Not everyone that teaches calls themselves a teacher.
As managers, we teach when we show someone the ropes in their new role. As presenters, we teach by imparting information. In conversation, we teach when we summarise the latest controversy in the news.
Teaching, then, isn’t just something that happens in schools. It is an attempt to transfer knowledge and understanding about some subject, regardless of whether that subject is Geography or how to break up with someone.
So, that’s settled. We’re all teachers, even if we might bristle at the label.
Now we recognise this, we can turn our focus to how we teach. Much of the teaching that happens outside of schools (and to be sure, occasionally within) isn’t that effective. This isn’t a huge surprise. After all, we haven’t been taught how to teach!
Fortunately, there are a few simple but profound principles we can learn to teach anything. As a teacher myself (of the official kind), I have found that these principles apply just as well outside of the classroom as within it.
An abundance of information creates a poverty of attention (Herbert A. Simon)
Just as we can’t swallow a whole steak in one mouthful, there’s a limit to the amount of information we can take in all at once. We consume information like we consume food, one piece at a time. Presented with too much at once, we struggle to chew and digest it.
The evidence from psychology supports this common-sense idea. According to psychologists, each bit of information must pass through our short-term memory if it is ever to teach our long-term memory. Since our short-term memory can only hold about seven items at any given time, it acts as a kind of bottleneck, slowing the passage of ideas to our long-term memory. When we try to process a lot of information all at once our short-term memory can get overloaded, causing a kind of traffic jam in our brain. As teachers, we ought to be mindful of this. Somewhat paradoxically, as the Simon quote illustrates, when given too much information we take less, not more of it away. It’s the educational equivalent of trying to stuff our mouths with food; we find it much harder to process any of it.
Unfortunately, this principle is often ignored in workplace settings outside of schools (e. g. in presentations and meetings of various kinds). People routinely try to communicate too much information at once, and our desire to appear smart and fear of being thought of as ‘slow’ means this practice can slip by unchallenged. Unlike in schools, where students are routinely tested to reveal their ignorance- and so potential ineffectiveness in the teaching- both parties in the workplace can happily pretend that an effective exchange of information took place.
It needn’t be like this. Instead of excusing or even encouraging this approach to teaching in our life and work, we ought to listen to what the evidence, and common sense, tells us.
How to do this:
- When communicating new information, think like a journalist. Present the key headlines (the main points of your message), and chunk information into smaller sections where you deal with specifics.
- If presenting with slides, limit the number of points per slide to avoid overloading viewers’ short-term memory. Think: more slides and shorter, not fewer slides but longer. We go far when we go small.
Learning is a journey from the known to the unknown
To get somewhere we haven’t been before, we need directions, or a map, to guide us. Without them, we will soon get lost.
This same principle applies to learning. To acquire new knowledge and understanding, we need to start somewhere familiar, and trace a clear path to our destination. So, when trying to teach someone, we ought to ask ourselves: what do they already know? We can then draw a path between the known and the unknown. In the jargon of the teaching profession, this is called ‘schema activation’; recalling relevant prior knowledge so that new knowledge could be connected to it.
It’s a vital ingredient of all teaching, especially when the student lacks a frame of reference. Without this, we are likely to be bamboozled when confronted with new information.
Take this abstract from mathematicians Alexander Barvinok and Mark Rudelson (titled ‘A Quick Estimate for the Volume of a Polyhedron’):
Let P be a bounded polyhedron defined as the intersection of the non- negative orthant Rn+ and an affine subspace of codimension m in Rn. We show that a simple and computationally efficient formula approximates the volume of P within a factor of γm, where γ > 0 is an absolute constant.
To even begin to understand what this all means, we need someone to draw on our relevant knowledge of maths, and then patiently draw links between the known to the unknown. Without it, we simply can’t get from A to B.
We ought to keep this principle in mind whenever we try to explain a completely different field to someone. This advice would be well heeded by people who explain to their friends and family what they do for work (when they don’t just assume that people already know), and by people who know huge amounts about a given field. Without a map to guide us, we will be lost.
How to do this:
- Make use of analogies and metaphors to explain new concepts. Think to yourself, what is this like? Then connect the unknown to the already known image or idea.
- Before explaining something that may be unfamiliar to your audience, consider what they already know, and draw links between the two.
Memory is the residue of thought (Daniel T Willingham)
Consider an owner of some shop. What matters most for their business is not that potential customers look at their products, pick them up, and ask questions about them. What matters is what they buy; what matters is what they take away.
The same is true for learning. Thinking is a process for which memory is the key result. Memory, in other words, is what we take away from thinking. It is the residue of thought. So, when we teach someone something and they don’t remember it, we may rightly ask what the point of all that was. Indeed, we might even go so far as to say that if they don’t remember it, then we didn’t teach it.
Unfortunately, our capacity to forget is truly impressive. Without repeated attempts to recall information, most information we read or hear about is rapidly forgotten in a matter of days. Our memory follows the well-trodden ‘forgetting curve’ first highlighted by the psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in the 19th century.
© Growth Engineering- Youtube
And yet ironically, this insight is often forgotten by those who teach outside of schools. Many organisations have ‘training days’ where new methods and ideas are introduced. However, there is usually precious little follow-up, making it very unlikely this information will be retained and used. Learning requires repeated exposure. It’s not one and done.
When we pay proper attention to memory, we can also consider the different ways that information can be presented to us to make it more memorable. Certain things capture the attention of an audience, making it more likely that people will recall what they’ve said. Yet we often neglect to include these ingredients when we try to get our message across.
Tips
- Think about what makes something memorable: novelty, high contrast, stories, emotional impact, repetition, surprise. Use these ingredients to make your message stick.
- Check understanding more often, instead of just assuming people have retained the information. They often won’t have.
- Use repetition to get your message across. One and done doesn’t work. Many and often does.
Need before feed (Andy Day)
Curiosity is fundamentally a hunger for knowledge and understanding. Like physical hunger, it motivates to dosomething. It gets us to pay attention.
Getting someone to learn something they don’t want to learn, then, is like trying to get a child to eat something they don’t want to eat. In both cases, we might offer reasons for how what we’re offering is ‘good for you,’ or coerce our unwilling subjects with bribery or blackmail, but our results will be shallow and short-lived.
Consider those times when you really paid attention to something. You had your own reason for doing it, some why that fuelled your how. Ian Gilbert, in his book ‘Essential Motivation in the Classroom’, suggests that as teachers we ought to always pose the WIIFM (What’s in it for me?) question of our students. Before presenting someone with information, we ought to think about why they might need or want it. An unmotivated mind doesn’t learn.
This explains why a popular metaphor of teaching as the ‘pouring’ of knowledge into students’ ‘buckets’ (that is, their minds) doesn’t work. The image is far too passive, implying that teachers can simply force their students to acquire new information by explaining it to them. But students won’t remember what they don’t care about at more than a surface level. A better metaphor for what really happens is magnetism. Students’ need to attract the knowledge we present to them to make it stick. A teacher’s job is to awaken curiosity in them, so they attract the new knowledge that we lay before them.
So, how do we do this?
To answer this, let’s turn to the insights of cognitive psychology. According to the psychologist George Loewenstein, curiosity is best understood as the recognition of a kind of deprivation: in other words, as a kind of hunger. It arises when we notice a gap between what we want to know and what we currently know, and we want to close the gap.
This is critical to bear in mind for anyone attempting to teach something. To awaken curiosity in others, we need only point out the gaps in others’ knowledge and give a reason for why they might want to fill it. Typically, we are motivated to close the gap for two reasons; either the knowledge is useful, or it is interesting.
For knowledge to be useful, it generally needs to solve some problem (e. g. how to fix a boiler, how to add up your shopping list most efficiently etc). When we can see the use of something, we are motivated to remember it. Information that is interesting need not have any practical value, but we are still compelled to remember it. Take a fact from the popular quiz show QI on the BBC, ‘mosquitoes are responsible for half the deaths in human history.’ This may not be particularly useful, but it is surprising and noteworthy. Since it gives us pleasure to think of it, we are still keen to know it. The pursuit of interesting, then, is ultimately the pursuit of pleasure: we get enjoyment from knowing things.
People who devote their lives to the study of something typically derive much pleasure from that field. Part of the job of a good teacher, then, is to recognise what gives pleasure to their students so that they can feed them more of what interests them. Similarly, just as a parent might mix something delicious with something disgusting to encourage their child to eat it, a good teacher might sprinkle interesting facts into an otherwise dull presentation to make it more memorable and compelling.
Tips
- The Buddha once said, ‘The world is created by desire.’ When you teach someone, consider why they might want to know what you’re teaching them. Does it solve a problem of theirs? Is it interesting for its own sake?
- Don’t give people answers to questions they haven’t thought about. Start with the need (i.e. the question that requires resolution) before feeding them the answer to stimulate their curiosity. If they can see the gap, and understand why it matters, they will be motivated to close it.
- When you need to teach a particularly dull subject, sprinkle some interesting facts, or give useful tips, to make the message more digestible.
When you put these four principles of good teaching to use, you will awaken others’ curiosity, capture greater attention, and ensure your message sticks.
We’re all teachers, so we may as well try to get better at it.
Teachers, assemble!
