Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know

As a middle school social studies teacher, Erin McCarthy frequently assigns readings from old history books she collects. Her goal is for her students to spot inaccuracies in textbooks from decades ago—she found that her students were conditioned to believe that everything in textbooks is correct, but the exercise pushes her students to think like scientists and question what they are learning, instead. As a final project, she asks her students to choose a period they see as underrepresented in the textbook, then research and rewrite that section of the book.

Grant writes that he wishes he had been able to discover interesting things for himself rather than being taught them in school. However, he notes that aside from being impractical, research shows that the longer we wait to address false scientific beliefs, the more ingrained they become. To counteract this, he believes that kids need to learn how to learn, as well as to learn how to unlearn.

In history education, he writes, there is an increasing emphasis on asking open-ended questions rather than focusing solely on facts. The “focus is less on being right, and more on building the skills to consider different views” (189). This doesn’t mean that anything goes, however. The goal is to get kids to think like fact-checkers, evaluating different evidence and claims to arrive at the truth.

This kind of approach is known as active learning, but Grant claims that the efficacy of active learning versus passive, lecture-based education is more complicated than one might expect. Courses and instructors are typically rated better if they are primarily delivered via lecture, and Grant notes that this shouldn’t be surprising given the popularity of YouTube, TED Talks, etc. However, research suggests that students learn more through active learning. It’s less enjoyable because it’s more difficult, but it is nevertheless more effective.

To demonstrate how we can incorporate rethinking into teaching, Grant describes the philosopher Robert Nozick, who taught a new class every year. Rather than lecturing on topics he already knew well, he chose to do his thinking through his instruction, demonstrating the work of academic philosophy in the process. “[H]e wasn’t content for students to learn from him,” Grant writes, but “wanted them to learn with him” (194).

Grant tries to incorporate a softer version of this in his own courses, in part by asking students in an upper-level course to challenge conventional wisdom in some way. He was surprised to discover that the top students were the ones most likely to struggle with the assignment. For Grant, this reinforces literature suggesting that being a top performer in school doesn’t necessarily translate to career success—on the contrary, top students are good at working within systems, but not as good at thinking against the grain.

A name that consistently comes up in Grant’s research into education pioneers is Ron Berger, a Massachusetts elementary school teacher. In addition to being a teacher, Berger is an excellent craftsman, and he brings his love of craftsmanship into the classroom, giving his students problems to grapple with throughout the semester in think-pair-share groups. With difficult problems, they often feel confused at first; however, research suggests that students need time to sit with their confusion, and Berger reinforces this by embracing confusion, allowing his students to surpass others’ expectations.

Grant concludes the chapter by arguing that while “good teachers introduce new thoughts […] great teachers introduce new ways of thinking” (203).

In 2013, astronaut Luca Parmitano nearly drowned while on a spacewalk due to an equipment malfunction that leaked water into his helmet. After investigating, NASA realized that they had normalized the expectation that astronauts’ drink bags leak, and that small amounts of water in their helmets are to be expected; as a result, they failed to recognize the malfunction when it had first begun a week earlier.

Grant notes that this had been a pattern at NASA. For example, the 1986 Challenger explosion was the result of “a catastrophically shallow analysis” of the potential failure of O-rings (206). Likewise, in 2003, the shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon reentry after the ground team had assumed that an issue which turned out to be critical was nothing to worry about. Grant argues that this failure to rethink was due to NASA’s performance culture: “excellence of execution was the paramount value” (207), and so employees were less likely to voice concerns or dissent. He contrasts this with learning cultures, “where growth is the core value and rethinking cycles are routine” (208).

Some time ago, Amy Edmonson was surprised to learn through her research that the more psychological safety medical staff at a hospital felt, the higher its error rates; she concluded that psychological safety breeds complacency. However, she later realized that a limitation of the study was that the errors were self-reported, so she ran another study which corrected for this. In the new study, she found that psychologically safe teams reported more errors but in fact made fewer errors. The real conclusion was that in psychologically safe teams, team members felt more comfortable admitting their mistakes, and were therefore able to learn from them.

Edmonson argues that psychological safety isn’t just about making people comfortable—rather, it’s about “fostering a climate of respect, trust, and openness in which people can raise concerns and suggestions” (209). This is representative of learning cultures. In contrast, performance cultures undermine psychological safety by emphasizing results first; this in turn discourages team members from raising questions or concerns.

Due to the performance culture at NASA, Grant notes, issues which later turned out to be critical had been raised by engineers; however, they were either ignored or silenced by management. Following the Columbia disaster, Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations Ellen Ochoa realized that performance culture was hurting NASA. She began implementing changes, beginning with herself, to promote a learning culture instead. The biggest change that might have prevented both issues would have been simply asking engineers how they knew what the issue was. Grant argues that it’s a question we should try to ask ourselves more often, as well.

In Grant’s research, he has found that asking for constructive criticism works best when managers first share past experiences with receiving feedback; this sends the message to their team members that they are actually open to receiving constructive criticism. When tasked with improving psychological safety at the Gates Foundation, Grant took this a step further and devised a team-building exercise based on Jimmy Kimmel’s “Mean Tweets” segments, in which executives, including Melinda Gates, would read complaints about them and react to them. As a result, she and other executives were humanized, which led employees to come away with a stronger learning orientation.

Grant cautions that erasing the fear of challenging authority is not the same as motivating people to question authority or creating accountability. At NASA, people were held accountable for outcomes; they were discouraged from anything that would delay launches, which led them to rely on best practices that weren’t questioned. Grant suggests that we not only strive for outcome accountability, but also process accountability by evaluating how we make decisions along the way. Edmondson’s research suggests that we need both accountability and safety to create a learning zone—either one without the other keeps people silent.

If the outcome of a decision is good but the process was shallow, Grant argues, it wasn’t success but luck. On the other hand, if the process was deep, then you can conclude that you’ve found a better practice; likewise, if the outcome was bad but the process was deep, then “you’ve run a smart experiment” (219).

At NASA, in the old performance culture, the responsibility was on dissenters to prove that their concerns were valid. Under Ochoa, though, the responsibility was shifted onto the rest of the team to prove that the dissenters’ concerns weren’t valid. This required more humility and more rethinking, and certainly more caution, but also more confidence and certainty.