You and Your Brain (or "make it Stick" made simple)

So I have been reading "Make it Stick" by Baron, Roediger and McDaniel over the last few days, and I have to say that it has been quite enlightening. The book sets out to explore the neuroscience behind how we learn, setting out the processes involved in learning in an accessible way and making reference to a number of studies. The book does not claim to have complete knowledge of the subject and notes where more research is needed, however I feel it has offered some very useful guidance on how I could move my students on. Most importantly the book deals with a number of myths which are peddled in education especially and debunks these once and for all (VAK I am looking at you).

I was pointed in the direction of the book by Christine Counsell and Michael Fordham. Michael in particular has posted three excellent blogs on the specific application of the book to issues of planning in history. (Blog 1, Blog 2, Blog 3). However, I wanted to focus more specifically on helping students to grasp some of the key points from the book. As such, I attach a PowerPoint which could be looked at in one, two or three sessions. I would suggest it will work best with KS4 or 5 and, in the spirit of creating a sense of urgency, should be linked to the idea that mastering memory is key to exam success.

One point in particular I wanted to emphasise in the materials, is how poor research suggests we are at knowing our own learning abilities and what works for us. We tend, the authors suggest to focus on learning that gives a sense of mastery, rather than testing ourselves properly. That is to say, we tend to prefer self delusion to reality. There is an interesting link here to Wineburg's "Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts" (1999) where he discusses the idea of the availability heuristic. We tend to prioritise what we think we know, rather than looking at objective measures. "Make it Stick" gives a great example of an aeroplane disaster, however I think Wineburg's example of the 100 year old smoker is better. Those of us who can cite examples of old people who smoke tend to believe that smoking is less harmful than the evidence suggests, we delude ourselves. In the same way, students who learn without testing themselves, or who excuse their test performance due to other factors are often those who have the least grasp of the key knowledge. 

The book also offers interesting challenges about discovery learning (which is rejected), enquiry learning (which is promoted) and self/peer assessment (it turns out that low ability kids generally self assess so badly it makes them think they are doing better than they are - even when they are shown really good examples). It also led me to thinking about where my students are in terms of their thinking. Clearly some students are falling down at the basic encoding stage of memory, whilst others are not consolidating fully. How this will pan out in the classroom, I am not yet sure.

In many senses, the book reinforces much of what good teachers already do, however it is good to have some basis for this belief. As I have not yet finished reading the book, I will be updating this resource as I go so please let me know what you think. Oh, and I have also just ordered 3,000 blank flashcards so my kids can get cracking on retrieval practice!!

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