1. Teaching
THE TEACHER EFFECT
IMPACT OF TEACHER TRAINING ON TEACHER QUALITY
RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE TEACHING: TUTORING, PEER
TEACHING, COOPERATIVE LEARNING
SOCIAL LEARNING MECHANISMS
IS TEACHING A NATURAL COGNITIVE ABILITY?

3. The teacher effect
• Studies show that primary education
has a long-term impact on pupils,
which goes beyond school results
• It seems to be the case that the quality
of the teacher plays a role in this
impact
BUT
• The impact of teachers is difficult to
evaluate
• The characteristics of the teacher that
might account for the effect are not
clearly identified

4. Chetty et al. (2011) HOW DOES
YOUR KINDERGARTEN
CLASSROOM AFFECT YOUR
EARNINGS? EVIDENCE FROM
PROJECT STAR
•
•
Follow up study 1985-1989
Tennessee
11571 pupils
– Random distribution into classes (K3)
•
Link experimental data with
administrative records (tax returns)
– Control for family socio-economic
level: age mother had 1st child,
retirement savings
– Search correlations between
classroom indicators (number of
pupils per class/teacher
quality/classroom quality) & socioeconomic indicators when adults
(earnings at 27, college attendance,
homeownership, retirement savings)
• Increase in tests scores at end
of K is positively associated
with earnings at 27, college
attendance, house ownership,
savings
• Small class size (small classes =
13-17) positively correlates
with college attendance, but
not with earnings
• More experienced teacher
positively correlates with
earnings
• Classroom quality positively
correlates with college
attendance, earnings & other
criteria

5. Chetty et al. (2011) THE
LONG-TERM IMPACTS OF
TEACHERS: TEACHER VALUEADDED AND STUDENT
OUTCOMES IN ADULTHOOD
– 2,5 M students
– Grades 3-8
– 18 M tests
(English+Mathematics)
– 20 years (1989-2009)
– Control for family socioeconomic level: age mother
had 1st child, retirement plan
• Teacher VA is predictive of
the students’ results
– Once the family effect is
controlled, the effect of the
teacher on school results
remains
• Teacher VA is predictive of
long-term results in life
–
Students assigned to
teachers with high VA (1DS)
for at least 1 year, at age
between 9 and 14 show
positive correlation with
•
•
•
•
College attendance
Salary, Savings
Quality of neighborhoods
Negative association with
teenage pregnancy

6. Teacher Value-Added =
evaluation of the quality
of teaching by measuring
the teacher’s impact upon
students’ tests’ scores
• The arrival of a new teacher with
high VA (top 5%) in a school
correlates with better results of the
school at the tests as compared to
previous years; the leaving of a
teacher with high VA correlates with
less good results that previous years
• The teacher value-added effect is
present in situations in which
teachers do not receive primes and
other forms of incitation for results
• The risk is otherwise that of
teaching for the test

9. Teacher VA seems to have an impact
both on the students immediate
results at tests and long-term extraacademic effects
•
•
Some bizarre facts
– Once the teacher changes, results at the tests
of the successive years are not affected
– They become visible again only at the level of
the extra-academic long-term impact!
Maybe
– Impact on non-cognitive aspects that are
significant for success in adulthood but not for
tests’ scores in following years (?)
•
difficulties in
evaluating teacher
impact upon
pupils, even in the
short term

10. • Pupils, Classroom, School: how to
distinguish whether the effect is
produced by the one or the
other?
• One needs to check the results of
the same teacher with different
classrooms and of the same
classroom with different teachers
• It is not the case in France, at
least simultaneously, only on a
sequence of years
• Is there a real effect?
• How to evaluate pupils’
performance?
• Test results are not
enough: they do not
take into account the
progression of the
student
What causes the effect?
• Studies are mostly not experimental
(excluded the one cited above)
• Children are not necessarily
randomly assigned to classes
• Even if some variables are
controlled for (such as family
socio-economic level), other
variables aren’t (such as pupils’
motivation)
• It can be the case in the
USA, but not in France
• One cannot easily infer the
existence of a causal effect

11. • Once these difficulties are taken into account
• There still seems to be something like a
teacher effect
• Teacher quality might account for 10%-15% of
the variance between the results of pupils
assigned to different teachers
• This effect is greater than the school effect
and the reduction of the size of the
classrooms
• It drops down quickly when the teacher
changes, but is present at adulthood
• It is not equal for any discipline: more
relevant for mathematics than for language

12. Cusset (2011) Que disent
les recherches sur l’“effet
enseignant”
?
Chetty et al. 2001
Chetty et la 2011
Nye et al (2004)
• Depuis quatre décennies, un ensemble de
recherches menées dans le domaine de
l’éducation a pu confirmer l’intuition de
nombreux parents : les progrès de leurs
enfants dépendent de manière significative
du talent et des compétences de leurs
professeurs.
• En tenant compte de l'influence des autres
variables explicatives, notamment le niveau
initial et la catégorie professionnelle des
parents, 10 % à 15 % des écarts de résultats
constatés en fin d’année entre élèves
s’expliquent par l’enseignant auquel l’enfant
a été confié.
• Ces études livrent d’autres résultats
intéressants :

13. Cusset (2011) Que disent
les recherches sur l’“effet
enseignant”
?
• l’ampleur de l’“effet enseignant” est
supérieure à celle de l’“effet établissement”
: le professeur a davantage de poids sur la
progression des élèves au cours d’une
année donnée que l’établissement dans
lequel ces derniers sont scolarisés ;
• la portée d’une augmentation de l’efficacité
pédagogique d’un enseignant est aussi
potentiellement supérieure à celle d’une
diminution de la taille des classes ;
• l’effet de l’enseignant qu’a eu un élève une
année donnée s’estompe assez vite une fois
que l’élève change d’enseignant ; mais les
impacts des enseignants successifs peuvent
se cumuler.

14. •
Cusset (2011) Que disent
les recherches sur l’“effet
enseignant”
?
Si l’existence de “l’effet enseignant” est
aujourd’hui solidement étayée, il reste que
l’efficacité d’un enseignant ne se laisse pas
prédire par des éléments aisément
objectivables tels que son niveau de formation
initiale ou son ancienneté. C’est dans
l’interaction avec les élèves que se joue
l’essentiel des différences.
Which teachers’ characteristics are predictive
of teachers’ impact upon pupils?

15. Yoon et al. (2007) Reviewing
the Evidence On How Teacher
Professional Development
Affects Student Achievement
Good studies are rare
•
Experience?
Certification, training?
•
•
•
Selection effect
Only 9 out of 1300 studies selected, of
which
– 3 non-published PhD theses
– 5 experimental studies
Effects concern teacher training, not teacher
trainers
Positive effects exist only for training actions
> 14 hours
Training actions are varied
(length, contents, modalities): it is difficult
to say what works even when it works – no
regularities can be extracted

16. Bressoux et al. (2008) Teachers’
Training, Class Size and
Students’ Outcomes: Learning
from Administrative Forecasting
Mistakes.
•
Experience?
Certification, training?
An administrative forecasting mistakes (in
France) has allowed to compare the differential
impact of teachers with and without
certification
– Experience
• Only limited to the first years of
teaching, after which no more
difference
– Certification, training
• Only limited to the first years of
teaching, and in particular to certain
disciplines such as mathematics
• The impact of teachers’ training seems
to be limited

17. •
Need better measures
– MET : Measures of Effective Teaching
– (2009 – )
– 3000 teachers (primary/secondary)
– 5 measures of the impact of teachers
• Students’ results at standardized evaluations +
reasoning & conceptual understanding tests
• Classroom observations
• Adoption of specific scales e.g. Quality Science
Teaching, Stanford Unviersity
http://scale.stanford.edu/teaching/qst, UTeach Teacher
Observation Protocol (UTOP), University of Texas-Austin
• Evaluation of pedagogical capacities
• Students’ evaluation of the classroom & teacher
• Teachers’ evaluation of the environment and support

18. Teaching
THE TEACHER EFFECT
IMPACT OF TEACHER TRAINING ON TEACHER QUALITY
RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE TEACHING: TUTORING, PEER TEACHING,
COOPERATIVE LEARNING
SOCIAL LEARNING MECHANISMS
IS TEACHING A NATURAL COGNITIVE ABILITY?

19. Bloom (1984)
2-sigma problem
Comparison of:
- Conventional teaching
- Mastery learning (conventional + formative tests)
- Tutoring + formative tests

20. Slavin (1996)
Cooperative learning
Research on cooperative learning is one of the greatest success stories in
the history of educational research.
Hundreds of studies have compared cooperative learning to various
control methods on a broad range of measures, but by far the most
frequent objective of this research is to determine the effects of
cooperative learning on student achievement.
Further, coop- erative learning is not only a subject of research and
theory, but it is also used at some level by millions of teachers.
While there is a growing consensus among researchers about the positive
effects of cooperative learning on student achievement as well as a rapidly
growing number of educators using cooperative learning at all levels of
schooling and in many subject areas, there is still a great deal of confusion
and disagree- ment about why cooperative learning methods affect
achievement and, even more importantly, under what conditions
cooperative learning has these effects.

21. Slavin (1996)
Cooperative learning
• What works?
• It is not the case that any kind of cooperation works
• Group goals and individual accountability
• But the presence of both conditions might be unnecessary in
• Structured controversy, Solving complex problems
• Presence of external goals
• Structured reciprocal tutoring
• ..
Research is needed
Research is needed
• Why it works?
• Motivation
• Social cohesion
• Mental processing of information
• Zones of proximal development partially overlap
• Explaining a concept to others helps understanding through
elaboration

22. Hole in the wall
http://www.hole-in-the-wall.com/index.html

23. Palincsar & Brown (1984)
Reciprocal teaching
Peer-teaching
Peer education
Peer tutoring
Peer tutoring is an opportunity for you to connect with a student who has
previously done well in your course. Among the reasons students seek peer
tutoring are the chance to work through problem sets, develop a better
understanding of concepts, prepare for an exam, and build confidence in
understanding course materials in a supportuve environment with a fellow
student. Most tutoring is one-on-one, but occasionally tutors also work with
groups of students. Over 5,100 hours of peer tutoring take place under the
Bureau's auspices each academic year. Last academic year, approximately 400
peer tutors fulfilled requests from more than 600 tutees in over 175 courses.
http://bsc.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k7
3301&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup141100

24. Goldin Meadow
Cook, Duffy, Fenn
(2013)
Gestures
Children who observe gesture while learning mathematics perform better
than children who do not, when tested immediately after training. How
does observing gesture influence learning over time? Children (n = 184,
ages = 7-10) were instructed with a videotaped lesson on mathematical
equivalence and tested immediately after training and 24 hr later. The
lesson either included speech and gesture or only speech. Children who
saw gesture performed better overall and performance improved after
24 hr. Children who only heard speech did not improve after the delay. The
gesture group also showed stronger transfer to different problem types.
These findings suggest that gesture enhances learning of abstract
concepts and affects how learning is consolidated over time.

25. Baumard (2013)
Cahuc & Algan ()
Horizontal/Vertical Teaching
Les auteurs ont comparé l’effet de l’enseignement dit « vertical », où l’enseignant
fait cours du haut de l’estrade et garde une distance importante avec les élèves, et
l’effet de l’enseignement « horizontal », où la distance entre l’enseignant et les
élèves est moindre, et la part de travail en groupes plus importante. L’étude montre
que plus l’enseignement est horizontal, plus les enfants font confiance aux autres
élèves, aux membres de leur société, ainsi qu’aux différentes institutions.
We use several data sets to consider the effect of teaching practices on student beliefs,
as well as on organization of firms and institutions. In student level data, teaching
practices (such as teachers lecturing versus students working in groups) exert a
substantial influence on student beliefs about cooperation both with each other and
with teachers. In cross‐ country data, teaching practices shape both beliefs and
institutional outcomes. The relationship between teaching practices and student test
performance is nonlinear. The evidence supports the idea that progressive education
promotes social capital.

26. Teaching
THE TEACHER EFFECT
IMPACT OF TEACHER TRAINING ON TEACHER QUALITY
RESEARCH ON EFFECTIVE TEACHING: TUTORING, PEER
TEACHING, COOPERATIVE LEARNING
SOCIAL LEARNING MECHANISMS
IS TEACHING A NATURAL COGNITIVE ABILITY?

27. FROM LESSON 2
Social learning mechanisms
“Child development is today
conceptualized as an essentially social
process, based on incremental knowledge
acquisition driven by cultural experience
and social context. We have “social”
brains.” (Goswami, 2008, p. 1)

28. FROM LESSON 2
Imitation

29. FROM LESSON 2
Cooperation
Testimony

30. Humans
Primates
Other animals
Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
Thornton
& Raihani
(2008)
What does evolution have to say about social learning
& teaching?
• Some forms of social learning are recognized to be present in several species
• Nevertheless, some continue to consider that humans are special in what
concerns social learning
In particular:
•
•
Teaching has often been considered as being specific to humans
• Teaching has been considered as being related to the intention to teach
• A flexible, generalizable ability facilitated by the ability to make
assumptions about others’ knowledge (mind)
This consideration is under revision, but in a surprising way

31. Blue tits
Japanese macaques
Chimpanzees
Several social learning mechanisms can
be observed in many taxa

32. Whiten
(2000)
If culture is defined in the most general way as behavioral
conformity spread or maintained by nongenetic means, then
these means must involve either social learning or social
influence.
Social influence and stimulus enhancement appear to be
widespread among birds and mammals (see Heyes &
Galef, 1996), and thus so do cultures, defined in this way

33. Social learning mechanisms
Observed in several taxa
Situation: In a similar situation, animal A does the same
thing than primate B
What has happened?
Individual learning
Non social process: A & B have
Independently found the same solution
Social influence:
e.g. exposure - Because B tends to be with A
B is exposed to the same to the same situation
Social learning:
e.g. stimulus enhancement/observational conditioning –
A’s action draws B’s attention on the situation
e.g imitation/emulation - B learns the FORM/CONTENT
from A’s behavior
The solution is prompted
by the situation & available
in the cognitive kit of
primates: social interaction
not required
The solution is prompted
by the presence of another
individual of the same
species
Whiten (2000)

35. Social learning
& the Evolution of culture
Whiten
(2000)
Humans are social animals. But one can go further than that:
there are ways in which we are more deeply social than any other
species on earth in our cognitive makeup. This distinctive social
‘depth’ in human cognition includes extensive penetration of each
other’s minds (‘mindreading’ or ‘theory of mind’), learning major
swathes of what we know and do from the culture we inherit
(cultural learning), exploiting cooperation to achieve much greater
things than we could individually, and communicating through
language …
In these zoologically extraordinary social achievements may lie key
explanations for the heights human intellect reaches and the
particular ways in which our cognitive system functions.

36. Whiten
(2000)
But distinctive as they are, these human
abilities have evolved from prehuman
primate foundations

37. The cultural
intelligence
hypothesis
Herrmann et al. (2007)
Humans have many cognitive skills not possessed by their nearest primate
relatives.
The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that this is mainly due to a
species-specific set of social- cognitive skills, emerging early in ontogeny, for
participating and exchanging knowledge in cultural groups. We tested this
hypothesis by giving a comprehensive battery of cognitive tests to large
numbers of two of humans’ closest primate relatives, chimpanzees and
orangutans, as well as to 2.5-year-old human children before literacy and
schooling. Supporting the cultural intelligence hypothesis and contradicting
the hypothesis that humans simply have more “general intelligence,” we
found that the children and chimpanzees had very similar cognitive skills for
dealing with the physical world but that the children had more sophisticated
cognitive skills than either of the ape species for dealing with the social
world.

38. Debate about
cultural learning in humans
and other primates
Human cultural learning
Can exploit true imitation
= recognize intentions
Mind reading
Can other primates
Mind read, share
intentions?
Shared
attention/inte
ntions
Human cultural learning
Can exploit motivation for
cooperation
Motivation for
cooperation
Are they motivated for
cooperation?
Tomasello, Kruger, Ratner (1993)
Tomasello & Herrmann (2010), Tomasello et al
(2005), Jherrmann et al. (2007)

39. Natural pedagogy
Csibra (2007)
It has been suggested that there are two main classes of behaviour
that accomplish the transfer of these cultural forms across
individuals: imitation (or, more generally, observational social
learning), in which the recipient is solely responsible for the
successful acquisition of knowledge, and teaching, in which the
donor has an active role in the transmission of cultural information
[1]. Although various forms of observational social learning are
widespread in non-human animals [2], it is generally assumed that
teaching is a human-specific activity [3–5]. However, this consensus
has now been brought into question.

40. Humans
Primates
Other animals
Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
Thornton
& Raihani
(2008)
Why teaching is considered to exist in different taxa?
• Revision of the definition of teaching
• Hauser & Caro (1992) have proposed a functional definition of teaching,
based on observational criteria
• Before:
• teaching requires intention to teach (Difficult to ascertain on animals
other than humans)
• Flexible & generalizable, adjustment to the learner’s change in
knowledge
Hauser & Caro (1992)
Olson & Bruner (1996)
Galef (1992)
Premack & Premack
(1996)
Tomasello (1994)

41. Is there teaching in non-human animals?
Hauser & Caro
(1992)
Functional criteria for teaching:
1. It occurs only in the presence of a naïve observer
2. It is costly and does not provide any immediate
benefit to the teacher
3. It facilitates knowledge acquisition or skill learning
in the observer
Multiple forms of teaching in animals. E.g:
• information donation via scaffolding or
opportunity teaching
• information donation via punishment /
reward or coaching
Do these criteria satisfy what
we would call human
teaching?
Is there something specific to
human teaching?

42. Babbling birds
Tandem Ants
Meerkats
…
Animals of certain taxa are
considered to teach

44. Animal vs Human teaching
Csibra (2007)
What the ants and the babblers do could be considered as charitable
information donation, whereas the meerkat helpers’ behaviour seems to
be a good example of what is called ‘scaffolding’ (modifying the
environment to sup- port individual learning) in developmental psychology.
However, the prototypical human teaching is neither pure expression of
episodic information nor just environmental scaffolding but a type of social
learning that transmits generalizable (semantic) knowledge from the
teacher to the pupil through (not necessarily linguistic) communication.
Typical examples of human teaching are demonstrations of useful means
actions, or expressions of information about hidden properties of objects
(e.g. unpalatability of food).
By contrast, the ants and the birds in these studies provided information
about an episodic fact … this information does not enable them to find
food sources more efficiently in the future and is unlikely to be worth
passing on to the next generation …

45. Natural pedagogy
Csibra & Gergely (2006)
We propose that humans are adapted to transfer knowledge to, and
receive knowledge from, conspecifics by teaching. This adaptation, which
we call 'pedagogy', involves the emergence of a special communication
system that does not presuppose either language or high-level theory of
mind, but could itself provide a basis for facilitating the development of
these human-specific abilities both in phylogenetic and ontogenetic
terms. We speculate that tool manufacturing and mediated tool use made
the evolution of such a new social learning mechanism necessary.
However, the main body of evidence supporting this hypothesis comes from
developmental psychology. We argue that many central phenomena of
human infant social cognition that may seem puzzling in the light of their
standard functional explanation can be more coherently and plausibly
interpreted as reflecting the adaptations to receive knowledge from social
partners through teaching.

46. Natural pedagogy
Csibra & Gergely (2009)
We propose that human communication is specifically adapted to
allow the transmission of generic knowledge between individuals.
Such a communication system, which we call ‘natural pedagogy’,
enables fast and efficient social learning of cognitively opaque
cultural knowledge that would be hard to acquire relying on purely
observational learning mechanisms alone.
We argue that human infants are prepared to be at the receptive side
of natural pedagogy (i) by being sensitive to ostensive signals that
indicate that they are being addressed by communication, (ii) by
developing referential expectations in ostensive contexts and (iii) by
being biased to interpret ostensive-referential communication as
conveying information that is kind-relevant and generalizable.

48. Culture & the ratchet effect
Tomasello (1999)
Human beings are biologically adapted for culture in ways that other
primates are not, as evidenced most clearly by the fact that only
human cultural traditions accumulate modifications over historical
time (the ratchet effect).
The key adaptation is one that enables individuals to understand
other individuals as intentional agents like the self.
This species-unique form of social cognition emerges in human
ontogeny at approximately 1 year of age, as infants begin to engage
with other persons in various kinds of joint attentional activities
involving gaze following, social referencing, and gestural
communication.
Young children’s joint attentional skills then engender some uniquely
powerful forms of cultural learning, enabling the acquisition of
language, discourse skills, tool-use practices, and other conventional
activities.
These novel forms of cultural learning allow human beings to, in
effect, pool their cognitive resources both contemporaneously and
over historical time in ways that are unique in the animal kingdom.

49. Debate about
cultural learning in humans
other primates
& other animals
Human cultural learning
Can exploit teaching
Why we
teach?
Can other primates
teach?
Close primates?
Can other animals
teach?
What is
teaching?
Which
capacities
are
involved/req
uired for
teaching?
Is teaching
an
adaptation?
Whiten (1999)
Strauss (2005)
Teaching
Hoppitt et al. (2008)
Caro & Hauser (1992)
Csibra (2007), Csibra &
Gergely (2006, 2009, 011),
Gergely & Csibra (2008)

50. Teaching with cues
Information donation
Social capacities
Scaffolding
Some form of Adjustment
e.g. coaching
Capacity to detect naïves
Special reaction to naïves
Capacity to adjust to the learner
on the basis of specific cues
Teaching
(S)
Adaptation for social interactions
Maybe for passing information
Not especially flexible

51. Social capacities
Teaching with (basic) ToM
Active teaching
Intentional teaching
Instructive learning
Information sharing
Teaching
(S)
Motivation to
share information
With adjustments
based on mind reading
Basic
Mind reading skills
Teaching with demonstration-imitation
Attentional skills
(Joint attention)
Intentional
imitation
skills
Adaptation for social interactions
flexible

52. Social capacities
Teaching with (higher-level) ToM
Selective information
sharing
Teaching
(S)
Detection of knowledge
gap
With smooth
adjustments
Detection of mistakes
(false beliefs)
based on motivation
for filling another’s
knowledge-gap
Empathy (cognitive)
Adaptation for social interactions
flexible
Altruism

53. Social capacities
Teaching with ToM & with natural pedagogy
Teaching
(S)
Transmission of
generalizable
knowledge
That is worth passing
from one generation
to another
Adaptation for teaching?
Teaching with language
Special forms of
communication
On both sides/learner &
teacher

54. Humans
Primates
Other animals
Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
Teaching might not be the same in different taxa
• Teaching have evolved from the different forms of social learning &
inadvertent teaching that exist in different taxa (but not all taxa)
• Teaching introduces a new dimension (the dimension of the tutor) in the
function of learning from others (the dimension of the naïve)
• Several taxa teach, but teaching is not based on one and the same kit of
capacities
• Different taxa teach with different sets of capacities, according to the
social learning kit they have evolved
• Humans might be the only one to teach with ToM/imitation & other
mechanisms

55. The evolution of teaching
Thornton
& Raihani
(2008)
Some forms of teaching, variously referred to as ‘active teaching’ (Caro &
Hauser 1992), ‘intentional teaching’ (Byrne 1995) and ‘instructive learning’
(Tomasello et al. 1993) may require mental state attribution.
This may alter the nature of teaching in humans, for example, by allowing
greater flexibility, but simpler mechanisms based on responses to
behavioural cues from pupils may suffice in many contexts (Thornton &
McAuliffe 2006).
Indeed, many forms of human tuition do not require teachers to impute
mental states to pupils. Parents, for example, pro- mote learning of motor
skills in children by encouraging and supporting infants’ attempts, modifying
their behav iour in response to behavioural cues from the child rather than an
awareness of the child’s changing knowledge about the world (Whiten &
Milner 1984). Similarly, as Barnett (1968) pointed out, university lecturers may
simply use one set of lectures for first-year undergraduates and an- other for
advanced classes without being aware of what individual students know.

56. Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
In summary, instead of being seen as a separate set of mechanisms
for information transfer, teaching can use fully be regarded as
introducing another dimension to social learning, corresponding to
whether the role of the demonstrator is active or passive. Because
many of the processes thought to underlie social learning in animals
do not rely on human-like mechanisms, such as intentional- ity, the
same should hold for teaching.
This categorisation helps us to understand how teaching could
evolve; teaching will often arise as signals, or responses, given by
tutors that take advantage of pre-existing social learning
mechanisms.

57. Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
Our hypothetical evolutionary pathway from inadver- tent social
learning to teaching leads us to predictions regarding the taxonomic
distribution of different types of teaching: we expect teaching to have
evolved only where the relevant social learning mechanism was
already in place, a prediction that can be tested using comparative
statistical methods. This reasoning provides a guide for future
research. For instance, we would not expect to find teaching by
imitation in meerkats or other carnivores, because imitation has not
been found in the Carnivora, but we might expect teaching by
imitation to occur in the parrot family (Psittacidae), where there is
such evidence [29,30]. By contrast, teaching by observational
condition- ing, which is merely reliant on classical conditioning, is likely
to be less taxonomically restricted.

58. Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
In debates over whether animals exhibit culture, sceptics have argued
that human and animal culture differ qualitatively, partly because the
former uniquely relies on teaching, whereas advocates of animal
culture have suggested that teaching in animals is currently
underestimated and have defended comparative arguments. In
fact, both might be correct: teaching could be common in
animals, yet reliant on completely different underlying mechanisms
from human teaching. Indeed, we expect teaching in other animals
not to resemble that in humans, because they will typically be
unable to exploit the same learning processes.

59. Lessons from animal teaching
Hoppitt et
al. (2008)
We do not suggest that the transition from social learn- ing through
inadvertent cues to teaching by active signals is inevitable. Teaching
must evolve in the tutor, but its immediate benefits, the learning of a
skill or acquisition of information, are for the pupil. Because it is a
costly beha- viour that benefits others, teaching can be understood in
a similar way to altruism. As with altruism, we would expect teaching
behaviour ultimately to benefit the tutor’s inclus- ive fitness, either
through kin selection [31] or because the tutor benefits directly from
the pupil learning [32]. In the case of kin selection, teaching will evolve
according to Hamilton’s rule: if the fitness cost to the tutor (c) is less
than the fitness benefit to the pupil (b), multiplied by the degree of
relatedness between them (r), or c < br [31].

60. TEACHING EXISTS IN OTHER ANIMALS
TEACHING IS ROOTED IN BIOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
TEACHING IS AN EVOLVED CAPACITY
TEACHING HAS EVOLVED IN A
CERTAIN
EVOLUTIONARY NICHE
FOR HUMANS THE NICHE IS NO
MORE THE SAME
TEACHING IS A SPANDREL OF OTHER
CAPACITIES RELATED TO THE
DEVELOPMENT
OF SOCIAL LEARNING
AND SOCIAL COGNITION
WHAT KIND OF CULTURAL
ADAPTATIONS
HAVE BEEN ADOPTED/ARE TO BE
ADOPTED FOR MATCHING THE
HUMAN NEEDS IN TERMS OF
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION?
WHAT KIND OF ABILITIES ARE
REQUIRED/NO MORE
REQUIRED/NEED TO BE
DEVELOPED?

62. Teaching as a natural cognitive ability
Strauss (2005)
Teaching, or folk pedagogy, the social transformation of knowledge
from one person to another or the attempt to engender it in others, is
one of the most remarkable of human enterprises. I propose that
teaching, which is central to education in the broad sense of that term,
can also be seen as an essential domain of inquiry for the cognitive
sciences. This is also because, as I attempt to show, teaching may be
a natural cognitive ability and is essential to what it means to be a
human being. Furthermore, I believe that a search for the cognitive
underpinnings of teaching may lead to a description of some of the
fundamental building blocks of human cognition and its development.
…
A broad view of teaching includes at least four levels of explanation
for the cognitive machinery in the mind associated with teaching: an
evolutionary adaptive problem that machinery solved, the cognitive
programs that solve that problem, the neurophysiological
infrastructure that serves as a base for the cognitive program, and
the cultural underpinnings that are deigned by and support the
above.

63. Teaching as a natural cognitive ability
Strauss (2005)
1. First … teaching with ToM may be species-typical. The cognition
underlying teaching among some species of animals and human beings
has not been thoroughly examined. There is little controversy that
chimpanzees, our closest relatives, and other primates do not teach
with a theory of mind…

64. Teaching as a natural cognitive ability
Strauss (2005)
2. A second motivation for teaching as a natural cognitive ability is that
although other primates do not seem to teach with a ToM, it is
incontrovertible that teaching with a ToM is universal among human
beings. This means that, with few exceptions, every person in every
society has taught (toddlers and some autistic individuals may be
exceptions here) and has been taught by others… These are universal
activities that take place in everyday life in the home, the streets, the
workplace, and the fields. There is considerable cross-cultural variation
concerning the amount of teaching that takes place … and the content
of what is taught … The importance of the claim of universality is
twofold. It means that everyone is exposed to teaching, which is to say
that everyone has the possibility to learn to teach by virtue of that
exposure, and that very universality suggests that is may be a
characteristic of human’s biological and cultural endowments.

65. Teaching as a natural cognitive ability
Strauss (2005)
3. Third, teaching is an extraordinarily complex enterprise that has much
to do with mind, emotions, and motivation-reading. …
4. Fourth is the poverty of the stimulus argument. One of the many
remarkable aspects of teaching is that so much of it is invisible to the
eye. The visible part is the external acts of teaching… the visible part of
teaching is quite impoverished in comparison to the depth of what
underlies it, the part that is not revealed to the eye, and what is invisible
is the inferences teachers make and the mental processes that lead to
these inferences…
5. Fifth, teaching is a specialized social interaction, unlike others. Yet it
shares some aspects of other kinds of social interaction…. What stands
at the heart of these social interactions is the intentionality of the
individuals involved in the social interactions…

66. Teaching as a natural cognitive ability
Strauss (2005)
6. Sixth, although teaching is universal among human beings, it seems to
be learned without formal education, or even education of the informal
kind. A sliver of the 6 billion inhabitants of planet earth has been taught
how to teach; yet all know how to teach. All have been exposed to
pedagogy; they have been taught but, with few exceptions, they have
had no instruction about how to teach. … The fact that people have not
been taught how to teach does not mean it is not learned.
7. Seven, very young children teach. There are two kinds of evidence that
bear on this matter: Toddlers may request teaching and youngsters
teach.

67. Olson & Bruner (1986)
Strauss (2001)
Folk pedagogy
Are there myths about teaching?
What do teachers think about teaching?
How this affects their way of teaching?
How this affects students’
learning?