Make It Stick

Spaced and interleaved exposure characterizes most of humans’ normal experience. It’s a good way to learn, because this type of exposure strengthens the skills of discrimination—the process of noticing particulars (a turtle comes up for air but a fish doesn’t)—and of induction: surmising the general rule (fish can breathe in water).

In Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past,

Trying to come up with an answer rather than having it presented to you, or trying to solve a problem before being shown the solution, leads to better learning and longer retention of the correct answer or solution, even when your attempted response is wrong, so long as corrective feedback is provided.

Cognitive psychology is the basic science of understanding how the mind works, conducting empirical research into how people perceive, remember, and think.

Rereading text and massed practice of a skill or new knowledge are by far the preferred study strategies of learners of all stripes, but they’re also among the least productive.

multiple intelligences theory elevates the sheer variety of tools in our native toolkit.

However, example learners may improve at extracting underlying rules when they are asked to compare two different examples rather than…

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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.

The very techniques that build habit strength, like spacing, interleaving, and variation, slow visible acquisition

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