Daniel Willingham--Science & Education
Hypothesis non fingo
  • Home
  • About
  • Books
  • Articles
  • Op-eds
  • Videos
  • Learning Styles FAQ
  • Daniel Willingham: Science and Education Blog

You won't believe what Pearson has planned. No, really, you won't believe it.

11/25/2013

 
On a scale of 1 to 10, how much do you think Pearson publishing cares about the efficacy of their products?

Now now, I asked for a numerical rating, not invective or expletives.

My own rating might be a three or a four. I'm guessing that the folks at Pearson care about effectiveness to some extent because it affects how much things sell.

But the bottom line is that what matters is the bottom line. The success and failure of particular marketing strategies are followed closely, I'm guessing, as are sales of particular products. Learning outcomes from the product? Well, the customer can track them if they are interested.

So what are we to make of it when Pearson says "We are putting the pursuit of efficacy and learning outcomes at the centre of our new global education strategy."

Wut?

Educators have every right to be cynical. It's not just that Pearson has shown little inclination in this direction in the past, but also that it's a publicly traded company that shareholders ought to expect will put profits first.

Ironically, the path Pearson plans to effect this change is mostly about inputs: hiring people who care about efficacy, developing a global research network to gather evidence, that sort of thing.

But crucially they also promise to track outcomes, namely "to report audited learning outcomes, measures, and targets alongside its financial accounts, covering its whole business by 2018."

That's an enormous commitment and if they really follow through, it gives me some confidence that this is not merely a marketing ploy. Or if it is, the marketing team has concluded that to make this ploy appear not to be a ploy, they need to put some teeth in the plan.
PicturePsychometric headhunter?
A significant aspect of the success of this step turns on that small adjective "audited." It's not that hard to cook the learning outcome books. For this new effort to be persuasive, Pearson will need to have disinterested parties weigh in on the efficacy measures used, and their interpretation.


A person knowledgeable about testing, yet wholly disinterested? Does Pearson have Diogenes on staff?

There's another aspect of this plan that I find even more interesting, and potentially useful. Pearson has published a do-it-yourself efficacy review tool. It's a series of questions you are to consider to help you think about the effectiveness of a product you are currently using, or are contemplating using. There's an online version as well as a downloadable pdf.

The tool encourages you to consider four factors (listed here in my own phrasing):
  1. What am I trying to achieve?
  2. What evidence is there that this product will help with my goal?
  3. What's my plan to use this tool?
  4. Do I have what I need to make my plan work?

These simple, sensible questions are elaborated in the framework, but working through the details should still take less than an hour. The tool includes sample ratings to help the user think through the rating scheme.

I think this tool is great, and not just because it
aligns well with a similar tool I offered in When Can You Trust the Experts?

I think it offers Pearson a way to gain credibility as the company that cares about efficacy. If I were to hear that Pearson's sales force made a habit of encouraging district decision-makers to apply this efficacy framework to the educational products of Pearson (and others) that would be a huge step forward.

I would be even more impressed if Pearson warned users about the difficulty of overcoming the confirmation bias, and making these judgments objectively.

Still, this is a start. There might be some satisfaction in greeting this move with cynicism, but I think it's better to start with skepticism--skepticism that will prompt action and help to encourage educators to think effectively about efficacy. 

Tim Holt link
11/25/2013 01:13:12 am

One wonders what their previous "global marketing strategy" was and whether they achieved that or not...

Douglas Hainline
11/25/2013 01:19:28 am

Well ... perhaps this is a sign that the market is changing. So Pearson is still profit-driven, but senses that its customers are becoming more sophisticated. I know this flies in the face of all the cognitive snake-oil salesmen that seem to have sprung up in the last decade or so, but maybe the snake-oil is just a phase in a maturing market.

Dr. Rich Mehrenberg
11/25/2013 01:53:10 am

I regret not investing in #2 pencils.

Karen W. link
11/26/2013 04:52:47 am

In our state Pearson has moved in to develop numerous assessments for our students in teacher preparation programs. I'm sure the next step is to persuade these programs to use their texts, which are (?) aligned to the tests. Sneaky. "Global education strategy" I think is code for "total world domination."


Comments are closed.

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed


    Purpose

    The goal of this blog is to provide pointers to scientific findings that are applicable to education that I think ought to receive more attention.

    Archives

    July 2020
    May 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    January 2019
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    December 2015
    July 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    January 2015
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012

    Categories

    All
    21st Century Skills
    Academic Achievement
    Academic Achievement
    Achievement Gap
    Adhd
    Aera
    Animal Subjects
    Attention
    Book Review
    Charter Schools
    Child Development
    Classroom Time
    College
    Consciousness
    Curriculum
    Data Trustworthiness
    Education Schools
    Emotion
    Equality
    Exercise
    Expertise
    Forfun
    Gaming
    Gender
    Grades
    Higher Ed
    Homework
    Instructional Materials
    Intelligence
    International Comparisons
    Interventions
    Low Achievement
    Math
    Memory
    Meta Analysis
    Meta-analysis
    Metacognition
    Morality
    Motor Skill
    Multitasking
    Music
    Neuroscience
    Obituaries
    Parents
    Perception
    Phonological Awareness
    Plagiarism
    Politics
    Poverty
    Preschool
    Principals
    Prior Knowledge
    Problem-solving
    Reading
    Research
    Science
    Self-concept
    Self Control
    Self-control
    Sleep
    Socioeconomic Status
    Spatial Skills
    Standardized Tests
    Stereotypes
    Stress
    Teacher Evaluation
    Teaching
    Technology
    Value-added
    Vocabulary
    Working Memory