Book Review: How Learning Works

As promised, I review and point-by-point summarize How Learning Works: 7 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching by Susan A. Ambrose, Michael W. Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Marsha C. Lovett, and Marie K. Norman (2010), hereafter HLW as I scratch in futility at the sprawling length of this post. Cross-posted to Less Wrong. Review The authors aim […]

Principled memorization

All else being equal, people tend to underestimate the value of drilling and memorization in learning.a It’s cheap and effective, and we should expect it to be undervalued due to the cultural forces acting on intellectuals across many domains. Below, I focus largely on the latter aspect, which is probably the most interesting and least […]