Make It Stick

Putting new knowledge into a larger context helps learning. For example, the more of the unfolding story of history you know, the more of it you can learn.

In virtually all areas of learning, you build better mastery when you use testing as a tool to identify and bring up your areas of weakness. All new

Testing doesn’t need to be initiated by the instructor. Students can practice retrieval anywhere; no quizzes in the classroom are necessary.

By mimicking the challenges of practical experience, these learning strategies conform to the admonition to “practice like you play, and you’ll play like you practice,” improving what scientists call transfer of learning, which is the ability to apply what you’ve learned in new settings.

It is a confounding paradox, then, that the changeable nature of our memory not only can skew our perceptions but also is essential to our ability to learn.

Mastery in any field, from cooking to chess to brain surgery, is a gradual accretion of knowledge, conceptual understanding, judgment, and skill. These are the fruits of variety in the practice of new skills, and of striving, reflection, and mental rehearsal.

Monitoring your own thinking is what psychologists call metacognition

The more we do, the more we can do. To embrace this principle and reap its benefits is to be sustained through life by a growth mindset.

Conversely, the more effort you have to expend to retrieve knowledge or skill, the more the practice of retrieval will entrench it.