Why?

Why?

 It’s a question that seems both too simple and amazingly complex. Children start asking “why?” as soon as they start noticing their surroundings. “Why is the sky blue?”, “Why is that man fat?”, “Why do I need to eat Brussel sprouts?”.  So, what happens during young adulthood (and beyond) that stops this? And why?

Elaboration is the “why” in making connections between material students are learning in the classroom and the world around them. These questions encourages them to think more deeply about the material, and explore connections. This increases learning of the material, retrieval, as well as the knowledge that “stuff covered in class” has greater meaning.

Many of us work under the illusion that students are doing this on their own. It seems as if any student would ask “why is my professor telling me this?”…but perhaps that is an artifact of our knowledge of the subject. It’s easy for us to see the connections between what we are sharing and the bigger picture.

But ask your students (either in class or during office hours) “why did we cover ________ in class”, and you might get a very different response.

How do we model Elaboration in the classroom? How do we train students to do this on their own? Why???