Teach Students How to Study: The Missing Skill in Academic Success

Summary for Educators

Based on an Edutopia piece discussing research by Professor Kit Cho and other learning-science findings on effective study strategies.

Edutopia, September 2026

THE BIG IDEA

Schools devote enormous attention to what students should learn, but far less attention to teaching them how to learn it. That may be a serious oversight. Research summarized in this Edutopia piece suggests that many students rely on study strategies that feel productive but produce relatively weak learning: rereading, highlighting, copying notes, and last-minute cramming. By contrast, one of the strongest strategies is self-testing—actively trying to retrieve information from memory without immediately looking at the answer.

The difference matters because effective learning is not simply exposure to information. Students need repeated opportunities to pull ideas back out of memory, discover what they do and do not know, correct errors, and try again. If schools want students to become independent learners, study skills should be taught as deliberately as reading, writing, mathematics, or laboratory procedures.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Students often choose ineffective strategies. Familiarity can create the illusion of learning. A page covered in highlighting may feel productive even when little has been retained.
• Retrieval strengthens memory. Asking students to recall information without notes—through practice questions, flash cards, quizzes, or verbal explanation—requires greater mental effort and tends to produce stronger learning.
• Self-testing provides immediate feedback. Students quickly discover gaps in understanding that passive review can hide.
• Good study habits must be taught. Telling students to “go home and study” assumes they already know what effective studying looks like.
• Spacing matters. Self-testing is more powerful when it occurs across several study sessions instead of being compressed into one long session before an exam.
• The goal is independence. Students should eventually be able to identify essential ideas, generate questions, retrieve answers, check accuracy, and plan another round of practice without relying on a teacher.

WHY IT MATTERS

Many academic difficulties may not be caused by a lack of effort. Students can spend substantial amounts of time studying and still use methods that produce disappointing results. When that happens repeatedly, they may conclude that they are simply “bad at” a subject.

That conclusion can be especially damaging for students who have never been explicitly taught effective learning strategies.

Schools therefore have an opportunity to make study skills part of the instructional program rather than leaving them to chance. A ninth-grade teacher, for example, could show students how to turn a textbook section into five retrieval questions. A science teacher could model how to close the notebook and sketch a process from memory. A history teacher could ask students to explain a concept aloud before checking their notes. An elementary teacher could begin teaching these habits even earlier through short, low-stakes recall activities.

The broader lesson is that students need to experience the difference between recognizing an answer and producing one. Recognition can create confidence. Retrieval reveals learning.

LEADERSHIP ACTIONS

School leaders can help make effective studying a schoolwide practice.

First, ask teachers what study strategies they currently recommend to students. If answers vary widely—or consist mainly of “review your notes”—there is an opportunity for professional learning.

Second, create a simple schoolwide language around retrieval practice. Teachers might routinely tell students: “Close the book. What can you remember?” A common phrase used across classrooms can gradually create a common learning habit.

Third, encourage teachers to model the study process explicitly. Students should see teachers demonstrate how to identify central ideas, write useful practice questions, answer from memory, check the response, correct misconceptions, and return to the material later.

Fourth, rethink homework and review sheets. Instead of assigning twenty more problems of the same type, teachers might include short mixed-review questions that require students to retrieve learning from previous days or weeks.

Finally, involve families. Parents often tell children to study but may not know what effective studying looks like either. A one-page school guide explaining retrieval practice, spacing, and self-testing could make homework support far more productive.

LEADER REFLECTION

Walk through your school and ask several students a simple question:

“When a teacher tells you to study for a test, what exactly do you do?”

Their answers may tell you a great deal about the quality of learning taking place in your school.

Great schools do not merely assign learning. They teach students how to become better learners

——————————

Prepared with the assistance of AI software OpenAI. (2026). ChatGPT (5.2) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com