"Your brain is completely insensitive to your desire to learn."
Dan Willingham is a Professor of cognitive science at the University of Virginia, and the author of Outsmart Your Brain: Why Learning Is Hard and How You Can Make It Easy, his most recent book.
Dan's book spoke to me for it's deep pragmatism in this field of human learning, and it is the word that emerges for me, out of this conversation. Dan's work bridges the learnings of cognitive science with the real world implications, and possibilities, of these findings, and their transformational potential on learning, and teaching.
Topics covered include why the brain is not really built to think, the missing piece in teaching students how to learn, on why eduction elicits so much emotion, and the joy of walking in solitude.
As for rest, respite and contemplation, it's a journey that is unfolding for Dan, and his openness in this conversation, really moved me. We also talk stamp collecting. I'll leave it there for now...
Without further ado I bring you, Dan Willingham, author of Outsmart Your Brain.
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