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School is back in session, and my son and fifth child has just completed his first two weeks of middle school. He’s now got a different teacher for every subject and mega-amounts of homework. I have a whole routine for setting up a homework ritual and a study spot that I feel has been tried and true and efficiency-tested by his four older siblings.
This is one of the great advantages for the youngest member of a large family where there are rituals and routines already pretty much in place. As a parent, my homework/study philosophy has gone through a kind of evolution as I have tried to incorporate the latest thinking on the subject. But this is tricky because research is ongoing and ideas about best practices change (alarmingly often) over time.
When you’ve been parenting over a long period of time, through one parenting trend and into the next and then the next, you learn to stay somewhat flexible. You also amass enough in-the-trenches experience to determine what makes sense and what doesn’t. Any theory about parenting that is born from work solely in a lab is worthless to me. Any parenting book written by someone who is not a parent will not find its place on my bookshelf or my iPad. (Okay, I don’t really have an iPad, but If I did…!) How theory works with each individual child always has a different spin. And so I have learned to sift through the ever-changing landscape of child behavioral theory and parenting philosophies and be very discerning about what I use for myself and my family.
This is how I am approaching the new studies about study habits reported by the New York Times this month. The article by Benedict Carey suggests in its very title that you Forget What You Know About Good Study Habits. Carey takes us through a review of research findings that ostensibly turn upside down our long held beliefs about good study habits. But I’m not really sure they do. Take for example what has been recently discovered about where students should study.
Several different studies cited in the article suggest that changing study locations may help students retain information better. The reasons for this are interesting. According to New York Times:
The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room, say; or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.
This is a cool idea -- that you can improve your retention of a fact by studying the same material in different locations. But does this mean that you should not create a set study spot for yourself? I don’t think so. If you look at the reasons for creating a consistent place to study, they don’t really contradict these research results and they make a lot of sense. Much of the rationale has to do with organization and study initiation. It is easier and more efficient to have a set place to come to begin a study session. As with all rituals, the mind adjusts quickly to an environment that consistently signals the same behavior. Just as your night time ritual signals your brain to begin to wind down for sleep, returning to the same study initiation spot gets you mentally ready for academic study. Also, from a practical standpoint, if you already have a spot, like a desk or table that has the materials you need to complete your work -- good lighting, your reading or writing materials, etc. -- you are able to get down to business in a more efficient manner. (See Carmen S’s great discussion about how to set up a study spot at home.)
So, it seems to me a student can have the best of all scenarios. He can settle into his usual study spot, unpack his backpack and look over his list of assignments. Then he can decide that he is going to study his vocabulary words first at his desk and then later on the porch swing. Or he can do some of his math problems at the kitchen table and some with a friend at the library.
On the
