For lifelong learning, the learning strategy is crucial! A study on students shows which strategy really leads to sustainable learning. But can this learning strategy also be applied to adults?

What are learning strategies anyway?
Simply put, a learning strategy is anything you do to remember new knowledge as effectively as possible. Everyone has such individual learning strategies, whether a child or an adult. The right learning strategies are the basis for lifelong learning, from kindergarten to professional development.

Which learning strategy really works?

A study on students already showed twenty years ago that certain learning strategies can significantly improve learning success! This study distinguished between two important learning strategies:

Surface strategies are what parents and teachers traditionally recommend: "Read the text a few times, highlight the most important parts with a highlighter, and just memorize it!" – Who doesn’t know that?

Deep strategies aim to find connections in the learning content and transfer them to other areas. This includes, among other things, rephrasing the content in your own words or transforming it into another form, for example, drawing a sketch of the content of a text.

Result of the student study: Deep strategies achieve higher learning success!

When reading texts, the choice of learning strategy has a strong influence on learning success: Students who naturally apply more deep strategies can remember significantly more content from the text. Additionally, these students can better place the new knowledge in their previous knowledge than students with surface learning strategies.

The graphic shows the success of both learning strategies in different content areas from the text that the students worked on.

Result of the study: Students with many deep strategies learn more and better than students with surface learning strategies.

The right learning strategy for adults?

Students, therefore, learn better with deep strategies. But can this also be applied to learning in adults?

I think: Of course! Learning is a lifelong process, and we use such learning strategies not only in school but also in adulthood.

In professional adult education, you as a trainer or coach have various opportunities to support deep learning strategies for adults:

• Specifically build on the knowledge that your participants already have from their work environment and that they need daily.

• Offer your participants various content instead of just texts and images: For example, encourage them with videos and practical exercises to place new knowledge into their professional context.

• Motivate your participants to create sketches or mind maps to initiate connections between different topics.

• …and so on!

Learning strategies are indeed individual, and ultimately, everyone learns best in their somewhat unique way – but age, whether student or adult, does not seem to influence the success of the learning strategy from my perspective.

I rather think: This is how adults can learn lifelong learning from children and find their suitable learning strategy.

What do you think on the topic: Do adults learn better with deep strategies just like children? Or are there special learning strategies for adults? Feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments – I'm curious about them! 😀