Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What It Means for Your Classroom

by Daniel T. Willingham

Book Overview

Easy-to-apply, scientifically-based approaches for engaging students in the classroom Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham focuses his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning. His book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn. It reveals-the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0470279303
• ISBN13: 9780470279304
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The second edition is pictured but I received the first edition

I have no use for this book and wasted the discount I had built up. I need the second edition, and that was what was pictured in the listing.

Book

Arrived on time Good book

Facts, Facts, Facts

Every once in a while, an empirical study comes along that provides solid evidence against one of those Constructivist practices that some of us whose thoughts on education come more from actual practice than from education theory have often been skeptical about. There is, for example, Jennifer Kaminski's Ohio State study, which suggests that too much of a focus on "real-world" math obscures the underlying mathematics, such that students are unable to transfer concepts to new problems. Dan Willingham's book Why Don't Students Like School presents a whole bunch of these experimental results. Together, they challenge the notions that: 1. Students need to learn inquiry, argumentation, and higher-level thinking *rather than* tons of facts. 2. Integrating art into other subjects enhances learning; so does integrating computer technology. 3. Children learn best through self-guided discovery. 4. Drill is kill. Multiple strategies in a given lesson are better than a single strategy practiced multiple times. 5. Students learn best when constructing their own knowledge. 6. The best way to prepare students to become scientists and mathematicians is to teach them to solve problems the way scientists and mathematicians do. The empirical data that Willingham cites show that, in fact: 1. Factual knowledge, lots of it, is a prerequisite to higher-level thinking. 2. Students are most likely to remember those aspects of a lesson that they end up thinking about the most. Corollary: Incorporating art or computer technology into another subject may sometimes cause students to think about the art or the technology more than the lesson content, such that they don't retain the latter. 3. Discovery learning should be reserved for environments where feedback about faulty strategies is immediate: "If students are left to explore ideas on their own," Willingham writes, they may "remember incorrect 'discoveries' as much as they will remember the correct ones." 4. In Willingham's words, "it is virtually impossible to become proficient at a mental task," or master underlying, abstract concepts, "without extended practice." 5. Unlike experts in a field, "students are ready to comprehend but not create knowledge." 6. Novices don't become experts by behaving like experts do. "Cognition early in training," Willingham writes, "is fundamentally different from cognition late in training." Of course, Willingham could be making all this up. But consider just one of his empirical claims: "Data from the last thirty years lead to a conclusion that is not scientifically challengeable: thinking well requires knowing facts... The very processes that teachers care about the most--critical thinking processes such as reasoning and problem solving--are intimately intertwined with factual knowledge that is stored in long term memory..." This is a strong statement that could easily be debunked by anyone who knows the empirical literature. There are plenty of highly articulate, outspoke

A Neceesary and Helfpful Shattering of Some Education Myths.

If you are a teacher, like myself, you have doubtless been inundated by advice about teaching to multiple intelligences, active (rather than passive) learning, teaching students to think rather than memorize facts, etc. If so, then you can't afford to pass up this book, which will provide a very helpful guide as to why some of these well-intentioned ideas are wrong, and what it means for you as a teacher. Dan Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School? is a book applying findings of cognitive psychology to the world of education. Sound a lot like Eric Jensen and his wildly popular book Teaching With the Brain in Mind? Well, unlike Jensen - who educators hear a lot about - Willingham is a PhD in cognitive psychology (while Jensen, who has a bachelors in English, is "working towards" a PhD from an online university, while making his real living as a motivational speaker). Long and short: Willingham is the real deal and I move to suggest that this book infinitely deserves more popularity amongst educators than anything Jensen has written. Willingham's basic theme is that, despite everything you've heard, nothing works to increase student ability like factual learning and practice. In fact, one of his first ideas is to point out that what seperates the excellent student (or adult) from those performing less well is their ability to recall facts. The more facts you know about your subject, the more you can understand your subject because of significantly less energy spent on fact recall or retention. With facts learned to automaticity, more time can be spent on higher-order concept learning, and once that becomes automatic....etc. While that may sound mundane, think of how many times you as a teacher have heard the idea of "rote memorization" and "regurgitation of fact" denegrated. Of course, Willingham is not advocating the strawman position that teachers do nothing but drill, drill, drill and enforce memorization of text passages. (No one actually holds that position!) What he reminds us, though, is that the critical thinking we hear so much about teaching our kids simply CANNOT happen without giving kids the requisite background info that must be employed to think critically. (One cannot critically reflect on whether the revolutionary war was justified without some big factual understanding of Colonial American and Empirial Britian, for example.) Another big idea in educaiton that Willingham works to dispel is the idea that we all have different learning styles - auditory, visual, kinesthetic, etc. Cognitive science, in fact, has shown the opposite: with minor variation, we all learn very similarly. While I may have a better memory for visual phemonena than you (who may be better at remembering sounds), we remember IDEAS not through the media in which they were delivered, but by...thinking about them. When memorizing words and definitions, we are not being asked to memorize sounds or visuals, but ideas, and the fact that I am an auditory o

Superb, practical book on how to optimize teaching

Teachers and parents: Imagine you could sit down with a cognitive scientist and ask him to explain how students' brains learn, so that you could better teach them. Dan Willingham has written a book which achieves that very effect. In an engaging and conversational style, the author brings cognitive science results to bear on our "common knowledge" about teaching, and turns our common assumptions upside down. For instance, the brain is not designed to think. Furthermore, the popular concept of visual-auditory-kinesthetic learners has no basis in fact. Dr. Willingham explains cognitive research findings, and discusses how teachers can practically apply these results in the classroom. He peppers his book with illustrations and real life examples, which prevent the material from coming across as dry. Some of the most profound ideas come in the final chapters: we should not praise a child for being "smart", but rather praise effort. Why? Because intelligence can be changed through sustained hard work. Children who are slow learners can often overcome shortcomings through harder effort. This has important implications for both teachers and parents. He also gives practical advice for improving your teaching [because, like intelligence, teaching skill--and performance--can be improved with practice]. A great example is to find another teacher to work with, and videotape yourselves in the classroom. Then, you can both analyze teaching performance (in a supportive way). For anyone who is interested in becoming a better teacher, or for parents who are interested in having their children learn optimally, I highly recommend this book. I am already buying copies for friends!

Why Don't They Teach This Stuff in Ed School?

Factual knowledge must precede skill. Rote learning and memorization are valuable teaching strategies. Teaching to "multiple intelligences," "learning styles," and individual student interests is a waste of time. Is this really a cognitive psychologist talking? The answer is yes, and Dr. Willingham should be knighted for flouting some of the most persistent lies about what constitutes "best practice" in the classroom these days. I just attended the ASCD's national conference in Florida last week, and while there was much blathering about brain research, teaching to the "whole child," and professional learning communities (the latest cult movement among education bureaucrats), there was precious little discussion about substantive teaching. In just 165 pages, Dr. Willingham presents more useful information than I've managed to glean in ten years of teacher-training, and he does so in a user-friendly, non-dogmatic style that can be read in one sitting. Most useful are the nine organizing principles, which are both memorable and quotable (like any smart rhetorician, Willingham begins with his most startling fact: the brain is designed not to help us think, but rather to help us avoid thinking), the quick lists of classroom implications at the conclusion of each chapter, and the bibliographical citations categorized by "less technical" and "more technical." Rather than using cognitive research to justify some hotly promoted fad or gimmick, Dr. Willingham presents the most consistent research findings, all of which tend to confirm things that the best and most experienced teachers already know to be true--e.g. the effectiveness of using narratives to dramatize and illustrate important concepts, a "best practice" that's been around since at least the time of Christ. In the current professional culture of education, searching for honest information about cognitive psychology--that is, information free of commercial or ideological bias--is like searching for a fast-food restaurant that doesn't use trans-fat. Thanks to Dr. Willingham for delivering the goods.

A Must-Read Book for Teachers and Parents

Dan Willingham's Why Don't Students Like School? is a terrific book. He makes the research on how students think and learn easy to understand. The chapter on memory would be helpful to anyone, and the chapter on increasing intelligence through hard work is heartening. He also settles an old debate in education about whether to teach content or skills by showing that we have to do both because critical thinking depends on knowledge.