Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom

The example in Figure 5.3 gives a feel for how an automatic process operates, but it's an unusual example because the automatic process interferes with what you're trying to do. Most of the time automatic processes help rather than hinder. They help because they make room in working memory. Processes that formerly occupied working memory now take u

Assignments and assessments are another source of implicit messages about what is important. When a project is assigned, does it demand deep understanding or is it possible to complete it with just a surface knowledge of the material? If your students are old enough that they take quizzes and tests, be sure these test deep knowledge. Students draw

Discovery learning is probably most useful when the environment gives prompt feedback about whether the student is thinking about a problem in a useful way. One of the best examples of discovery learning is when kids learn

The paragraph on the left is taken from a technical research article.10 Each sentence is likely comprehensible, and if you take your time, you can see how they are connected: The first sentence provides a definition, the second sentence poses a problem, and the third states that a description of the thing under study (skills) is necessary before th

Keep a Diary The core idea presented in this chapter is that solving a problem gives people pleasure, but the problem must be easy enough to be solved yet difficult enough to take some mental effort. Finding this sweet spot of difficulty is not easy. Your experience in the classroom is your best guide – whatever works, do again; whatever doesn't, d

Question: Most of the teachers I know entered the profession because they loved school as children. They want to help their students feel the same excitement and passion for learning that they felt. They are understandably dejected when they find that some of their pupils don't like school much, and that they, the teachers, have trouble inspiring t

When you plan a lesson, you start with the information you want students to know by its end. As a next step, consider what the key question for that lesson might be and how you can frame that question so it will have the right level of difficulty to engage your students and so you will respect your students' cognitive limitations.

Though you can't increase working memory capacity, you can cheat this limitation. In Chapter 2 I discussed at length how to keep more information in working memory by compressing the information. In a process called chunking, you treat several separate things as a single unit. Instead of maintaining the letters c, o, g, n, i, t, i, o, and n in work

the answer Things go into long-term memory if they create an emotional reaction is not quite right. It's more accurate to say, Things that create an emotional reaction will be better remembered, but emotion is not necessary for learning.