Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning

The Small Teaching movement began in 2016, when this unassuming book made a simple argument to college faculty: a growing body of research on human learning was pointing us to small, manageable changes we could make to our teaching that would have a significant positive impact on student learning. Since its publication in 2016, higher education faculty around the world have embraced its message of empowerment and hope, and used its theoretically grounded, highly practical recommendations to spark ongoing change for their students. Although the book was written with an audience of college faculty in mind, it has been embraced by secondary educators as well, especially those interested in preparing their students to succeed in higher education.

The book makes its case for small teaching changes by introducing nine learning strategies that have been demonstrated as highly effective for college and secondary students in the research literature. Each chapter introduces one of those strategies with an engaging, personal narrative or example from the author’s life or classroom; offers an easy-to-read theoretical overview of its mechanics; and then provides multiple practical examples of how that principle could be implemented in practical, easy-to-implement strategies for course design and classroom practice.