Research has shown that teaching can be an effective way to learn. By teaching a topic you learn more about it than if you simply read or studied it (Fiorella & Mayer, 2015; Schwartz, Tsang, & Blair, 2016). What is it about teaching that makes it a potent learning experience, and how can educators promote the use of teaching as a learning strategy for students?
Teaching involves three cognitive activities that support depth of understanding and memory:
- preparing to teach by studying a topic with the goal of teaching it to others
- explaining material to others
- interacting with others to answer questions, clarify the material
First, when you expect to teach, you are more likely to think about what information is most relevant, and how to organize and present it to someone who doesn’t know the material. This involves organizing and re-organizing the information so that it is coherent for the target audience. Second, the act of teaching involves describing and explaining information which extends your own understanding of the topic. Third, clarifying and answering questions are opportunities to further explain aspects of the information. In responding to questions, one sometimes discovers gaps one’s own understanding of the topic. Together these three activities, preparing, explaining and clarifying can enhance your own grasp of the topic and help you develop a coherent conceptual model of the material.
The processes involved in teaching overlap with those of self-explanation. A key difference is the additional interaction of trying to answer questions and clarify the concepts for others. Teaching is an important strategy for developing deeper understanding, and may be used in preparing for exams, class projects and presentations. In self-explaining students typically try to explain new concepts to themselves. Their explanations may be incomplete or even inaccurate. In teaching, they have an opportunity to try out their ideas on others and receive feedback.
How to use teaching as a learning strategy. An important factor that influences whether teaching is an effective way to learn is whether you teach by “restating the information” or by trying to “build knowledge.” Restating information means that you learn the material well enough to repeat it. This is like rote repetition. In contrast, knowledge building means you focus on trying to make sense of the information (i.e., its meaning), monitor your understanding, make inferences, and elaborate on the material. Knowledge building leads to much better learning. Restating the material is a weak strategy roughly equivalent to shallow memorization of the information.
Using teaching as a learning strategy in your class. Instructors can assign students to teaching roles in a variety of ways. Some examples:
- Students teach the answers to questions to one another in small groups.
- In the Jigsaw Technique, responsibility for teaching is distributed systematically among students in small groups. Each group works on a complex topic or problem. Each member specializes in one part of the larger topic and is responsible for teaching it to other group members (Aronson, 1978).
- In large classes, instructors may assign students to prepare (but not actually teach) a topic for the class. Students do the background reading, prepare several slides, organize notes, and create quiz questions and handouts for the class. The instructor can then incorporate the material into teaching the class. Evidence suggests that student learning improves when students expect and prepare to teach, even when they do not actually teach to others (Nestojko, Bui, Kornell, & Bjork, 2014).
- In Peer Instruction, the instructor poses questions during lecture that students first answer individually and then discuss in pairs or small groups (Mazur, 1999; Mazur, 2009). Each class period involves several peer instruction episodes.
- In tutoring, students typically teach one-on-one with another student. Tutors often present, organize, and explain course material as well as answer questions and clarify information (Roscoe & Chi, 2007; Roscoe & Chi, 2008).
- Instructors can encourage students to use teaching as a learning strategy in study groups to prepare for exams.
Undoubtedly, there are many other contexts in which students can teach to one another, e.g., presentation of projects. In planning and facilitating teaching opportunities, instructors must attend to classroom dynamics, differences among students, student motivation and so on. Regardless of the social context, students will learn more from teaching if they study the course material with the expectation of teaching it to others, and if they organize, explain and clarify the material when they actually teach it to others. To help prepare students, you may want to use the Learn by Teaching: Student Tip Sheet which explains to students how teaching can support their learning, and how to do so effectively.
References
Aronson, E., et al. (1978). The jigsaw classroom. NY: Sage.
Fiorella, L., & Mayer, R. E. (2015). Learning as a generative activity: Eight learning strategies that promote understanding. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107707085
Mazur, E. (1997). Peer instruction: A user’s manual. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Mazur, E. (2009). Farewell, lecture? Science, 323, 50–51, http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.1168927
Nestojko, J.F., Bui, D.C., Kornell, N., & Bjork, E.L. (2014). Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages. Memory & Cognition 42, 1038–1048https://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-014-0416-z
Roscoe, R. D., & Chi, M. T. H. (2007). Understanding Tutor Learning: Knowledge-Building and Knowledge-Telling in Peer Tutors’ Explanations and Questions. Review of Educational Research, 77(4), 534–574. https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654307309920
Roscoe, R.D., Chi, M.T.H. (2008). Tutor learning: the role of explaining and responding to questions. Instructional Science 36, 321–350. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-007-9034-5
Schwartz, D. L., Tsang, J. M., & Blair, K. P. (2016). The ABCs of how we learn: 26 scientifically proven approaches, how they work, and when to use them. New York, NY: Norton.