What If We Taught Children HOW They Learn?

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What If We Taught Children HOW They Learn?

This is something that’s been on my mind for a while, and I’ve finally had time to think properly about it. I’m growing increasingly convinced that we need to be teaching children the tools they need to be good at learning, as well as the content they need to learn.

Once upon a time, it was the student’s responsibility to slog through what they were taught and learn it as best they could (or enough not to get into trouble). But is this what we really want?

When I was at school, many moons ago, I was allowed to persistently underachieve in maths because, according to my parents, ‘all our family are rubbish at maths’, so very little was expected of me. Yet when I told my Hong Kong students about this, they couldn’t believe their ears! Their response was ‘you just needed a tutor’, or ‘you just have to work on it until you ‘get it’ – you can’t just fail it!’

Notice how my maths woes were more about attitude than ability. Ironically I could do the maths I needed for science, because I was interested in science!

My Hong Kong students had strategies for navigating difficulty – ways of thinking about their own learning, and options for how to improve on subjects or content they found hard. Why did I lack those tools? Where had my students learnt about them? And more importantly, shouldn’t all our students have access to them?

Think about your own school experience. Were you ever explicitly taught how to approach something you didn’t understand? How to work through complex problems? How to know when you truly understood something versus when you were just going through the motions?

If you had a similar education to me, you’ll have learned content – facts, formulas, procedures – but the actual process of learning remained mysterious. We figured out some strategies by chance, but imagine if someone had made these thinking processes visible to us.

Some Ideas Worth Exploring

Here are some ideas which came up when I started to explore ideas around metacognition. I’ve mentioned one or two in my blogs before, but some are new to me.

The shift from “What?” to “How?” – Rather than asking what the answer is, straight away, what would happen if we asked “How did you work out the answer?” Or maybe as the student works through a problem, could we ask them, “Can you explain what your brain is thinking?” Would this get students starting to pay more attention to their own thinking processes? When my son was very young, he used to physically ‘switch on’ the other side of his brain, using his hand, and tell me he was doing this to help him think. I’ve no idea where he got that idea from, but it seemed to help him.

Making our own thinking visible – What if we regularly modeled our genuine thought processes out loud, showing children the messy, uncertain reality of working through problems? Would they discover that confusion and backtracking are normal parts of learning? Young children seem less phased by this than older children. Maybe the world is much newer and they expect it to be confusing. Shouldn’t we encourage them to continue to expect confusion and be fascinated by it as they get older, rather than worried?

Creating time for reflection – What might emerge if we built in regular moments for students to discuss not just what they learned, but how they learned it? Even very young children might surprise us with their insights about their own thinking. In our global world, where potentially our children are from all corners of the globe, consider the different methods they may have for adding and subtracting, or memorizing. If these are shared, what fascinating insights might we all gain?

Tracking learning strategies – What patterns might we notice if students occasionally noted which approaches helped them learn something new? Or if it became part of the class culture to collect and share the strategies which worked for individuals and groups as visuals, displayed on the walls? Would students start to recognize their own preferences and strengths, or experiment to find new ones?

These aren’t proven formulas, just ideas about possibilities.

Some Ideas to Try Out

Here are a few ideas if you’re interested in exploring this topic. Maybe try one or two and see what happens:

The Thinking-Out-Loud Experiment

Next time you’re genuinely working through a problem, try verbalizing your actual thought process:

“Hmm, I’m getting confused here. Let me reread this bit…” “Oh, this reminds me of that thing we did with fractions…” “Wait, does this answer actually make sense?”

This approach, known as “think-alouds,” has been shown in classroom research to help students develop better problem-solving strategies when teachers model their genuine thinking processes (Zepeda et al., 2019). What happens when children hear the hesitation, the backtracking, the real messiness of thinking? Might they discover that uncertainty isn’t failure but part of the process?

The “What Confused You?” Question

What would happen if, instead of asking “Any questions?” at the end of a lesson, we asked “What was most confusing today?”

Would children start to see confusion differently? Would they begin to notice when they’re lost instead of pretending to understand?

The Process Conversation

Instead of asking “What’s 47 + 38?” what if we asked “How did you work out 47 + 38?” What might we discover about the different ways our students think?

The Strategy Sharing Circle

What if we regularly asked “Who tried something today that worked well for them?” Would children start noticing their own strategies? Would they begin collecting techniques from each other?

The Before-During-After Check-In

What if students got into the habit of pausing to ask themselves: – Before starting: “What do I already know about this? What’s my plan?” – While working: “Is this approach working? Should I try something else?” – After finishing: “What worked? What would I do differently next time?”

Would this kind of self-questioning become automatic over time?

The Hesitations We All Feel

Every teacher I talk to about this has similar concerns. Maybe you recognize some of these thoughts:

“There’s no time for this…” I wonder though – what if this isn’t something extra we add, but a different way of having conversations we’re already having? What if a single question like “How did you work that out?” shifts the focus without taking extra time?

“My students are too young for this kind of thinking…” But what if they’re not? What if we’ve been underestimating what children can reflect on when we make it concrete and visual?

“They don’t know how to reflect…” True – because no one’s taught them. But what if reflection, like reading, is a skill that develops with practice and scaffolding?

“How would I even assess something like this?” Good question. What would we look for? Maybe evidence of strategic thinking in their conversations? Signs that they’re choosing different approaches for different problems?

Where to Begin?

Rather than a rigid plan, what if we thought about this as gentle experimentation?

Maybe start by noticing: When do your students seem most strategic in their learning? What do they do when they get stuck? How do they talk about difficult tasks?

Then perhaps try one small thing: thinking out loud during a lesson, asking “What confused you today?” or having students explain their thinking to a partner.

What do you discover? What surprises you?

What If We Taught Children HOW They Learn?