40 pages • 1 hour read
Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDanielMake It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “Increase Your Abilities”
Chapter 7 focuses on “raising intellectual abilities,” or “The brain’s ability to change itself throughout life and people’s abilities to influence those changes” (164-165).
The authors discuss neuroscience—science pertaining to the physical brain. They stress the brain’s plasticity, or its ability to “[reorganize] itself with each new task” and change over time (166). They also describe early neural development (some of which still requires further research) to demonstrate how the brain wires itself for a lifetime of mutability and growth.
The authors provide a basis for what nerve cells in the brain (neurons) look like (they have branches called axons, which act as transmitters and extend from one side of a cell body while dendrites—receptors—grow from others) and how they communicate with each other (by sending signals via connections called synapses). They explain that neural cell bodies constitute most of the brain’s “grey matter,” while wiring constructed from axons constitutes “white matter” (169). Both types of matter are the subject of ongoing research.
The chapter details “the brain’s enduring mutability” (171). For example, the brain learns to consolidate cognitive and motor sequences into a reflexive “single unit […] without requiring a series of conscious decisions” (171). Athletes make complex decisions about strategy in seconds; musicians play at a pace faster than conscious thought. Physically, the brain can repair itself by creating new neurons (a process called neurogenesis).
The authors suggest three practices that can “amp up the performances of the intelligence” people already possess: “embracing a growth mindset, practicing like an expert, and constructing memory cues” (178).
A growth mindset is one that convinces a person that they have the capacity for learning and can achieve tasks with hard work. This attitude creates motivation and staves off the frustration of initial failure. Expertise comes from hours of practice and the development of complex mental models in a particular field. There are many different types of memory cues—some structured around mnemonic devices that help people recall related information, others triggered by things like images and smells. The most complex memory cue is a mind palace, a familiar space that people imagine and mentally populate with characters and images that represent information. However, cues only aid durable learning when the information they represent is thoroughly learned and understood.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Make It Stick”
The last chapter comprises practical advice. The authors advise that students self-quiz rather than reread (retrieval), space out this practice, and interleave the information they need to learn while studying.
For lifelong learners, the authors acknowledge that classroom strategies (while effective for learners of all ages) might not be easily replicable. It can take creativity to apply a strategy like retrieval to various tasks. The authors illustrate this point with a thespian understudy who must learn lines for a part in a play. Retrieval practice might manifest as struggling to remember a line and reading the one that cues it in order to learn the whole context of the scene. Physically acting in addition to speaking lines elaborates on the script, more deeply encoding the information for later recall. The authors also make an example of authors who write messy first drafts to reflect on, rework, and steadily improve. This process mirrors the way a brain learns: Some material is unclear but comes to make sense as it is recalled and revised. Strategies such as spaced and interleaved practice, generation, elaboration, and reflection are the same as those of students, but undertaken under very different circumstances.
The next group the authors address is teachers. They suggest that teachers explain how learning works to their students so they can have confidence in their prescribed approach. This practice is particularly important because there are so many misconceptions about effective learning. Teachers can also teach students how to study effectively (utilizing sound practice methods), quiz frequently and establish other desirable difficulties in the curriculum, and “be transparent” about their methods—and the struggles and benefits these methods create for students (227).
The last group the authors address is trainers. Again, the principles are the same as in other learning settings. For professionals such as business consultants, applying these principles might comprise helping clients not only find a solution to a problem, but helping them thoroughly understand how the problem arose so they can learn from their mistakes. A trainer can ask clients to generate solutions, offer corrective feedback, and encourage them to “practice what works” (240).
The final chapter proves that Make It Stick’s underlying principles are universally applicable.
Chapters 7-8 Analysis
Previous sections of the book touched on neuroscience, but this section tackles it directly, offering a brief anatomy lesson and emphasizing that the brain is a physical site for the operative mind. The authors remind the reader that “Effortful learning changes the brain, building new connections and capability” (198). The brain changes physically as the mind changes its abilities and updates its archives. While discussing physiology, the authors deemphasize genetics as permanent determinants of mental ability. Genes do influence intelligence and ability, but so do “self-discipline, grit, and persistence” (199). This should motivate people to keep trying to learn, for learning is a worthy goal and certainly not wasted effort when performed effectively.
Armed with motivation, people can learn effectively in any setting. The final chapter mentions several settings and offers numerous stories of individuals who applied the book’s learning principles to great success. The authors express some reservation regarding detailed prescriptions, “feeling that if [they] laid out the big ideas from the empirical research and illustrated them well through examples, [the reader] could reach [their] own conclusions about how best to apply them,” which would be preferable to being told what to do (200). However, the authors concede that individuals “must find what’s right” for their classrooms (225). This concession brings up an important point: Though people share principles of brain functionality and productivity, individuals make sense of the world in subtle and unique ways through personal concoctions of reflection, elaboration, and connections between memories. There are strategies that anyone can employ to enhance their learning, but the most effective balance of said strategies will be unique to each person. Every learner should take control of their own lifelong education, empowered by effective strategies and the knowledge that their failures reflect worthy effort and not irreversible inability.
These are uplifting messages that the authors intend to instill in their readers. The book deals almost entirely with neurotypical brains, briefly mentioning learning disabilities and musing about the possibilities of altered brain chemistry or physiology. However, it doesn’t explore atypical learning and thinking in any detail. For example, the authors don’t discuss how people on the autistic spectrum think and learn or address if their patterns differ from those of a neurotypical person. The authors note that neuroscience is a developing field with scientists hard at work learning more about the brain, learning, and memory. This science will continue to yield more answers about how people of all “personal concoctions” think.
