learning failures that demanded solutions. I spent much of my free time locating, synthesizing and researching about learning including writing two working papers titled “Efficient learning for the poor: insights from the frontier of cognitive neuroscience” and “Absenteeism and beyond : instructional time loss and consequences”.

Researching efficient methods of learning in my after-hours seems like a weird hobby, but I was an anomaly from day one. I am an educational psychologist, the only one in this world of economists. I was hired in 1985 because someone noticed nine languages in my CV; twenty-four years later that number has risen to nineteen! I had to learn the languages of the countries where I worked in order to observe classes and ask questions such as “Could the students read?”, “What was in the textbooks?”  “Were teachers really trained?”

Cognitive science helps design better projects

Throughout my career, I’ve learned that educational institutions must teach in the ways people are set up to process information, including learning how to read quickly.   On the road to chasing results, the retirement age of 62 has caught up with me, so I want to pass along the following three concepts that I’ve been using in my work:

• How can I help improve use of instructional time? Teacher absenteeism and transfers, gratuitous school closings, wastage of classroom time result in much less learning time than governments pay for.  This is not just in primary and in poor countries but also in higher education.  Can you help governments identify obstacles and improve use of learning time?

• How can I help the schools improve reading fluency?  We need a minimum reading speed to make sense of text (45-60 wpm).  This concept led to the early-grade reading fluency initiative worldwide.  Furthermore, automaticity is needed for all basic skills, from math to cell phone use.  Consider how to ensure fluency in the prerequisites of projects.

• How can I help schools provide at least one textbook for every child?   At post-secondary levels in poor countries, books are often procured just for libraries, while students spend valuable class time copying notes. But when children are able to take books home, they are able to do homework and practice reading. Learn more about this in my recently published paper “Literacy for all in 100 days“.

So after 26.5 years of ”educadicalism”, I must say goodbye. Employment-wise I must “cool off”, but I stay hot on the pursuit of innovative solutions for education.   Please write anytime with ideas and thoughts.