Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Make It Stick opens with a short preface. The authors claim that “the most effective learning strategies are not intuitive” (ix). They introduce themselves as Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, cognitive scientists who study how people think (with an emphasis on learning and memory). The third, Peter Brown, is a storyteller. The authors use storytelling to communicate recent studies about best practices for learning and remembering. They allude to education policy, but the book itself is not a call to action in said area. It is instead a guide on how to improve learning, which is useful for “students and teachers, of course, and for all readers for whom effective learning is a high priority” (xi).

The first chapter defines key terms and maps the book. Most essential is the authors’ purpose in writing: To explain effective learning strategies. The authors define learning as “acquiring knowledge and skills and having them readily available from memory so you can make sense of future problems and opportunities” (2). They outline several specific components of the learning process with a focus on effort exertion (learning takes work in order to make material “stick”), regular