Nonfiction: Why Don't Students Like School? Daniel T. Willingham

Why Don't Students Like School
Daniel T. Willingham
ISBN: 9780470279304
Cognitive science provides answers to how best to teach and motivate students to learn.

I came across this via the footnotes in the book Curious and was surprised to find it actually in our library catalog.

Here Willingham provides 9 discrete cognitive science concepts that are, in his words: "so fundamental to the mind's operation that they do not change as circumstances change" (italics in original) and that meet three other criteria: "using vs ignoring a principle had to have a big impact on student learning" "an enormous amount of data... to support the principle" and the principle had to "suggest classroom applications that teachers might not already know."

Nicely reasoned set of concepts, and a great way to set out your purpose ahead of time.

Here are our principles, by the way, paraphrased wildly by me:

1) People are naturally curious, but we are not good at thinking.
2) Skill is based on a robust platform of "rote" knowledge
3) Memories are formed based on what we think about strongly or very often.
4) Context is key when learning anything new - we relate new things to familiar ones.
5) Practice makes permanent; about 10 years for most areas of study.
6) Novices and Experts think differently, and that's ok.
7) Learning "styles" or "abilities" (ie, kinesthetic or verbal learners) don't matter to learning UNLESS the content is that style (in other words, learning to sing the Star Spangled Banner vs learning ABOUT the Star Spangled Banner).
8) Intelligence is not static - hard work impacts IQ, knowledge base, and thinking skills.
9) Any skill has to be purposefully practiced to improve.

And there you have it.

He goes through each principle in a chapter, and lays out the science, the real-world implications, the applications in a classroom, some basic questions and answers, and why it's important.  I love it when authors are systematic and organized like that.

Strongly considering adding this to my personal childhood development collection.