Educational Principles in Support of Meaningful Learning

1. The goal of instruction is to develop understanding so that new knowledge may be applied appropriately to new situations.
2. Material learned in meaningful ways is retained longer, facilitates the learning of new material, and can be recalled more easily.
3. Meaningful learning has three requirements:

• relevant prior knowledge must be activated,
• material to be learned must be meaningful (so it can be incorporated into into existing knowledge non-arbitrarily), and
• the learner must choose to learn.

1. Good teaching helps learners to perceive the underlying structure of the material (content) in order to relate new learning to prior knowledge.
2. Introductory concepts, images, frameworks, etc. can be used to facilitate subsequent learning by creating a bridge to prior knowledge.
3. Good teaching requires an awareness of what the student already knows.
4. Students’ approaches to learning are contingent and varied.
5. Effective learners are aware of the strategies they use.
6. Teachers who encourage and facilitate student-to-student contact both in- and outside of class enhance student motivation, intellectual commitment, and personal development.
7. Teaching methods that encourage and facilitate student-to-student contact are likely to be more effective for more students than passive methods when higher level learning is the goal.
8. Students need prompt, corrective, and supportive feedback to benefit from instruction, both in terms of achievement and satisfaction.

From Katherine Edmondson and Kathleen Quinlan, Cornell University, Presented at PBL 2002

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