Report Learning by teaching others is extremely effective – a new study tested a key reason why

tom_mai78101

The Helper Connoisseur / Ex-MineCraft Host
Staff member
Reaction score
1,632
The learning-by-teaching effect has been demonstrated in many studies. Students who spend time teaching what they’ve learned go on to show better understanding and knowledge retention than students who simply spend the same time re-studying. What remains unresolved, however, is exactly why teaching helps the teacher better understand and retain what they’ve learned.

For a new study in Applied Cognitive Psychology researchers led by Aloysius Wei Lun Koh set out to test their theory that teaching improves the teacher’s learning because it compels the teacher to retrieve what they’ve previously studied. In other words, they believe the learning benefit of teaching is simply another manifestation of the well-known “testing effect” – the way that bringing to mind what we’ve previously studied leads to deeper and longer-lasting acquisition of that information than more time spent passively re-studying.


The researchers recruited 124 students and asked them spend ten minutes studying a text, with accompanying figures, about the Doppler Effect and soundwaves – a topic about which none of them had any previous knowledge – with a view to teaching the material themselves afterwards without notes. Participants were told they could take notes while studying but not keep them for the next stage.

After the study phase, the participants were divided into four groups. In one group participants spent five minutes being filmed alone while they stood and delivered a lesson on the study material without notes (they could use a blank flip chart to draw figures if they wanted). The other groups either spent the same time completing multiplication arithmetic; standing up and teaching verbatim from a set script (including making reference to pre-drawn figures on a white board); or writing down all they could remember from the text (i.e. a form of retrieval practice designed to induce the testing effect).


Read more here. (The British Psychological Society - Research Digest)
 
General chit-chat
Help Users
  • No one is chatting at the moment.

      The Helper Discord

      Members online

      No members online now.

      Affiliates

      Hive Workshop NUON Dome World Editor Tutorials

      Network Sponsors

      Apex Steel Pipe - Buys and sells Steel Pipe.
      Top