Check this out: a study by Vanderbilt University indirectly supports the value of homeschooling. It concludes that kids learn best when they explain what they’re learning to their mom. Previous studies (if not oodles of personal experience) have shown that people learn more when they generate explanations of what they’ve learned. The Vanderbilt study examined whether it’s important if the explanation is for oneself or for a listener, and also if the specific listener mattered.

In other words, do children learn better when they explain something to someone else?

Don’t we all?

And does it matter if that someone else is one of the most important people in a child’s life?

Shouldn’t it?

From “Learning from explaining: Does it matter if mom is listening?”
The goal of the current study was to examine whether explaining to another person improves learning and transfer. In the study, 4- and 5-year-olds (N = 54) solved multiple classification problems, received accuracy feedback, and were prompted to explain the correct solutions to their moms, to explain the correct solutions to themselves, or to repeat the solutions. Generating explanations (to selves or moms) improved problem-solving accuracy at posttest, and explaining to mom led to the greatest problem-solving transfer. The study indicates that explanation prompts can facilitate transfer in children as young as 5 years and reveals that it matters if mom is listening. [emphasis mine]

Well, DUH. It always matters if mom is listening. And she usually is, as is dad. Most parents naturally help their babies and young children learn new things by talking to them (even when they’re too young to “talk back”), answering their questions (even the thousandth “why?” for the day), and listening and otherwise showing genuine interest when their kids say, “Hey, Mom, look at this!” or “Hey, Dad, guess what?” This is the natural state of early exploration and learning for all humans raised by other loving humans.

Should this relationship be any different as kids get older? Would a parent’s genuine, natural interest in what’s going on in his/her child’s mind (and life) not continue to exist and nurture the child’s learning? It seems obvious to me that if a parent doesn’t drastically change the way s/he interacts with and listens to his/her kids, the benefits of having that parent as a “listener” would never dissipate. It also seems obvious that the more time a child spends with his/her parents actually learning and talking to them, the better.

Homeschooling, then, naturally provides a superb learning environment for children.

The study also focused on a particular age group: 4-5-year olds. I find it somewhat funny that the study “prompted” these young children to explain their new knowledge to their mothers. As if kids that young can be stopped from showing and telling their parents all about darn near everything! Again, it’s natural for kids to show/tell their parents about new, exciting things. This show-tell-listen relationship is part of our evolutionary programming, and it happens in families without anyone even thinking about it. We just do it naturally.

The study concludes:

Prompts to explain improve learning, even for young children, and having an audience for the explanations facilitates transfer of this knowledge to novel problems. Presence of a listener may provide a natural context for helping children to stay motivated and integrate knowledge across multiple dimensions of a problem. The general lesson might be that if you are having difficulty in understanding something, you should try explaining it to your mom.

Well, it’s not like we need research to tell us that parents are important to their children. To me, the key sentence in the paragraph above is: Presence of a listener may provide a natural context for helping children to stay motivated and integrate knowledge across multiple dimensions of a problem.

Kids learn better when they tell another person what they learned. They learn best when that person is their mother — or presumably another adult they’re emotionally close to. To generalize, children need at least one caring adult who is available to listen to them explain what they’re learning. If they don’t have access to that special listener, they don’t learn as well. What will happen to their innate passion and motivation if, over time, they see that no one is available to listen to them when they’re excited about something or want to explain it to an adult to see if they really understand it?

And riddle me this: can a teacher in a conventional classroom of ~25 kids possibly be engaged with and actively listen to each child to help reinforce his/her learning? No, it’s just not possible. One human being, no matter how loving, dedicated, and skilled, cannot give all those children the attention each and every one of them deserves and needs.

But I suppose the kids can talk to their parents when they get home, right? Riiiiight. Have you ever met your kids at the door after school and asked them what they did that day and had them answer, “Nothing.”? I have — on my daughter’s first day of kindergarten. I shit you not. Where was her motivation to tell me what she learned? Where was I, her best listener, when she was excited or had a question about what was happening in the classroom? Where was the opportunity to explain to me what she accomplished that day so that it naturally reinforced what she learned? It was gone. That moment of excitement just could not be maintained until later in the day when she was able to see me again.

It would be very easy to read this study and walk away just thinking, Omigod, I’m soooooo important that when my kids tell me about something, they learn it best! I totally rule! But I’m not so great. I’m just an everyday mother who wants what’s best for her children. Even without the research, and even only part-way through our first year of homeschooling, I can see that homeschooling provides more benefits to my kids than attending school does. Maybe that won’t always be the case, but it is right now. That said, it’s nice to have more research to cite at all those cocktail parties I attend these days.

Hat tip: Kitchen Table Math

Tags: moms help kids learn, homeschooling, listening, learning