Habit Forming in K-12 Education

By Emma Zande

Fall 2025 Intern

Test scores among K–12 students have been on the decline since 2013, an issue which has been exacerbated since the pandemic. Research has pointed to a combination of the pandemic-induced learning gap, decreasing attention spans, and increased social media usage as contributing forces to this drop in learning. Some research also indicates that standardized testing contains bias and may not be the best way to assess overall knowledge. 

Many students struggle with studying simply because they haven’t yet built the study habits they need to succeed. Educators and researchers find that a significant number of students, even in college, lack fundamental study skills, and some are not explicitly taught these techniques in school. This can lead to frustration and poor academic performance.

What is a Habit?

The brain is constantly looking for ways to be more energy efficient, and one of the ways it does this is by turning tasks into automatic routines—things you do with little to no conscious thought. Things like driving to work, reaching for your phone, or drinking water can become habits. When we repeatedly perform these actions, our basal ganglia, or our brain’s autopilot system, encode that behavior as routine. And each time we repeat a behavior, it becomes more automatic. 

While there’s a popular myth that habit-creation takes twenty-one days, it actually varies widely from person to person. Research has found that, on average, it takes about sixty-six days to reliably form a habit. However, it’s much quicker to form new habits during K–12 years due to the higher level of neural plasticity in young people. This is why it’s so important for students to learn and develop strong study habits while they’re young. 

This is what turns choices into habits. Habits have three main components: a cue, a behavior, and a reward. A cue is something that triggers a behavior. It can be a time of day, being in a specific place, or being around specific people, or even just a thought. Once you’ve completed the habitual behavior, you get a reward of some sort—maybe it’s the endorphins from a run, the dopamine hit from scrolling on social media, or the sense of accomplishment and pride from spending time studying. Whatever the reward is, achieving it can make the brain think it’s getting a reward. And once a habit and a reward are tied together in your brain, the brain will start to send these reward signals before a behavior is even completed . . . aka, a craving.

The Cue

The first step to building a habit is having a cue that tells your brain to do that habit. For instance, when you get home, you likely take your shoes off without thinking about it. This is because the action of getting home cues your brain to do so.

While a cue can be as simple as thinking “I should go study,” there are some more powerful habit cues. Location, time, emotional state, the people around you, or the last action you took can all be powerful habit cues. For developing a study habit, it may be helpful to choose a particular cue that works for you. 

For instance, a specific time of day can be a powerful cue. Maybe you choose a specific time of day to spend a set amount of time studying (thirty minutes to two hours a day is a general guideline for K–12 students). If you study at the same time every day, your brain will begin to develop a routine, which will eventually lead to a habit. If you have a more erratic schedule, it may help to choose a specific place, like the library, or specific people, like a study group, for your cue. 

The Behavior

Although making an intentional effort to study will undeniably improve academic performance, there are specific tools and strategies that make for more effective studying. Passive study methods, like re-reading and highlighting material, do not aid in the memorization and learning of material to the same degree that active study methods do. Active study methods engage your brain through self-testing and application. Active study methods include:

  • Explaining material in your own words.
  • Creating flashcards and quizzes.
  • Working practice problems.
  • Self-quizzing.
  • Teaching the material to someone else.
  • Relating concepts to real-life examples.

The Reward

While a sense of accomplishment, higher grades, or increased intelligence can serve as a powerful study-habit reward for some students, many students need heightened rewards to form a strong study habit. In an age where a strong dopamine release is easily accessible via online content, some students need to create different reward systems for themselves.

One of the most rewarding feelings is checking an item off your to-do list. So, one way to trick your brain into getting a high reward from studying is to create a really specific to-do list: If you fill your to-do list with all the small steps it will take to complete a task, you get to feel the reward of checking off each box. For instance, rather than writing “English paper,” you could write “complete research,” “finish outline,” “finish first draft,” “edit draft,” “finish final draft,” “edit draft,” and “turn in paper.” And you can take this strategy and make it as specific as you want: “write first paragraph,” “write second,” “write third,” etc. 

To push this even further, try to incorporate immediate rewards for small tasks. For instance, if an item on your to-do list is to practice all your flashcards, you could reward accomplishing that specific task with a snack or a short break. Use larger rewards, like watching an episode of your favorite TV show, for bigger tasks.

Repeat, Repeat, Repeat

The most important strategy to forming a habit is to repeat it over and over. Every single time we repeat a task, it gets a little bit easier for our brain to make the choice. And, eventually, it’s no longer a choice, it’s a habit, and it won’t be something you need to force yourself to do. 

Photo by Soundtrap for Unsplash