Before You Read Further
Most of us are self-taught. We fall, get up, try again, sometimes again and again and again for what seems like it will never end. Nobody learns anything for us. We learn to reduce our trial-and-errors in part through interactions with other people and with things.
Behavioral scientists have described ways to reduce the number of trial-and-errors that precede learning. A background in these descriptions isn’t common among educators and other people who encourage and manage the learning of others.
Many of these managers – parents, teachers, school psychologists, occupational therapists, among a large number of others – have backgrounds and interests that give priority to other views of life and learning. They use practices other than those that behavioral scientists have documented people use to learn.
As a consequence, their practices have been influenced by the tools and techniques of their interests even more than by principles of learning. Some of these influences have been good for learners, but not necessarily for accelerating and increasing their rate and depth of learning.
Whether you have never heard of principles of learning or have instructed behavioral science based lessons for years, we hope you will find new and useful pages at this site.
To this end, we attempt to catalogue in considerable detail the core facts of descriptions behavioral scientists have reported that people do to learn something.
We also offer ways educators and others have applied these descriptions that resulted in accelerated and increased rates and depth of learning in schools, homes, workshops, and other settings with individuals and large groups.
Above all, we hope to convey to you a sense of confidence that you too can accelerate and increase rates and depth of learning that others enjoy when applying descriptions on this site.
In over seven decades in education, even people as blockheaded as we, the writers of posts on Classic Education at EduClassics.com, have collected techniques and “gotchas” that change learning promptly. We’ve included them on these pages for you to add to your collection.
This site is for anyone who wants to learn how to accelerate and increase the rate and depth of learning promptly.
T-Shirt Wisdom (TSW): Good principals practice principles of learning.