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Learning Science & Neuroplasticity How the brain actually learns, and the methods that work with it: retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, deliberate practice, sleep, and the neuroscience underneath.
44 cards · space to flip · 1–4 to grade · d to go deeper
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Reading list The works this deck draws on, in the order worth reading them. Cards point to a specific chapter or paper where one fits.
01 Book Make It Stick · Peter Brown, Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel The best single starting point: the research on retrieval, spacing, interleaving, and desirable difficulties, told through cases by two of the researchers who produced it. 02 Paper Improving Students' Learning With Effective Learning Techniques · John Dunlosky, Katherine Rawson, Elizabeth Marsh, Mitchell Nathan and Daniel Willingham, 2013 Ten study techniques rated on the evidence. The summary table and the sections on practice testing and distributed practice are the parts to read. 03 Book Why Don't Students Like School? · Daniel Willingham The clearest account of why memory is the residue of thought, why background knowledge matters more than general skills, and what working memory limits do to learning. 04 Chapter Making Things Hard on Yourself, But in a Good Way: Creating Desirable Difficulties to Enhance Learning · Elizabeth Bjork and Robert Bjork, 2011 A short chapter by the people who named desirable difficulties, covering spacing, interleaving, generation, and testing in one place. 05 Book Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise · Anders Ericsson and Robert Pool Deliberate practice from the researcher who defined it, with the argument about mental representations that explains why experts see differently. The chapters on purposeful versus deliberate practice are the core. 06 Book A Mind for Numbers · Barbara Oakley The most practical book here for applying the methods to hard technical subjects: chunking, focused and diffuse modes, and the illusions of competence. 07 Book Why We Sleep · Matthew Walker The memory chapters cover consolidation, what the different sleep stages do, and encoding capacity. Read for the mechanisms rather than the headline statistics, some of which have been disputed. 08 Paper Learning Styles: Concepts and Evidence · Harold Pashler, Mark McDaniel, Doug Rohrer and Robert Bjork, 2008 The review that found no credible evidence for matching teaching to learning styles. Worth reading to see what a fair test of the idea would look like. 