Chapter 2, page 46
elaborations than if teachers provide all the explanations and elaborations for them (Willoughby et al.,
2000). Similarly, students are likely to learn more if they imagine visual images themselves than if
teachers provide pictures of visual images (cf. Kinjo & Snodgrass, 2000).
There may be times, however, when students need teachers’ help because they cannot carry out a
strategy on their own. For example, a student may try to use the keyword method but find himself unable
to come up with a good keyword for a particular vocabulary word. In this case, the teacher can certainly
help the student by providing a good keyword. But the teacher should nonetheless encourage the student to
invent his own keyword whenever possible. In general, teachers should teach students to execute strategies
on their own and allow them to do so whenever they can.
In meaningful encoding, students focus on what the new information means, and they try to
understand the information. Students remember more when they focus on meaning and when they
understand what they are learning. For example, people learn word lists better if they focus on meaning
than if they focus on unmeaningful information such as the number of vowels or consonants in the word
(Craik & Tulving, 1975).
Meaningful learning also facilitates the ability to use the knowledge to apply knowledge to solve
problems or answer new questions. Consider how Rachel might try to learn the fact about lobsters. Rachel
could opt for a relatively nonmeaningful way to remember the new fact about lobsters: She could say that
lobster starts with an L, and they lobsters taste foods with hairs on their legs, which also starts with L.
She could try to remember that lobsters taste with hairs on their legs by remembering “LL” together. This
might indeed help Rachel remember this fact.
But suppose Rachel is asked, “What would happen to lobsters if the water where they lived
became polluted?” She would have difficulty applying her knowledge to answer this question, because she
does not understand why lobsters taste food with their hair (J. D. Bransford, Stein, Shelton, & Owings,
1981) To make the information she has more meaningful, Rachel needs to read further and learn more
about lobsters. By reading further and then attempting to explain the information, she will generate more
meaningful connections. She will learn that lobsters decide which food to pass into their mouths based on
the taste registered by the hairs on their legs. Rachel will also learn that this is analogous to smell in
humans; people will reject eating something if they don’t like the smell of it. She might then be able to
provide a plausible answer to the question: If pollution in the water interferes with lobsters’ ability to taste
food with their legs, they might be more likely to eat food that is harmful to them, and this might cause
some lobsters to die or to get sick. Thus, by generating meaningful explanations, Rachel creates
knowledge that can be used to answer practical questions. Less meaningful learning may help Rachel
remember facts, but she won’t understand how to use the facts to answer new kinds of questions.