Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning
4.6 | 4,644 ratings
Price: 18.92
Last update: 02-02-2026
Product details
- Publisher : Belknap Press: An Imprint of Harvard University Press
- Publication date : April 14, 2014
- Edition : 1st
- Language : English
- Print length : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0674729013
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674729018
- Item Weight : 1.1 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 1 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank:#7,820 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Educational Psychology (Books)
- Study & Test-Taking Skills (Books)
- Cognitive Psychology (Books)
- Customer Reviews:4.64.6 out of 5 stars(4,583)
Top reviews from the United States
- AmberEducator PD for All Content AreasThis is a great text for teachers. Provides research based strategies and practices that are practical and easy to incorporate in all content areas.
- MaggieA must read for teachers and mentors.This is an easy read and science based. They give you the cognitive research behind what they are saying. It is a must read for anyone who teaches or mentors.
- A. MazonianHow the Mind Learns - a how to guide, with storiesIs there anything new in this book? I believe there is sage advice in it for many of us.
That our brains adapt is good but also bad for studying. We become bored.
For many of us, we were never taught how our minds work and how we should leverage its natural processes to learn. Sometimes, practice or studying feels painfully slow and we often switch to another method that feels good. Unfortunately, we often fail at assessing how much we're learning and have actually learned.
Some students were never taught how to learn, and had few, if any, good teachers/mentors.
Some teachers were never taught how to teach, and have forgotten what it was like to be a student.
This book is for those both groups. The examples and advice for teachers and corporate trainers is also well written and useful.
If you have had good teachers or learning examplars, you might find this book less valuable than will most people.
SUMMARY:
PROs: This book will show you how to structure your learning and assessment processes to learn and confirm you're actually retaining the material. It provides 27 pages of endnotes on scientific studies that support its recommendations. Having read and applied the principles of both MIS and WSSK (see below), I can say they do work, very well.
CONs: Be prepared to look for what you want. Most of us will focus on the prescriptions of Chapter 8: e.g. avoid rereading as a primary study method, and do use the blank paper assessment test, etc..
=====
While reading, I noticed two points made by the authors that will shape your experience:
1) page ix in the Preface: "first author is a storyteller"
2) page 200: "early readers (of the book draft) urged the author to get specific with practical advice"
I agree with reviewers Soumen, T. Pagni, Economist: yes, the book could've been much shorter and focused on the advice.
I also agree with the numerous reviewers who praise it: yes it provides excellent practical insight into the best ways to learn (both physical and mental tasks).
I will now use the book to evaluate the book.
1) Interpret/Elaborate/Infer from what I'm reading:
Why is a storyteller the first author? I'm glad they told me. I'm now prepared to wade through long winded stories to find the main points.
2) Find the underlying rules/principles in what I've read:
- Allow time to forget. You MUST give yourself time to partially, but not completely, forget the material. Then give yourself time to struggle with recalling it.
- Effortful (i.e. NOT effortless!) recall is good. It dramatically increases retention.
- sustained, deliberate practice, even when it feels ponderous, is helping me learn
- Trust the process of study, forget, retrieve.
- Reflection is a form of retrieval practice.
3) Scatter/Vary/Mix the information while you're studying it.
By mixing the precepts in with the stories, the patterns were harder to see. I had to pick up the book several times because I was so annoyed by all the storytelling. However, DURING REFLECTION away from the text, I realized they were deliberately embedding kernels in the stories and forcing me to look for them. Upon revisiting the material, I found myself *wanting* to find and connect the ideas spread across the stories and the book. Clever, and more effective than giving me a list to memorize. During retrieval practice, I actually started remembering some of the advice from the stories, moreso than from the explicit recommendations.
4) Change the material BEFORE you've mastered it in that session
What are they trying to teach me? Sometimes before they "got to the point", they switched to yet another story (!)
This made me really focus on connecting what I read previously to what I was currentl reading.
Thankfully, the chapters often end with a "Takeaways" section.
RELATE IT TO WHAT I ALREADY KNOW:
I consider this book (MIS) a valuable complement to What Smart Students Know by A. Robinson (WSSK).
WSSK tells you in much greater detail what to do while you are a matriculating student i.e. how to approach the conventional schooling process, how to assess class/book structure, how to relate the material to what you've learned, what specifically you should during the pre-study, study and post-study periods.
MIS does present specific study methods but it also presents the bigger picture of learning:
Why the "learn via re-reading" intuition is wrong, yet feels right.
Why the "learn via struggling" process is right, yet feels wrong.
In general,
WSSK fully develops the terse advice of MIS p207: Elaborate/question/interpret what you're reading
MIS fully develops the terse advice WSSK p118: Quiz yourself Periodically.
Both are excellent resources for improving your habits for studying from books.
Personally, the advice in this book is worth far more than the cost of $21, and a few hours of reading, reflection and note-taking that I paid for it. I do recommend you buy it and apply its principles, even to itself. - Jeremey DonovanFinally a learning book based on science!Summary of the key concepts in the book:
Conventional Wisdom: Make learning easy
Best practice: Design learning with desirable difficulties
Discussion: “Learning is deeper and more durable when it is effortful.” “Difficulties that elicit more effort and that slow down learning… will more than compensate for their inconvenience by making the learning stronger, more precise, and more enduring. Short-term impediments that make for stronger learning have come to be called desirable difficulties.” “Don’t assume you are doing something wrong if the learning feels hard.” “Not all difficulties in learning are desirable ones. Anxiety while taking a test seems to represent an undesirable difficulty.” Slow down to find meaning. Always read prior to the lecture. “Training has to be engaging in order to hold employees’ attention.”
Conventional Wisdom: Concentrate on one topic at a time (aka. massed practice)
Best practice: Interleave different but related topics
Discussion: “Learning from interleaved practice feels slower than learning from massed practice.” While interleaving can impede performance during initial learning (tests taken immediately after exposure), interleaving has been show to boost “final test performance by a remarkable 215 percent.” In addition, “commonalities… learned through massed practice proved less useful than the differences … learned through interleaving.” “In interleaving, you don’t move from a complete practice set of one topic to go to another. You switch before each practice is complete… You need to shuffle your flashcards.”
Conventional Wisdom: Reread material multiple times and in close succession
Best practice: Space repetition
Discussion: “Repetition by itself does not lead to good long-term memory… It makes sense to reread a text once if there’s been a meaningful lapse [at least a day in between] since the first reading.” “The increased effort required to retrieve the learning after a little forgetting has the effect of retriggering consolidation, further strengthening memory.” “Design quizzing and exercises to reach back to concepts and learning covered earlier in the term, so that retrieval practices continues and the learning is cumulative.” Spiral upward at increasing levels of difficulty with each re-exposure.
Conventional Wisdom: Reread to lock-in knowledge
Best practice: Focus on effortful recall of facts or concepts or events from memory (aka. Retrieval practice)
Discussion: “Retrieving knowledge and skill from memory should become your primary study strategy in place of rereading.” There are many methods of retrieval practice. Elaboration, expressing new material in your own words and connecting it with what you already know to find new layers of meaning, for instance by writing daily summaries, is the most effective. Moreover, “cultivating the habit of reflecting on ones’ experiences, of making them into a story, strengthens learning.” Essays and short answer tests are the next most effective durable learning strategies because they involve “Generation… an attempt to answer a question… before being shown the answer”, followed by practice with flash cards, reflection, and, least effective though still useful, multiple choice or true/false questions. To foster this, convert main points into questions to answer during subsequent studying rather than (or in addition to) highlighting and underling,
Conventional Wisdom: Conduct pop-quizzes and high-stakes post-testing with a goal toward errorless results
Best practice: Conduct frequent, predictable, low-stakes testing (including pre-testing)
Discussion: “Trying to solve a problem before being taught the solution leads to better learning, even when errors are made in the attempt.” In fact, “making mistakes and correcting them builds the bridges to advanced learning.” In addition, frequent quizzing – especially when quizzes are announced in advance - actually reduces learner anxiety. With respect to anxiety, the peak-end rule applies; people judge experiences based on how they were at the peak and at the end. Appreciate that “errors are a natural part of learning.” “Make quizzing and practice exercises count toward the course grade, even if for very low stakes.” Set “clear learning objectives prior to each class.”
Conventional Wisdom: Match instructional style to each learner’s preference
Best practice: Match instructional style to the nature of the content
Discussion: While people do have preferred learning styles (ex: visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile), empirical research does not support the notion that learning in your preferred style leads to superior outcomes. “When instructional style matches the nature of the content, all learners learn better, regardless of their differing preferences for how the material is taught.”
Conventional Wisdom: Memorize
Best practice: Extract underlying principles (aka “rule learning” and “structure building”)
Discussion: “It is better to solve a problem than to memorize a solution.” “Mnemonic devise are sometimes discounted as tricks of memory, not tools that fundamentally add to learning, and in a sense this is correct. The value of mnemonics to raise intellectual abilities comes after mastery of new material.”
Conventional Wisdom: Learn abstract concepts
Best practice: Learn using methods and examples that are concrete and personal
Discussion: “The kind of retrieval practice that proves most effective is one that reflects what you’ll be doing with the knowledge later. It’s not just what you know, but how you practice what you know that determines how well the learning serves you later.” Simulations and role-playing are excellent techniques. “Difficulties that don’t strengthen the skills you will need, or the kinds of challenges you are likely to encounter in the real-world application of your learning, are not desirable.” “Practice like you play, because you will play like you practice.” “Sustained deliberate practice… [is] goal-directed, often solitary, and consists of repeated striving to reach beyond your current level of performance.”
Conventional Wisdom: Read without pausing
Best practice: Spend 40% of time reading and 60% of time “looking up from the material and silently reciting” what it contains.
Conventional Wisdom: Provide immediate feedback
Best practice: Delay feedback
Discussion: “Delaying the feedback briefly produces better long-term learning than immediate feedback.” That said, receiving immediate corrective feedback is better than receiving no feedback at all.
Conventional Wisdom: Review all concepts equally
Best practice: Disproportionately focus on the least familiar material (aka dynamic testing)
Discussion: To increase frequency of practice on less familiar material without completely ignoring the most familiar material, use the Leitner box method. “Think of it as a series of four file-card boxes. In the first are the study materials… that must be practices frequently because you often make mistakes in them. In the second box are the cards you’re pretty good at, and that box gets practiced less often than the first, perhaps by half. The cards in the third box are practiced less often than those in the second box, and so on.”
Conventional Wisdom: Accept that IQ is fixed
Best practice: Focus on mindset
Discussion: “Average IQs have risen over the past century with changes in living conditions... IQ is a product of genes and environment” including increased stimulation, nurturing, nutrition “One difference that matters a lot is how you see yourself and your abilities. As the maxim goes, ‘Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.’” Adopt a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset; “consider your expertise to be in a continuing state of development.” “Success is less dependent on IQ than on grit, curiosity, and persistence.” Knowledge is a foundational element of creativity, critical thinking, and application. “The upper limits of your performance on any cognitive or manual skill may be set by factors beyond your control, such as you intelligence and the natural limits of your ability, but most of us can learn to perform nearer to our full potential in most areas by discovering our weaknesses and working to bring them up.” “Achieving expertise in any field if particular to that field… The central idea here is that expert performance is a product of the quantity of and the quality of practice, not of genetic predisposition, and that becoming expert is not beyond the reach of normally gifted people who have the motivation, time, and discipline to pursue it.”
Conventional Wisdom: Trust your own sense of mastery
Best practice: Calibrate your judgment
Discussion: “Calibration is the act of aligning your judgments of what you know and don’t know with objective feedback so as to avoid being carried off by the illusions of mastery that catch many learning by surprise at test time.”
Note: This book practices what it preaches with lots and lots of repetition. The authors are up-front about that but it does get well... repetitive. - AmberInsightfulHad to read this book and take notes for graduate school. It was very insightful and had some great strategies!
- JahirInterestingSuper interesting and thoughtful. Makes you reconsider many things and basically relearn to learn