In their quest for the Holy Grail of teaching techniques, educators and parents alike have tried—and to their credit, are willing to try!—it all. Increasingly, it is technology that schools are turning to for breakthroughs, though often with a significant hit to the pocketbook. Only time will tell whether it provides the panacea many hope for.
What is becoming ever clearer, the longer I teach, is that it’s the simple things—done well—that work best. Often, it turns out that less is more.
Nowhere is this more true than with a simple technique that any teacher can do at any level of instruction, anywhere—be it in the classroom with 25 kids or in the living room, homeschooling.
It’s a method that has been well-demonstrated and costs nothing—other than a small leap of faith. It’s refreshingly simple, and with a little attention to detail, I dare say, foolproof. (Students can even adapt the insights it provides to their own study habits, to great effect. More on that later.) It’s one technique that lives up to the impressive claims researchers have made.
The technique is this, in its simplest form: When providing what’s usually called “direct instruction” (such as explaining historical content, presenting a PowerPoint, or even reading to students), pause periodically to give students time to process things. Each pause can be as short as only two minutes, yet the payoffs are exponential.
(As we’ll see in Part 2, we want to make the break what I call an “active pause,” with some form of structured prompt or task being provided for the short break.)
Simple enough, right? So much so, you’re probably wondering if it could really have that big of an impact. Several well-designed research studies answer in the affirmative: definitely.
A 1987 study by Ruhl, Hughes, and Schoss, who examined multiple classes over the course of two semesters, is eye-opening. (Importantly, their work involved both control and experimental groups, which isn’t always the case in educational research.) They found that this rather basic technique resulted in a mean difference of 17 percentage points. That’s the equivalent of up to two letter grades. In other words, the learning of a C student could be propelled to that of at least a B student, if not A.
And all this from a technique requiring very little effort on the part of the instructor. And better yet, it’s highly enjoyable and enlivening for students, making class far more interesting for everyone.
What’s the Problem, Though?
The secret magic of the pause lies in two factors, it seems.The first has to do with the science of attention.
When direct instruction carries on for too long, without pauses, learning begins to sputter under the influence of failing attention. How long is “too long,” though? Much shorter than you would think. And this is true even at the college level.
Studies have found that during a typical direct instruction class (picture the classic “lecture”), students spend around the first 5 minutes or so simply settling in, followed by a rather humblingly short period of focused attention, lasting from just 5 to 10 minutes.
Then things start to fall apart.
From there (we’re now at the 10- to 15-minute mark of class), attention progressively deteriorates—with boredom, restlessness, and even confusion progressively setting in.
And we’re not just talking about the usual suspects in the back row.
Studies have found this to be true for students across the board, including even the most motivated of students. (They might just not show it as obviously, or pay for it as measurably.) It’s not simply about willpower or enthusiasm. Researchers have found this pattern to hold true even for medical school students—the elite of the elite.
(One dogged researcher, Bligh, went so far as to hook heart rate monitors up to students to measure their levels of arousal during university lectures. His rather disheartening findings—I’m afraid to report—only confirmed the unsettling outcomes reported by others.)
So, flagging attention is one issue.
The second fallout of nonstop instruction is that it proves to be “too much of a good thing,” as the saying goes. That is, no matter how fascinating, insightful, or witty one’s teaching is, it’s very likely to overwhelm listeners if it keeps coming at them in a steady, uninterrupted stream. There’s a reason your GPS doesn’t reel off every one of the directions in rapid-fire succession, right at the start.
(In this regard, we teachers who are blessed with a captive audience of students for 55 minutes could learn from the wildly successful formula of TED Talks, which caps speakers’ remarks at just 18 minutes!)
The Secrets of Success
What these short pauses do is give students time and space to digest the instruction they’ve been hearing.It’s important to remember that if the ideas and information we’re presenting are fresh and new to students—as we’d hope—it’s going to take some processing.
If we want what we teach to stick, we have to carve out time for that process. Think of it like digestion. Even the best meal, with the best farm-to-table ingredients, is going to result in a troubled tummy if too much is crammed in too quickly.
A short pause also gives the brain a break. It allows students to shift their attention to a different—and complementary—task (as we’ll see in the next part). This makes for a refreshing change of pace. And brain breaks often prove energizing, giving you recharged students for those next 15 minutes or so.
A final bonus is that these breaks allow students, if properly structured, to self-reflect on and assess their own learning (what’s often referred to as the skills of meta-cognition). This is immensely impactful, and a terrific skill to develop. It also helps learners to take ownership of the material.
Together, these perks result in a level of deeper learning that comes as a pleasant surprise to your kiddos. As one student commented recently, on an end-of-course survey for a humanities class I taught: “I actually never had to study much for the exams because the way you teach makes everything stay in my brain! All I had to do was read through my notes once and I remembered pretty much everything taught throughout the semester!”
While it’s flattering to think that it was my teaching that worked the magic, the irony is, it was probably more those moments of not teaching—when I loosened the reins and let students work their own brain magic.
Whatever the case, the research as well as my own experiences suggest that the benefits are enough to spike even a med student’s heart rate.
Stay tuned for Part 2 to see how to put all of this into practice and get the best possible results.
