The expectations in the previous section are minimum expectations. They are so low, in fact, that any teacher at UW that only met them would not only not be hired, but definitely would not be promoted. We expect instructors to aim higher, and this begins with understanding how learning works.

There are many basic ideas from the science of learning that most people do not know. Below I’ll share some of this big ideas. While you read them, remember that many of your beliefs about learning are not necessarily informed by science, and be open to changing your beliefs.

We’ll begin with  prior knowledge   ^{7 7}

Tobias, S. (1994). Interest, prior knowledge, and learning. Review of Educational Research.

To build efficiently on prior knowledge, learners need deliberate practice  ^{3 3}

Ericsson, K. A., Krampe, R. T., & Tesch-Römer, C. (1993). The role of deliberate practice in the acquisition of expert performance. Psychological Review.

Closely related to practice is  intelligence mindset   ^{2 2}

Carol S. Dweck (2018). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House Books.

Another factor that shapes motivation is  interest   ^{5 5}

Hidi, S., & Renninger, K. A. (2006). The four-phase model of interest development. Educational Psychologist.

A third factor that shapes motivation is  identity   ^{8 8}

Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge University Press.

Even if a student is motivated to learn, has a growth mindset, has an interest, and has an identity that aligns with a subject, structuring practice is still hard. One of the critical skills required to structure practice is  self-regulation   ^{9 9}

Zimmerman, B. J. (1990). Self-regulated learning and academic achievement: An overview. Educational Psychologist.

Even if learning is successful, it turns out that people rarely  transfer  their knowledge from one domain to another  ^{4 4}

Haskell, R. E. (2000). Transfer of learning: Cognition and instruction. Elsevier.

Whereas all of the ideas above are supported by many decades of research on learning, there are many common myths about learning:

• Lecturing is generally less effective than active learning methods. Active learning methods engage students in practicing skills, recalling knowledge, and synthesizing ideas, rather than just listening. Counterintuitively, learners may  perceive  active learning as less effective than great lectures, because they can lead to a sense of struggle and confusion, but this is because learners wrongly perceive the struggle to learn as  not  learning ^{1 1}

  Louis Deslauriers, Logan S. McCarty, Kelly Miller, Kristina Callaghan, Greg Kestin (2019). Measuring actual learning versus feeling of learning in response to being actively engaged in the classroom. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

  .
• Students do not have different “learning styles” ^{6 6}

  Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological science in the public interest.

   (e.g., “visual” learners, “auditory” learners). Learners  do  have preferences for media, which often come from diversity in learners attentional skills, physical abilities, language fluency, etc. But learners aren’t categorically “visual” or “auditory” learners, and serving students’ preferences does not improve in learning. That said, not meeting students’  needs  (e.g., accessible materials in a language they can read) clearly affects learning. Moreover, not all methods for teaching a particular concept are equally effective for all learners, but that’s because of varying prior knowledge, not differences in ways people process information from different media. Attention should be on those inequities and less on negligible factors like whether something should be text, video, or sound (for content to be accessible, it should all of these).
• There’s no such thing as “left brained” or “right brained” students. Most people have both hemispheres and we all use both of them fully. What people are usually thinking of when they say this is that  personalities  vary. They do, and teaching to varying personalities does require careful planning.
• There is no magic number of hours of practice (e.g., 10,000) that result in expertise. It’s the  quality  of practice that determines the pace of learning, and it’s a teacher’s job to help shape, structure, and motivate that practice.
• Praising intelligence does not help; it reinforces a fixed mindset, falsely signaling to students that they’re abilities come from an intrinsic trait rather than their effort. Praising  effort  and  persistence  does help, because it promotes a growth mindset.
• Students do not “discover” their passions. They develop interests, with the help of teachers, who can share new possible interests and give them positive experiences with those potential interests that eventually lead students to internalize them.

All of these ideas show that learning is purposeful, highly sensitive to a learners’ self, self-knowledge, and environment, and greatly shaped by the social context of learning, especially teachers.