Because this book is such a game-changer for the way we live now, I know you'll be interested in this conversation I had with Larisa:
Q: What motivated you to write this book?
The short answer is that I needed my son to read it, but it didn’t exist. When students level up into secondary and post-secondary education, memorizing facts and reproducing simple procedures is no longer enough. We really need to understand the material deeply. We need the ability to analyze unfamiliar problems, before we can solve them. We need to start making logical connections, and expressing those connections clearly. The trouble is: the material we are learning becomes more and more abstract throughout high school and college, and it is not always obvious what we need to be doing inside our heads while we go through the motions of studying. Since “how to learn abstract things” is not explicitly taught in school, most students end up struggling with their studies. Some are unable to master the material, but even those who earn top grades often struggle. They study long hours, using ineffective study strategies, and get stressed out and overwhelmed because they don’t understand how learning works. That’s what my son had begun to do, and I wanted to make his academic life easier, and more rewarding.
The interesting thing is, over the past 35 years, there has been a lot of research done on the biology of human learning. We know a lot about the neurobiology of learning; about the roles of nutrition, hydration, exercise, and sleep on learning; about the critical role that emotions play in learning; about how human memory works; and about which study strategies are effective, and which are not. There is also research showing that explicitly teaching students about learning decreases academic stress, anxiety, and fatigue, and increases motivation, confidence, and learning outcomes. So I had expected that there would be a book on all this, written for students, available for purchase. But there wasn’t, so I decided to write it myself.
Q: There are a lot of books in print about education: study guides, test-prep books, and the like. What makes this book different from the rest?
Study guides and test-prep books rarely address the science of how humans learn, at least not in any depth. Most of what has been written on the topic are scientific papers in fields like neurobiology, cellular biology, sleep medicine, and experimental psychology. Most of these are found only in academic journals or graduate-level textbooks. And for good reason. They are written in a very precise, jargon-filled style of writing that is necessary for serious scholarship, but is impenetrable by mainstream readers — let alone by struggling students. Even if they were capable of reading it, who would have the time?
Students — whether in high school, in college, or making a mid-career transition to a new occupation — need something that is short and sweet, something written in plain and simple language, which also provides a thorough and accurate overview of the science. They also need to be walked through the process of putting that theory into practice, using examples that are familiar and accessible to them. As an educator with decades of experience with both classroom teaching and education research, I was able to read the science, translate it into plain English, and explain how to apply it to the classroom situations and assignments students are most likely to encounter.