Hi there! đ
I wrote last week about how teaching for memory and for understanding is not âeither-orâ. Memory supports understanding, and vice versa.
I want to delve into this a bit more today. How do we get new ideas into learnersâ minds and memories in the first place? And how can we support understanding?
Getting Ready
For new ideas to be taken in effectively (and memorably), itâs worth bearing in mind that learning is a generative process, with new information being linked to existing knowledge (in the form of schemasâmore on those soon!).
To do so, it will help if we activate schemas, reminding learners of ideas that will be relevant in a lesson.
And taking a step further back, how can we be sure that students actually have the relevant prior knowledge? That is the role of curriculum planning, but some may simply have forgotten what they did last month (or last year). Formative assessment in the form of questioning and quizzes (preferably a whole-class approach, e.g. with mini whiteboards) can check that everyone is on the right page.
Developing Learnersâ Knowledge
From there, we need to be offering ways to link and use the new material. This is where generative tasks come in (see posts here and here).
Another strategy thatâs valuable here is interleaving of examples. Interleaving helps to guide understanding by emphasising meaningful differences. If you interleave two types of Mathematics problem, for example, or show two different (but confusable) species of animal in Biology, you help learners to understand the differences between them.
I say more about using interleaving in the classroom in this blog post.
What is Deep Processing?
Psychologists talk about depth of processing to mean the quality of how a person thinks about a task in working memory. This research has shown that itâs not just about how much a learner thinks, but how well.
Different processing levels might involve:
Focusing on the appearance or sound of a phrase;
Focusing on what the phrase means;
Actively categorising the phrase, or thinking of a related example;
Thinking of what the phrase means to you;
Thinking about the phrase in context as part of a realistic task.
It was established decades ago that meaningful processing â for example, asking learners to connect things to their own likes â leads to better memory than focusing on how a text looks or sounds (e.g., Hyde & Jenkins, 1973). It emphasises the meaning of what is being learned.
Since then, even more powerful forms of processing have been explored. Check out the paper below:
Nairne, J. S., Pandeirada, J. N., & Thompson, S. R. (2008). Adaptive memory: The comparative value of survival processing. Psychological Science, 19(2), 176â180.
Itâs pretty fascinating to see that processing items in the context of self (e.g., âWhat would be useful if you moved house?â) or danger (e.g., âWhat would be useful for surviving?â) led to even better recall.
The idea of âsurvival processingâ may be tricky to apply, but this area of research as a whole shows that rich, meaningful contexts can aid memory. What learners think about when learning new information is more important than time or repetition.
Finally, just to say that SAGE have offered a discount on my new book. The code UK23AUTHOR should give 25% off (at least when ordering via their site. At least, I hope so. And apologies for not sharing this beforeâI just received it myself!)
Have a great week,
Jonathan
Last week: Memory, Memorisation and Education
Links to my new book, What Teachers Need to Know About Memory:
Amazon UK | Amazon US | Booktopia Australia | Preview on SAGE site.
Please note that my slides and similar materials are used under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.