Understanding How We Learn: A Visual Guide

by Yana Weinstein, Megan Sumeracki, Oliver Caviglioli

Educational practice does not, for the most part, rely on research findings. Instead, there’s a preference for relying on our intuitions about what’s best for learning. But relying on intuition may be a bad idea for teachers and learners alike.

This accessible guide helps teachers to integrate effective, research-backed strategies for learning into their classroom practice. The book explores exactly what constitutes good evidence for effective learning and teaching strategies, how to make evidence-based judgments instead of relying on intuition, and how to apply findings from cognitive psychology directly to the classroom.

Including real-life examples and case studies, FAQs, and a wealth of engaging illustrations to explain complex concepts and emphasize key points, the book is divided into four



Evidence-based education and the science of learning Basics of human cognitive processes Strategies for effective learning Tips for students, teachers, and parents. Written by "The Learning Scientists" and fully illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli, Understanding How We Learn is a rejuvenating and fresh examination of cognitive psychology's application to education. This is an essential read for all teachers and educational practitioners, designed to convey the concepts of research to the reality of a teacher's classroom.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Science, Productivity

176 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 22, 2018

Reviews

[Yoric · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book is not bad, but the actually useful content could fit on 2 or 3 pages.
Moreover, there's nothing new inside, so don't expect to learn anything if you're already familiar with these concepts:
- Spaced repetition (consistent) is better than "cramming" the night before the exam
- Switch between different topics while studying (keep curious, make connections)
- Ask yourself questions, why and how, to go deeper and wider
- Connect with concrete examples
- Combine audio and visual information
- Consolidation (Retrieval): bring back the information you've learned. Then check, and complete.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding.

Wonderfully clear explanations on metacognition, logically laid-out with some fantastically quirky illustration. I had intended originally, to dip in and out, but because of it's easy to access references and research, I just kept going!

A must for teachers of all ages!

[Lthmath · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great book to find out more about how people learn in general. It covers a lot of interesting aspects that are explained using easy to understand vocabulary and great drawings (infographics and mind maps).

If you are a teacher, this book is very good if you want to improve your teaching techniques. It has a lot of examples of activities and small changes that one can implement to benefit the pupil. It gives examples that other teachers have used, together with academic research to explain why some concepts and methods have a positive impact on the learning process.

Moreover, it has some great examples and advice for students to use when they are studying in general. Even more interesting, it has advice for parents with activities and examples on how they can help their children learn better.

All in all, it is one of my favourite books I have read this year and I cannot recommend it more.

[Alexander Eckinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

(my first review!)

To anyone interested in the psychology behind effective learning, I highly recommend this book. This book excels in putting forth the conclusions that cognitive scientists have made about learning. I began reading this book already with decent knowledge of the tried-and-true learning strategies (and with a few years attempting to implement said strategies). Nevertheless, I came away with a superior understanding of a) the wealth of research behind such strategies and b) how such strategies may be concretely implemented.

There are six main strategies that effective learning (and teaching!) involves, according to the two cognitive scientist authors. In my opinion, the two most critical strategies are spaced (as opposed to crammed) practice and retrieval practice. These are the two I have implemented the most in my studies. They enable me to spend the least amount of time learning the most amount possible. But my interest in implementation goes beyond mere study- as someone interested in the field of education, this book gives some really clear pedagogical techniques.

I am fortunate enough to have gone to a high school that frequently implemented many of the strategies written about in this book. But even then, my time there was marked with plenty of misconceptions (such as the learning styles myth discussed in the book!) and, unfortunately, time wasted on inefficient methods. As a result, it's my belief that these strategies still have a long way to go before they are worthy of being called ubiquitous. This book is a step towards ameliorating that issue. Regardless, I've been able to see many of these strategies in action. I'm happy to have found a book that makes these strategies accessible and clear.

Also, throughout the book the design is quite aesthetically pleasing. It definitely helped me understand the ideas.

[Kenny Low · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book - I’m a teacher and I’d been looking for a book to help my students learn for a long while and this was exactly what I was looking for. It gives useful strategies that allows us teachers to plan lessons in the most effective ways to help students learn. This was also useful as I got my fellow colleagues to discuss how differently we might implement our lessons based on the strategies mentioned.

[CUONG TRAN · Rating 3 out of 5]

Phương pháp học theo cognitive science thì chỉ xoay quanh mấy phương pháp như retrieval practice, spaced repetition, interleaving, concrete examples. Nếu mới bắt đầu tìm hiểu thì có thể thấy nhiều khái niệm rất hay về khoa học hành vi để nâng cao khả năng học tập. Nhưng chủ quan với mình, sau một thời gian thực hành thì đọc cuốn này có nhiều điểm hông ổn:
- Hơi tham lam về dẫn chứng khoa học, vòng vòng nhiều nghiên cứu khá lan man, đọc cứ phải skip nhiều.
- Đọc cuốn này hông thấy "điểm cân bằng", hông biết học làm sao để thấy vui, thấy muốn học, thấy chấp nhận cái hông giỏi của mình,...

Có vẻ cuốn này chỉ thuần kỹ thuật của phương Tây thôi mà quên mất nhiều khía cạnh tinh thần khác.

[Joe McCluney · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book starts from first principles about how we learn, and expands outwards from there. This approach keeps the work grounded in cognitive psychology and allows the reader to figure out how to apply the science to their own practices. As a teacher, I really appreciated this flexibility and didn't feel bombarded by a "here's how to [insert new teaching theory/method/idea]!" appeal that feels all too common in many education books (even good, well-researched ones). Instead, I simply came away from this book with deeper knowledge about learning, and feel good about being able to use the evidence to augment, support, or change what I do in class. Every teacher should give this a read.

[Paul Groos · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice summary of insights from cognitive psychology to use in education, no matter the side of education you’re on: teacher, student or parent. Not just a collection of tips from the consensus of educational science, the book offers background information and proof of the different concepts. Furthermore, the writers offer explanations about why intuitive learning strategies tend not to work too well and why the scientific conclusions often aren’t put into practice by educators and learners.
The clear and beautifully simple illustrations offer visual ankerpoints and summaries to the text, although not every graphic has enough informational value relative to its size.
The book suffers from the problem most works on educational science have: educational practice is such a complicated subject to research that for every conclusion in this book a teacher (like me) can go: “well, yes, but, sometimes, depending on the specific educational context, actually, no.” It’s very difficult to make any statement about education that holds up under every circumstance in educational practice.
Having said that, this book offers very many interesting insights and, importantly, substantiates them from current research data. It could be a very valuable research for teachers and students.

[Alex Linschoten · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of thought and design has gone into this book. Clearly explained, with rigorously-tested advice, this is as good a place to start as any in learning how to learn.

[Jeferson Silva · Rating 4 out of 5]

Um livro bastante objetivo sobre estratégias para aprender de forma eficiente. O início descreve bem os processos envolvidos no aprendizado, nossas limitações e alguns equívocos comuns que costumamos ter sobre aprendizado. O restante do livro aborda as estratégias mais efetivas de acordo com pesquisas recentes na área. A parte final é dedicada a como professores, estudantes e pais podem ajudar na implementação dessas estratégias. Um ponto importante a frisar é que todos capítulos possuem uma lista de referências aos materiais utilizados que permite verificar todos os estudos e afirmações feitas no texto.

[Nikki Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am surprised I have never heard this book discussed among educators. I stumbled across the title when listening to a podcast. It is like the practical application of "Make it Stick" by Brown and McDaniel (which I LOVED). One of the most useful books I have read in a long time!

[Kelly Wilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easy to read, great visuals. A good starting point for any teacher interested in learning more about evidence based strategies for learning to use in their classroom.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and incredibly readable insight into learning practices. The concepts and research are clearly stated, and it is easy to draw parallels with your own (effective and ineffective!) working practices. I found the use of visuals in the book particularly effective, and the chapter summaries at the beginning and end of each chapter.

I would recommend this book to anyone who teaches, studies or has children studying. I only wish I had read this 20 years ago!

[Nancy Valentino]

I had the great fortune to see Yana Weinstein speak at a conference. She is a dynamic and vivacious speaker and this book, of which she is the co-author, reflects that perfectly. An enjoyable read that explains the science behind how we learn and suggests evidence-based strategies for implementing this in a practical way from the perspective of teacher, parent, and student. An awesome book.

[Akshar Gupta · Rating 5 out of 5]

A succinct survey of the cognitive psychology of learning. The book is beautifully illustrated and complicated topics are tackled with ease so that this book becomes an invaluable resource for not just teachers, but also for students.

The authors also have a podcast and a blog called Learning Scientists where they have covered most of this material before. Their approach is different as they look at science communication in education not as a prescription or a lecture from a researcher to a teacher where there is a power imbalance which ultimately leads to issues of trust, but rather as a conversation between equals which empowers both the researcher and the teacher.

There are three parts in the book: the first one is an introduction, the second, a survey of the relevant cognitive psychology topics, and the third, a very practical prescription consisting six scientifically proven techniques that can enhance learning.

What makes this book stand out the most are the illustrations and how they get the point across beautifully and the visual imagery makes the point stick in the reader's mind. I would say it is could be a very valuable resource for teachers and students and is a start of a conversation that is sorely needed, one between psychology researchers and educators.

[Luca · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a slim and straight-to-the-point book.

You are going to learn the most important elements of effective learning and how to integrate them into your teaching or studying.
The book starts with a very interesting overview of cognitive psychology, it explains what cognitive psychology is and what it is not and why it is so complex.
The authors have been very good into keeping a high-quality level of information, trough out the book, you can see all the research that they use to prove their points and it feels scientific and professional.

The book is not very big and some of the points are over-explained, but I guess it is too keep it accessible also to a younger audience.
The layout and illustrations are very pleasant and make each page interesting to look at.

This book is a must for each teacher and student who wants to quickly learn the most important concept in effective learning strategies.

Plus, the authors are working on a website which is trying to make the results of cognitive psychology accessible in an accurate way to a broad audience (http://www.learningscientists.org/)

[LizCastle · Rating 5 out of 5]

With the prospect of beginning a career in education, this book was a comprehensive and concrete introduction to learning theory, meta cognition and pedagogical practices. Whilst an American insight with American k studies, the use of such k studies are powerful, contextualised and argued in depth while also being digestible for the layman reader. The book in itself is meta-cognitively driven and laid out in a way that is in itself a learning technique. The visuals/ pacing/ chapter variation was a constant example of ‘understanding how we learn’ from page 1 to end.

[Momchil Kolev · Rating 5 out of 5]

Valuable guide

I've been interested in how people learn for years now and this book has been marvelous. The chapters are clearly separated, yet interleaved (he-he), the topics are well explained and have a great amount of research referenced. Regardless of whether you want an answer to one or two questions or to gather as much knowledge on the topic of learning as you can, this book is a one-stop guide.

[Spencer Whitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the best resource on learning which I have so far encountered. It does not contain excessive fluff, as many books in the area do. It clearly presents actionable advice along with its caveats, its level of scientific support, and examples of how to apply it. I believe every thinking person should read this book.

[Michael Wolcott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A high quality review of cognitive psychology and the application to education. The authors give valuable strategies and research to inform practices and make positive shifts to improve teaching and learning.

[Con · Rating 5 out of 5]

Every teacher should read this book.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb.
A must-read for those working in education.

[Gianni Barros · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s surprising how every student doesn’t have this book as an essential item on his/her personal library.

[Shubh_27 · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very helpful ....loved the organization of content .
Must read for all students ,parents and teachers !

[Craig Bosman · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is a ton of great information and things to learn from other studies included in this. A very important read if you are trying to better teach your students.

[Pravs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have consumed quite a bit of content on how to learn through various videos, books and articles but it felt like something was missing.

I appreciate that authors of the book acknowledge shortcomings of the studies, sometimes contradictions too. They gave pros and cons of almost all techniques. From what I understood one needs to experiment with quite a few techniques, and combinations before you know what suits you.

Most of these studies are 1. done in the lab, 2. use language or STEM topics, 3. very few long term studies, 4. don't usually differentiate between a person or student learning a topic within their field vs outside their field.

The study techniques are for after you read a topic, in certain cases after you gain a certain level of mastery or understanding. If you attempt to use them without a good understanding you will end up wasting your time, and get more confused.

Feynman technique or trying to explain something you've learnt in simple words may not be a good technique to use after you read something for the first time. Not saying it won't be helpful, but it is not for everyone.

While students do sometimes test themselves, it is usually to check their knowledge rather than to produce learning (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009).

This excerpt from the book captures what I was wondering about. When I was in school, spaced practice, retrieval practice, and interleaving were used. Right now I can say with certainty that it was useless. I did pretty well in almost all my exams, my scores were also good, yet I don't remember what I learnt because of lack of understanding. This becomes a huge problem as the difficulty or complexity of a topic increases.

Understanding a topic is necessary in order to use these tools efficiently over a long time. If not, these tools aren't that different from using inefficient techniques like rereading, underlining etc.

On rereading, authors said it is okay if you think you missed or didn't get something during your first reading. It is better if you take a break before rereading.

They covered how we store a piece of information in our memory. Which was important to understand how these techniques work.

This book did answer questions, not all of them, and I have new questions now.

Most of the content, be it books, articles or videos, almost never talk about how to approach and study a topic for the first time. What to do when we are stuck or when we cannot comprehend?

We are told to take a break, but what if you don't understand even after taking a break? The science is still emerging, it isn't as miraculous as we are being told.

Also, do note that we are told what the majority of the people benefit from, you could be in the minority who might benefit from something different.

[Rory Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wide ranging and informative account of ‘how we learn’ but also a bit repetitive.

The first part of the book is essentially a prologue dealing with questions about how we get reliable information about what works in education. In particular it asks whether teachers should just use their ‘intuition’ to know what works, or are there alternative forms of evidence which provide a more reliable indication? This part of the book is thought provoking but it will not necessarily be ‘interesting’ to readers who want to know about how we learn.

The main body of the book focuses upon six key ideas which generate effective learning. They are: Spaced Learning, Retrieval Practice, Interleaving, Elaboration, Concrete Examples and Dual Coding (using images along side words).

Each of these ideas is presented as an Either/Or, which enables readers to think about it as a concept which is contrasted with an alternative model. For example, Spaced Learning is preferable to cramming or massed learning, which essentially means spending a block of time on a topic and hoping to learn it all in that block. On the contrary, we now know that doing a little, often, with spaces between study sessions helps learning to stick better.

There are some potentially counter-intuitive ideas, but the research behind it is solid. For example, if students learn a subject in a block, then their performance in recall tests drops from 100% on day 1 to around 38% just a day later. However, if the students had ‘interleaved’ their original learning (by studying different material mixed or ‘interleaved’ with the original study material) then they scored 81% on day 1, and 78% on day 2. This means that ‘interleaving’ means students score initially less, but their knowledge holds up for longer. Why that would be the case is still very much a matter of debate among academics. The fact that this effect occurs, however, is a well tried and tested outcome in Educational Research.

The final section of the book gives tips for teachers, students and parents. This is, in theory, a good attempt to make the book specifically relevant to its differing readerships. But, in practice this section seemed to just repeat what had just been said in the previous section.

Overall, the middle section of this book is well worth reading by educators. It presents a good summary of educational research about learning, and it provides bibliographies of where that research can be found.

[Jonathan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps this book is more useful to people who have never thought about how people learn before. As someone who has casually thought about that, though, it wasn't great. It could be much more concise, skipping obvious discussions, the pictures are more distracting than useful, and there aren't many useful takeaway recommendations in the end. I guess my main critique is that I believe the content of this books can be boiled down into a paragraph or two. So I've done that here; most important bits of knowledge:

Memories are modified every time you remember them.
If your goal is to immediately do something well, and you don't care about your ability to do it later, cramming is effective so long as it does not replace sleep.
If you wish to do continue to be able to do something well, space out your practicing, and significant time should be devoted to practice recalling things (in structured or unstructured ways) instead of just reengaging with the task (e.g. rereading material). Cramming is very poor at this.
Trying to use/retrieve material is hard and so can make you feel worse about your abilities than if you just reread it, but you'll actually do better.
If you want to learn many related things, mixing them up as opposed to focusing on them one at a time may improve performance.
Trying to elaborate on what you've learned is probably good for both prolonging memory of the material and learning it better. But not justified by science yet.
Regardless of which medium you prefer to learn in (visually, orally, etc.) you probably learn best using a mix of media.

Or, in even shorter summary: study repeatedly over time, try to use what you've learned, and don't get discouraged.

[Malapata · Rating 4 out of 5]

Un resumen del estado del arte en psicología cognitiva sobre cómo se produce el aprendizaje. Su objetivo declarado es hacerlo lo más accesible posible, con la vista puesta tanto en docentes como en alumnos y familias. Para ello no dudan en incluir numerosos gráficos y resúmenes, además de esforzarse por hacer los términos fáciles comprensibles.

Me ha resultado bastante interesante y ha cumplido el objetivo que tenía en mente cuando lo compré de aprender algunas cosas que pudiera incorporar en mi práctica como docente. En el debe, que en su afán por hacerlo fácilmente comprensible acaban cayendo en muchas repeticiones. Además la versión electrónica es un desastre, ya que todas las imágenes y cuadros están en un azul que se convierte en un gris muy claro en el lector de libros electrónicos, dificultando bastante la lectura.

Por si queréis echarle un vistazo, las autoras son parte de un colectivo que mantienen un blog sobre el tema, con algunos materiales en castellano.

[Seb Yawlo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was recommended this book during an online researchEd session during the first lockdown and it wasn’t until Christmas when I eventually got it. This is an interesting book which reinforces a lot of current learning theories which are beginning to circulate around schools at the moment.
There were some good practical ideas to get teachers thinking throughout the book. Although the education settings from primary to university and beyond are covered which at times makes it hard to draw out ideas for my own classroom, I have come away with some strategies which I want to begin or hone.
I would recommend this to those interested in education and learning but I would stress that it’s more of a springboard and a good introduction to how we learn as opposed to a practical guide. For those interested in particular ideas/strategies, it would perhaps be better to pursue a book solely on that.