How People Learn

 “A remarkable feature of American colleges is the lack of attention that most faculties pay to the  growing body of research about how much students are learning and how they could be taught to learn more.”
                Derek Bok

The Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Research Council put out a very useful book in 2000 called How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School, that describes the conclusions of a lot of that learning research in a very concise and readable way. As indicated in A D- in science education, this is information that many faculty need to have.

The report begins by emphasizing - as Bok might - that “the world is in the midst of an extraordinary outpouring of scientific work on the mind and brain, on the processes of thinking and learning, on the neural processes that occur during thought and learning, and on the development of competence. The revolution in the study of the mind that has occurred in the last three or four decades has important implications for education.” (p.3)

One of the aspirational goals emphasized by this report is to enable students begin to think more like experts in an area. Compared to novices in an area, experts are much more able: to notice features and meaningful patterns of information; to organize learned content knowledge in ways that reflect a deep understanding of the subject matter(e.g. core concepts); to understand contexts of applicability; and to flexibly retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little intentions effort. Experts also have a strong ability to actively monitor their own approach to problem solving – to be metacognitive. Some examples are given of pedagogical approaches that help to build expert-like responses. For example, providing a superficial coverage of facts before moving on to new topics may leave the student little time to develop the necessary organizing ideas. Sufficient time to grapple and then organize turns out to be key to many of the results described in this report. Subject matter knowledge is, of course, a fundamental component of “thinking like an expert”, but the report emphasizes that it is only one component, and that the way in which subject material is presented has a lot to do with whether the students begin to “think like an expert “or not. The report cautions that “expertise in an area does not guarantee that one can effectively teach others about that area.” (p. 49) Instead, the experts themselves must work to become expert teachers by acquiring pedagogical content knowledge in addition to content knowledge.

Transfer of learning from one context to another is another critically important component of competency. A fundamental requirement for such transfer to occur is mastery of the original subject. Understanding of the subject in an expert mode, organized around principles, is key. Timely feedback to students on conceptual understanding, as well as on how well they are learning contexts of applicability, is crucial. Student motivation is essential, of course, but not all students are motivated by the same stimuli. However, research shows that in general learners are more motivated when they can see the usefulness of what they are learning. Research has also shown that “transfer across contexts is especially difficult when a subject is taught only in a single context rather than in multiple contexts.” (p.62) Multiple contexts seem to enable a student to better see the core concepts involved. As might be imagined, metacognition is important in helping to improve transfer.

People learn new things by using what they know to construct new understanding. “All learning involves transfer from previous experiences.” (p.68) Thus, it is important to assess and then build upon previous knowledge in teaching something new. On the positive side, actively taking into account previous knowledge can lead to a more coherent global understanding of the new material. However, not surprisingly, transfer to new situations can occur when the transferred material reflects wrong understanding as well as correct understanding.  Thus, it is critical to identify previous understanding – preconceptions- as new material is taught. Unaddressed incorrect or inappropriate preconceptions can lead students to construct a seemingly logical but actually totally incorrect understanding of new material. The panel suggests that one of the major weaknesses of lectures is that there often is too little opportunity for the lecturer to ascertain the underlying preconceptions of the individual students, thus increasing the probability that many students will not be able to construct a correct understanding of the course material.

The report describes 3 components of a healthy learning environment:

1. Learner-centered - “…pay careful attention to the knowledge, skills, attitudes and beliefs   that learners bring to the educational setting” (p.133) This includes paying attention to the misconceptions that the learners bring, as well, and creating tasks that  help the students see that various ideas might need to change.
2. Knowledge-centered – “...take seriously the need to help  students become knowledgeable by learning in ways that lead to understanding and subsequent transfer…” , “…focus on the kinds of information and activities that help students develop an understanding of disciplines…”, and help “students become metacognitive by expecting new information to make sense and asking for clarification when it doesn’t…” (p.136-7); and
3. Assessment-centered – “provide opportunities for feedback and revision and that what is assessed must be congruent with one’s learning goals.” (p.139-40). This “assessment and feedback must focus on understanding, and not only on memory for procedures or facts…” (p. 140) It also includes measurements of preconceptions.

All of this implies, as stated in the introductory chapter, that “attention must be given to what is taught (information, subject matter), why it is taught (understanding), and what competence or mastery looks like.” (p.24) As a consequence, a teacher needs to be able to articulate the learning goals of a course and its subsections, and how the material, the method of presentation, and the assessment, interacting together, all lead toward those goals.

This is not meant to be a “cookbook” that provides detailed steps for obtaining the different desired educational results.  It does give several examples relating to higher education, although most of the examples have to do with K-12. However, it provides an enormous list of references to primary materials.