Significant learning depends on both the teaching process and how it is treated by the student, education psychologists are very interested in both aspects and have developed theories to optimize them, in this article we will talk about the second aspect: learning strategies.
The main goal of learning strategies is to make students more effective learners. Exploration and research in this area have provided us with different ways to achieve this goal. The three best-known learning strategies are mnemonic, structural and generative.
- This type of learning strategy helps students memorize content in the form of specific facts or terms; for example.
- They are useful for remembering uppercase names.
- Important dates.
- Language vocabulary.
- Etc.
- When meaningless data needs to be memorized.
- Mnemonic strategies give us a way to establish a certain degree of meaning.
The validity of these techniques is widely recognized, so they have been used for a long time, the psychologist Paivio explained that these techniques work for three reasons:
An example of a mnemonic strategy is the keyword method, this method is very useful when learning a conflicting vocabulary in a foreign language, consists of a phonetic and iconic link, for a detailed explanation.
Structural strategies encourage active learning by encouraging students to mentally select relevant information and connect it to each other in a structure. In this method, we find techniques for developing conceptual maps, flowcharts, or diagrams.
Clearly, it is not enough for the teacher to tell the student that he needs to make diagrams and summaries, these tools will only be useful if the student knows how to use them, so it is interesting and productive that the teacher also teaches students about the development of these tools. The most difficult aspect of this training is learning to identify the most relevant or significant aspects of a text or exhibition.
The effect of these techniques on learning is rapidly emerging. When we organize the material into small, closely related ideas, it’s easier to access it; In addition, by creating intense associations between these ideas, it will be easier to access the rest of the information in our memory.
Research shows us that students who use these techniques greatly increase their performance, and also help formalize an authentic understanding of content, rather than memorized and superficial learning, so it’s interesting to include these learning strategies in the classroom.
With previous strategies, we look for ways to help students remember specific facts and organize them into structures, i. e. these are techniques to deal with new information that need to be learned, but another important aspect of learning is the integration of new content. with prior knowledge And that’s where generative strategies come in.
EZRothkopf called the activities in which the student produces knowledge of “mathematical activities”. Examples of these activities include taking notes, highlighting, creating and answering questions, or rehearsing aloud. This type of activity helps to understand in depth by forcing students to integrate knowledge.
Many psychologists see active learning as the creation of relationships between ideas by the student, so generative strategies are an excellent tool to achieve this type of learning in students, teach students to take notes or ask questions greatly facilitates the task. understand and integrate the knowledge acquired.
As we see, throughout this article we have seen and explored different learning strategies with great potential and usefulness in the classroom, scientific research on teaching and education helps us achieve the active and deep learning that we seek in students, it would be a serious mistake not to follow the guidelines and evidence provided by the psychology of education.