Learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by infl uencing what the student does to learn.
HERBERT A. SIMON, 1 one of the founders of the fi eld of Cognitive Science, Nobel Laureate, and University Professor (deceased) at Carnegie Mellon University
As the quotation above suggests, any conversation about effective teaching must begin with a consideration of how students learn. Yet instructors who want to investigate the mechanisms and conditions that promote student learning may fi nd themselves caught between two kinds of resources: research articles with technical discussions of learning, or books and Web sites with concrete strategies for course design and classroom pedagogy. Texts of the fi rst type focus on learning but are often technical, inaccessible, and lack clear application to the classroom, while texts of the second type are written in accessible language but often leave instructors without a clear sense of why (or even whether) particular strategies promote learning. Neither of these genres offers what many instructors really need — a model of student learning that enables them to make sound teaching decisions. In other words, instructors need a bridge between research and practice, between teaching and learning.
We wrote this book to provide such a bridge. The book grew out of over twenty - nine years of experience consulting with faculty colleagues about teaching and learning. In these consultations, we encountered a number of recurring problems that spanned disciplines, course types, and student skill levels. Many of these problems raised fundamental questions about student learning. For example: Why can ’ t students apply what they have learned? Why do they cling so tightly to misconceptions? Why are they not more engaged by material I fi nd so interesting? Why do they claim to know so much more than they actually know? Why do they continue to employ the same ineffective study strategies?
As we worked with faculty to explore the sources of these problems, we turned to the research on learning, and from this research we distilled seven principles, each of which crystallizes a key aspect of student learning. These principles have become the foundation for our work. Not only have we found them indispensable in our own teaching and in our consultations with faculty, but as we have talked and worked with thousands of faculty from around the world, we have also found that the principles resonate across disciplines, institution types, and cultures, from Latin America to Asia. In our experience, these principles provide instructors with an understanding of student learning that can help them (a) see why certain teaching approaches are or are not supporting students ’ learning, (b) generate or refi ne teaching approaches and strategies that more effectively foster student learning in specifi c contexts, and (c) transfer and apply these principles to new courses.
In this blog, we offer these principles of learning, along with a discussion of the research that supports them, their implications for teaching, and a set of instructional strategies targeting each principle. Before briefl y summarizing the full set of principles and discussing the characteristics they share and some ways that this book can be used, we begin by discussing what we mean by learning.
