Thinking books · Learning how to learn · Daniel Willingham, 2009

Why Don’t Students Like School? — the big ideas

A cognitive scientist on how thinking actually works, and what that means for teaching and learning.

Free — no account needed to read

The big ideas

People are not naturally good at thinking — it is slow and effortful, so the mind avoids it and uses memory instead wherever it can. Curiosity survives only when a problem is at the right difficulty.

You cannot think critically about a subject you know little about. Background knowledge is not the opposite of critical thinking; it is the precondition for it.

Understanding is remembering in disguise: new ideas are grasped through existing ones, so what you already know determines what you can learn next.

Learning styles as commonly taught are not supported by the evidence; what matters is matching the format to the content, not to the learner.

Practise it — no need to have read it

Pick a topic you want to think critically about. List what you actually know about it factually. Then judge how much your opinion rests on that.

A hint: This is uncomfortable on exactly the topics people have the strongest opinions about.

Where it shows up in real life

• Forming opinions on unfamiliar subjects
• Teaching or mentoring
• Deciding what to learn first

Described in our own words with the source named — never quoted, and not a substitute for reading the book.