A group of scientists, including those from the Royal Society of Chemistry, recently proposed that experiences such as licking an ice lolly should be part of the science curriculum. The idea is that by licking the lolly and seeing how it melts – children will learn better about melting, and therefore about chemistry and physics too.
But do experiences like licking a lollipop, or kneading dough, playing with shadows or digging up soil really help students learn science? Using examples and demonstrations in the classroom can be a helpful gateway toward deeper understanding, but it is not a shortcut to knowledge.
The idea of learning through experiences has a long history. It is perhaps most closely associated with the work of educator John Dewey in the early 20th century. Dewey and other educators of the time were concerned that an emphasis on rote learning would lead to “passive knowledge”: facts that students would not be able to apply in the real world.
An experience like licking a lollipop might be the least memorable – especially if you’ve never done it before. Licking a lollipop or watching it melt in class will trigger what psychologists call an episodic memory: a recollection of an event in your life.
Experience and understanding
However, there is a difference between remembering events and having knowledge. For example, there is a difference between experiencing yourself during the French Revolution and knowing what happened.
The latter involves a different kind of memories – semantic memories. These are based on an understanding of how things work and what they mean. This is the kind of memory that works when you use a word like “heavy” unconnected with a specific heavy object. Such an understanding is essential to both scientific education and our use of language.
If you stop to think about it, much of your knowledge may not be clearly linked to any one specific experience. Learning is not usually a one-time process – for example, think of how much experience a gardener needs before he or she knows how plants grow and thrive.
These semantic memories arise from a combination of many experiences, and, sometimes, from comparing and contrasting different things: such as the difference between two types of plants, or the difference between an ice cream and an ice lolly.
Learning about melting is similar. We don’t just demonstrate melting once, and then suddenly (or by chance), students know it.
The importance of context
Understanding science or anything else is not just about memorizing experiences. Learners need to understand the encounter, focus their attention on similar and different processes, and experience multiple examples.
To get the most out of it, students need enough prior knowledge to understand what is happening when they see something in class. This is why leaving students to discover things entirely on their own is a flawed strategy.
This is another reason why relying on one-time experiences is not effective. Students need to revisit ideas from time to time, bringing forth more knowledge and understanding each time.
Without a basic understanding of science, there is a risk that a student will fail to connect an observation made in class to its wider context. For example, knowing about melting is more than knowing that lollies melt – it involves knowing why and under what conditions they melt. It also involves knowing that other everyday substances will melt at high temperatures.
This basic understanding is also important to protect students from scientific misconceptions. In the example of the lolly, students may overgeneralise surface features such as how quickly the lolly melts or how sticky it is, seeing these as features of melting in general.
In short, understanding science or anything else is not just about remembering things. It means understanding what an experience is about, what category it is an instance of, and how it differs from other concepts.
personal education
Another notable claim in the ice lolly story was that promoting learning “at the individual level” is valuable. There is research on this too.
Imagine you were asked to memorize a list of random words, such as “music, broccoli, dance, plastic bottles, baby shark.” A study on memory found that people remembered words from such lists better if they were asked “Do you like this?” than a simple, information-processing question, such as “Does the word have the letter ‘e’ in it?”. We also remember our own things better than ordinary objects.
So, yes – there is some evidence that we can retain experiences better if we are personally invested in them. However, it is worth noting that such experiments tend to be short-lived. In everyday life, we can really enjoy and engage with something on a personal level (such as a book or a conversation) yet forget the details after a few weeks or months.
This is why people write diaries. Memories of our lives are fleeting, easily lost over time. Sometimes such memories are distorted, or even entirely imaginary – false memories. Learning science based on such memories is risky.
If we want students to increase their knowledge of science and use it in the future, it is important to focus on strategies that develop a deep understanding of concepts and their structure, rather than relying on gimmicks or one-off experiences.
All this is to say nothing of the practicalities of having an ice lolly for each school student, distributing it around the class – or cleaning up afterwards.
Jonathan Firth, Senior Teaching Fellow in Education, University of Strathclyde
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
