The genius of DT Willingham and WDSLS
Tom Sherrington (@teacherhead) posted this discussion of Dan Willingham’s updated “Why Don’t Students Like School“. Tom writes:
It’s an impossible and unwise task to summarise a book satisfactorily when it’s one that should be read in its entirety so we decided to pick out five key ideas that might have wide resonance for lots of teachers, hopefully as a way of highlighting the power of this great book.
The five key ideas are:
- Memory is the residue of thought.
- The power of stories
- Understanding is remembering in disguise
- Deep knowledge is the goal; shallow knowledge comes first.
- The power of practice.
This week I received a delivery of Dan Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School 2nd Edition from the bookshop and I’ve been reading through it, taking it in, refreshing my connection with the key ideas. It’s not a ‘Book 2’ but very much an updated version of the orginal. There’s an additional chapter on technology and some extra reflection questions at the end of chapters but, happily, it’s largely the same text. I absolutely love it. It can be an overblown statement that a book is a ‘must-read’ but there is no other single text that explores so comprehensively and clearly, the nature of learning and the challenges that students and teachers experience …
