Don't Forget to Elaborate

The science of learning, or cognitive science, is having a moment—or, let’s hope, more than that. A top-down and bottom-up movement in England and parts of Australia is infusing scientifically grounded principles into classroom teaching. The enthusiasm seems to be spreading elsewhere—including the U.S., albeit slowly. Most of the interest has focused on explicit instruction and retrieval practice.

That’s a hugely important and positive development. For too long, teachers and prospective teachers have been assured that it isn’t necessary—and may even be harmful—to explicitly convey factual information to students, ensure they’ve retained it in long-term memory, and provide them with practice in retrieving it from long-term memory so that the information will be available to them in the future. Scientific studies, in contrast, have yielded abundant evidence that these teaching strategies are hugely beneficial, especially for the most vulnerable students.

But as I’ve read the recent wave of books and articles on cognitive science aimed at teachers, I’ve had the sense that something important is often missing, or at least under-emphasized: the need to have students engage in reflection or analysis based on the information they’ve retained.

I’ve seen this happening in practice too. Teachers in classrooms I visited in Australia were doing an amazing job of implementing explicit teaching and retrieval practice, often with students who are far behind where they should be. These teachers kept up such a brisk pace that kids didn’t have a chance to let their attention wander. The teachers were expert in providing brief, clear explanations of concepts or definitions of words and quickly asking students to repeat the information back, sometimes orally and sometimes by means of answers written and displayed on individual whiteboards. These classrooms bristled with energy.

What I didn’t see, for the most part, were questions that required students to make new connections or add their own ideas.

The emphasis on explicit instruction and retrieval practice is understandable. Those are the components of teaching that the education system has long ignored or rejected. Teachers have been encouraged to go straight for higher-order cognitive activities—analysis, synthesis, and the like—without laying the necessary groundwork. As cognitive science tells us, that doesn’t work.

But laying the groundwork without building on it doesn’t work either. And if teachers get a message that explicit instruction and retrieval practice are all students need, that may be all they provide.

Good ideas in education are sometimes