Description
Learning is memory; memory, learning. Learning entails two processes: acquiring and retaining. Psychologists and educators would call these processes short-term memory and long-term memory. Whether we are learning a telephone number, a chess strategy,
a role in a play, a dance step, or how to recover from a computer mishap, in order to say that we have learned something we must be able to demonstrate that not only have we acquired the knowledge or skill, i.e., that we understand it and can use it properly, but that we also have retained that understanding so that we may continue to use it over time. If we learn how to use something but forget soon afterward and must look it up (on the Internet, in a reference book, or from an associate), then we have only done half the job. To completely learn something, we must be able to use it repeatedly and independently. If I must continue to refresh a memory, I have only partially learned it.
A word of clarification is in order: To remember something is not the same thing as to memorize something. To memorize something is not the same thing as to learn something. Memory is used in two senses here. If I learn to play a Bach sonata, that means that I have mastered the notes and can play them for an audience. However, it does not mean that I have committed it to memory, or memorized it. Or I might learn to make a souffle without memorizing the ingredients. Or I might learn how to use a complex statistical formula without memorizing its elements. On the other hand, in all three cases, I might commit the elements to memory—the note, the ingredients, and the mathematical symbols, so that I am free of the texts that bear them. To memorize is a specific kind of learning goal that does not necessarily entail understanding. I could memorize a Latin quotation and speak it impressively at my next cocktail party without understanding a jot of it. So, the two meanings that we will necessarily modulate between are as follows: to remember how to use, do, or apply something, without regard to whether we need prompting as to the specifics, and to remember all of the details of something without needing any prompting as to the specifics. The first is like conducting Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony from a score, while the second is like conducting without the score. In both cases the conductor has learned the piece, but only in the second case have they memorized it. One can learn how to do something, and remember how to do it, without having memorized it.
Contents
A Note to the Reader
How We Learn: Acquiring and Remembering Information
The Mechanics of Memory
Defining Memory
A Note on Genetics and Learning
1 The Three Stages of Memory Formation
2 Memory Slip-Ups as a Two-Edged Sword
3 The Two Kinds of Memory Chunks
4 An Overview of the Three Strategies for Learning and Remembering
Strategies for How We Might Intend to Learn
5 Advance Organizers
6 Atmosphere
7 Developing Prestige
8 Focus and Attention
9 Follow-Up
10 Positive Expectations
11 Rapport
12 Relaxation
13 Richness
14 Stereotypes and Performance
15 Strategies for Studying
16 Transfer: Applying Classroom Ideas to the Real World
17 Two Modes of Processing Information
Strategies for How We Might Organize for Learning
18 Breaks
19 Chunking
20 Control
21 How Personality Traits Do and Do Not Support Different Kinds of Learning
22 Incubation
23 Memory and Emotion
24 Modalities
25 Schemas
26 Spacing
27 The Development of Critical Thinking from Grade School Through University
28 What Makes Good Textbooks?
Strategies for How We Might Practice What We’ve Learned
29 Habituation
30 Handle It!
31 Peer Feedback
32 Practice for Simple Mastery
33 Practice for Expert Performance
34 Self-Explanation
35 State Dependence
36 Testing as a Learning Process
37 Visualization
Some Myths About Learning
A Final Word on the Role of the Teacher