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Activating attention, curiosity, and readiness to learn via prior learning

The Hook

The brain is not simply passive. For accelerated growth and retention, the learning design of the instructor must carefully consider setting the tone of the learning environment to foreground the message, “we are here to learn, grow, and perform today”.

How we begin a session shapes how learners feel, how they focus, and how well they’re able to retain and apply new information.

Starter activities are integral for learning; to signal intent. When used with intention, they light up the prefrontal cortex and guide learners to elaborate on prior knowledge and ascertain what connects their learning, and prepare them to pay attention to the right cues/learning material(s).

It is the science of readiness and it matters in both classrooms and coaching environments.

Why Priming Matters

The Education Endowment Foundation highlights metacognition as a high-impact strategy. One of the simplest ways to activate metacognition is to ask learners to think about their thinking before instruction begins. Priming the brain for learning.

Whether it’s a recall quiz, a scenario prompt, a visual cue, or a short challenge, such tasks will:

- Activate prior knowledge and learning via existing schema and motor programmes stored in long-term memory

- Narrow the attentional field (what needs to be processed and considered for success to more likely occur)

- Increase engagement by making the session feel relevant

- Creates a sense of predictability, and thus psychological safety

The brain loves patterns. Starting with consistency builds calm and starting by communicating relevance to the learner inspires curiosity.

The expert-novice divide

An effective priming task can reduce cognitive load and unlock learning readiness. For experts, it’s about calibration to prior learning and the motivational impact of a challenge. For novices, it’s about orientation towards the right supportive prior learning material. This acts as a measure by which to reduce cognitive load on the working memory.

Examples in practice

- In classrooms: a retrieval quiz from last lesson, or “what do you already know about…?”

- On the pitch: “How does this pattern remind you of a previous opponent?”

- In meetings: “Discuss one thing you noticed in last week’s session.” OR “what one impact, positive of negative, did you observe as a result of actioning that policy?”

In all of these, we reduce the gap between prior experience and new input. We warm up the brain by reminding it of what it needs to focus its attention on to accelerate new learning.

A Crafted Concept approach

The most effective and fastest route to learning starts with anchoring attention. Before you instruct, consider:

1. What emotional or cognitive state are learners in?

2. What prior experiences might they draw on?

3. What question will hook them in by engaging them with prior connections, or pique curiosity in the content of today’s session?

The best instructional design does not wait for learners to engage; they prime them through thoughtful and deliberate activating learning tasks.