Teaching a subject deepens the teacher's own grasp of it, and even preparing to teach improves learning.
Seneca wrote to Lucilius that people learn while they teach; the two-word Latin tag is the later compression. Chase and colleagues found in 2009 that pupils worked harder learning material for a computer character they had to teach than for themselves, which they called the protégé effect. Nestojko and colleagues found in 2014 that students who expected to teach a passage recalled more of it, and organised it better, than students who expected a test.
In practice
- A firm that has each intake run the induction session for the next finds the teachers remember the procedures best.
- A student explaining an exam topic to a friend finds the gaps in her own understanding halfway through the explanation.
- Standing
- Much of the gain comes from preparing to explain and from retrieval rather than from the act of teaching itself. Compare the illusion of explanatory depth, which explaining exposes.
- Subject
- Learning & Education
- Essay
- What works in learning, and what schools can and cannot change