How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching

Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

by Joshua R. Eyler

Even on good days, teaching is a challenging profession. One way to make the job of college instructors easier, however, is to know more about the ways students learn. How Humans Learn aims to do just that by peering behind the curtain and surveying research in fields as diverse as developmental psychology, anthropology, and cognitive neuroscience for insight into the science behind learning.

The result is a story that ranges from investigations of the evolutionary record to studies of infants discovering the world for the first time, and from a look into how our brains respond to fear to a reckoning with the importance of gestures and language. Joshua R. Eyler identifies five broad themes running through recent scientific inquiry - curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure - devoting a chapter to each and providing practical takeaways for busy teachers. He also interviews and observes college instructors across the country, placing theoretical insight in dialogue with classroom experience.

Genres: Education, Teaching, Nonfiction, Psychology, Academia, Science, Academic

293 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2018

About the author

Josh Eyler is the director of the Center for Teaching Excellence and adjunct associate professor of humanities at Rice University. After receiving his Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Connecticut in 2006, Josh moved to a position as assistant professor in the English department at Columbus State University in Georgia. Although he was approved for tenure at CSU, his love for teaching and his desire to work with instructors from many different disciplines led him to the field of faculty development and to George Mason University, where he served as an associate director of the Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence from 2011-2013. In August of 2013, he came to Rice to take the position of director of the CTE. His eclectic research interests include the biological basis of learning, evidence-based pedagogy, and disability studies. He is the author of How Humans Learn: The Science and Stories behind Effective College Teaching (West Virginia UP, 2018).

Reviews

[Monica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got so much from reading this book. One of its biggest strengths is how well it synthesizes recent research on learning and presents often highly technical information in ways that are practical and take the realities of teaching into account. Also, the fact that it’s aimed at college teachers is also important, as so much of the scholarship of teaching and learning is aimed at k-12 teachers. One of the highlights of the book for me was the chapter on failure, as it synthesizes a lot of buzzwordy ideas—grit and mindset being two huge ones—and takes a really practical approach to them.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisiting this book as I try to think about remote teaching in the pandemic -- the strategies here really emphasize something truly irreplaceable about the classroom space but what Eyler does is really make clear why certain pedagogical strategies work over others. Engaging with scientific research as a way of grounding what gets carelessly buzzworded as "student-centered teaching" or "active learning," Eyler doesn't merely defer to these studies but instead uses them as foundations for different philosophies or ethics of teaching. I admired most his decision to really spotlight different teachers from very different disciplinary backgrounds whose strategies in fact had more in common than we believe.

[Anthony Friscia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe 3.75. A slightly odd combination of a book, with background on the theories about the evolution of human intellect with applications to teaching practice. The bits about evolution are… okay… They rely a bit much on garbage evolutionary psychology, and as a humanities academic his portrayal and acceptance of them leaves something to be desired. The bits about application to higher-education teaching are good, mostly in the sense that they don’t suffer from what a lot of books about such things do - basically saying if you aren’t making huge changes in your teaching you’re a failure as a teacher and doing violence to your students. His suggestions are small and mostly doable, although it’s often hard to see how to apply some to large classes. Certainly one of the better books I’ve read on such things, although maybe that’s because I felt better because I was already implementing a lot of what he suggested…

[Jeanette Lukens · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked how broad the information contained in the book was. It seemed to help that the author doesn’t have an expertise in one particular part of education, but more of a general focus. I certainly learned a lot and got good ideas. The book was well written, I just didn’t feel like it was life-changing or really amazing information for me.

[Marbacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is so nice to see a scholar investigating with such honesty, humility and rigor about his own work as a teacher. He walks the talk, since we can see in his book how a free mind looks for some truth beyond his own knowledge or discipline. So this is inspiring, since this is precisely the ultimate goal of any education : going again and again out of one’s mental models, biases,etc. The whole book is balanced and well structured. Final remarks about grades are so accurate - they are revolutionary but his conclusions send us back to our own capacity to test and use our margins of freedom without only complaining about “the system”. Good job.

[Gary B · Rating 4 out of 5]

How Humans Learn, by Joshua Eyler

Summary: This is not a Christian book. This book is about how people learn, and is very much geared towards higher education and teaching adults. The author is not a scientist but has much experience with academic teaching. He surveys the science of learning and cognition, and then uses that survey to draw inferences on ways to potentially improve teaching. Much of his discussion is related to evolutionary theory and early childhood development; this forms the basis for many of his recommendations for adult education. There are five main chapters that focus on five areas he sees as needing more emphasis in education. These areas are curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, and failure. Briefly, we learn better when we are truly curious about the topics (Curiosity). There is an important role for group interactions in learning (Sociality). Negative or even extreme positive emotions can impede our ability to focus and learn (Emotion). Authenticity refers primarily to the learners realizing that these situations and concepts being presented are authentic and real, rather than simply contrived to teach a point (Authenticity). Sincerity of the teacher is also wrapped up in this. Finally, failure can be an important tool for learning. Rather than seeing failure as a negative, we should see failure as opportunity for growth and learning (Failure).

Recommendation: I would mostly recommend this to people interested in teaching. It is applicable to many types of classroom scenarios. It does have some (limited) applicability to small group or bible study situations. I'd recommend the book for educators or people who want to improve their teaching.

My personal highlights: The reliance on evolutionary biology is off putting. Not so much because it's evolutionary biology but because the connections are somewhat tenuous, and he could have reached the similar conclusions through other means in most cases. So, from an editing/ writing perspective it seemed distracting to me. One thing I found interesting is that many of the concepts are things that good preachers and teachers already use. For example: curiosity is exploited by asking good questions that engage the listener. Sociality is often included in small group discussion and interpersonal relationships within the church. A good sermon will engage the emotions of the hearers and will be preached in a way that takes into account the differing emotional states of the hearers (e.g., those prospering, those suffering, non-believers, etc). Finally, as an academician, it definitely inspired me to rethink how I organize and teach some of my courses – in particular, the idea of using real-world (authentic) scenarios as part of my coursework.

[Elisha Lawrence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eyler did an amazing job showing five principles that impact learning: Curiosity, Sociality, Emotion, Authenticity, and Failure. He traced research surrounding these ideas and shared stories of their implementation in classrooms. Books like this, if implemented, can overhaul higher education. Classes do not need to be boring. Too often, the focus for faculty in higher education is research without an emphasis on pedagogy. Adopting practices like those suggested in this book can awaken classrooms and the students within those classrooms. An overhaul of K-12 is a more daunting task, but I do think the same principles ring true. School and real life are too far divided. Too often, what students learn in school is that you have to play the game to get good grades, only to enter a world that does not play by the same rules. Education is incredibly important, but learning is the goal of education. And people do not learn through lecture and memorization alone. People learn when they are engaged/involved, inspired, and safe to explore. I long for an education system that develops these sort of pupils.

I'm also pretty interested in what principles like this look like for the church. I believe God desires for Christians to be all those same things. An aspect of church is education/formation. Discipleship is often done outside of the context of a Sunday gathering--that won't change completely. That being said, sermons are a lot like lectures. Are there ways sermons can be more embodied? Are there ways congregations can be more involved? These are helpful questions to consider for the church moving forward.

[Xin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this book at work with a learning community. The content is solid, but I felt like I am familiar with the message, thus not overly impressed. The more valuable piece for me is building legs on ideas through discussions with colleagues in other areas.

The two ideas I would start thinking about implementing right away are:

Reacting to the past (RTTP), a history major technique that allows students to take on the roles of a historical time and replay the events as historical figures. This can be a fun way to get students to think deeper about schools of theories in psychology.

Another one that I have been using but did not have a name to is called “productive failure” coined by Manu Kapur. The idea is that we should pose questions to students that they can’t fully answer yet, then help them figure out the answer through the process of experimentations and discussions. I been asking students at the beginning of the class about the content we are learning that day in small groups, and students sometime feel lost. However, they seem more curious and interested once they realize they don’t have the answer and then are able to figure it out through class. There might be something to this.

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

[education book #7] a few things i appreciated about this book: 1) focused on teaching in the university/college setting, which is unusual for education books that tend to be focused on k-12, 2) contains both theory and thoughts for practical application, 3) easier to read and better written than most books by STEM professors (sorry). i was impressed that Eyler, a medievalist, was willing to reach across the artificial fuzzy/techie divide to write a book on the science behind teaching college students. i admire a true generalist and hope to be one. that being said, having studied and read up on psychology, cognitive science, and behavioral science at a basic level, i didn't encounter much new in the research included. i do think this book is general and colloquial enough to be interesting to people beyond university professors and lecturers.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eyler draws on research from fields as diverse as child development, neuroscience, and sociology to describe how humans (and therefore college students) learn. His cardinal considerations are curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity and failure. It wasn't exactly a "can't put down" book and some of the declarations, like that grading is antithetical to the ideals of learning seem like a big stretch. I kept saying, "When was this published?" because there were some discussions, like a lengthy treatment of trigger warnings, that felt a little out of the moment, but the book was published in 2018. Still, it's good to see someone making connections between research on developing learners (children) and still-developing learners (adults).

[Kara · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’ve read other recent books on pedagogy then you’ve probably encountered most of what the author writes about already. However, I really enjoyed the non-dogmatic, open-minded approach to the subject and I think the author did an excellent job synthesizing different ideas in a way that makes it easy to put them in practice. I especially appreciated how much he emphasized that we should remember students are human beings and should be treated with compassion. (I’m not sure he ever uses the word “compassion” in the book but that’s what he’s describing.)

[Liz Norell · Rating 5 out of 5]

While this book rehashes much of the material in other books about learning, I found the organization and perspective to be a delightful shot of inspiration and fodder for further thought. I completely recommend it!

If for no other reason than for this gem that I will think about for a long time to come: "At a minimum, we should empathize with students who are trying to succeed in a system that _prizes success over development_." !!! <3 (page 183, in a chapter called "Failure.")

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eyler doesn't report anything here that isn't reported elsewhere in the teaching and learning literature. However, he does provide an astute synthesis and his careful take on social science literature (written from his own humanist perspective) suggests some new ways to both look at and apply some of what we know about emotion, grit, etc. This book reads fast but has immediate takeaways that can easily transform classrooms and teaching. I really recommend it.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for class but thoroughly enjoyed it. The author combines a nice mix of research and real-life teaching examples to keep the readers attention. It was nice that the book hit on five main topics, so it did not seem very overwhelming in information. Overall a good read for anyone who educates.

[Genevieve Brassard · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5: Very helpful summary of pertinent studies and practical ways to apply them in course design and classroom activities/assignments. Also includes a nuanced discussion of the thorny topic of trigger warnings, and a reminder that lecturing does not promote student learning (hands on, student-centered, active learning yields more substantive results).

[Charity · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text offers a refreshing spin on understanding how people learn. The significance of motivation seemed to be hidden from the author’s argument, but the rest of the ideas presented were salient. I recommend this book for anyone who needs an overview on learning theory or who is looking for a fresh perspective on the topic.

[Todd Cheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are nuggets in the narrative for the mid level management too. In post pandemic work environment I am struggling to both myself find intellectual growth in the workplace and help connect learning with the team I support. This book shares research and models to help spark that growth. The author does this unfolding his own learning journey and a lifetime of research in the topic.

[Renz Nikka De Gula · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is quite dense, but I found it to be a valuable resource as a new professor. I appreciate how Eyler included different theorists who are important to pedagogy. I also really like how he reminds us that teaching doesn't need to be (and shouldn't be) boring. We should include active learning.

[Lorette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great read that incorporates research from psychology, sociology, and other disciplines to illustrate how humans learn supported by classroom-ready practices from higher education. Research and practice are separated into themes of Curiosity, Sociability, Emotion, Authenticity, and Failure.

[Vanessa Baird]

This is a really interesting take on learning. it was particularly persuasive about teaching as correcting misinformation or misunderstanding - which requires that we understand what students misunderstand. That will make a difference in my teaching.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

A synthesis of research on what factors seem to help humans learn (curiosity, sociality, emotion, authenticity, failure); Provides a pretty decent framework for thinking about designing or redesigning classes; Like that it is focused on college teaching

[Allison Morway · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this! I can’t wait to use what I’ve learned and continue growing as an instructor.

[Rob O'Lynn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really excellent discussion about how we learn. My only critique, as seems to be a continuing critique of marketplace writing, is that the content weighs toward example rather than application.

[Neregauzak]

2021/06/08

[Seth · Rating 5 out of 5]

SO helpful! Anyone in education (participant or instructor) teacher, preacher, professor…ALL of us, should read this!

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely required read for anyone in higher education

[Jennifer C · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good resource for those teaching adult learners.

[Ritvik Thakur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laying out principles for teaching and learning that matter. Took a lot of notes, and it sparked a lot of ideas that I'll try and incorporate.

[Pete Edgar · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the active learning strategies and felt like there was robust research backing for many of his points.

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a relatively new professor in a creative field, this book was illuminating and undercut many intuitive impulses. As a broader study of consciousness, beyond just teaching, this work is inspired.