--- title: The Key To Learning: Knowing How Learning Works description: What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7131575/the-key-to-learning-knowing-how-learning-works/ author: Annie Murphy Paul article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2013-10-08T09:45:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T09:11:04.310Z article:section: Ideas og:title: The Key To Learning: Knowing How Learning Works og:description: What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7131575/the-key-to-learning-knowing-how-learning-works/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Key To Learning: Knowing How Learning Works twitter:description: What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [Ideas](/section/ideas/) # The Key To Learning: Knowing How Learning Works > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Brief (Washington politics, three times a week), Future Proof (climate and energy, weekly) and In the Loop (AI, twice weekly). All are free at time.com/newsletters and together reach more than 1.1 million engaged readers. #### Which TIME newsletter should I subscribe to? It depends on what you follow. For a daily briefing, The Brief. For health, Health Matters. For Washington politics, D.C. Brief. For AI and technology, In the Loop. For climate and energy as a business story, Future Proof. For culture recommendations, Worth Your Time. For how TIME's journalism gets made, Inside TIME. Readers can select any combination at time.com/newsletters. #### Are TIME's newsletters free? Yes. All seven TIME newsletters are free to join at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes TIME's newsletters? TIME journalists write them. Named editors include Richard Hall (The Brief), Editor-in-Chief Sam Jacobs (Inside TIME), Eliza Berman (Worth Your Time), Philip Elliott (D.C. Brief), Justin Worland (Future Proof) and Harry Booth (In the Loop). Health Matters is written by TIME's health desk. #### How do I sign up for a TIME newsletter? Go to time.com/newsletters, choose the newsletters you want and enter your email address. There is no cost and no subscription requirement. by [Annie Murphy Paul](https://time.com/author/annie-murphy-paul/) Oct 8, 2013 9:45 AM UTC by [Annie Murphy Paul](https://time.com/author/annie-murphy-paul/) Oct 8, 2013 9:45 AM UTC What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. It’s what you know about what you know. To put it in more straightforward terms, anytime a student learns, he or she has to bring in two kinds of prior knowledge: knowledge about the subject at hand (say, mathematics or history) and knowledge about how learning works. Parents and educators are pretty good at imparting the first kind of knowledge. We’re comfortable talking about concrete information: names, dates, numbers, facts. But the guidance we offer on the act of learning itself—the “metacognitive” aspects of learning—is more hit-or-miss, and it shows. In our schools, “little emphasis—if any—is placed on training students _how_ they should go about learning the content and what skills will promote efficient studying to support robust learning,” writes John Dunlosky, professor of psychology at Kent State University in Ohio, in an [article](http://www.aft.org/pdfs/americaneducator/fall2013/Dunlosky.pdf) just published in _American Educator._ Research has found that students vary widely in what they know about how to learn, according to a team of educational researchers from Australia [writing](http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11251-011-9182-5) last year in the journal _Instructional_ _Science_. Most striking, low-achieving students show “substantial deficits” in their awareness of the cognitive and metacognitive strategies that lead to effective learning—suggesting that these students’ struggles may be due in part to a gap in their knowledge about how learning works. Teaching students good learning strategies leads to improved learning outcomes, writes lead author Helen Askell-Williams of Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. Askell-Williams cites as one example a recent finding by [PISA](http://www.oecd.org/pisa/), the Programme for International Student Assessment, which administers academic proficiency tests to students around the globe (American students score right in the mediocre middle.) “Students who use appropriate strategies to understand and remember what they read, such as underlining important parts of the texts or discussing what they read with other people, perform at least 73 points higher in the PISA assessment—that is, one full proficiency level or nearly two full school years—than students who use these strategies the least,” the PISA report reads. **(MORE**: [Highlighting is a Waste of Time: The Best and Worst Learning Techniques](http://ideas.time.com/2013/01/09/highlighting-is-a-waste-of-time-the-best-and-worst-learning-techniques/)) Students can assess their own awareness by asking themselves which of the following learning strategies they regularly use (the response to each item is ideally “yes”): • I draw pictures or diagrams to help me understand this subject. • I make up questions that I try to answer about this subject. • When I am learning something new in this subject, I think back to what I already know about it. • I discuss what I am doing in this subject with others. • I practice things over and over until I know them well in this subject. • I think about my thinking, to check if I understand the ideas in this subject. • When I don’t understand something in this subject I go back over it again. • I make a note of things that I don’t understand very well in this subject, so that I can follow them up. • When I have finished an activity in this subject I look back to see how well I did. • I organize my time to manage my learning in this subject. • I make plans for how to do the activities in this subject. Askell-Williams and her colleagues found that those students who used fewer of these strategies reported more difficulty coping with their schoolwork. For the second part of their study, they designed a series of proactive questions for teachers to drop into the lesson on a “just-in-time” basis—at the moments when students could use the prompting most. • What is the topic for today’s lesson? • What will be important ideas in today’s lesson? • What do you already know about this topic? • What can you relate this to? • What will you do to remember the key ideas? • Is there anything about this topic you don’t understand, or are not clear about? These questions, too, can be adopted by any parent or educator to make sure that children know not just what is to be learned, but _how_. _This article is from the_ [_Brilliant Report,_](http://www.anniemurphypaul.com/) _a weekly newsletter written by Annie Murphy Paul._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"OpinionNewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7131575/the-key-to-learning-knowing-how-learning-works/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7131575/the-key-to-learning-knowing-how-learning-works/"},"headline":"The Key To Learning: Knowing How Learning Works","datePublished":"2013-10-08T09:45:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T09:11:04.310Z","description":"What’s the key to effective learning? One intriguing body of research suggests a rather riddle-like answer: It’s not just what you know. 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