Why is thinking like a teacher the best learning strategy for a student?
Subject: Learning - Protege Effect
Event: Jacob Neuer gives convocation address at Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania, 1991
On this day in 1991, Professor Jacob Neusner, a historian of religion, delivered the convocation address to students at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. Unlike a commencement speech, which is presented at a graduation ceremony at the end of a school term, a convocation is a speech to incoming students at the beginning of a school term. The word “convocation” is from the Latin convocare, “to call/come together.”
The purpose of a convocation, therefore, is to inspire students and to spark their quest for knowledge as they stand poised at the beginning of a new school year. Neusner clearly is qualified to speak about acquiring knowledge, having played a part in the publication of over 1,000 books, either as an author, editor, or translator. In his convocation, Neusner evoked examples of history’s great teachers, teachers who helped their students to discover truth for themselves. First, he held up Socrates as an example, saying his primary method was to walk the streets, stop people, and ask them irritating questions. His second example was Jesus, whose Sermon on the Mount was anything but a long, boring lecture (1).
The most important challenge for students is to engage in their own education: “Learning takes place through discovery, not when you’re told something but when you figure it out for yourself.” The most important lesson that any student can learn in school is to “teach themselves.” In school, students have teachers and professors “to guide, to help, to goad, to irritate, to stimulate” them; however, if students are to be fully prepared for life outside of school, they must know how to teach themselves.
Research shows that thinking like a teacher is the best way to become a lifelong learner. Researchers call it the Protege Effect. Instead of trying to imagine what you will be tested on; instead, imagine what you would test your students on. Doing this raises learning to another level, requiring the learner to think about their own thinking but also the thinking of the person they are teaching. In a 2014 study by psychologist John Nestojko, students were asked to study reading passages either for A) preparing to be tested on the passage, or B) preparing to teach the passage to another student. Even though the students who expected to teach never actually engaged in teaching, they still answered more questions correctly about the passage; they also were able to produce “more complete and better organized free recall of the passage” (2).
Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason: What is the Protege Effect, and how did the two groups in the study that showed its effectiveness differ?
Challenge - A Letter to Your Protege: What would you say to a student younger than yourself to inspire them at the beginning of the school year. Write an open letter that will inspire readers to take charge of their own learning. Focus on specific pieces of advice that you could give them about how to be a successful learner.
Sources:
1- Safire, William. Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
2- Nestojko, John, Bui, Dung, Kornell, Nate, Bjotk, Elizabeth. “Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages” Memory & cognition. 2014/05/21
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