Episode SummaryIn May 2014, seven researchers at the University of Washington published a study so stark they compared it to a clinical trial that should have been stopped for benefit. They had pooled 225 studies of undergraduate STEM teaching. Their verdict: students in traditional lecture classes were 1.5 times more likely to fail than students in classes that actively engaged them. Exam scores improved by about 6 percent. The case was, by the standards of education research, closed.In this episode we tell the story of the Freeman et al. (2014) meta-analysis and what the field learned in the decade that followed. We meet Eric Mazur, the Harvard physicist whose accidental discovery in 1991 became Peer Instruction. We unpack the equity finding of Theobald et al. (2020), which showed that active learning narrows achievement gaps for the students universities have historically underserved. We confront the most psychologically interesting result of the decade: students in active classrooms learn more but feel they have learned less, which helps explain why the better pedagogy keeps losing the popularity contest. And we ask the question that still haunts the field: if the evidence is this clear, why are more than half of STEM classrooms still being taught the way they were in 1950?Key Topics CoveredThe 2013 context: the PCAST report, the 60 percent STEM attrition rate, and why the field needed a meta-analytic verdictFreeman et al. (2014): 225 studies, the inclusion criteria, the random effects model, and the headline numbers (g = 0.47, 1.5 times the failure rate, 3,516 more students who failed under lecture)Carl Wieman's companion editorial and the "pedagogical equivalent of bloodletting" framingEric Mazur's origin story: the Force Concept Inventory, the student question that changed his career, and the birth of Peer InstructionThe bundle of active learning pedagogies: Peer Instruction, Flipped Classroom, Think Pair Share, POGIL, Problem Based Learning, Jigsaw, SCALE UP, and Just in Time TeachingThe ICAP framework (Chi and Wylie, 2014) and why some "active" activities outperform othersTheobald et al. (2020) on equity: 33 percent gap closure on exam scores, 45 percent on passing rates, and the "heads and hearts" hypothesisDeslauriers et al. (2019) on the feeling versus learning gap and the 20 minute framing intervention that closed itStains et al. (2018) on what STEM classrooms actually look like: 55 percent still predominantly lectureThe predecessor studies: Hake (1998), Bonwell and Eison (1991), Springer, Stanne and Donovan (1999)The minimal guidance critique (Kirschner, Sweller and Clark, 2006) and the boundary it marksWhy instructors resist change: incentives, evaluations, scale economics, and Henderson, Beach and Finkelstein (2011)The AI wrinkle: Kestin et al. (2025) on AI tutoring versus in class active learningResearchers MentionedScott Freeman (University of Washington) : Senior author of the 2014 meta-analysis and follow up equity workCarl Wieman (Stanford, formerly Colorado and UBC) : Nobel laureate physicist, founder of the Science Education Initiative, author of the 2014 PNAS commentaryEric Mazur (Harvard) : Originator of Peer Instruction in the early 1990sMichelene Chi (Arizona State University) : Originator of the ICAP frameworkLouis Deslauriers (Harvard) : Lead author on the feeling versus learning studyElli Theobald (University of Washington) : Lead author on the 2020 equity meta-analysisMarilyne Stains (University of Virginia) : Lead author on the 2018 direct observation study of STEM teachingRichard Hake : Author of the 1998 six thousand student physics surveyCharles Bonwell and James Eison : Authors of the 1991 ASHE ERIC report that named the fieldFrank Lyman (University of Maryland) : Originator of Think Pair Share in 1981Richard Moog, James Spencer and John Farrell (Franklin and Marshall) : Co founders of POGILHoward Barrows (McMaster) : Codifier of Problem Based Learning in the 1970sElliot Aronson : Developer of the Jigsaw method in 1971Robert Beichner (NC State) : Originator of SCALE UPGregor Novak (IUPUI) : Originator of Just in Time TeachingCharles Henderson, Andrea Beach and Noah Finkelstein : Authors of the 2011 review on instructional changeKey Studies and SourcesFreeman, S., Eddy, S.L., McDonough, M., Smith, M.K., Okoroafor, N., Jordt, H., and Wenderoth, M.P. (2014). "Active learning increases student performance in science, engineering, and mathematics." PNAS, 111(23), 8410 to 8415.Wieman, C.E. (2014). "Large scale comparison of science teaching methods sends clear message." PNAS, 111(23), 8319 to 8320.Theobald, E.J., Hill, M.J., Tran, E., et al. (2020). "Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math." PNAS, 117(12), 6476 to 6483.Deslauriers, L., McCarty, L.S., Miller, K., Callaghan, K., and Kestin, G. (2019). "Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively ...
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Jul 28 202621 mins