“How Learning Works: 8 Research-Based Principles for Smart Teaching 2nd Edition” by Marsha Lovett, Michael Bridges, Michele DiPietro, Susan Ambrose, and Marie Norman

I got a free copy of this book from a course on teaching that I took earlier this summer. It is a really useful read, I found myself thinking of different things I could start implementing in my teaching as I read it.

The main idea with the book is they go through eight kinds of issues that you might run into with teaching and from there get into research on the problem, and strategies based on the research to help. There is even a whole appendix with examples of things that they mention in the text such as rubrics and learning outcomes so you have an example of the language.

When I first picked it up, I didn’t quite care for the introduction which is very “we are doing this right and no one else has any idea what they’re doing” but it drops the condescending tone after that. In fact for the rest of it there’s a refreshing stance taken where it emphasizes that we need to learn more about teaching in order to be good teachers.

I haven’t used any of the strategies to be fair, but it’s already got some ideas going in my head of changes that I could make to my pedagogy. I imagine that I’ll be referring back to it plenty of times as I think more and more about how I teach, and so far that’s enough for me!