Boost Learning With Persistent Exposure Concepts in the Classroom

Most of us can learn just about anything given enough time. At least, that’s what Benjamin Bloom proposed when he described his mastery learning concept in his now classic text Human Characteristics and School Learning. It is foundational to a number of theories put forward today to address how we create the capacity to function in the world we find ourselves in. 

While his observation seems rather obvious, it’s actually a bit more complex than you might first realize when you consider taking human learning from the real world into the classroom.

Real world learning is awash in reoccurring, or persistent, exposure opportunities, especially for young children. Such encounters are critical to real world learning and the number of exposures each of us needs varies from individual to individual. Each encounter helps us refine our understanding of what we are exploring.

For example, children discern whether that little fuzzy thing they saw was a dog or a cat. They consider what distinguishes one from the other. For adults, it’s not an easy thing to explain to a young child. There’s nuance to it: There are big cats and little ones, big dogs and little dogs, and hairy cats and hairy dogs. Each make distinct sounds. And so on.

These situations become compare-and-contrast conversations, which go on regularly outside of school as parents begin to build their children’s connection to their surroundings and the accompanying vocabulary that becomes part of the currency they must use to interact with others. They are low-risk encounters which are the primary building blocks for future mastery learning.

There are no hard deadlines for mastering most of the things we learn outside of school, and we spend most of our lives refining what we know about things as we grow and engage in new experiences. Each of us works at our own pace, whether we are learning how to tie our shoes, attempting to ride a bike, or simply acquiring new words to add to our listening and speaking vocabularies.

And, just as we engage in low-risk conversations that expose us to new learning opportunities outside of school, low-risk persistent exposure conversations are also necessary on the road to mastery in classrooms.

Teaching New Concepts

Persistent exposure opportunities in the classroom allow children to ask questions and get feedback that enables them to adjust their understanding of new concepts. They also take time. The more exposure conversations children experience in school, the more opportunities they have to make sense of what they are being asked to master.

For example, “No, Ella, the giant didn’t say, fee, fi fo fum I smell the blood of an English Muffin.” The word he said was Englishman. That’s a new term we haven’t talked about yet. Let me tell you a little more about it.”

As children move forward, the insights they develop become part of their prior knowledge to apply to new topics and concepts. And, just as it happens at home when they are exposed to something that appears confusing, it requires the need for regular low-risk conversations to bring clarity and update their understanding of what they’re learning in school.

Overcoming Time Constraints

Unfortunately, the classroom is often a place of limited time and maximum mastery expectations. This structured learning environment often adds a new, sometimes unwelcome, dimension: pressure. Those who learn in less time are quickly rewarded, primarily so because they are more familiar with what is to be learned. For those children and teachers who find themselves up against the clock, “Gotta be on page 58 by Thanksgiving!” the pressure can be palpable and, over time, lead to unintended negative consequences.

Some first graders, for example, can become overly anxious when they discover that their speaking vocabulary doesn’t compare to the many words others already know. So, they begin to act out in class rather than trying to keep up with their more precocious classmates. Or the fifth-grade student who has decided that he would rather be viewed as a troublemaker than reveal that he feels left behind or out of place. Perhaps, for the frustrated teachers who know what the exposure needs are, but allotted instructional time or methodology makes it difficult, if not impossible, to vary learning strategies to meet them prior to introducing the mastery expectations.

Creating Regular Exposure Opportunities

The notion that most of us can learn anything given enough time sounds great, but it must be qualified for the classroom: To be useful in school, the feedback necessary must also affirm that the learners are on the right track so that exposure time is applied carefully and integrated into the daily classroom activities.

Otherwise, students might draw incorrect conclusions about what they have experienced. This is in part because our brain is programmed to work very efficiently and only takes in enough new information with most encounters to make sense of the experience at hand. If this were not the case, the brain would be overwhelmed with too much information to process at any one time.

That’s why it’s so important to create regular opportunities for students to have brief low-risk, high-impact informal conversations as often as possible. Sometimes simply adding more exposure through short low-risk conversational opportunities before moving on in anticipation of a pending mastery lesson can make or break a student’s ability to be successful on any given learning task.

Gerald L. Fowler is a former school principal and superintendent who currently serves as emeritus professor at Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, Pennsylvania.