Interdisciplinary perspective on the role of active learning in enhancing memory

Abstract

Active learning, as delineated through the ICAP framework, differentiates between active, constructive, and interactive modes of engagement, each linked to specific cognitive and behavioural processes that influence knowledge acquisition and retention. While cognitive psychology and neurobiology provide mechanistic explanations for the effectiveness of certain learning behaviours, these insights are seldom systematically integrated within educational frameworks. This theoretical review aims to address this gap by utilising the ICAP hierarchy as an organisational scaffold for synthesising findings from education, cognitive psychology, and neurobiology, and by proposing an integrated model that elucidates how distinct forms of active engagement enhance declarative memory through shared neurocognitive mechanisms. From an interdisciplinary perspective, active learning fosters long-term memory not merely through heightened behavioural engagement, but by aligning curiosity, effort-reward appraisal, and social interaction to activate dopaminergic plasticity pathways. Consequently, the modes of ICAP engagement can be conceptualised as graded modulations of a common neurocognitive cascade: Increasing learner choice and novelty enhances effort–reward appraisal, biases learning toward curiosity and motivation, and thereby facilitates dopaminergic activation, hippocampal and striatal plasticity, and durable memory formation. Within this framework, the active mode initiates engagement with the cascade, the constructive mode stabilises learning through metacognitive monitoring and attentional control, and the interactive mode further amplifies memory by integrating social reward with coordinated regulation of cognitive demands. Collectively, these distinctions elucidate how instructional design can support durable learning by maintaining a favourable effort–reward balance, fostering metacognitive regulation, and leveraging collaboration without exceeding cognitive limits.