Psychologists and educators have studied learning for well over 100 years, and we still don’t know the specific conditions that result in learning. If we did, then teaching would be easy. A teacher would simply recreate the specific conditions, and students would always learn. We may not know exactly how people learn, but we do know a lot about the conditions that make learning more or less likely to occur. We know that learning is a complex interaction of multiple factors, such as a student’s prior knowledge of a topic, their learning strategies, and the mental effort required for learning (Chew & Cerbin, 2021). We know that teaching is incredibly complex and defies simple, one-size-fits-all pedagogical approaches. Nuthall (2007) described teaching as a process of constant adaptation to dynamic learning conditions. To try to capture the complexity of teaching and help guide teachers, my colleague Bill Cerbin and I outlined a framework of nine cognitive challenges that teachers must address successfully for students to learn. In this column, I am going to discuss the challenge of creating a productive academic mindset. The goal of creating a mindset for academic success is something teachers can begin addressing on the first day of class.
