Technological change increasingly rewards adaptability over rote learning of facts, so “learning to learn” is one of the most important skills for the future.
Study Description
This paper evaluates a curriculum developed by the NGO FUNDAEC that teaches individuals how to learn by training them to think like scientists and approach problems through inquiry and experimentation. The program was implemented among school teachers in Uganda and evaluated through a large-scale randomized controlled trial. The intervention significantly increased the pass rate in the national exam determining progression from primary to secondary school, placing the programme in the top five percent of rigorously evaluated education interventions in terms of learning-adjusted years of schooling per USD. Students taught with this curriculum also scored higher on questions measuring their applied understanding of concepts and critical thinking, and received higher ratings on designing experiments, analyzing hypotheses, and communicating results in science fair projects.
Curriculum take-aways
- Teach participants to learn like scientists based on the following tenets:
- Using precise language
- Observing and describing the world with increasing clarity
- Designing experiments and testing hypotheses
- Distinguishing between objective and subjective statements
- Identifying processes worth studying and sources of data
- Taking an opposite approach to the “banking model” of education that promotes rote-learning and one-way flow of information from teachers to students