Mohamed_hassan / Pixabay

I often write about research studies from various fields and how they can be applied to the classroom. I write individual posts about ones that I think are especially significant, and will continue to do so. However, so many studies are published that it’s hard to keep up. So I’ve started writing a “round-up” of some of them each week or every other week as a regular feature.

You can see all my “Best” lists related to education research here.

Here are some new useful studies (and related resources):

 

I’m adding this excerpt from Edutopia’s email newsletter to The Best Posts On Helping Students Teach Their Classmates — Help Me Find More:

Sometimes a little peer pressure is a good thing, according to a 2024 study that evaluated the effect of peer-to-peer teaching on student brain activity.

One hundred university science students were recruited and fitted with futuristic caps studded with optical sensors capable of measuring neural engagement. The students were then given 10 minutes to digest a multimedia lesson about the Doppler effect before being randomly assigned to either reread the lesson, explain what they’d learned to a classmate, or explain what they’d learned to themselves.  

Students who taught their classmates reported the highest levels of social anxiety, and experienced correspondingly high levels of activity in social and cognitive processing centers of the brain—but also performed the best on tests of the material, monitored their thinking more effectively, and included more “elaborative statements” and examples. Researchers hypothesized that the presence of peers made the difference, pushing kids to up their game and “adapt their explanations to the needs of the audience.”

Learning is social, especially for teens. To get the most out of them, periodically let them teach classmates or write letters of explanation to fictional peers.