Acknowledgments

This textbook stands on the shoulders of decades of research by cognitive scientists, educational psychologists, and learning scientists whose work has transformed our understanding of how humans learn.

We are particularly indebted to the researchers whose work forms the scientific backbone of this book: Hermann Ebbinghaus, whose forgetting curve studies in the 1880s launched the experimental study of memory; Fergus Craik and Robert Lockhart, whose levels-of-processing framework reshaped how we think about encoding; Robert Bjork and Elizabeth Bjork, whose concept of "desirable difficulties" is one of the most important ideas in learning science; Henry Roediger III, Jeffrey Karpicke, and Mark McDaniel, whose research on retrieval practice gave us the testing effect; John Dunlosky, whose landmark meta-analysis sorted study strategies by effectiveness; K. Anders Ericsson, whose research on deliberate practice changed how we think about expertise; Carol Dweck, whose growth mindset research (alongside ongoing debates about its replication) has influenced millions of learners; and Barry Zimmerman, whose self-regulated learning model provides the framework for metacognitive skill development.

We owe a special debt to the authors whose books inspired the voice and approach of this text: Barbara Oakley, whose A Mind for Numbers proved that learning science could be communicated warmly and accessibly; Peter Brown, Henry Roediger, and Mark McDaniel, whose Make It Stick set the gold standard for evidence-based learning advice; Susan Ambrose and colleagues, whose How Learning Works organized decades of research into actionable principles; Saundra McGuire, whose Teach Students How to Learn demonstrated the transformative power of metacognitive instruction; and James Clear, whose Atomic Habits showed that system-building could be both rigorous and practical.

This is an open-source textbook, and we are grateful to all contributors who improve it through corrections, additions, translations, and accessibility enhancements. Education should be free and accessible to everyone.

Finally, this book is for every student who has ever felt "not smart enough." You are smart enough. You just needed better tools.