Without schools, children can be taught well by four methods that need no building or books: a mixed-age group under one teacher, learning by doing beside a skilled worker, older children teaching younger ones, and spoken instruction built around questions. What matters most is not matching lessons to a child’s supposed learning style, which research has not supported, but having children recall material repeatedly over days and weeks and giving them prompt feedback.
How to teach a community’s children without classrooms, textbooks or trained teachers, and which popular ideas about teaching to leave out.
Four Methods Cover Nearly Everything
- A mixed-age group with one teacher: One-Room Schoolhouse Model
- Learning by doing beside a skilled worker: Learning by Doing
- Older children teaching younger ones: Peer Teaching
- Teaching by speech, song and story: Oral Instruction Techniques
The fuller method list, with step-by-step procedures and the spaced-review schedule, is in Teaching Methods.
What Is Well Supported
Two techniques have strong support from experiments on memory and learning:
- Retrieval practice. Asking a learner to bring something to mind, by quizzing or by having them explain it from memory, produces better later recall than reading it again. A much-cited study is Roediger and Karpicke (2006). In a ranking of ten study techniques by Dunlosky and colleagues (2013), practice testing and spreading practice over time were rated highest; re-reading and highlighting were rated low.
- Spacing. Several short sessions spread over days beat one long session of the same total length. The best gap depends on how long the learner needs to remember (Cepeda and colleagues, 2006).
Both are cited from recall, not rechecked. They are the basis of the review schedule in Teaching Methods, which this article does not restate. They cost nothing: a teacher needs only a habit of asking “what do you remember about last week’s lesson?” before starting anything new.
What Is Not Supported
Learning styles. The idea says each child is a “visual”, “auditory” or “kinaesthetic” learner and learns best when taught in that style. A review by Pashler and colleagues (2008) found no adequate evidence that matching teaching to a stated style improves learning. People do have preferences and the preferences are real; acting on them does not reliably help. Teach each subject in the form that suits the content: maps are drawn, songs are heard, knots are tied.
Left-brain and right-brain people. Brain imaging has not found that individuals are dominated by one side (Nielsen and colleagues, 2013, recalled). Both sides work together in every task.
“We use ten percent of our brain.” False. Activity appears throughout the brain, and damage to almost any region has an effect.
None of the four methods above relies on any of these ideas. If an old book or a salvaged teaching guide is built on learning styles, use its content and drop that frame.
Common Mistakes
- Teaching one style and calling it personalised. Sorting children into types wastes time.
- Lecturing and stopping there. A child can nod through a lecture and recall nothing.
- No check for understanding. Ask, don’t assume.
What’s Next
- Learn next: One-Room Schoolhouse Model
- Combine with: Age-Appropriate Learning