Students learn best when educators remember the 4 Hs.

Do people still need convincing that effective education requires more than simply attending to the cognitive aspects of learning? Descartes’ error (the title of a great book, by the way) was arguing that we could or should split thinking from feeling, that somehow our emotions “interfere” with our thinking. Sorry Charlie (or, in this case: sorry, Descartes). As Immordino-Yang and others have shown so well, education and learning require engaging one’s mind as well as one’s heart. In addition, students learn best when they are healthy (i.e., physically and socially) and feel at home in their learning environment. Thus, educators should develop contexts that attend to students’ 4 Hs of learning: Heart, Head, Health, and (sense of) Home.

In support of the 4Hs, Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues published a great review of the sciences of learning and development, with clear and pretty detailed implications for educational practice and policy. This is a wonderful resource for people interested in the evidence supporting the 4 Hs as well as examples of how a 4-H-focused educational context can promote all students’ success. Definitely a great read.