Table Of Content“So often I’ve been asked to recommend a starting text for educators
interested in the workings of the mind – now I have one. The text
Kirschner and Hendrick offer alongside each seminal article does a
wonderful job of situating the content in the broader scientific context,
and in the classroom”.
– Daniel Willingham, Professor of Psychology and Director
of Graduate Studies, University of Virginia
“As the volume of research into psychology and education grows, it
becomes ever harder for researchers, let alone teachers, to keep up
with the latest findings. Moreover, striking results often turn out to
be difficult, or impossible to replicate. What teachers need, therefore,
is good guidance about research that has stood the test of time, and
practical guidance about how these well-established findings might
be used to inform teaching practice, and this is why this is such an
extraordinary, wonderful and important book. Paul Kirschner and Carl
Hendrick have selected the most important research publications in the
psychology of education, and, for each publication, they have provided a
summary of the research, the main conclusions, and a series of practical
suggestions for how the findings might inform teaching practice. I know
of no other book that provides such a rigorous, accessible and practical
summary of the last fifty years of research in educational psychology, and
anyone who wants to understand how research can improve teaching
needs to read this book. Highly recommended”.
– Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment,
University College London
“It’s hard to overstate just how fabulous this book is; a book I’ve wanted
to exist for years and now here it is. A judicious and comprehensive
selection of seminal research papers presented by two expert
communicators, this is absolutely superb – from the mouth-watering
list of contents, and through each of the chapters. I meet teachers
in schools every week who, on hearing about various findings from
research, feel liberated, enlightened with a whole new perspective on the
problems they wrestle with in their classrooms. Teachers are busy – often
overwhelmed – and all too frequently have not yet found the time or had
the opportunity to engage with research that underpins the profession
they’ve committed their lives to. This book is going to change that for
a lot of people. The format is excellent, presenting the original papers
alongside insightful commentary and key practical recommendations; a
brilliant idea executed with style! Every school should have this book and
every teacher should read it”.
– Tom Sherrington, Education Consultant; author of
The Learning Rainforest and Rosenshine’s Principles in Action
“Teachers are rightly encouraged to base their practice on research – but
education research is a huge field and it’s hard to know where to start.
This book provides the answer: it’s valuable in its own right as a summary
of some key research papers, and it’s also a great starting point for further
reading and research”.
– Daisy Christodolou, Director of Education at No More Marking
“With the increasing volume of calls for education to become more
evidence based, teachers everywhere have shaken their heads and
wondered where on earth they’re supposed to find the time to locate, read
and evaluate the ever-increasing acreage of research papers out there.
Worry no more. In How Learning Happens: Seminal Works in Educational
Psychology and What They Mean in Practice, Kirschner and Hendrick have
done the hard work so that you don’t have to. The volume you have in
your hands has compiled some of the most important and prominent
research papers in the field of education and distilled them into a form
that is genuinely useful to anyone chipping away at the chalkface. But,
not only is this a resource of unparalleled utility, it’s also a fascinating
and world-enlarging read”.
– David Didau, author of Making Kids Cleverer
“Future historians of education will look back on this period as a
Renaissance; a time when dogma and orthodoxy were being challenged,
and gatekeepers, priesthoods, and shamans felt the ground shift beneath
their feet. The sleep of reason has bred monsters of pedagogy, and they
have been fattened and nurtured by the relative ignorance of the teaching
profession. Not a general ignorance, but a specific one: ignorance of the
evidence bases behind the claims made in education. This Renaissance
has been accompanied by an evolution, as teachers and academics reach
out to one another and seek sincere, authentic dialogue. But, unless
we stand on the shoulders of giants who have gone before us, each
generation is doomed to rediscover what their ancestors painstakingly
uncovered. For the health of the profession, we need the best of what we
know in one place, so that successive generations of educators can carry
on from their ancestors, and carry the conversation into the future rather
than tread water endlessly.
This book is the perfect resource with which to do so. I can give no higher
accolade than to say that every teacher should be familiar with the
research it represents, its chapters should be required reading on every
teacher induction course, and no teacher should account themselves a
professional until they can demonstrate its acquaintance. I wish I had
read it in the infancy of my career”.
– Tom Bennett, Founder, researchED
How Learning Happens
How Learning Happens introduces 28 giants of educational research and
their findings on how we learn and what we need to learn effectively, effi-
ciently, and enjoyably. Many of these works have inspired researchers and
teachers all around the world and have left a mark on how we teach today.
Exploring 28 key works on learning and teaching, chosen from the
fields of educational psychology and cognitive psychology, the book
offers a roadmap of the most important discoveries in how learning
happens. Each chapter examines a different work and explains its
significance before describing the research, its implications for practice,
how it can be used in the classroom and the key takeaways for teachers.
Clearly divided into six sections, the book covers:
■■ How the brain works and what this means for learning and teaching
■■ Prerequisites for learning
■■ How learning can be supported
■■ Teacher activities
■■ Learning in context
■■ Cautionary tales and the ten deadly sins of education.
Written by two leading experts and illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli,
this is essential reading for teachers wanting to fully engage with and
understand educational research as well as undergraduate students in
the fields of education, educational psychology and the learning sciences.
Paul A. Kirschner is Emeritus Professor of Educational Psychology at
the Open University of the Netherlands as well as Guest Professor at the
Thomas More University of Applied Science in Belgium.
Carl Hendrick teaches at Wellington College, UK, and holds a PhD in
Education from King’s College London.
How Learning Happens
Seminal Works in Educational Psychology
and What They Mean in Practice
Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick
Illustrated by Oliver Caviglioli
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick
The right of Paul A. Kirschner and Carl Hendrick to be identified as
authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Kirschner, Paul A., author. | Hendrick, Carl, author.
Title: How learning happens : seminal works in educational
psychology and what they mean in practice / Paul A. Kirschner and Carl
Hendrick.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2020. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019043773 (print) | LCCN 2019043774 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367184568 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367184575 (paperback) | ISBN
9780429061523 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Learning, Psychology of. | Educational psychology. |
Effective teaching.
Classification: LCC LB1060 .K57 2020 (print) | LCC LB1060 (ebook) | DDC
370.15/23--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043773
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043774
ISBN: 978-0-367-18456-8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-18457-5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-06152-3 (ebk)
Typeset in Tisa OT
by Swales & Willis, Exeter, Devon, UK
Contents
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiv
Introduction xvi
PART I
How does our brain work? 1
1. A novice is not a little expert 3
2. Take a load off me 13
3. How deep is your processing? 23
4. An evolutionary view of learning 33
5. One picture and one thousand words 41
PART II
Prerequisites for learning 51
6. What you know determines what you learn 53
7. Why independent learning is not a good way to
become an independent learner 65
8. Beliefs about intelligence can affect intelligence 75
9. … thinking makes it so 85
10. How you think about achievement is more
important than the achievement itself 97
11. Where are we going and how do we get there? 105
PART III
Which learning activities support learning 115
12. Why scaffolding is not as easy as it looks 117
13. The holy grail: whole class teaching and
one-to-one tutoring 125
vii
Contents
14. Problem-solving: how to find a needle in a haystack 135
15. Activities that give birth to learning 143
PART IV
The Teacher 153
16. Zooming out to zoom in 155
17. Why discovery learning is a bad way to discover
things/Why inquiry learning isn’t 165
18. Direct instruction 175
19. Assessment for, not of learning 187
20. Feed up, feedback, feed forward 197
21. Learning techniques that really work 207
PART V
Learning in context 219
22. Why context is everything 221
23. The culture of learning 231
24. Making things visible 241
25. It takes a community to save $100 million 251
PART VI
Cautionary tales 261
26. Did you hear the one about the kinaesthetic learner … ? 263
27. When teaching kills learning 273
28. The medium is NOT the message 283
29. The ten deadly sins in education 295
Index 307
viii
PREFACE
Preface: “standing on the shoulders
of giants”
Of all the bitter feuds in science, one of the fiercest is the “war of letters”
between Robert Hooke and Isaac Newton. One particular dispute
between them popularised a phrase which has now become one of the
most prominent observations about progress and the way in which true
scientific discovery is inherently cumulative in nature. The source of
their disagreement was on the nature of diffraction, how light bends
around objects. Hooke claimed to have discovered this but Newton
claimed that this “discovery” was largely as a result of earlier work by
French and Italian scientists who had conducted similar experiments. In
a letter to his great rival in 1675, Newton wrote:
You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours
of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further
it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
Although widely attributed to Newton, the phrase dates back a lot
further. In 1159, John of Salisbury (1955) wrote of Bernard of Chartres
that he
used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He
pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not
because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are
lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.
However, the earliest recorded usage of the phrase dates back to the sixth
century with the Latin Grammarian Priscian.
At the time of Newton’s use of the phrase, the notion of knowledge as
a perpetually changing process that is refined and built upon previous
knowledge and discovery was very much a contested one as James Gleick
(2004) notes:
The idea of knowledge as cumulative – a ladder, or a tower of stones,
rising higher and higher – existed only as one possibility among
ix
