Do I need to know who is teaching me? Effects of prior knowledge about teachers on learners? performance.

GOLDSTEIN J; DELGADO T; HAIMOVICI A; CALERO CI

BUENOS AIRES

Congreso; XXXV Annual (virtual) meeting de la SAN; 2020

SAN

Recently, a Bayesian approximation was proposed for understanding pedagogical situations (Shafto et al, 2008)*. In this context, different models had evaluated how a teacher chooses limited examples with the objective of having a learner infer (learn) a concept. But, these don?t explore the relevance that knowing your teacher may have on learning. Hence, we wondered how prior information about the teacher would affect learners´ inferences of new concepts.Extending Little Teachers project, we present a new paradigm, in which a teacher helps a learner to find a secret box on the screen using a limited set of cues. First, young adults were placed in the learners? role knowing (or not) that they were recibing cues chosen by 2nd, 4th or 6th graders, and then, they were placed in the teachers? role.Our ongoing results indicate that (1) performance increases when playing consecutively with the same teacher and (2) knowing the teachers? age has a complex impact: It significatively improves performance at first but, it may affect it in the long run, overshadowing the teachers? particular strategies. In fact, it had a significant negative effect on performance for learners whose teachers were 2nd graders. Interestingly, young adults in the teachers? role chose examples highly biased by the strategies used by their teachers, even when they reported those as ?bad?.These results suggest that prior knowledge about teachers can affect learners? performance and teaching strategies.