Is recall understanding or remembering?

While reading some interesting blogs the other day a thought gently emerged in my foggy brain which then led to a question.

Is brain friendly learning, and pehaps more importantly recall,  about understanding or remembering?

It’s subtle but I believe it strikes at the core of what brain friendly learning is all about.

After pondering this question for a while I decided to try and capture my thoughts before the excesses of Christmas deplete my already dwindling powers of reason.

Here is what I thought.

Remembering is about being able to recall information stored, understanding is about being able to use learning in appropriate situations. Remembering is good and we have already discussed many ways to help learners to remember their learning but do we really focus on understanding?

So, I would like to offer the following: Context is King

To remember something, the context in which we learnt it will help. To understand something the context in which it is applied is all important

This is somewhat at odds to what Confucius says:

What I hear, I forget

What I see, I understand

What I do, I remember

This implies that remembering is most important. I’m not so sure and I am happy with that. It seems to me that understanding is more important than remembering. My sons can remember certain historical dates (1066, 5th November – although these are probably only relevant to our UK readers) but they don’t really understand the importance of these events at a deep level. It was just stuff that happened back in the day

(Common comment: “Weren’t you around then Dad?”  – Teenagers, doncha just love em!)

Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

Context is King

If I go into hospital for an operation I don’t want the surgeon to remember how to do the operation. I want him to understand how my body is put together,  why he is doing the operation in the first place and most importantly, to understand the impact of doing “B” when “A” doesn’t seem to work.

If an engineer comes round to fix my heating he may not have worked on my particular boiler before. He will have to try and remember having worked on a boiler like mine and hope that he can try and transfer that knowledge to the current situation. BUT – if he understands how heating systems and boilers work he can fix mine with ease.

And this is why I think understanding and context are central to what we do. People remembering stuff is OK but,  for them to be able to make choices about applying learning, they need to understand the connections between what they now know, what they new before and the situation they are faced with right now. It’s about knowing what fits where and why. Remembering gives you the basic data, understanding requires more. It needs a context to operate within.

And once you understand something, you don’t need to remember it which makes recall effortless. It also means I can apply what I understand to many different situations.

My final convincer was supplied by my 15 year old – “It’s an interesting article Dad. I think it’s like this – I understand English, I don’t need to remember it.”

Nice………..

photo memories image by blythe_d
square peg image by ePublicist

Paul and Ally are working on an exciting 6-part (online) course to help your learners fully engage with your training - sign up for the 'early bird' list for advanced notification and more info

If you liked this, you may also like these:

1. Do you want to boost recall by up to 15% This seems to indicate is that by doing all our training in training rooms we are depriving...
2. Recall: It’s a bit like opening a document Our understanding of how the brain stores and retrieves data is still in the early stages...
3. Perishable skills and use by dates While mindlessly flicking through the TV channels the other night Paul stumbled upon a documentary on about...
4. The power of a good story For ages now I have been planning to write some posts about the power of “story”...
5. Dale’s Cone of Learning figures debunked Edgar Dale was a US educationist and professor of educations at Ohio State University. In 1946 he...