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Hot on the heels of Another Shocker – NOT! Students Respond Better To Support Than Threats, yet another study has been released finding something that has been obvious to teachers for years — reflecting on a learning experience enhances it.

Here’s how the Harvard Business Journal summarized the results:

Research participants who did an arithmetic brain-teaser and then reflected on their strategies for solving it went on to do 18% better in a second round than their peers who hadn’t set aside time to reflect, according to Giada Di Stefano of HEC Paris, Francesca Gino and Gary Pisano of Harvard Business School, and Bradley Staats of the University of North Carolina. The unconscious learning that happens when you tackle a challenging task can become more effective if you deliberately couple it with controlled, conscious attempts to learn by thinking, the research suggests.

A huge added benefit to this research is that the study itself is available for free download. And, not only that, but it’s actually written in a way relatively accessible to laypeople (without lots of academic gobbledy-guk) and contains a great summary of previous research on learning and reflection.

I’m adding this info to The Best Resources On Student & Teacher Reflection.