In 2000, when the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine first released “How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition,” the private, nonprofit institution couldn’t have predicted how important the research report would become in the field of K-12 education over the next 18 years, writes Senior Contributing Editor Dian Schaffhauser for THE Journal.
According to Schaffhauser, the updated version, “How People Learn II,” picks up from the original research, providing new insights related to the ground covered in the first report, but expands the discussion to include learning that occurs beyond K-12.
Schaffhauser interviewed Study Director Sujeeta Bhatt to find out how the latest study was undertaken and its key findings.
“One of the things that the Academies have been doing for some time now is tracking how popular reports are in terms of [free downloads and purchases],” said Bhatt.
“For a very long time, the "Expanded Edition" of "How People Learn" has been the No. 3 most-downloaded report of over 10,000 reports for the Academies.”
So in 2008, Bhatt said the National Academies Press commissioned market research to help it understand how readers have used How People Learn in educational settings, and it also examined what topics were recommended for a revision of the book.
“When asked about recommendations for revisions, the two areas that were most frequently noted were technologies for learning and neuroscience,” Bhatt said.
“And so … the decision was made to expand the report beyond K-12 and to cover learning across the lifespan in both formal and informal settings. They also decided to focus on educational technologies, neuroscience, learning across the lifespan, including research on the aging brain, which kind of relates to neuroscience, and the influence of culture, motivation and emotion on learning.”
According to Bhatt, some of the How People Learn II key findings are:
• Culture plays an important and complex role in shaping how people learn
• Learning is a dynamic process that continues across the lifespan
• Mental models help people retain lessons learned by applying knowledge appropriately to solve new problems or make inferences
• Motivation evolves throughout the lifespan