How Kids Learn

In today's rapidly evolving world, education needs to adapt to equip students with the knowledge and skills necessary to thrive. Many learning approaches have been studied by academics and educators over the years for their potential to enhance student outcomes and their work offer valuable insights into understanding how kids learn.

Learning is not a linear process

While schools follow a sequential standardized approach to learning, ideal learning experiences follow cyclical patterns. Bloom (1968) studied tutoring extensively and formulated a structured framework in hopes to bring some of its benefits to teaching at scale.

Initial instruction introduces the core concepts and skills with the goal of ensuring students achieve a high level of understanding and competence in the subject matter through clearly defined learning objectives and standards, allowing students to progress to new material only after demonstrating proficiency on previous concepts.

Formative assessments serve as checkpoints to determine whether a student needs additional support through corrective activities.

Corrective activities for students who have not yet achieved mastery, addressing specific areas of difficulty and providing additional support and resources toward overcoming their learning challenges. These activities might involve alternative explanations, different learning materials, peer support, or additional practice opportunities. According to Bloom, the students who have the cognitive prerequisites for each new learning task, become more positive about their ability to learn the subject, and they put in more active learning time.

Enrichment activities provide further exploration and challenges for those who have demonstrated mastery to foster deeper understanding and critical thinking.

Cumulative assessments incorporate previously learned material into later assessments. This approach helps to reinforce foundational knowledge and ensure long-term retention of key concepts.

Successive relearning involves repeated practice and mastery checks over multiple study sessions which has been shown to significantly improve long-term retention, particularly for conceptual material. By revisiting previously mastered material in subsequent units, students strengthen their understanding of foundational concepts and better prepare themselves for more advanced learning.

This process ensures that students build a solid foundation, preventing them from moving forward with critical knowledge gaps that could hinder their progress in later stages. It does so by ensuring students progress through units at their individual pace, rather than a large group of students moving through material at a uniform pace.

Learning is more than just a cognitive experience

Keerthigha and Singh (2023) found that student academic motivation mediates the effect of teaching style inline with Komarraju's work (2013) which revealed that students who lacked academic motivation valued the 'caring' trait in a teacher, while motivated students strongly endorsed the importance of a teacher being more professional than caring or in other words students with high academic motivation prefer a task-oriented teacher, while those with low academic motivation prefer a relationship-oriented teacher. This means that practicing a teaching style appropriate for the student's academic motivation is pivotal. People are cognitively more sensitive to information regarding others' warmth than competence cues (Cuddy et al., 2008) hence enacting warmth cues are key especially at the beginning of a tutoring relationship.

Emotional connection to the content is just as important. Traditional school subjects are often presented in a way that is dissociated from relevance and real-life applications but rather whether the content aligns with the student's cognitive abilities, which can hinder learning (Picard et al., 2004). Kuo et al. (2023) found a robust correlation between the affective and cognitive domains affirming the potent role of emotionalized learning experiences in enhancing student outcomes. Incorporating affect into learning using engaging real-life stories and anecdotes or content related to students' personal experiences can make these subjects more engaging and meaningful for students.

Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

Csikszentmihályi (1991) has highlighted the dynamic between 'challenge' and 'mastery' in the learning process. Too often, educators try to make things 'easy' or 'entertaining' for learners and seem to think that children need to be 'motivated' to do harder work. A view of activities as motivating in themselves has been theorised by Csikszentmihályi (1997) who has found that people become most deeply engaged in activities that are challenging, but not overwhelming. Similarly, Papert (1993) has developed the concept of 'hard fun' — learners do not mind, and benefit most from, activities that are 'hard' as long as they connect deeply with their interests and passions. Immediate feedback is another key to continued student engagement.

All research indicates that learning is a complex, personal journey the success of which depends on the student's goals, preferred engagement style, academic inclinations and life experiences. Given all these nuances, how can we help all students reach their full potential?

References

Bloom, B. S. (1984). The 2 Sigma Problem: The Search for Methods of Group Instruction as Effective as One-to-One Tutoring. Educational Researcher 13, no. 6: 4-16.

Bloom, B. S. (1968). Learning for Mastery. UCLA -CSEIP- Evaluation Comment. Vol. 1.

Csikszentmihályi M. (1991). Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, HarperCollins.

Csikszentmihályi M. (1997). Finding Flow: The Psychology of Engagement with Everyday Life, HarperCollins.

Cuddy A. J., Fiske S. T., Glick P. (2008). Warmth and competence as universal dimensions of social perception: The stereotype content model and the BIAS map. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 40, 61-149.

Dignath-van Ewijk C. (2016). Which components of teacher competence determine whether teachers enhance self-regulated learning? Predicting teachers' self-reported promotion of self-regulated learning by means of teacher beliefs, knowledge, and self-efficacy. Frontline Learn. Res. 4, 83-105.

Keerthigha C., Singh S. (2023). The effect of teaching style and academic motivation on student evaluation of teaching: Insights from social cognition. Front. Psychol. 13:1107375.

Komarraju M. (2013). Ideal teacher behaviours: student motivation and self-efficacy predict preferences. Teach. Psychol. 40, 104-110.

Kuo Y. K., Batool S., Devi S., Tahir T., Yu J. (2023). Exploring the impact of emotionalized learning experiences on the affective domain: A comprehensive analysis. Heliyon, Volume 10, Issue 1.

Papert S. (1993). The Children's Machine, Basic Books.

Picard R. W., Papert S., Bender W., Blumberg B., Breazeal C., Cavallo D., Machover T., Resnick M., Roy D., Strohecker C. (2004). Affective learning - a manifesto BT Technology Journal Vol 22 No 4.