Thoughts on combining the best of neurological and sociocultural components of the learning sciences
When it comes to learning, our intuitions are all wrong. We tend to think that learning is better when it is easy and progresses smoothly. Focusing on one topic at a time, digging in for lots of learning all at once, and reviewing or rereading material are all strategies that give us a sense of fluency. Moreover, when the learning process feels “easy” and we are not stumbling or making mistakes, we inherently feel successful. But the research makes clear that this fluency—to the extent we have achieved it at all—is fleeting.
We need to embrace evidence-based practices to help us remember information longer, connect it more securely to previous knowledge, and improve our ability to transfer knowledge to new settings. Specifically, research from psychology and cognitive science suggests that we should engage in “effortful learning” that is ripe with “desirable difficulties.” Specifically, retrieval practice encodes information more securely by making our brains work to recall information. Spacing out learning across time gives our brains time to begin-to-forget, thus encoding information more deeply when we return to it. Interleaving material by moving back and forth between subjects, and between items within a subject, helps our brains to create schema, categorize like-kinds and discriminate between different-kinds. Embracing mistakes ensures that we can learn from our errors rather than allowing them to shut down our learning. Reflecting on learning, especially through writing, requires retrieval, elaboration, and generation of new ideas—all of which further encode the learning in our brains. And finally, through sleep, we give our brains another chance to encode information and connect it with prior knowledge.
So, if we can only get everyone to use these learning strategies, have we solved the problem of effective learning? Not so fast.
Sociocultural contexts and histories also deeply influence learning, as Robert Bjork crucially notes at the end of his talk. Our brains do not function as inanimate machines with minimal influence from the external world. We know that the affective side of learning is critical, both for learning itself and for success in schooling. Learners need to feel connected to their teachers and peers. They need to believe that what they are learning is relevant to their lives and their communities. They need to be able to bring their own social, cultural, and linguistic resources to bear in their new learning. They need to see themselves as belonging within the fields they are studying. They need to have confidence in their ability to contribute meaningfully to the work that they are doing and to ultimately be successful in their endeavors.
So to my mind, one question becomes: How can we combine what we know about brain science and memory with what we know about the affective needs of learners in order to truly support meaningful learning for everyone? Without evangelizing any one strategy over another, I’d like to think about the ways in which project-based learning might successfully incorporate the best of both sciences. Project-based learning is an instructional approach that provides students with authentic interdisciplinary learning experiences. A “driving question” anchors the project and guides the learning activities. Students then work together to answer an important big-picture question, solve a problem, or design a solution to a real-world challenge.
It seems that the PBL structure may naturally incorporate many of the best practices for learning that have been documented in cognitive science. Students cannot simply review material—as they might do in preparation for a test—because they have to be solving problems and designing solutions, both of which require retrieving information and using it in context. Spacing and interleaving also happen naturally because the project takes place over an extended period of time (i.e., multiple weeks) and integrates multiple content areas. As in the real world, mistakes are inevitable along the way. Teachers can play an important role in creating norms that position these mistakes as valuable for progress and learning.
We know that rigorous PBL supports many of the affective components of learning as well. Done right, PBL creates a fertile environment for student-focused and equity-focused norms and practices. PBL gives students the opportunity to learn through engaging, authentic tasks that connect academic content with their interests, lives, and communities. Students also collaborate with peers to create joint products that require participation and contributions from everyone involved. Through these projects, students also have the opportunity to bring their own knowledge and experiences to bear on the work that they are doing—using those resources to further everyone’s learning. These projects also show students empirically that they are scientists and engineers, historians and ethnographers—demonstrating their belonging through the doing of the work itself.
What other instructional practices might similarly combine the best of both cognitive and sociocultural aspects of learning? What is still missing from this picture about how to support effective and meaningful learning for all learners?
I enjoyed reading how you pulled so much of what we are exploring into this post. Nice elaboration.
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