421: Help People Learn Through Powerful Teaching, with Pooja Agarwal

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Jul 22, 2019

Pooja Agarwal, an expert in cognitive science and founder of RetrievalPractice.org, shares valuable insights on enhancing teaching effectiveness. She emphasizes the importance of retrieval over mere information encoding, highlighting strategies that lead to long-term retention. Pooja challenges the myth of learning styles, advocating for varied teaching methods. She also discusses the significance of creating a supportive learning environment that embraces mistakes as growth opportunities. Her research-backed advice is essential for leaders aiming to develop talent more successfully.

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INSIGHT

Three Stages of Learning

Learning involves encoding, storage, and retrieval stages.
Retrieval, the act of recalling information, is crucial but often neglected.

ANECDOTE

The Coffee Shop

Pooja Agarwal forgot a coffee shop's name despite encoding it.
This highlights the importance of retrieval in learning.

ADVICE

Retrieval Practice

Use retrieval practice; learning happens through recall, not just input.
Ask questions to prompt recall instead of simply reviewing material.

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Pooja Agarwal: Powerful Teaching

Pooja Agarwal is an expert in the field of cognitive science and is passionate about bridging gaps between education and the science of learning. She is the founder of RetrievalPractice.org and Assistant Professor at the Berklee College of Music, teaching psychological science to exceptional undergraduate musicians.

She also serves as a consultant and facilitates professional development workshops on the science of learning around the world. Pooja is the author with Patrice Bain of the book Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning*.

In this conversation, Pooja and I discuss the key strategies that leaders can use in order to maximize their effectiveness as teachers. Since almost every leader is responsible for talent development in some capacity, becoming a more powerful teacher will help you develop others more successfully.

Key Points

The three stages of the learning process are encoding, storage, and retrieval. We tend to focus too much on getting information into peoples’ heads (encoding) and not enough on getting it out (retrieval).
Stop reviewing past discussions and meetings. Instead, invite people to recall and articulate prior interactions.
Cramming works, but only in the short-term. For long-term retention, spacing is much more effective.
There is no significant evidence that visual, auditory, and kinetic preferences correlate to actual learning. Instead, effective learning combines all these methods.

Bonus Audio

Why struggling is a good thing for learning

Resources Mentioned

Book Notes

Download my highlights from Powerful Teaching in PDF format (free membership required).

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