Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

by Peter C. Brown

The second question the team asked was whether this kind of evidence existed. The answer was no. They found very few studies designed to be capable of testing the validity of learning styles theory in education, and of those, they found that virtually none validate it and several flatly contradict it. Moreover, their review showed that it is more important that the mode of instruction match the nature of the subject being taught: visual instruction for geometry and geography, verbal instruction for poetry, and so on. When instructional style matches the nature of the content, all learners learn better, regardless of their differing preferences for how the material is taught.

The fact that the evidence is not there to validate learning styles theory doesn’t mean that all theories are wrong. Learning styles theories take many forms. Some may be valid. But if so, we can’t know which: because the number of rigorous studies is extremely small, the research base does not exist to answer the question.

Psychologists today generally accept that individuals possess at least two kinds of intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to reason, see relationships, think abstractly, and hold information in mind while working on a problem; crystallized intelligence is one’s accumulated knowledge of the world and the procedures or mental models one has developed from past learning and experience. Together, these two kinds of intelligence enable us to learn, reason, and solve problems.

IQ tests have been used to measure individuals’ logical and verbal potential. These tests assign an Intelligence Quotient, which denotes the ratio of mental age to physical age, times 100.

One countervailing idea, put forward by the psychologist Howard Gardner to account for the broad variety in people’s abilities, is the hypothesis that humans have as many as eight different kinds of intelligence: Logical-mathematical intelligence: ability to think critically, work with numbers and abstractions, and the like; Spatial intelligence: three-dimensional judgment and the ability to visualize with the mind’s eye; Linguistic intelligence: ability to work with words and languages; Kinesthetic intelligence: physical dexterity and control of one’s body; Musical intelligence: sensitivity to sounds, rhythms, tones, and music; Interpersonal intelligence: ability to “read” other people and work with them effectively; Intrapersonal intelligence: ability to understand one’s self and make accurate judgments of one’s knowledge, abilities, and effectiveness; Naturalistic intelligence: the ability to discriminate and relate to one’s natural surroundings (for example, the kinds of intelligence invoked by a gardener, hunter, or chef).

Unlike learning styles, which can have the perverse effect of causing individuals to perceive their learning abilities as limited, multiple intelligences theory elevates the sheer variety of tools in our native toolkit.

What both theories lack is an underpinning of empirical validation, a problem Gardner himself recognizes, acknowledging that determining one’s particular mix of intelligences is more an art than a science.8

Robert J. Sternberg helpfully distills it again. Rather than eight intelligences, Sternberg’s model proposes three: analytical, creative, and practical. Further, unlike Gardner’s theory, Sternberg’s is supported by empirical research.

Children whose environments prized one kind of learning over another (practical over academic, in the case of the families who taught their children about herbs) were at a lower level of knowledge in the academic areas not emphasized by their environment. Other families placed more value on the analytic (school-based) information and less on the practical herbal knowledge.

In Sternberg’s view, we’re all in a state of developing expertise, and any test that measures only what we know at any given moment is a static measure that tells us nothing about our potential in the realm the test measures.

Analytical intelligence is our ability to complete problem-solving tasks such as those typically contained in tests; creative intelligence is our ability to synthesize and apply existing knowledge and skills to deal with new and unusual situations; practical intelligence is our ability to adapt to everyday life—to understand what needs to be done in a specific setting and then do it; what we call street smarts.

standardized tests can’t accurately rate our potential because what they reveal is limited to a static report of where we are on the learning continuum at the time the test is given.

dynamic testing: determining the state of one’s expertise; refocusing learning on areas of low performance; follow-up testing to measure the improvement and to refocus learning so as to keep raising expertise. Thus, a test may assess a weakness, but rather than assuming that the weakness indicates a fixed inability, you interpret it as a lack of skill or knowledge that can be remedied.

to be skeptical when somebody’s trying to sell him something, to figure out the right questions, and to learn how to go dig out the answers. That’s developing expertise.

When we take our first steps as toddlers, we are engaging in dynamic testing. When you write your first short story, put it in front of your writers’ group for feedback, and then revise and bring it back, you’re engaging in dynamic testing, learning the writer’s craft and getting a sense of your potential.

There do appear to be cognitive differences in how we learn, though not the ones recommended by advocates of learning styles. One of these differences is the idea mentioned earlier that psychologists call structure building: the act, as we encounter new material, of extracting the salient ideas and constructing a coherent mental framework out of them. These frameworks are sometimes called mental models or mental maps. High structure-builders learn new material better than low structure-builders. The latter have difficulty setting aside irrelevant or competing information,

Each of these elements is like a central idea in the textbook, and each takes more shape and nuance as added pieces snap into place. Together, these central ideas form the larger structure of the village.

Structure building is a form of conscious and subconscious discipline: stuff fits or it doesn’t; it adds nuance, capacity and meaning, or it obscures and overfreights.

We know that when questions are embedded in texts to help focus readers on the main ideas, the learning performance of low structure-builders improves to a level commensurate with high structure-builders.

cultivating the habit of reflecting on one’s experiences, of making them into a story, strengthens learning.

reflecting on what went right, what went wrong, and how might I do it differently next time helps me isolate key ideas, organize them into mental models, and apply them again in the future with an eye to improving and building on what I’ve learned.

As with high and low structure-builders, our understanding of rule versus example learners is very preliminary. However, we know that high structure-builders and rule learners are more successful in transferring their learning to unfamiliar situations than are low structure-builders and example learners. You might wonder if the tendency to be a high structure-builder is correlated with the tendency to be a rule learner. Unfortunately, research is not yet available to answer this question.

a punch line of any kind needs a setup, explicit or implied.15

Be the one in charge. There’s an old truism from sales school that says you can’t shoot a deer from the lodge. The same goes for learning: you have to suit up, get out the door, and find what you’re after. Mastery, especially of complex ideas, skills, and processes, is a quest. It is not a grade on a test, something bestowed by a coach, or a quality that simply seeps into your being with old age and gray hair.

Embrace the notion of successful intelligence. Go wide: don’t roost in a pigeonhole of your preferred learning style but take command of your resources and tap all of your “intelligences” to master the knowledge or skill you want to possess.

Consider your expertise to be in a state of continuing development,

Adopt active learning strategies like retrieval practice, spacing, and interleaving.

Don’t rely on what feels best: like a good pilot checking his instruments, use quizzing, peer review, and the other tools described in Chapter 5 to make sure your judgment of what you know and can do is accurate, and that your strategies are moving you toward your goals.

Don’t assume that you’re doing something wrong if the learning feels hard. Remember that difficulties you can overcome with greater cognitive effort will more than repay you in the depth and durability of your learning.

Distill the underlying principles; build ...

Which are the big ideas, and which are supporting concepts or nuances?

If we borrowed the winding stair metaphor as a structure for Bruce Hendry’s investment model, it might work something like this. Spiral stairs have three parts: a center post, treads, and risers. Let’s say the center post is the thing that connects us from where we are (down here) to where we want to be (up there): it’s the investment opportunity. Each tread is an element of the deal that protects us from losing money and dropping back, and each riser is an element that lifts us up a notch.

By abstracting the underlying rules and piecing them into a structure, you go for more than knowledge. You go for knowhow. And that kind of mastery will put you ahead.

school children who had been more successful in delaying gratification in this exercise grew up to be more successful in school and in their careers.

The word “mnemonic” is from the Greek word for memory.

It’s the same with a brain. We come into the world endowed with the raw material of our genes, but we become capable through the learning and development of mental models and neural pathways that enable us to reason, solve, and create.

We have been raised to think that the brain is hardwired and our intellectual potential is more or less set from birth. We now know otherwise. Average IQs have risen over the past century with changes in living conditions. When people suffer brain damage from strokes or accidents, scientists have seen the brain somehow reassign duties so that adjacent networks of neurons take over the work of damaged areas, enabling people to regain lost capacities. Competitions between “memory athletes” like James Paterson and Nelson Dellis have emerged as an international sport among people who have trained themselves to perform astonishing acts of recall. Expert performance in medicine, science, music, chess, or sports has been shown to be the product not just of innate gifts, as had long been thought, but of skills laid down layer by layer, through thousands of hours of dedicated practice.

The idea that the brain is not hardwired but plastic, mutable, something that reorganizes itself with each new task, is a recent revelation, and we are just at the frontiers of understanding what it means and how it works.

For a period shortly before and after birth, we undergo “an exuberant burst of synapse formation,” in which the brain wires itself: the neurons sprout microscopic branches, called axons, that reach out in search of tiny nubs on other neurons, called dendrites. When axon meets dendrite, a synapse is formed. In order for some axons to find their target dendrites they must travel vast distances to complete the connections that make up our neural circuitry

It’s this circuitry that enables our senses, cognition, and motor skills, including learning and memory,

The number of synapses peaks at the age of one or two, at about 50 percent higher than the average number we possess as adults. A plateau period follows that lasts until around puberty, whereupon this overabundance begins to decline as the brain goes through a period of synaptic pruning. We arrive at our adult complement at around age sixteen with a staggering number, thought to total about 150 trillion connections.

architecture and gross structure of the brain appear to be substantially determined by genes but that the fine structure of neural networks appears to be shaped by experience and to be capable of substantial modification.

Neural cell bodies make up most of the part of our brains that scientists call the gray matter. What they call the white matter is made up of the wiring: the axons that connect to dendrites of other neural cell bodies, and the waxy myelin sheaths in which some axons are wrapped, like the plastic coating on a lamp cord.

The thickness of the myelin coating correlates with ability, and research strongly suggests that increased practice builds greater myelin along the related pathways, improving the strength and speed of the electrical signals and, as a result, performance.

The study of habit formation provides an interesting view into neuroplasticity. The neural circuits we use when we take conscious action toward a goal are not the same ones we use when our actions have become automatic, the result of habit. The actions we take by habit are directed from a region located deeper in the brain, the basal ganglia.

When we engage in extended training and repetition of some kinds of learning, notably motor skills and sequential tasks, our learning is thought to be recoded in this deeper region, the same area that controls subconscious actions such as eye movements.

brain is thought to chunk motor and cognitive action sequences together so that they can be performed as a single unit, that is, without requiring a series of conscious decisions, which would substantiall...

Another fundamental sign of the brain’s enduring mutability is the discovery that the hippocampus, where we consolidate learning and memory, is able to generate new neurons throughout life. This phenomenon, called neurogenesis, is thought to play a central role in the brain’s ability to recover from physical injury and in humans’ lifelong ability to learn.

the activity of associative learning (that is, of learning and remembering the relationship between unrelated items, such as names and faces) stimulates an increase in the creation of new neurons in the hippocampus.

This rise in neurogenesis starts before the new learning activity is undertaken, suggesting the brain’s intention to learn, and continues for a period after the learning activity, suggesting that neurogenesis plays a role in the consolidation of memory and the beneficial effects that spaced and effortful retrieval practice have on long-term retention.