Children are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it looks like their thoughts are turned off. Why is it they can keep in mind the smallest details from a common television programs, yet miss the most apparent questions on the history test?

Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the natural and cognitive basis of learning and includes a deep knowledge of the daily challenges experienced by classroom instructors. This book will help teachers enhance their about Why Don’t Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions about How the Mind Works and What THIS MEANS for the Class room practice by explaining the way they and their college students believe and learn-revealing the importance of story, emotion, storage, context, and schedule in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.

In this breakthrough book, Willingham has distilled his knowledge of cognitive science into a group of nine principles that are easy to comprehend and have clear applications for the classroom. Some examples of his surprising findings are:

-‘Learning designs’ don’t exist. The procedures by which different children think and learn are more related than different.

-Cleverness is malleable. Cleverness contributes to college performance and kids do differ, but cleverness can be elevated through sustained hard work.

-You cannot develop ‘thinking abilities’ in the lack of facts. We encourage college students to believe critically, not only memorize specifics. However, thinking abilities rely on factual knowledge for their operation.

Why Don’t Learners Like School is a basic primer for each teacher who wants to know how their brains and their students’ brains function and exactly how that knowledge might help them hone their teaching abilities.