Learning That Transfers - E117

The EduGals Podcast

This week, we are diving further into the book "Why Don't Students Like School?" by Daniel Willingham. Specifically, we are exploring ideas of understanding abstract ideas, practice that works, and thinking like the experts.

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Featured Content
**For detailed show notes, please visit our website at https://edugals.com/117**

• Why Don't Students Like School by Daniel Willingham
• How To Get Students Thinking - E110
• Strategies for Enhancing Memory & Critical Thinking - E113
• Chapter 4 key ideas:
  • "We understand new things in the context of things we already know and most of what we know is concrete"
  • Analogies and concrete examples (need to be familiar to students)
  • Learning That Transfers book by Julie Stern
  • ACT model (acquire, connect, transfer)
  • Understanding is built on combining past knowledge in new ways
  • Shallow (limited to specific contexts) vs Deep knowledge (connections and application to new contexts)
  • Transfer - surface (scenario) vs deep (concept) structure
  • Expectations for deep knowledge needs to be realistic
  • Multiple examples
• Chapter 5 key ideas:
  • "It is virtually impossible to become proficient at a metal task without extended practice"
  • Working memory has limited space - it's the fundamental bottleneck of human cognition!
  • Chunking is a great strategy
  • Not all things need to be practiced - what needs to be automatized?
  • Cramming vs spaced practice
  • Overlearning offers protection against forgetting
  • Practice helps transfer!
  • Spaced practice with Retrieval Grids
• Chapter 6 key ideas:
  • “Cognition early in training is fundamentally different from cognition late in training"
  • Students are not experts!
  • Experts have a large amount of knowledge (facts, procedural), more sensitive to subtle cues (classroom management), clustered thinking (functions or deep structures)
  • Students are ready to comprehend but not to create knowledge
  • Don't expect novices to learn by doing what experts do
  • Just because student’s can’t create like experts doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t create (science fair projects) - great for motivation!

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