WHY STUDENTS FORGET WHAT THEY LEARNED IN SCHOOL?
WHY STUDENTS FORGET WHAT THEY LEARNED IN SCHOOL?
It is customary to blame
forgetting on a bad memory and there is no doubt that people do differ
considerably in their innate capacity to remember things. We forget because we
want to do so. One may retort that it is unfortunately just the things one
wants to forget which insist on remaining vividly in our memories.
A good instance is in an ancient
formula for changing lead into gold. The process is a somewhat complicated one,
but the crucial part requires that we run round a churchyard three times at
midnight and not once during the period think of the word abracadabra. The
process is quite certain, we are assured if we carry out the instructions
precisely. Ofcourse abracadabra refuses to remain out of our thoughts and so we
fail.
We all have the experience of
forgetting to answer letters and usually we must admit that we didn’t want to
answer the letter. If a letter is likely to bring a cheque or some specially
welcome news in return we seldom forget.
According to Daniel T. Willingham,
a professor of Cognitive Psychology
at the University of Virginia, suggests that we certainly forget things
overtime and there is no reason to expect that what students learn in school
should be any exception. But take heart: we don’t forget everything, and under
some conditions we remember everything. Researchers have some understanding of
why we are likely to overestimate what we have forgotten. And most important,
there is some evidence that the memory of what we have learned in school
matters and actually makes us smarter.
What is Memory?
According to Feldman a professor in the Department of Psychology
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, defines Memory as the processes that allows us to record, store and later
retrieve experiences and information (Feldman, 2004).
Memory adds richness and context
to our lives but even more fundamentally, it allows us to learn from experience
and thus adapt to changing environment.
Memory is the
retention of information overtime through encoding, storage and retrieval
(Morris, 1973).
In sum, Psychologists consider
memory as the process by which we encode, store and retrive information. Each
of the three parts of this definition- encoding, storage and retrieval
represents a different process. You can think of these processes as analogous
to the functions of a computer’s keyboard (encoding), disk (storage) and
screen/monitor (retrieval).
MODEL
#Encoding: Is the
way in which information is processed for storage in memory. In short, encoding
is the way in which information gets into memory storage.
When you are listening to a
lecture, watching a movie, listening to music, a talking with a friend, you are
encoding information into memory. In everyday experiences, encoding has much in
common with learning.
Some information gets into memory
virtually automatically, whereas getting other information takes effort. Let’s
examine some encoding processes that require effort.
The issues that interest
psychologists include how effectively we attend to information, how deeply we
process it, how extensively we elaborate it with details and how much we use
mental imagery to encode it.
#Storage: Is the
way in which information is retained overtime and how it is represented in
memory.
#Retrieval: Ability
to access stored information in memory.
THREE SYSTEMS OF MEMORY STORAGE
The quality of encoding is not
the only thing that determines the quality of memory. The memory also needs to
be stored properly after it is encoded. Storage encompasses how information is
retained overtime and how it is represented in memory.
We remember some information for
less than a second, some for half a minute, and some for minutes, hours, years,
even a lifetime. Richard Atkinson and Richard Shiffrin (1968) formulated a very
influential theory of memory that acknowledged the varying life span of
memories.
The
Atkinson-Shiffrin theory states that memory storage involves a
system characterized by time frames.
Sensory memory: time
frames of a fraction of a second to several seconds. Sensory memory holds
information from the world in its original form only for an instant, not much
longer than the brief time it is exposed
to the visual, auditory and other senses (sense organs).
Short-term memory: time
frames up to 30 seconds. Short-term memory is a limited-capacity memory system
in which information is retained for only as long as 30 seconds unless
strategies are used to retain it longer. A three-part system that temporarily
hold information is called working memory.
Working
memory is a kind of mental workbench on which information is
manipulated and assembled to perform other cognitive tasks.
According to research, the
capacity of short-term memory is greater when information is stored not
phonologically (by how it sounds) but visually (by how it looks).
Long-term memory: time
frames up to a lifetime. Long-term memory is a relatively permanent system of
memory that holds huge amount of information for a long period of time.
●Semantic memory: Portion
of long-term memory that stores general facts and information. Semantic memory
is a person’s knowledge about the world. Example; Recalling tha capital of
Ohio.
●Episodic memory: Portion
of long-term memory that stores specific information that has personal meaning.
The retention of information about the where and when of life’s happenings. Example;
Recalling where you went on your first date.
●Implicit memory: Memory
for information that either was not intentionally committed to memory or that
is retrieved unintentionally from memory. Example; Suddenly remembering that
today is a friend’s birthday.
●Explicit memory: Memory
for information that is intentionally committed to memory and intentionally
retrieved from memory. The conscious recollection of information such as
specific facts or events and atleast in humans, information that can be
verbally communicated. Example; Recalling the definition of “slave trade”
during an exam.
The contention that we
forget most of our education is wrong. Under some conditions, we remember
nearly everything
Nevertheless, the contention that
we forget most of our education is wrong. Naturally, lessons learned in school
are subject to forgetting like any other experience but some of what we learned
stays with us.
What is Forgetting?
Is the inability to recall or
recognise something that has previousily been learned (Passer, 2008).
This may be due either to a lack
of availability, as in the case of decay when the information has disappeared,
or to a lack of accessibility, as in the case of cue-dependent forgetting when
the memory is stored somewhere but can’t be found at that time.
Reasons to Why Students Forget What They Learned in
School
#1: Encoding Failure
This is the most cause of
forgetting. The information never actually made it to the person’s memory bank.
This happen when a student fails to focus on what is being taught.
May be they had other things on
their mind that day, or the material just was not engaging enough to capture
thier attention.
Another reason for not paying
attention is that the student did not see a reason for learning this
information; it did not see to have a purpose related to the subject at hand.
This encoding failure can also
occur when someone is being presented with too much information all at once,
and using them to have to pick and choose what the brain will retain.
#2: Interference
According to interference theory states that people forget not because memories
are actually lost from storage but because other information gets in the of
what we want to remember.
It is known that recent things we
learn are more easily remembered than older information. If both sets of
information on the same subject, the newer memories may make it harder, if not
impossible to remember the older ones on the same subject.
There are two types of
interference which are Proactive
interference and Retroactive
interference.
Proactive interference is the process by which old material
already in memory interferes with new information.
Suppose that Mwl. Juma changes residences, gets a new phone number and meorizes
it. That night, when a friend asks Mwl.
Juma for her new phone number, he can recall only three digits and instead
keeps remembering his old phone number. Memory of his old phone number is
interfering with his ability to retrieve the new one.
Retroactive interference is the process by which new information
interferes with old material already in memory.
Suppose Anna has now had her new
phone number for two months and recalls it perfectly. If we ask her, “What was
your old number?” Anna may have trouble recalling it, perhaps mixing up the
digits with her new number. In general, the more simiral two sets of
information are, the more likely it is that interference will occur.
Why does interference occur? It
takes time for the brain to convert short-term memories into long-term
memories, and some researchers propose that when new information is entered
into the system it can disrupt (i.e retroactively interference with) the
conversion of older information into long-term memories (Wixted, 2005).
Others believe that once
long-term memories are formed, retroactive and proactive interference are
caused by competition among retrieval cues (Anderson & Neely, 1996). When
different memories become associated with similar or identical retrieval cues
confusion can result and accessing a cue may call up the wrong memory.
Retrieval failure also can occur because
we have too few retrieval cues or the cues may be too weak.
#3: Shallow Processing
Deep processing occurs when
meaning is placed on the material being learned. When a student can find a
reason to retain the information, when an emotion is connected to the material
or when more than one sense is used in learning, the memory gains staying power
and is more easily brought forth when needed.
If the material can’t be
connected to a sense or a feeling, the processing is shallow and it does not
stay in the brain for any length of time because the brain considers it
unimportant and will make room for things it considers more relevant.
#4: What Versus How
#5: Decay or Disuse
According to decay theory states that when something new is learned, a
neurochemical memory trace is formed, but overtime this trace tends to
disintegrate.
#6: Failure to rehearse information
According to rehearsal means
repetition of information that has entered short-term memory.
There are two types of rehearsing
the information which are Rote rehearsal and Elaborative rehearsal.
Rote
rehearsal: retaining
information in short-term memory simply by repeating it over and over.
Elaborative
rehearsal: The
linking of new information in short-term memory to familiar material stored in
long-term memory.
The transfer of material from
short-term memory to long-term memory proceeds largely on the basis of
rehearsal, the repetition of information that has entered short-term memory.
Rehearsal accomplishes two things. First, as long as the information is
repeated, it is maintained in short-term memory. More important, however,
rehearsal allows us to transfer the information into long-term memory. If the
stored information in memory is not rehearsed over and over, it will be easy to
forget.
#7: Amnesia
The term amnesia commonly refers
to memory loss due to special conditions such as brain injury, illness, or
psychological trauma.
There are two types of amnesia
which are Retrograde amnesia and Anterograde amnesia.
Retrograde
amnesia: represents memory loss for events that took place
sometime in life before the onset of amnesia. Example; Brain operation may cause
a person to loss memory. Also, football players experience retrograde amnesia
when they are knocked out by a concussion, regain conciousness and cannot
remember the events just before being hit.
Anterograde
amnesia: refers to memory loss for events that occur after the
initial onset of amnesia.
#8: Dementia and Alzheimer’s Didease
Dementia refers
to impaired memory and other cognitive deficits that accompany brain
degeneration and interfere with normal functioning. There are more than a dozen
types and causes of dementia, and although it can occur at any point of life.
Dementia is most prevalent among elderly adults.
Alzheimer’s
disease is a progressive brain disorder that is the most common
cause of dementia among adults over the age of 65.
Estimates suggest that in the
year 2000, 4.5 million Americans had Alzheimer disease. By 2050, the number of
cases is predicted to rise to about 13 million (Herbert et al., 2003).
The early symptoms of Alzheimer
disease which worsen gradually over a period of years, include forgetfulness,
poor judgement, confusion and disorientation. Often, memory for recent events
and new information is especially impaired.
Alzheimer disease spreads across
the temporal lobes and to the frontal lobes and other cortical regions of the
brain.
#9: Infantile (Childhood) Amnesia
There is one type of amnesia that
almost all of us encounter an inability to remember personal experiences from
the first few years of our lives.
Even though infants and
preschoolers can form long-term memories of events in their lives. As adults we
typically are unable to recall these events consciously. The memory loss for
early experiences is called infantile
amnesia or childhood amnesia.
Eacott and Crawley (1998)
proposed that, our memories of childhood typically do not include events that
occured before the age of 3 0r 4, although some adults can partially recall
major events. For example; the birth of a sibling, hospitalization, or a death
in the family) that happened before the age of 2.
Infantile amnesia is caused by
the immature of brain in the first years after birth. Also, we do not encode
our earliest experiences deeply and fail to form rich retrieval cues for them.
Additionally, because infants lack a clear self-concept, they do not have a
personal frame of reference around which to organize rich memories.
Knowledge Retention Strategies for Helping Students’ Remembering
of What They Learned in School
1.Assign students frequent
practice tests or quizzes
When students are given tests or
quizzes that they are not graded on, they are able to review material in a
low-stress environment (stress can undermine memory retention).
2.Combine visual and verbal
lessons
Learning to use multiple senses
helps increase retention. Showing students visual aids while teaching a lesson
verbally helps to illustrate and cement the message for students.
3.Encourage and help students to
develop memory cues
Examples include acronyms like
“Roy G.. Biv” (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet) to remember
the colors of the rainbow and “Pretty please my dear aunt sally” (parentheses,
powers, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction) to remember
mathematics’ order of operation.
Another way to “cue” memories is
to create memory- boosting songs about lessons.
4.Encourage peer discussion and
group-based learning
Group discussion naturally help
students retain information because when students see their fellow classmates,
that visual will spark memories of what those students had to say about the
lesson in question. In short, participatory methods of teaching and learning
should be used in the class during teaching and learning process.
5.Include constructive comments
on graded assignment or tests
Each comment becomes another
synaptic connection enforcing the “memory web” for a given concept or fact.
6.Encourage students to make
lesson review the last thing they do before bedtime or rehearsing
Research shows the information
circulates in the mind during sleep, bolstering retention.
7.Employ the spacing effect
Research shows that revisiting
lessons just as they are on the verge of being forgotten boosts memory
retention. Instead of teaching one lesson, considering it complete, then moving
on to the next lesson, a better approach is to teach a lesson but then revisit
it at regular intervals in the future.
Thank you!
Prepared by;
Mwl. Juma,
Mwenge Catholic
University
Department of Education,
Educational Psychology & Guidance and Counselling
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