19. Paul Tough, How Children Succeed (New York: Houghton Miffl in Harcourt, 2012).
20. Anders Ericsson’s work on deliberate practice has been described in many places, including Malcolm Gladwell, Outliers: The Story of Success (New York: Little, Brown, 2008). For accessible introductions to the work by Ericsson, see K. A. Ericsson & P. Ward, Capturing the naturally occurring superior per for mance of experts in the laboratory: Toward a science of expert and exceptional per for mance, Current Directions in Psychological Science 16 (2007), 346– 350.
21. Mental imagery and its power as an aid to learning and memory has been appreciated since the time of the ancient Greeks.
However, psychologists only began studying the topic in experimental studies in the 1960s. Allan Paivio’s research showed the power of imagery in controlled studies. A summary of his
Notes to Pages 188–193 ê 282
early research appears in A. Paivio, Imagery and Verbal Pro cesses (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1971).
22. Mark Twain, “How to Make History Dates Stick,” Harper’s, December 1914, available at www .twainquotes .com /History Dates /HistoryDates .html, accessed October 30, 2013.
23. In the history of mnemonic devices (and psychologists’ and educators’ attitudes toward them), they have suffered various reversals of fortune over the centuries. They were valued from Greek and Roman times and throughout the Middle Ages by educated people who needed to remember large amounts of information (e.g., to make a two- hour speech in the Roman Senate). In recent years, educators have dismissed them as useful merely for rote learning. However, as we show in this chapter, this charge is not fair. Mnemonics, as used by James Paterson and his students, can serve (as they did for the ancient Greeks and Romans) as or ga niz ing systems for retrieving information. To put it simply, mnemonic devices are not necessarily good for comprehending complex information, but using a mnemonic system to help to retrieve learned information can be invaluable. James Worthy and Reed Hunt provide an excellent introduction to the history of and psychological research on mnemonic devices in their book Mnemonology: Mnemonics for the 21st Century (New York: Psychology Press, 2011).
24. James Paterson is a “memory athlete,” partaking in a growing sport in Eu rope, China, and to some extent the United States.
Joshua Foer wrote about this emerging subculture in his best-selling book Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything (New York: Penguin, 2011). How long might it take a person to remember a shuffl ed deck of cards in order? For you, a long time. For a memory athlete in the top rungs, under two minutes. A video of Simon Reinhard memorizing a deck of cards in 21.9 seconds is available at www .youtube .com /watch ?v=sbinQ6GdOVk, accessed October 30, 2013. This was a world record at the time, but Reinhard has since broken it (21.1 seconds is the record as of this writing). Reinhard has broken twenty seconds in practice sessions but not yet in a timed public event (Simon Reinhard,
Notes to Pages 194–236 ê 283
personal communication in the form of a conversation over dinner in St. Louis, MO, on May 8, 2013, with Roddy Roediger and several other people).
25. Michela Seong- Hyun Kim’s description of her experience using mnemonics was relayed to Peter Brown by James Paterson in private correspondence, February 8, 2013.
26. Peter Brown and Roddy Roediger interview of James Paterson, January 4, 2013, St. Louis, MO.
27. Peter Brown interview of Karen Kim, April 18, 2013, St.
Paul, MN.
8. Make It Stick
1. Peter Brown telephone interview of Michael Young, May 21, 2013. All quotes of Young are from this interview.
2. Peter Brown telephone interview of Stephen Madigan, May 20, 2013.
3. Peter Brown interview of Nathaniel Fuller, April 29, 2013, Minneapolis, MN.
4. John McPhee, “Draft no. 4,” New Yorker, April 29, 2013, 32– 38.
5. Peter Brown interview of Thelma Hunter, April 30, 2013, St.
Paul, MN.
6. Peter Brown interview of Mary Pat Wenderoth, May 7, 2013, Seattle, WA.
7. The empirical studies aimed at testing the effects of high-structure classes in reducing student attrition in gateway science classes are S. Freeman, D. Haak, & M. P. Wenderoth, Increased course structure improves per for mance in introductory biology, CBE Life Sciences Education 10 (Summer 2011), 175–
186; also S. Freeman, E. O’Connor, J. W. Parks, D. H. Cunning-ham, D. Haak, C. Dirks, & M. P. Wenderoth, Prescribed active learning increases per for mance in introductory biology, CBE
Life Sciences Education 6 (Summer 2007), 132– 139.
8. Peter Brown telephone interview of Michael Matthews, May 2, 2013.
9. Peter Brown telephone interview of Kiley Hunkler, May 21, 2013.
Notes to Pages 237–251 ê 284
10. Peter Brown interview of Kathleen McDermott, June 20, 2013, Folly Beach, SC.
11. Peter Brown telephone interview of Kathy Maixner, July 18, 2013.
12. Peter Brown telephone interview of Kenneth Barber, July 1, 2013.
13. Peter Brown telephone interview of Richard Wynveen, July 17, 2013.
14. Peter Brown telephone interview of Erik Isaacman, June 2, 2013.
Suggested ReadingFollowing are some readings to provide underpinnings for andto further illustrate the principles we have described in thisbook. These readings are just the tip of the iceberg; in the scientifi c literature there are hundreds of papers addressing thesetechniques. In the notes section, we provide references for studies and quotes that are included in the text so that readersmay delve deeper. We have tried to balance the need for moreinformation without affl icting the reader with paralyzing detailabout the studies.
Scholarly Articles
Crouch, C. H., Fagen, A. P., Callan, J. P., & Mazur, E. (2004).
Classroom demonstrations: Learning tools or entertain-ment? American Journal of Physics, 72, 835– 838. An interesting use of generation to enhance learning from classroom demonstrations.
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