'Make it Stick' by Peter Brown, Henry Roedinger III and Mark McDaniel

Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, Peter Brown, Henry Roedinger III, Mark McDaniel (4.0)

I read this book as part of a book circle organized by our University to encourage teachers to be lifelong learners and continue to improve their teaching techniques. Luckily the gentleman who runs the groups tends to find books that are impactful overall, not just on teachers and college students. This book looks at techniques for studying and learning that are traditionally thought to be the most successful and, using data, refutes their effectiveness. The authors convincingly argue that some of the basics (rereading text and mass practice) are ineffective at long-term storage of knowledge. They argue that the harder it is to learn something and the more you have to go back to ‘retrieve’ the knowledge, the better it is in your long-term memory. They illustrate this in many ways. Failing is and good – as long as you are told why you failed. That will sink the learning deeper in your memory. Our group was able to come up with many examples in our own lives of this phenomenon. Unfortunately, quick and easy learning gives positive reinforcement to the learning process. Hard learning with tests and spaced retrieval can be discouraging. As with most books of this type – you don’t need to read all the chapters to get the key points, but the authors use their own methods (spaced retrieval, interleaving subjects) to give you the best opportunity to learn (i.e. if you skip parts you may be short changing your learning process). Overall this book is very important for someone looking to improve their ability to learn and interesting to those of us who are lifelong learners.