Traditionally, learning was seen as simply a matter of memorizing information. But as psychologists examined the way we learn things, ideas about education changed. They found that learning by rote, or repetition, is not the best method—we do need to study, but how we study is very important, too.

Making it stick

The way we learn things and how our memories work are of great interest to psychologists. Hermann Ebbinghaus, a 19th-century pioneer of psychology, studied memory and found that the longer and more often we spend time memorizing something, the better we remember it. This confirmed the idea that to learn something well, we should study hard and often. A century later, behaviorist psychologists suggested that we learn by experience, and that when we do something that is rewarded, we remember and can repeat it. Some of the behaviorists, including Edward Thorndike and B. F. Skinner, also emphasized the importance of reinforcing that learning by repetition—going over what you have learned to make it stick. Unlike Ebbinghaus, however, Skinner stressed that there should be some kind of reward for every successful repetition. He invented a “teaching machine,” which gave feedback to students in the form of praise for correct answers, but asked them to repeat questions that they answered incorrectly.

Understanding is the key to learning

But even Ebbinghaus realized there is much more to learning something thoroughly than simply repeating it. He found that we remember things much better if they have some significance or meaning to us. Later psychologists returned to this idea. They approached it from the point of view of what is going on in our minds as we learn, rather than how things can be made to stick in our memories. Since Ebbinghaus showed that we remember things better if they mean something, psychologists came to believe that we learn by trying to make sense of things. Wolfgang Köhler suggested that, in trying to solve problems, we get an insight into the way things work. Edward Tolman went further, suggesting that we each build up a mental “map” of the world from the ideas we learn. Combining these ideas with his own notion of the mind as a processor of information, Jerome Bruner showed that learning is not simply a matter of putting information into our memories, but involves a process of thinking and reasoning. To learn something well, we have to understand it first.

Do it to learn it

Jean Piaget approached the idea of learning from yet another angle. He saw it in terms of the stages of mental development he had distinguished in children. Children’s learning, he said, is a process that changes to fit the limitations of each stage of development. He incorporated the behaviorist theory that chidren learn through trial and error, especially in the early stages, with the cognitive theory that we learn by making sense of what we discover. But, most importantly, he stressed that education should be child-centered—geared to children’s individual needs and abilities, and encouraging children to use their imaginations in exploring and understanding the world for themselves. In the early stages, this would take the form of what we regard as “play” (which from a child’s point of view is very serious). And as children get older, learning is most likely to succeed through hands-on experience, as opposed to learning by rote from a teacher or from books.

Hands-on learning

Children of different ages have different needs when it comes to education. Jean Piaget emphasized the importance of practical experience—doing an experiment, for example, or building a model.

PEEKABOO

According to Piaget, children can only learn things that fit their stage of development. In one study, Piaget showed a child a toy, which he then hid under a cloth while the child was watching. He found that children older than eight months knew to look for the toy under the cloth, but that infants younger than eight months could not understand that the toy was still there even though it was hidden from view.

Playing with colored blocks helps children learn about geometry and spatial awareness.

See also: Can’t you just GROW UP? | What is KNOWLEDGE? | Decisions, decisions, DECISIONS