To most of us, learning something the hard way implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concrete techniques for becoming more productive learners. Memory plays a central role in our ability to carry out complex cognitive tasks, such as applying knowledge to problems never before encountered and drawing inferences from facts already known. New insights into how memory is encoded, consolidated, and later retrieved have led to a better understanding of how we learn. Grappling with the impediments that make learning challenging leads both to more complex mastery and better retention of what was learned. Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and singleminded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning come from selftesting, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to restudy new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another. Speaking most urgently to students, teachers, trainers, and athletes, Make It Stick will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and selfimprovement.
[...]... without creativity where would our scientific, social, or economic breakthroughs come from? Besides which, accumulating knowledge can feel like a grind, while creativity sounds like a lot more fun But of course the dichotomy is false You wouldn’t want to see that t-shirt on your neurosurgeon or on the captain who’s flying your plane across the Pacific But the sentiment has gained some currency as a reaction... method for either group, at either school, in any of the conditions tested In fact, the researchers found no rereading benefit at all under these conditions What’s the conclusion? It makes sense to reread a text once if there’s been a meaningful lapse of time since the first reading, but doing multiple readings in close succession is a time-consuming study strategy that yields negligible benefits at the... short-answer test, or simply practice with flashcards, appear to be more effective than simple recognition tests like multiple choice or true/false tests However, even multiple choice tests like those used at Columbia Middle School can yield strong benefits While any kind of retrieval practice generally benefits learning, the implication seems to be that where more cognitive effort is required for retrieval,... learn cabinetmaking, you need to have mastered the properties of wood and composite materials, how to join boards, cut rabbets, rout edges, and miter corners In a cartoon by the Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson, a bug-eyed school kid asks his teacher, “Mr Osborne, can I be excused? My brain is full!” If you’re just engaging in mechanical repetition, it s true, you quickly hit the limit of what you can... types of problems, and so on In the chapters that follow we describe these in depth And because learning is an iterative process that requires that you revisit what you have learned earlier and continually update it and connect it with new knowledge, we circle through these topics several times along the way At the end, in Chapter 8, we pull it all together with specific tips and examples for putting these... instructive, and participation would bring enticements in the form of smart boards and “clickers”—automated response systems—for the classrooms of participating teachers Money for new technology is famously tight A sixth grade social studies teacher, Patrice Bain, was eager to give it a try For the researchers, a chance to work in the classroom was compelling, and the school’s terms were accepted: the study... my teaching is only a component of their learning, and how I structure it has a lot to do with it, maybe even more.” Meanwhile, the course enrollment has grown to 185 and counting Exploring Nuances Andy Sobel’s example is anecdotal and likely reflects a variety of beneficial influences, not least being the cumulative learning effects that accrue like compounded interest when course material is carried... trial and error with delayed feedback is a more awkward but effective way of acquiring a skill than trial and correction through immediate feedback; immediate feedback is like the training wheels on a bicycle: the learner quickly comes to depend on the continued presence of the correction In the case of learning motor skills, one theory holds that when there’s immediate feedback it comes to be part... “practice-practice-practice” of conventional wisdom Cramming for exams is an example Rereading and massed practice give rise to feelings of fluency that are taken to be signs of mastery, but for true mastery or durability these strategies are largely a waste of time Retrieval practice—recalling facts or concepts or events from memory—is a more effective learning strategy than review by rereading Flashcards... essential to stay in control of his plane As Matt points out, you hardly ever have an emergency, so if you don’t practice what to do, there’s no way to keep it fresh Both of these cases—the research in the classroom and the experience of Matt Brown in updating his knowledge—point to the critical role of retrieval practice in keeping our knowledge accessible to us when we need it The power of active retrieval . of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Brown, Peter C. Make it stick : the science of successful learning / Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger, Mark A. McDaniel. pages cm Includes.