The Effect of Teachers' Memory‐Relevant Language on Children's Strategy Use and Knowledge

Building on longitudinal findings of linkages between aspects of teachers’ language during instruction and children’s use of mnemonic strategies, this investigation was designed to examine experimentally the impact of instruction on memory development. First and second graders (N = 54, Mage = 7 years) were randomly assigned to a science unit that varied only in teachers’ use of memory-relevant language. Pretest, posttest, and 1-month follow-up assessments revealed that although all participating children learned new information as a result of instruction, those exposed to memory rich teaching exhibited greater levels of strategic knowledge and engaged in more sophisticated strategy use in a memory task involving instructional content than did students exposed to low memory instruction. The findings provide support for a causal linkage between teachers’ language and children’s strategic efforts. A rich literature characterizes the development of children’s skills in the deliberate deployment of strategies for remembering (Ornstein, Haden, & San Souci, 2010; Schneider & Pressley, 1997). For example, mnemonic techniques such as rehearsal and meaning-based sorting become increasingly complex and effective over the course of the elementary school years (Ornstein, Baker-Ward, & Naus, 1988). Nonetheless, even though there has been a great deal of interest in children’s memory, surprisingly little is known about the factors that serve to bring about developmental changes in remembering (Ornstein & Haden, 2001). A number of lines of work, however, point to the importance of experience in formal school settings for the emergence and consolidation of children’s mnemonic skills (Morrison, Smith, & Dow-Ehrensberger, 1995; Rogoff, 1981). Moreover, additional evidence suggests that aspects of the language used naturally by teachers during the course of instruction—and more specifically, teacher’s mnemonic orientation that includes the provision of metacognitive information—may be important for the development of deliberate strategies for remembering (Coffman, Ornstein, McCall, & Curran, 2008). Accordingly, this study was designed to examine experimentally the impact of this language on children’s developing use of mnemonic techniques. The experiment reported here is grounded in several disparate literatures that when integrated lead to the plausible inference that teachers’ use of memory-relevant language may influence the development of young children’s mnemonic skills. The importance of formal schooling for the development of memory strategies was first suggested by a number of important comparative-cultural research programs that included contrasts between groups of same-aged children who did or did not have significant experience in Western-style schools. More specifically, studies carried out in Liberia (Sharp, Cole, & Lave, 1979), Mexico (see Rogoff, 1981, for a review), and Morocco (Wagner, 1978) revealed that children who had the opportunity to attend school were more skilled in the use of deliberate memory strategies than were their peers who did not have this experience in school. Although these important