Who'd've thought? Teachers have long known that reflection can help students, but now there's scientific evidence to back that up.
Learning is more effective if a lesson or experience is deliberately coupled with time spent thinking about what was just presented, a new study shows. In “Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance,” a team of researchers from HEC Paris, Harvard Business School, and the University of North Carolina describe what they call the first empirical test of the effect of reflection on learning. By “reflection,” they mean taking time after a lesson to synthesize, abstract, or articulate the important points.
Read the whole article from The Atlantic: You Really Can 'Work Smarter, Not Harder'. Or, if you prefer your science "straight up" head over to the Social Science Research Network for the paper: Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance.
If you're in a hurry, here's the ultimate takehome point for teachers: build a little time for reflection into your lesson plans. If you're already doing this, consider yourself vindicated.
Photo: the class by hitzi1000