I might read How We Learn by Stanislas Dehaene. Some notes from the sample:
Four essential mechanisms, or “pillars,” massively modulate our ability to learn. The first is attention: a set of neural circuits that select, amplify, and propagate the signals we view as relevant–multiplying their impact a hundred fold. My second pillar is active engagement. . .learning requires active generation of hypotheses, with motivation and curiosity. The third pillar, the flip side to active engagement, is error feedback. . . eliminate inappropriate hypotheses, and stabilize the most accurate ones. Finally, the fourth pillar is consolidation: over time, our brain compiles what it has acquired and transfers it into long-term memory. . .Repetition plays an essential role in this consolidation process.
Think about how I learn a new dance. I have to pay attention to the teacher. I am either consciously or unconsciously forming hypotheses about what the next steps will be. When I find myself on the wrong foot, I have to go back and figure out what I got wrong. Finally, the more I do the dance the less my conscious brain has to work to do it.
“adversarial learning,” consists of training tow opponent systems. . .The first system gets a bonus whenever it successfully identifies a genuine Van Gogh painting, while the second is rewarded whenever it manages to fool the other’s expert eye. . .
. . . Some of the areas in our brain learn to simulate what others are doing; they allow us to foresee and imagine the results of our actions. . . Some areas learn to criticize others: they constantly assess our abilities and predict the rewards or punishments we might get. . .We will also see that metacognition–the ability to know oneself, to self-evaluate, to mentally simulate what would happen if we acted this way or that way–plays a fundamental role in human learning. The opinions we form of ourselves help us progress or, in some cases, lock us into a vicious circle of failure. Thus it is not inappropriate to think of the brain as a collection of experts that collaborate and compete.
“There are four elements from which all spirits draw their supplies: their Ego or individuality, Nature, God, and the Future. All intermingle in millions of ways and offer themselves in a million differences of result: but one truth remains which, like a firm axis, goes through all religions and systems—draw nigh to the Godhead of whom you think!”
-Friedrich Schiller, Letter IV from Schiller’s Philosophical Letters
A bit of generalization of what we could have been using for the last century or so, but the one thing schools won’t teach students is how to study. It is left to each to arrive at a method from whole cloth or association with those who learned good methods in their life outside of school.
“True or logical study is not aimless mental activity or a passive reception of ideas only for the sake of having them. It is the vigorous application of the mind to a subject for the satisfaction of a felt need. Instead of being aimless, every portion of of effort put forth is an organic step toward the accomplishment of a specific purpose; instead of being passive, it requires the reaction of the self upon the ideas presented, until they are supplemented, organized, and tentatively judged, so that they are held well in memory. The study of a subject has not reached its end until the guiding purpose has been accomplished and the knowledge has been so assimilated that it has been used in a normal way and has become experience. And, finally, since the danger of submergence of self among so much foreign thought is so great, it is not complete — at least for young students — until precautions for the preservation of individuality have been included.”
–How to Study and Teaching How to Study (1909) by F. M. McMurry, Professor of Elementary Education, Teachers College, Columbia University
It is good to see education research has finally resurged the interest in how students can effectively learn from a disciplined studying process.
Dehaene has written three very good books, The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics (1997, new edition with afterword 2011), Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read (2010), and Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts (2014). Fascinating accounts of how the brain does what it does. Including how parts of the brain are repurposed to do unnatural things like reading (for the vast majority of human history, reading and writing did not exist).