Why Human Interaction Still Matters in Learning
There has been a strong movement in education towards greater structure, explicit teaching and measurable academic progress.
There are good reasons for this. Children benefit from clear teaching, modelling, repetition, predictable routines and well-designed learning experiences. Structure can reduce uncertainty, make expectations clearer and create conditions in which children are better able to participate and learn.
I value structure. Across almost three decades in education, I have seen how much difference thoughtful routines, clear boundaries and explicit teaching can make.
But structure and human interaction are not opposites.
The question I keep coming back to is what happens when the pursuit of academic efficiency becomes so narrow that some of the human experiences through which children also learn begin to disappear.
Collaborative learning, discussion, movement, inquiry, play and open-ended exploration can be harder to measure and less predictable to manage. In busy classrooms, they can also be messy.
Yet that does not make them unimportant.
Children are more than information processors
Learning does not happen separately from the person doing the learning.
Children arrive in classrooms with developing brains and bodies, emotions, relationships, sensory experiences, previous experiences and differing levels of cognitive and emotional load. Their capacity to attend, participate, communicate, persist and think flexibly can change according to what they are carrying and what is happening around them.
This is one reason I think we need to be careful about viewing education primarily through the lens of information delivery.
Children need knowledge. They also need opportunities to interact with other human beings while they are developing the skills that allow them to use that knowledge within the world.
Communication, collaboration, emotional regulation, flexibility, problem solving, perspective-taking and navigating disagreement do not simply appear because children get older.
They develop through experience.
Human skills need opportunities to develop
We would never expect a child to become a fluent reader simply by telling them to read better.
We teach. We model. We scaffold. We practise. We revisit. We respond when something isn't working and gradually reduce support as competence develops.
Social and emotional development also requires teaching, modelling and repeated opportunities for practice.
A child learning to work with other people may need help waiting, negotiating, listening, explaining an idea or coping when somebody disagrees. Another child may need support recognising when frustration is building and knowing what they can do next. Some children need much more explicit teaching and scaffolding than others.
Putting children into groups isn't enough to create effective collaboration, just as telling a distressed child to calm down isn't enough to teach regulation.
The conditions around the experience matter.
Clear expectations matter. Predictability matters. Relationships matter. The level of challenge matters. Adult modelling and support matter.
This is where structure and human interaction can work together.
Good structure can create the conditions in which richer interaction becomes possible.
Sometimes we need to look beneath the difficulty
It can be tempting to reduce collaborative or interactive experiences when they aren't going well.
If group work repeatedly results in conflict, removing group work can appear to solve the immediate problem. If movement creates chaos, keeping everybody seated may feel easier. If discussion wanders, tighter teacher control may appear more efficient.
Sometimes modifying an activity is absolutely appropriate. But there is also value in pausing long enough to ask what might be sitting beneath the difficulty.
Do the children know how to work together? Is the task clear enough? Is the group too large? Has the interaction been sufficiently scaffolded? Are children already carrying significant cognitive, sensory or emotional load? Does someone need movement before being expected to sit and listen? Is the environment adding unnecessary stimulation?
Do the children feel sufficiently safe to contribute, make mistakes or disagree?
The visible behaviour gives us information, but it doesn't necessarily give us the whole explanation.
That distinction matters. If we respond only to what we can immediately see, we may remove an experience when what was actually needed was to change the conditions surrounding it.
Adults are part of the learning environment too
Children do not learn these things only through activities designed specifically to teach social and emotional skills.
They are watching us.
They notice how adults speak to people when things go wrong. They experience our tone, pace and expectations. They see what happens after disagreement, how mistakes are handled and whether relationships can be repaired.
They also experience the broader emotional environment around them.
This is why I find it difficult to talk about children's regulation and wellbeing without also talking about the adults supporting them.
An educator who is carrying an unsustainable workload, moving rapidly from one demand to another and trying to support a room full of children with very different needs is operating within their own set of conditions.
Understanding this isn't about expecting adults to remain perfectly calm. That isn't realistic. It is about recognising that classrooms are relational systems, and the conditions surrounding educators inevitably influence the conditions they are able to create for children.
That takes the conversation beyond individual classroom strategies. Leadership, workload, school culture, relationships between adults, communication and the way a school responds to pressure are part of the learning environment too.
This isn't academics versus wellbeing
This distinction is important.
Supporting human development does not mean lowering academic expectations or replacing explicit instruction with unstructured activities.
Children need excellent teaching. They need strong foundations in literacy and numeracy. They need teachers who understand what they are teaching and can explain, model, scaffold and respond to what learners need.
They also need opportunities to move, communicate, collaborate, create, solve problems, navigate relationships and develop increasing independence.
These things can sit alongside one another.
In fact, some of the most effective classrooms I have experienced across my years in education have combined considerable structure with warmth, creativity, humour, movement and connection.
The structure wasn't there to remove the human element.
It helped make it possible.
What are we preparing children for?
Perhaps this is the bigger question.
Education is partly about acquiring knowledge and skills, but children are also learning how to participate in a world filled with other people.
They will need to communicate with people who think differently from them. They will encounter frustration, uncertainty and disagreement. They will need to solve problems, adapt, contribute ideas, ask for help, recover from mistakes and work alongside others.
Increasingly, they will also live and work in a world where technology can provide information, generate content and perform tasks that once required considerably more human effort.
That makes me wonder whether the deeply human parts of learning are becoming less important — or more.
I don't think the answer is to romanticise the past or reject structured teaching, technology or academic accountability. Nor do I think every lesson needs to be collaborative, creative or open-ended.
It is about being thoughtful about what we keep, what we change and what we might inadvertently lose.
When something isn't working, we can pause before assuming the experience itself is the problem. We can become curious about what is happening beneath what we see and consider whether a change in structure, environment, support, expectations or timing might make a difference.
Sometimes the answer will be more explicit teaching. Sometimes it will be more structure. Sometimes it may be movement, connection, conversation or space to explore.
The important thing is having enough understanding to consider why something might be happening, what may be influencing it and how we might respond.
Because children aren't simply learning curriculum. They are learning how to think, communicate, create, regulate, relate and participate in the world around them.
Human interaction isn't something that sits around the edges of learning. It is one of the places where learning happens.
About Nicole Nolan
Nicole is an educator, consultant and founder of WiseLearn Education, with almost 30 years' experience across early childhood, primary and secondary education. Her work brings together education, psychology, social and emotional learning, neuroscience and neuroplasticity to explore practical ways we can support learning, wellbeing and everyday life.
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