Papers & Studies
The research itself
Twenty nine papers and studies on how skill is really built, each with a plain note on what it found.
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The Research, In Plain English
The papers, studies, and books behind the methods, plus Gregg's own writing and interviews. Every item has a short note on why it matters.
Why It Matters
Good ideas are only useful if you can use them
Cognitive and behavioral science quietly figured out how people really learn, but most of it stays locked in journals, far from teachers and students.
This is the reading list Gregg built over more than ten years of digging. Papers and studies first, then books, then his own articles, talks, and interviews. Each one has a plain line on what it says and why it is worth your time.
The Library
Start with these
Four ways in. Pick the one that fits how you like to learn, then follow it wherever it goes.
Books
Start with three books
Talent is Overrated, Willpower, and Mindset. Read those three and the rest of the list makes sense.
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His writing and talks
Articles, presentation handouts, podcasts, and interviews you can read or listen to right now.
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No More Plateaus
The brain hack you can use in your very next practice session.
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The research behind the methods
Peer reviewed papers, plus a few articles worth reading. Start with Ericsson, 1993, then follow what interests you.
The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance
Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Romer. Psychological Review 100.3, 1993. The paper that first described the path to world class performance. Ericsson updated it later in The Cambridge Handbook, but the 1993 version still holds up. Read this one first.
The Strategy Specific Nature of Improvement
Delaney, Reder, Staszewski, and Ritter. Psychological Science 9.1, 1998. The first study to show that changing your strategy resets the progress curve, so you start improving quickly again.
Unleashing Talent
Iznaola, Ricardo. Guitar Journal No. 5, European Guitar Teacher's Association, 1994. A performer and teacher who argued against the talent myth before the research caught up. Worth reading even if you never touch a guitar.
What Makes a Musician
Posner, Michael. Guitar Journal No. 5, European Guitar Teacher's Association, 1994. A leading education researcher makes the case that great musicians are made, not born, and shows how it happens.
Electrically Driven Insulation in the Central Nervous System
Araque, Alfonso, and Maria Navarrete. Science 333:6049, 2011. A short introduction to the Wake paper below. Read it first if the science gets dense.
Control of Local Protein Synthesis and Initial Events in Myelination by Action Potentials
Wake, Hiroaki, Philip R. Lee, and Douglas Fields. Science 333.6049, 2011. Evidence that firing a signal down a nerve makes the brain add insulation right where you used it. This is what practice does, physically.
How Arts Training Improves Attention and Cognition
The Dana Foundation. Cerebrum, 2009. Posner argues that focus trained in the arts carries over to other subjects. He wanted hard data, and the 2014 Jentzsch study finally supplied it.
Training Young Minds Not to Wander
Murray, Bridget. Monitor on Psychology 34.9, 2003. A short piece on Michael Posner's work training attention. The point Gregg makes often is here: you cannot only teach content, you have to teach process.
Problem Discovery, Divergent Thinking, and the Creative Process
Runco, Mark A., and Shawn M. Okuda. Journal of Youth and Adolescence 17.3, 1988. A small study that pulls apart the pieces of creative work in teenagers, including how they find the problem in the first place.
Talent Development vs. Schooling
Bloom, Benjamin S., and Lauren Sosniak. Educational Leadership 39.2, 1981. Bloom studied more than 120 people who reached the top of six fields, then compared how they learned with how schools teach. The gap explains a lot, including the dropout rate.
Attention Training and Attention State Training
Tang, Yi-Yuan, and Michael Posner. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 13.5, 2009. A tour of the ways you can train focus, from classic methods to mindfulness to time outdoors. Highly recommended.
Brain Changes in the Development of Expertise
Hill, Nicole M., and Walter Schneider. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2006. What actually changes in the brain as a skill is learned, with fMRI images. As you get good, the brain packs the job into a smaller area. Using more of your brain is not always better.
Development and Adaptation of Expertise
Zimmerman, Barry J. The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance, 2006. Getting through the hard early stage of a skill builds the drive to keep going. Useful for any parent pushing a kid through homework or practice.
Improved Effectiveness of Performance Monitoring in Amateur Instrumental Musicians
Jentzsch, Ines, Anahit Mkrtchian, and Nayantara Kansal. Neuropsychologia 52, 2014. The long awaited data behind the link between music study and school performance. Playing an instrument strengthens executive function, and that carries into other subjects.
Neuroethics, Neuroeducation, and Classroom Teaching
Hardiman, Rinne, Gregory, and Yarmolinskaya. Neuroethics, 2011. How to tell real brain research from the hype that gets sold to schools. Useful now that everyone is selling brain based anything.
Making Things Hard on Yourself, but in a Good Way
Bjork, E. L., and R. A. Bjork. Psychology and the Real World, 2011. Learning that feels easy usually is not working. This explains why the harder path is the one that sticks.
Does Teaching Kids To Get 'Gritty' Help Them Get Ahead?
Smith, Tovia. NPR, 2014. A look at grit in schools, with nods to Angela Duckworth and Carol Dweck. Good information, but do not take the point about mistakes too far.
Neuroscience for Educators: What Are They Seeking, and What Are They Finding?
Hook, Cayce J., and Martha J. Farah. Neuroethics, 2012. A small study of what teachers look for in brain science and what they walk away with. It shows how wide the gap is between the research and the classroom.
Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Executive Functioning in Musicians and Non-Musicians
Zuk, Benjamin, Kenyon, and Gaab. PLoS ONE 9(6), 2014. One of the most careful studies linking music training to stronger focus. It warns that cutting music to raise test scores can backfire.
Why Minimal Guidance During Instruction Does Not Work
Kirschner, Paul A., John Sweller, and Richard E. Clark. Educational Psychologist 41.2, 2006. Fifty years of evidence that leaving learners to discover it on their own works worse than guided teaching. Practicing a profession is not the same as learning to practice it.
Neuroplasticity: The Brain's Ability to Change Itself
Thompson, Gary. Lukenotes 14.2, 2010. The story of brain plasticity from 1890 to 2010 in under 900 words. A great first read on the subject for anyone.
You Think You Know What Teachers Do. Right? Wrong.
Strauss, Valerie. The Washington Post, 2014. A trained teacher who left for law explains why sitting in a classroom as a student does not make you an expert on teaching.
Learning Styles, Concepts and Evidence
Pashler, McDaniel, Rohrer, and Bjork. Psychological Science in the Public Interest 9.3, 2008. A review of the evidence for learning styles. The short version is that people hold beliefs about how they learn that are often wrong.
Do Learners Really Know Best? Urban Legends in Education
Kirschner, Paul A., and Jeroen J. G. van Merrienboer. Educational Psychologist 48.3, 2013. Digital natives, multitaskers, learning styles, and students as self teachers all get tested here. Most of it does not hold up.
Autonomous Self-Control Is Less Depleting
Muraven, Mark. 2008. Self-control runs down like a battery, but it drains slower when you choose the work yourself. That has real weight for how we motivate students.
The Learning Curve
Ritter, F. E., and L. J. Schooler. International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, 2002. A clear overview of the power law, strategy changes, and why progress feels fast at first and then slows.
Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America's Future Through Creative Schools
President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The expected case for funding the arts, plus a genuinely useful description of how creativity works that Gregg uses when he teaches it.
Cortical Map Reorganization Enabled by Nucleus Basalis Activity
Kilgard, Michael P., and Michael M. Merzenich. Science 279, 1998. Shows the switch in the brain that lets learning rewire it. After childhood, intense focus is what turns that switch on.
The Role of Selective Attention on Academic Foundations
Stevens, Courtney, and Daphne Bavelier. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience 2.1, 2011. Links focus to early school skills and names the brain areas doing the work. Important if you teach young people.
As a psychologist, I can say he is certainly on the money when it comes to incorporating the latest neuropsychological research findings into his work.
Gary Radler
Clinical Psychologist, Australia
Books
Read these first
The first three books are the jumping off point for everything else. After that, start anywhere that interests you.
Talent is Overrated
Colvin, Geoff. Penguin, 2010. Gregg's single best pick on what talent really is, why we get it wrong, and what that means for teaching. Scholarly and still an entertaining read.
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength
Baumeister, Roy F., and John Tierney. Penguin, 2011. How self-control works in the brain and how it gets trained. One of the three must reads on this list.
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Dweck, Carol. Random House, 2006. Three decades of research on why mistakes and failure scare people away from learning. You will recognize it in other people and probably in yourself.
Make It Stick
Brown, Roediger III, and McDaniel. A teacher's manual for retention and retrieval. A bit technical, but the methods in chapter 8 can be used right away. Expect to look worse before you get much better.
The Little Book of Talent
Coyle, Daniel. Bantam, Random House, 2012. Short entries on the specific things great coaches and teachers do to build skill fast. An owner's manual, and an invaluable one.
The Talent Code
Coyle, Daniel. Bantam Dell, Random House, 2009. Coyle traces all human improvement to one biological process, myelin. Research published since 2011 has backed up the core of it.
The Genius in All of Us
Shenk, David. Anchor Books, Random House, 2010. Nature times nurture instead of nature versus nurture, plus a good first look at epigenetics.
The Power of Habit
Duhigg, Charles. Random House, 2012. How habits form and how to change them. Practical for your own work and for teaching other people.
Outliers: The Story of Success
Gladwell, Malcolm. Little, Brown and Company, 2008. The most fun read on the list and the least scientific. The section on Canadian hockey players and the talent myth is worth the price by itself.
Good Business Leadership: Flow, and the Making of Meaning
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Penguin, 2003. Flow is that state where hours pass like minutes while you work. This one applies it to groups. Give it time to sink in.
The Willpower Instinct
McGonigal, Kelly. Avery, Penguin, 2012. A good companion to Willpower, with week long exercises you can actually try.
The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance
Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich, and Hoffman, editors. Cambridge, 2006. Over 900 pages of peer reviewed studies on how expertise is built. Not a light read, but it is organized so you can pick the chapters you need.
The Brain That Changes Itself
Doidge, Norman. Viking, Penguin, 2007. The history of brain plasticity, from fringe idea to core science. The part about the nucleus basalis is worth it on its own.
From Gregg
His own writing and talks
Articles, presentation handouts, podcasts, and interviews. All free, all yours to use.
Article
Why Music Education Matters in Academics
First published in The American String Teacher. What music study really does for learning, which is not what most people think.
Open PDF →Presentation
My Dog Ate My Talent: General Faculty
The full handout for parents, administrators, and general faculty. High efficiency learning, what talent means, and how to do the work.
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My Dog Ate My Talent: Music Teachers and Students
The same talk written for music teachers and their students, with examples from the practice room.
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My Dog Ate My Talent: Sports Coaches and Players
The version for coaches and athletes. Same science, aimed at training and competition.
Open PDF →Podcast
Musicality Now: How to Learn Like a Genius
Gregg takes the research on how the brain learns and puts it to work in lessons and classrooms.
Listen →Interview
Learning, Competence, and Talent
Practical methods backed by research and tested on real students for years, from Musical U.
Read →Interview
Effective Practice: Lessons from Neuroscience and Psychology
Why Gregg does not believe in natural talent, and what he teaches instead.
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Gregg's Video Essays
One idea at a time, short enough to watch and use the same day.
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The point is not to collect ideas, it is to use them. Start with the free guide.
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