The “Learning Pyramid”Average retention rates for material taught using various methods —>Looks plausible, doesn’t it? It is plausible enough to appear on over 1,200 web-sites, according to one search engine, and in goodness knows how many textbooks on teaching. Moreover, its provenance is impeccable; NTL no relation to the former UK cable company is a highly-respected institution, now “NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Sciences” undertaking research and training in group dynamics. The attribution is always to “National Training Laboratories, Bethel, Maine”Unfortunately, according to a recent article even NTL does not know where it comes from. “NTL believes it to be accurate but says that it can no longer trace the original research that supports the numbers” Magennis and Farrell 2005:48It may come from Dale 1946/1954/1969 but see below.See here for more on the disputed provenance.And here for another take on it.Does that matter? The pyramid makes sense, and it is intuitively accurate. Perhaps so; perhaps too much so! It is just too neat. The figures fit too closely and neatly with our i.e. sophisticated teachers’ beliefs. I am inclined to think that one of our kind conjured them out of the air in a less demanding age I do the same thing, but I’m not daft/arrogant enough to attach figures to my half-baked ideas. I don’t even know whether Pask’s commitment to the value of “teach-back” was really based on his own research, or on this notional model.But:”retention” = “knowledge” or “remembering”. Whichever way you look at it, it is the lowest level of Bloom’s taxonomy in the cognitive domain.If it was researched;In what subject areas?With what students?How was it tested?Purely a note for academic detectives:”It is important to discuss what the Cone is not as well as what it is because of a widespread misrepresentation that has become ubiquitous in recent years. At some point someone conflated Dale’s Cone with a spurious chart that purports to show what percentage of information people remember under different learning conditions. The original version of this chart, […], has been traced to the Socony-Vacuum Oil Company, according to Dwyer 1978, who cites Treichler 1967. […] Despite the lack of credibility, this formulation is widely quoted, usually without attribution, and in recent years has become repeatedly conflated with Dale’s Cone, with the percentage statements superimposed on the cone, replacing or supplementing Dale’s original categories.MOLENDA M 2003 “Cone of Experience”in A. Kovalchick & K. Dawson, eds Educational Technology: An Encyclopedia. ABC-Clio, Santa Barbara, CA, 2003.References:Subramony, D.P. 2004. “Dale’s cone revisited: Critically examining the misapplication of a nebulous theory to guide practice.” Educational Technology 43.Treichler, D.G. 1967 “Are you missing the boat in training aids?” Film and Audio-Visual Communications 1: 14-16.Note: I have not personally verified these references beyond Molenda: JSA 1.11.05 [back]
To Talk Like This and Act Like That 