Licking a lollipop in class will lead to what psychologists call episodic memory (representative).

Oh A group of scientistsincluding those at the Royal Society of Chemistry, have recently proposed that experiments such as Ice lolly lick Should be part of science curriculum. By licking a lollipop and seeing how it melts – the idea goes – children will learn better about melting and therefore about chemistry and physics.

But do experiments like licking a lollipop, or kneading dough, playing with shadows or digging in the dirt, help students learn science? Deploying examples and demonstrations in the classroom can be a helpful gateway to 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 related to the work of the 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 “extraordinary knowledge”: facts that students would not be able to apply. In the real world.

An experience like licking a lolly can be memorable at the very least – especially if you’ve never done it before. Licking a lollipop or watching it melt in class triggers what psychologists call episodic memory: the memory of an event in your life.

Experience and understanding

However, there There is a difference Between having memories of events and having knowledge. There is a difference, for example, between personally living through the French Revolution and knowing what happened.

The latter includes a different type of memory – semantic memory. They are based on understanding how things work and what they mean. This is the type of memory that is triggered when you use a word such as “heavy”, unassociated with a specific heavy object. Such understandings are essential to both scientific learning and our use of language.

If you stop to think about it, most of your knowledge cannot be clearly linked to any particular experience. Learning is not usually a one-shot process – think, for example, of how much experience a gardener needs before they “know” how plants grow and thrive.

These semantic memories derive from a combination of many experiences, and sometimes, from comparing and contrasting different things: the difference between two types of plants, or between an ice lolly and an ice cream.

So is learning about melting. We don’t just perform a melt, and boom (or squelch) once, the students have learned it.

The importance of context

Understanding science or anything else is not just about remembering experiences. Learners are needed. Understand the meetingdrawing their attention to similar and different processes, and experimenting Multiple examples.

To get the most out of it, learners need enough prior knowledge to understand what is going on when they observe something in class. This is one reason why students have to stop exploring things entirely on their own. Wrong strategy.

This is another reason why relying on one-sided experiments doesn’t work. Students need to revisit ideas periodically, each time bringing more knowledge and understanding to the table.

Without a basic understanding of science, there is a risk that the learner will fail to connect classroom observations to their wider context. Knowing about melting, for example, is more than just knowing that a lollipop melts – it involves knowing why, and under what conditions. This includes knowing that other everyday substances will melt at high temperatures.

This basic understanding is also important to prevent students from coming up with scientific misconceptions. In a cute example, students might be. Generalization of surface properties Such as how quickly the lollipop melts or how sticky it is, looking at these as melting properties in general.

In short, understanding science or anything else is not just memorizing things. It’s about understanding what an experience relates to, what category it exemplifies, and how it differs from other concepts.

Personal education

Another notable claim in the ice lolly story was the suggestion that it was valuable for promoting learning. “on a personal level”. There is research on this too.

Imagine you are asked to remember a list of random words such as “music, broccoli, dance, plastic bottles, baby shark”. A study Looking at memory found that people recalled words from such lists better if they were asked, “Do you like this?” Compared to a blender, information processing queries, such as “Does the word contain the letter ‘e’?”. We too Remember our own possessions Better than normal items.

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 experiences are short-lived. In everyday life, we can really enjoy and engage with something on a personal level (like a book or a conversation) but forget the details within 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 still Totally conceptual – False memories. Basing learning science on this kind of memory is dangerous.

If we want students to increase their knowledge of science and be able to use it in the future, it is important to focus on strategies that develop a deeper understanding of concepts and how they are structured. rather than relying on gimmicks or one-sided experiments. .

All of this is to say nothing of the process of storing ice lollies for each student at school, handing them out to class – or cleaning up afterwards.

Jonathan FirthSenior Teaching Fellow in Education, University of Strathclyde

This article has been republished. The conversation Under Creative Commons License. Read on Original article.

(Other than the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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