How To Improve Your Learning

Some students seem to breeze through their school years, whereas others struggle, putting them at risk for getting lost in our educational system and not reaching their full potential. Parents and teachers want to help students succeed, but there is little guidance on which learning techniques are the most effective for improving educational outcomes. This leads students to implement studying strategies that are often ineffective, resulting in minimal gains in performance.

What then are the best strategies to help struggling students learn?

Fortunately for students, parents, and teachers, psychological scientists have developed and evaluated the effectiveness of a wide range of learning techniques meant to enhance academic performance.

Some commonly used techniques, such as underlining, rereading material, and using mnemonic devices, are found to be of surprisingly low utility. These techniques are difficult to implement properly and often result in inconsistent gains in student performance. Other learning techniques such as taking practice tests and spreading study sessions out over time - known as distributed practice - are found to be of high utility because they benefited students of many different ages and ability levels and enhanced performance in many different areas.

This outlines the importance of learning being a personalised process, in order to maximise one`s outcomes within education.