Understanding in Human Learning
This article is part of a series on Learning Learning Science.
Modern education is an incredible feat. Packed within my brain is thousands of years of knowledge. Yet if much of my knowledge was tested in practice it would probably be ineffective or useless. For example, if I was set the task of throwing a tennis ball from a moving car with the aim of hitting a target on the side of the road, I’d likely miss. In research, university students tested in this way failed to account for the momentum that the car’s forward movement would impart on the ball — even though they were intimately familiar with the laws of motion. Research shows that when taught with modern techniques, children in grades 7–9 can outperform students in grades 11 & 12 in fundamental understandings of physics. This sort of transformative educational result is possible through a focus on understanding — a core goal of learning science.
Today’s article is based on the information presented in Chapter 1 of “How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School”, which you can download for free from the National Acadamies Press. I won’t be citing, or writing this in a scholarly style, instead I aim to present some of the information there which is interesting to me. I’d like to note that this book was published in 1996 and so for anyone in the education field already, this won’t be new. For those of us coming from an outside perspective however it’s a great look at the background of learning science.
Understanding Understanding
To grok (understand something intuitively) what is meant by understanding in the context of learning science I’ll paraphrase a very good example contained within How People Learn.
When taught about veins and arteries students will often be taught in ways that emphasise facts. They may be told that arteries are thicker than veins, more elastic, and carry blood from the heart; while veins carry blood back to the heart. This information could then be tested with a multiple choice test which checks that students remember these facts.
If we were to compare this understanding of veins and arteries to that of an expert we may find a difference. Experts tend to understand why veins and arteries have particular properties, they know that blood exiting the heart comes in spurts and the elasticity of the arteries allows for those spurts while also stopping the blood from flowing backwards once a spurt stops.
Lets imagine that a student taught in the first way went on to become a materials engineer and was tasked with designing artificial arteries. Without a full understanding they might focus on the elasticity as being a required feature of arteries. Whereas a materials engineer who has a full understanding might realise that the important behaviour of the arteries is to act as a one-way valve allowing them to relax the elasticity requirements and instead focus on the underlying mechanism. This deeper understanding of the properties of veins and arteries facilitates the transfer of this knowledge to a novel domain.
I quite like this example, but don’t let it give you a false distaste for facts. Facts are still important, but they are important when combined with understanding. Facts without understanding cause problems with transfer and create disconnected and useless knowledge.
Techniques for Improving Understanding
Focusing on understanding requires changes in the way subjects or courses are taught. The following suggestions come from How People Learn.
- Change assessments to evaluate understanding. Assessments are not only used as a tool to evaluate students but are often used to evaluate teachers. Without assessment of deep understanding teachers will never be incentivised away from teaching facts and students won’t be tested on their true understanding encouraging wasteful cramming and memorising.
- Wide and superficial coverage should be replaced with a deep and narrow approach. Many courses skim over a topic covering many different facts, but trying to cram more coverage in to a students head does them no favours. Instead in-depth study of particular concepts which build up the core understandings of a topic will help students learning go further in the future.
- Teachers must teach with the experience of in-depth study themselves. Before teaches can develop powerful teaching tools they must be intimately familiar with the concepts and organisation of a topic. Without this background teachers are unable to evaluate their students’ true understanding of a topic which will again promote fact-based evaluation.
Wrapping Up
Understanding is a fundamental pillar of learning science and promoting understanding in the classroom can lead to many fantastic improvements in the quality of an education. With a focus on understanding young students are able to reason about topics in a natural way that allows them to outperform older students who have been taught through a fact-based approach.
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