Science of Learning

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Summary of ‘The Science of Learning’ by Deans for Impact

This article summarises the existing research into how students learn and the practical implications this has for teaching and learning.

The article is broken down into 6 key questions:

  1. How do students understand new ideas?
  2. How do students learn and retain new information?
  3. How do students solve problems?
  4. How does learning transfer to new situations in or outside the classroom?
  5. What motivates students to learn?
  6. What are the common misconceptions about how students think and learn?

In this summary, I have tried to pull out some of the key points from the article.

How do students understand new ideas?

Students understand new ideas by referring it to what they already know. As teachers, we need to ensure that they have sufficient prior knowledge to help them master the new ideas.

Students have a limited working memory and the understanding of new ideas can be slowed if we give them too much information in one go. We should provide worked examples and step-by step demonstrations (scaffolding) using careful explanation.

The mastery on new concepts does not happen overnight!

How do students learn and retain new information?

We need to encourage students to explain their thinking or use tasks that require them to organize their though process so that the content takes on meaning for them.

Practice is essential to learning new facts. We need to space practice with regular reviews over a period of weeks, months and years (memory platforms).

How do students solve problems?

We need to ensure that students know basic facts – by having this information stored in their long term memory, they are freeing up working memory resources to help tackle more complex concepts.

Effective feedback is key to acquiring new knowledge and skills. It should be specific and clear and focused on improvement rather than performance.

How does learning transfer to new situations in or outside the classroom?

Students understand new ideas by examples. We need to model how to compare problems with different surface structures that share the same underlying structures and show students how to adopt a step-by-step approach to solving the problem.

What motivates students to learn?

Students need to believe that intelligence and ability can be improved through hard work! We should focus on praising and recognizing effort rather than outcome and work towards setting learning goals rather than performance goals.

Students need to develop their own ability to reflect on their work so that they can identify what they do and do not know. We need to teach them strategies that allow them to do this.

Students are often more successful when they feel they belong and are accepted. They need to be taught that feedback is a sign of our belief in their ability to reach a high standard.

What are the common misconceptions about how students think and learn?

Students do not...

  • have different learning styles.
  • use only 10% of their brains.
  • have a preferred side of their brain.
  • all think the same way.
  • progress at the same rates.

 

If you want to do some further reading, I have added the link for the website.
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