Why Don't Students Like School? Second Edition features 25% updated material while still honoring the classic, beloved approaches of the original. The book draws its themes from the most frequently asked questions in his "Ask the Cognitive Scientist" column in the American Educator, such as—How can I teach students the skills they need when standardized testing just requires facts? Why do students remembers everything on TV, but forget everything I say? How should I adjus...

A Map to the Magic of ReadingStop for a moment and wonder: what's happening in your brain right now―as you read this paragraph? How much do you know about the innumerable and amazing connections that your mind is making as you, in a flash, make sense of this request? Why does it matter?The Reading Mind is a brilliant, beautifully crafted, and accessible exploration of arguably life's most important skill: reading. Daniel T. Willingham, the...

Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off. Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television programs, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test?Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers. This book will help teachers impr...

Each year, teachers, administrators, and parents face a barrage of new education software, games, workbooks, and professional development programs purporting to be based on the latest research. While some of these products are indeed based on solid science, the truth is that the research underlying many others is grossly exaggerated. How can everyday teachers, administrators, and family memberswho dont have years of statistics courses under their beltsseparate the wheat from the chaff and ...

By describing experiments that control, manipulate and measure mental processes, this book shows how we can discover the answers to key questions about the mind, such as: 'Can we focus attention on more than one thing?' and 'Is language unique to humans?' Written in a down-to-earth narrative prose that avoids jargon, addresses the reader directly and draws on the authors' unique style ('suppose Willingham split his pants at a junior high dance …'), this text takes complex experiments in co...

Fully revised and updated for the fifth edition, Cognition offers an approachable yet deep introduction to the science of the mind. Avoiding the pitfall of a grab bag of phenomena, Willingham and Riener survey key mental processes such as memory, language, and problem-solving and connect them to experimental process. This new edition has been fully revised and updated with new references, figures, and experiments, with particular attention to the intersection of cognition and culture. Writ...

In this revolutionary, comprehensive, and accessible guide on how the brain learns, discover how to study more efficiently and effectively, shrug away exam stress, and most of all, enjoy learning.When we study, we tend to focus on the tasks we can most easily control—such as highlighting and rereading—but these practices only give the illusion of mastery. As Dan Willingham, professor of psychology and bestselling author, explains, familiarity is not the same as com...

"A lightning bolt of a book" makes the case for why self-directed learning — "unschooling" — is the best way to get kids to learn (Lenore Skenazy)In Free to Learn, developmental psychologist Peter Gray argues that in order to foster children who will thrive in today’s constantly changing world, we must entrust them to steer their own learning and development. Drawing on evidence from anthropology, psychology, and history, he demonstrates that free play is ...

Are you above average? Is your child an A student? Is your employee an introvert or an extrovert? Every day we are measured against the yardstick of averages, judged according to how closely we come to it or how far we deviate from it.The assumption that metrics comparing us to an average—like GPAs, personality test results, and performance review ratings—reveal something meaningful about our potential is so ingrained in our consciousness that we don’t even question it. Th...

**Is Wall Street bad for Main Street America?"A well-told exploration of why our current economy is leaving too many behind." —The New York Times**In looking at the forces that shaped the 2016 presidential election, one thing is clear: much of the population believes that our economic system is rigged to enrich the privileged elites at the expense of hard-working Americans. This is a belief held equally on both sides of political spectrum, and it seems only to be g...

In The Improbability Principle, the renowned statistician David J. Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact, they're commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month.But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal. His definition of "miracle" is thoroughly rational. No mystical or supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky enough to win the lo...

We live in a time of vast changes that include accelerating globalization, mounting quantities of information, the growing hegemony of science and technology, and the clash of civilizations. Those changes call for new ways of learning and thinking in school, business, and the professions. Listen as psychologist Howard Gardner defines the cognitive abilities that will command a premium in the years ahead:The disciplinary mind: mastery of major schools of thoughtThe synthesiz...