Book review:

"How People Learn"

Review by Jennifer Seretan

Rich, rich, rich. How People Learn by the National Research Council takes a comprehensive look at the science of learning for young and old learners, for students and teachers. It thoroughly examines the implications of new scientific findings and incorporates old classic studies, applying them to every aspect of the education system – from children learning in formal and informal settings to researchers’ efforts to communicate with schools; from teacher pre-service education (student teachers) and professional development to the role of learning environments; from the role of administration and policy-makers to the implications of technology in our present society.

This book is quite dense. It looks at learning as a science; it takes apart education, thinking, learning and teaching. It examines each independently, then it draws on common themes to unite these aspects of education together. The book starts with a premise that we need to re-examine what we think is the purpose of education:

“The meaning of ‘knowing’ has shifted from being able to remember and repeat information to being able to find and use it. More than ever the shear magnitude of  human knowledge renders its coverage by education an impossibility; rather, the goal of education is better conceived as helping students develop the intellectual tools and learning strategies needed to acquire knowledge that allows people to think productively….( p. 5)”

The book carries several principles throughout:

-         Students come with preconceptions that they will keep, even after being exposed to clarifications and being tested on the new knowledge, unless the teacher specifically addresses these misconceptions and offers specific opportunities for the learner to dismiss their preconceptions and replace them with more accurate concepts.

-         competence requires:

o       a deep foundation of factual knowledge (notice the word “deep” instead of a survey of facts).

o       an understanding of facts and ideas in the context of a conceptual framework.

o       metacognitive skills – learning how to think, draw connections and reference information for easy retrieval (memory).

-         Teachers must have:

o       a deep understanding of the subject they are teaching,

o       teaching skills, and

o       skills in teaching metacognition.

All of these principles contribute to the teacher’s ability to recognize learning obstacles and misconceptions and easily manipulate the information they are teaching to more fluently provide an array of learning opportunities for the students

-         Environments need to be:

o       Learner-centered

o       Knowledge-centered and

o       Community-centered in two senses of the word:

§         We need to recognize that schools present their own culture, thus we need to establish healthy, thoughtful cultures in our schools.

§         Also we need to remember that schools are part of the larger community, thus connecting the learning to the outside world to make learning real and relevant.

Formative assessment means ongoing assessments to make students’ thinking visible to both teachers and students. This means learning can be student centered. It means students can figure out what they are not learning, what are the obstacles or misconceptions, and figure out how to learn it – metacognition.

There are two things I most value in this book. First, none of the concepts are really new, but they are all defended by scientific studies. These studies are not just using rats in cages, but are often of students in classrooms or experts learning in their own field. Second, as the authors build their case, each of the concepts carry over to another branch of our educational system. Metacognition, learning environments, expertise, etc. are addressed when examining young learners, teachers as teachers, teachers as learners, new learning tools, policy, etc. For example, experts think about problems in their field better than novices because they have a deeper understanding of the information in the field and because they use metacognitive skills to access that information more easily than novices could. Therefore, teachers who know their subject matter and provide ongoing assessment can catch students misconceptions and find ways to guide students to “make sense” of the new concepts.

There is a whole section on teachers as learners and how to implement the same concepts we use for young students in teacher pre-service, in-service and other training situations. This supports the concept that everyone is a learner, that the school environment needs to be knowledge-centered, including for faculty and administrators. The authors also examine traditional learning mechanisms for teachers and how those could be adapted without scrapping the whole professional development system.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to understand learning and improve their teaching. The science is fascinating but written in an accessible way. The examples of classroom lessons and other educational situations are plentiful. Ultimately, the authors make recommendations and suggestions for ways that these principles can be put into action. Many suggestions that authors and presenters and theorists suggest run head long into obstacles – government mandates, funding limitations and the time and space to feasibly carry them out. However the authors address many of these obstacles in the book and take them into consideration. Their ideas are big and ambitious but quite doable.

I have read many a book on school reform where authors declare that the system is beyond fixing and needs to be rebuilt from the base up. This, of course is quite unlikely to happen. The authors of How People Learn take a much more realistic approach. They do an excellent job of finding where the educational system is weak and offering ways to improve it as opposed to throwing out the whole system or patching the holes enough to keep the educational boat from sinking. If you want to stay ahead of the current and are ready to look under the surface of education to discover the deeper science of learning, then dive in to this book.