Habit formation limits growth in teacher effectiveness: A review of converging evidence from neuroscience and social science

Abstract

Teachers become rapidly more effective during the early years of their career but tend to improve increasingly slowly thereafter. This article reviews and synthesises converging evidence from neuroscience, psychology, economics and education suggesting that teachers’ rate of growth slows because their practice becomes habitual. First, we review evidence suggesting that teaching is highly conducive to habit formation and that teachers display characteristic features of habitual behaviour. Next, we review empirical findings that performance asymptotes, as seen in teachers’ learning curves, coincide with the reallocation of behaviour regulation to neural circuits governing habitual behaviour. Finally, original data is presented showing that teachers’ behaviour becomes automatic around the time that teacher effectiveness begins to level off. Collectively, this evidence implies that professional development should involve repeated practice in realistic settings in order to overwrite and upgrade existing habits.

The Curriculum Design Coherence Model in the Knowledge‐Rich School Project

“…Adopting a different approach was not easy. This is unsurprising given that teaching is highly conducive to habitual behaviours that often become automatic and rigid (author unknown yet, Review of Education article, Hobbiss et al ., 2020). According to Hobbiss et al .…”

“…According to Hobbiss et al . (2020) this automaticity becomes a problem with teachers ‘performing complex classroom routines with little explicit deliberation’ (n.p.). Yet we were asking our teachers to reverse their habits ; to not only consider their teaching in deliberative ways, but to shift established habits from outcomes‐based to knowledge‐informed design practice.…”

Teacher Careers in Education Systems That Are Coherent for Learning: Choose and Curate Toward Commitment to Capable and Committed Teachers (5Cs)

“…Experienced teachers have between 5 and 25 years of teaching experience. System-level goals for experienced teachers are retaining experienced teachers who cultivate student learning, and continuing to equip and motivate them by fostering their continuous professional development rather than allowing them to settle into performance plateaus (Hobbiss et al, 2020). Part of retaining experienced teachers will almost certainly be compensation that rises with seniority, but not merely because of seniority per se, but because the efficacy and contributions of teachers to educational goals rise with seniority.…”

Cognitive acceleration in mathematics education: further evidence of impact

“…We anticipated that impact on teacher practice and student learning would initially be low as teachers struggled to adopt the new pedagogical practices (Hobbiss, Sims, and Allen 2020), but that towards the end of the professional development programme and after the programme ends, there would be an impact. We would also expect this impact to deepen as teachers reteach the CA lessons they know for a second time, in the years after the professional development programme ends: research into CA has historically shown that if the intervention is carried out with the same cohort of teachers and students for two years, there is a significant and lasting impact on student learning both within and beyond the focus subject case (e.g.…”