{"id":6666886,"date":"2025-11-16T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/?p=6666886"},"modified":"2025-11-03T09:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T14:33:10","slug":"making-the-dull-stuff-relevant-to-students","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/making-the-dull-stuff-relevant-to-students\/","title":{"rendered":"Making the Dull Stuff Relevant to Students"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>I&#8217;ll be honest: my sophomore English curriculum doesn&#8217;t always inspire my students. I myself find Gerard Manley Hopkins fascinating&#8230;but only a rare 15 year-old thinks &#8220;Spring and Fall&#8221; is the most awesome poem ever. Perhaps I&#8217;m not the only teacher who faces this problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One obvious solution: <em>make the curriculum relevant<\/em>&#8211;more immediately connected to my students&#8217; lives and interests. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>For my poetry curriculum, I could teach the lyrics to current popular music.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>For my grammar curriculum, I could write practice sentences about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. (Find the direct object and indirect objects in this sentence: &#8220;Taylor gave Travis four leftover grammys.&#8221;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If I can make my curriculum emotionally interesting, then perhaps academic interest will follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This call for <strong>relevance <\/strong>often appears in educational debates. When we research this question, what do we find?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Lightning Strikes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the <a href=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/1997-07777-008\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/psycnet.apa.org\/record\/1997-07777-008\">best known studies<\/a> on this topic considers the potential benefits of enhancing relevance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let&#8217;s take the topic of <strong>lightning formation<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I could ramp up my students&#8217; <em>emotional interest <\/em>in this topic by adding ideas that pique their curiosity:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Lightning strikes don&#8217;t harm airplanes&#8211;so counter-intuitive!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Lightning can melt sand into cool little sculptures, called &#8220;fulgurites&#8221; <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I could instead focus on their <em>cognitive interest <\/em>by highlighting key steps in process:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Violent up- and down-drafts in cumulonimbus clouds move charged water droplets.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Positively charged ions move to the top of a cloud, while negatively charged ions move to the bottom.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>This charge imbalance, in turn, changes the electrical field on the ground below the cloud&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Researchers Harp and Mayer wanted to know if students benefit when we add emotional interest (&#8220;relevance&#8221; ) to cognitive interest&#8211;the traditional focus of classroom education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In their study, they had four groups of students read passages about lightning formation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Group one read the &#8220;cognitive interest only&#8221; description, which clearly delineated the steps that lead to lightning strikes. Each step was illustrated by a simple diagram.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A second group read that description supplemented with &#8220;emotionally interesting&#8221; <em>sentences<\/em>: a lightning strike one created a hole in a football player&#8217;s helmet and knocked off his shoes!<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>A third group read the &#8220;cognitive only&#8221; description with extra &#8220;emotionally interesting&#8221; <em>photographs<\/em>: e.g., lighting passing through an airplane.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The final group got all three: the base cognitive description PLUS emotional sentences PLUS emotional photos.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>To see which blend helped students the most, Harp and Mayer asked them to <em>recall<\/em> information and to <em>explain<\/em> it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>The &#8220;recall&#8221; question couldn&#8217;t have been simpler: &#8220;please write down everything you can remember from the passage.&#8221;<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>The &#8220;explain&#8221; questions sounded like this: \n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>&#8220;Suppose you see clouds in the sky, but no lightning. Why not?&#8221; <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>&#8220;What does air temperature have to do with lightening?&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>By crunching lots of numbers, these researchers could find out how much the added <em>emotional interest<\/em> sentences and photos increased memory and understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Beyond Helmets and Airplanes<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Harp and Mayer hoped that the additions&#8211;shocking stories and vibrant photos&#8211;would ramp up the students&#8217; <strong>emotional interest<\/strong>. Sure enough, the participants in their second study rated those versions twice as &#8220;emotionally interesting&#8221; as &#8220;cognitively interesting.&#8221; For the base version, which simply outlines the process of lightning formation, those numbers were reversed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large is-style-default\"><img decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AdobeStock_581643816-1024x683.jpeg\" alt=\"A fulgurite created by lightning striking sand .\" class=\"wp-image-6666981\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AdobeStock_581643816-1024x683.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AdobeStock_581643816-300x200.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AdobeStock_581643816-768x512.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AdobeStock_581643816-1536x1024.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AdobeStock_581643816-2048x1365.jpeg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Having successfully raised emotional interest, how much more learning did Harp and Mayer produce?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well: they <em>reduced <\/em>learning. For the &#8220;recall&#8221; and &#8220;explanation&#8221; tests, the <em>emotionally interesting additions lowered students&#8217; scores. <\/em>In fact, adding <em>both <\/em>piquant sentences <em>and <\/em>vivid photos reduced understanding more than adding one or the other. (Check out the graphs on p. 98.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In brief: students learned less from the passages they found more interesting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Bigger Pictures<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>When I write these blog posts, I typically look for the most recent quality study I can find. Today, I decided to focus on a classic: this study was published back in 1997.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I do want to emphasize that subsequent reseach has supported these initial conclusions. As I wrote <a href=\"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/seductive-details-when-do-cool-stories-and-videos-interfere-with-learning\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"5615\">earlier on the blog<\/a>, a recent meta-analysis supports these basic findings. Yes, it does seems obvious that we should make our classes relevant and intriguing. Alas, we find that this common-sense strategy interferes with learning. Our students get wrapped up in all those vivid details&#8211;imagine lightning drilling a hole in a football helmet!&#8211;and lose track of the content we want them to learn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our goal should not therefore be to make our lessons boring. Instead, we should make them <em>clear<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I also want to make a second cautious point. Common sense suggests that we should <strong>ask our students <\/strong>what helps them learn. Who knows more about students&#8217; learning than students?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sadly&#8211;over and over again&#8211;we find that students&#8217; intution just doesn&#8217;t lead them in the right direction. Given the choice, students  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>prefer <em>review <\/em>to <em>retrieval practice<\/em> <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>prefer studying a topic <em>all at once <\/em>to <em>spreading practice out<\/em>  <\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>prefer <em>highlighting <\/em>to <em>almost anything else<\/em>. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m told they prefer cookie dough to asparagus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In order to fulfill our teacherly responsibilities most wisely, we have to look past these preferences to the teaching strategies that truly help students learn. I myself often stop to explain <em>why<\/em> I am choosing the less-popular approach. (My students have been known to be vexed with me for showing them research studies.) But I do stick to those research-supported strategies even if my students don&#8217;t love them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Despite the common-sense appeal of &#8220;making lessons relevant,&#8221; despite our students preference for &#8220;emotionally interesting&#8221; lessons, we should keep our focus on the core goal. To help our students learn, we should prioritize clarity over entertainment, focusing on the core concepts rather than flashy digressions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So what about Gerard Manley Hopkins? I&#8217;m not going to make my poetry unit &#8216;relevant&#8217; by replacing Hopkins with Olivia Rodrigo lyrics. Instead, I&#8217;ll focus on making Hopkins&#8217; difficult language clearer\u2014breaking down the syntax, explaining archaic terms, and helping students see the poem&#8217;s structure. This research suggests that clarity, not entertainment, leads to genuine understanding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Harp, S. F., &amp; Mayer, R. E. (1997). The role of interest in learning from scientific text and illustrations: On the distinction between emotional interest and cognitive interest.&nbsp;<em>Journal of educational psychology<\/em>,&nbsp;<em>89<\/em>(1), 92.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ll be honest: my sophomore English curriculum doesn&#8217;t always inspire my students. I myself find Gerard Manley Hopkins fascinating&#8230;but only a rare 15 year-old thinks &#8220;Spring and Fall&#8221; is the most awesome poem ever. Perhaps I&#8217;m not the only teacher who faces this problem. One obvious solution: make the curriculum relevant&#8211;more immediately connected to my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6666981,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[263],"class_list":["post-6666886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lb-blog","tag-relevance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666886","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6666886"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6666984,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6666886\/revisions\/6666984"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6666981"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6666886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6666886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.learningandthebrain.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6666886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}