Reviews for The nature and conditions of learning

The average rating for The nature and conditions of learning based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-06-20 00:00:00 Justin Logan This book was academic, yet highly readable. It reviewed various recent neuroscientific studies and how their findings have been misinterpreted to place a disproportionate emphasis on brain development in the first three years of life, disregarding what happens later. While the first three years are important and there are so-called critical periods for certain species-wide skills such as seeing and speaking, development continues until adolescence, and even adults can learn new skills.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-11-30 00:00:00 Therese Sutherland Recently (late 2013) several books have come out debunking the exaggerated misinterpretations of "brain science." This book was way ahead of its time in 1999. The author does what science writers should do, going back to the original research papers to see what the evidence shows. Unfortunately, the writing style is not great, with tons of repetition, etc. This is a shame because overall, he makes a convincing case that zero-3 pronouncements and policies are not based on much. Of course, the bigger issue is that the "brain science" doesn't really matter for policy. What matters is what actually works. We need to look at evidence from studies of interventions and their outcomes, regardless of the theories behind them. Here the picture is murkier, with things like the Abecedarian program showing some impact but not enough to impress the author: the thing is a few IQ points isn't much at an individual level but shifting the average IQ for a population by a few points does make a big deal. The test of his general hypothesis would have been to show that good programs that start after age 3 (at school age, for example) can erase differences between rich and poor kids as well as or better than 0-3 programs, but he doesn't really get into that.