My last WYPR commentary on learning
Discoveries in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, education, design thinking and behavioral economics have given us substantial new insights into how learning works.
At its core, learning is what happens to the structure in your brain and it turns out that the five most important things anyone can do to improve learning are S.W.E.E.T.: sleep, water, exercise, eating, and time are the most important conditions for supporting your brain in learning.
We have great experimental confirmation of all of these things. Moderate exercise, even 4 hours after studying improves retention. Being dehydrated reduces both cognitive and physical performance. And T is for time: teaching matters, but you learn more when you practice more.
The S for Sleep and it is critical because sleep is when your brain sorts memories and decides what to remember: if you get only 7 hours of sleep, your emotional reactions to yesterday’s class predominate. You remember that you felt stupid in math class. But 90% of your REM sleep occurs in that 8th hour, so with an extra hour of sleep, your brain re-lives that math class and de-emotionalizes the memories: so you better remember the math part.
These research findings can help us improve learning. Your brain lives in your body, so it only functions and learns well when it gets what it needs biologically. Emphasizing wellness and the SWEET part of learning is as essential as what happens in classrooms.
There is a chapter on SWEET in the Nudge book, due out in 2022.