Expecting to Teach Enhances Learning, Recall
A trade secret among educators is that teaching is a form of deep learning. A study led by Washington University postdoctoral researcher John Nestojko, PhD, and recently published in the journal Memory & Cognition shows that people learn more effectively when they think that they will be teaching the material to others. Compared with participants who expected to be tested, participants who expected they would teach the material remembered it more effectively, with finer organization and grasp of essential concepts.