Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

by Peter C. Brown

Unsuccessful attempts to solve a problem encourage deep processing of the answer when it is later supplied, creating fertile ground for its encoding, in a way that simply reading the answer cannot.

This is why pretesting works. Also we need to try to test our knowledge before revision. We might feel stupid, but that is necessary for durable learning. The realization of our ignorance makes the soil fertile for deep learning.

The act of taking a few minutes to review what has been learned from an experience (or in a recent class) and asking yourself questions is known as reflection.

Try reflecting on a book after each chapter.

These studies point out that not all difficulties in learning are desirable ones. Anxiety while taking a test seems to represent an undesirable difficulty.

meet with a group of farmers who wanted her gardening insights on a gamut of issues ranging from layout

Learning always builds on a store of prior knowledge. We interpret and remember events by building connections to what we already know.

Long-term memory capacity is virtually limitless: the more you know, the more possible connections you have for adding new knowledge.

simple: go where the competition isn’t, dig deep, ask the right questions, see the big picture, take risks, be honest.

As the maxim goes, “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”

On any list of differences that matter most for learning, the level of language fluency and reading ability will be at or near the top.

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.

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

Knowledge is not knowhow until you understand the underlying principles at work and can fit them together into a structure larger than the sum of its parts. Knowhow is learning that enables you to go do.

Describe what you want to know, do, or accomplish. Then list the competencies required, what you need to learn, and where you can find the knowledge or skill. Then go get it.

Consider your expertise to be in a state of continuing development, practice dynamic testing as a learning strategy to discover your weaknesses, and focus on improving yourself in those areas.

As Bach-y-Rita explained, the eyes are not what sees, the brain is. The eyes sense, and the brain interprets.

(Early education was defined as environmental enrichment and structured learning prior to enrollment in preschool.)

To the extent that “brain training” improves one’s efficacy and self-confidence, as the purveyors claim, the benefits are more likely the fruits of better habits, such as learning how to focus attention and persist at practice.

those who attribute failure to their own inability—“I’m not intelligent”—become helpless. Those who interpret failure as the result of insufficient effort or an ineffective strategy dig deeper and try different approaches.

Dweck came to see that some students aim at performance goals, while others strive toward learning goals. In the first case, you’re working to validate your ability. In the second, you’re working to acquire new knowledge or skills.

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a rare variable they can control,” Dweck says. But “emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of a child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

The striving, failure, problem solving, and renewed attempts that characterize deliberate practice build the new knowledge, physiological adaptations, and complex mental models required to attain ever higher levels.

Deliberate practice usually isn’t enjoyable, and for most learners it requires a coach or trainer who can help identify areas of performance that need to be improved, help focus attention on specific aspects, and provide feedback to keep perception and judgment accurate. The effort and persistence of deliberate practice remodel the brain and physiology to accommodate higher performance, but achieving expertise in any field is particular to the field.

Ten thousand hours or ten years of practice was the average time the people Ericsson studied had invested to become expert in their fields, and the best among them had spent the larger percentage of those hours in solitary, deliberate practice. The central idea here is that expert performance is a product of the quantity and the quality of practice, not of genetic predisposition, and that becoming expert is not beyond the reach of normally gifted people who have the motivation, time, and discipline to pursue it.

Humans remember pictures more easily than words.

Images cue memories.

The memory palace serves not as a learning tool but as a method to organize what’s already been learned so as to be readily retrievable at essay time.

Generation is an attempt to answer a question or solve a problem before being shown the answer or the solution.

You don’t engage the mind by reading a text over and over again or by passively watching PowerPoint slides. You engage it by making the effort to explain the material yourself, in your own words—connecting the facts, making it vivid, relating it to what you already know. Learning, like writing, is an act of engagement.

The pedagogical philosophy at West Point is founded on an instructional system called the Thayer method, developed almost two hundred years ago by an early superintendent of the academy named Sylvanus Thayer. The method provides very specific learning objectives for every course, puts the responsibility for meeting those objectives on the student, and incorporates quizzing and recitation in every class meeting.

It was Hunkler who spoke to us of shooting an azimuth. “Everything at the academy is about self-responsibility, taking ownership for finding your own way to the objective,”

follow-up emails to appear in your inbox every month or so with questions that require you to retrieve the critical learning you gained from the seminar.

The responsibility for learning rests with every individual, whereas the responsibility for education (and training, too) rests with the institutions of society.

structure-building theory—the idea that good comprehenders are able to construct a coherent, organized representation of a narrative from many sources (either read, listened to, or seen in pictures),

The learners who contrasted two problems were more likely to extract a general solution scheme and transfer that scheme to successfully solve new problems than were the learners who studied only one problem.