Learning About Learning with Andy Matuschak

For anyone who aspires to teach well, it is worth considering how we learn, and whether we learn well. I recently watched a fascinating interview of Andy Matuschak with Dwarkesh Patel and it left me considering my own learning habits.

For those aren’t familiar, Andy Matuschak was formerly a software engineer at Apple who helped to build iOS. He also worked for Khan Academy and is now an independent researcher developing tools for learning.

It was fascinating to hear his insight and personal learning practices. I ran across him first in a video wherein he was trying to demonstrate his learning practices by studying Quantum Physics with very little background in the subject.¹

One of the things that came up in both videos was the idea of deliberate practice. Matuschak approaches study and knowledge skills as though they are problems to be solved through planning and iteration. He reads and identifies each unfamiliar concept and makes a note to be repeatedly studied using his own custom spaced repetition software. His area of focus is extremely fine-grained.

I think one of Matuschak’s main insights is that people don’t treat learning seriously enough. He notes that people tend to forget what they read because they fail to rehearse the knowledge. In other cases, learners may not know what they need to know in order to understand a subject, or they might exhaust themselves in planning and tracking down the right sources or texts.

Matuschak notes how metacognition (thinking about how to learn) draws on the same cognitive resources necessary for learning, and suggests outsourcing some metacognitive tasks by using curricula, tutors or textbooks, particularly in unfamiliar or demanding fields.

Another key point for Matuschak is how memory tends to be undervalued. Educators sometimes disparage rote learning, but he notes that having relevant facts at appropriate times can be very useful. Memory can help to facilitate creativity, particulary the kinds of connective leaps where a new idea combines serendipitously with an old thought that ‘pops into your head’. Memory is also important for being able converse about most any subject, and of course for problem-solving and understanding. He advocates for deliberate note-taking and also spaced repetition memory practice in subjects that learners need to understand deeply. Matuschak’s website also contains a linked repository of his own evergreen notes, basically a continuously-updated and ever-expanding inventory of his knowledge, interests and understanding.

Matuschak also talks about schools and he notes that much of school-based education is focused on helping the bottom quartile of learners. It is assumed that students with greater ability will be fine or figure things out for themselves. Instead, Matuschak focuses on what is possible with a highly-capable, maximally-motivated learner. What kinds of tools could push that person’s learning ability even further. He focuses on user experience and interface, as you might expect from someone with a background in software engineering.

In some sense, part of my own project when starting this blog is similar: to force myself to better process and record my own thoughts through writing them. I spend a fair amount of my discretionary time doing activities that I would broadly categorize as learning and it is important to me that my time isn’t wasted.

As a teacher, Matuschak’s methods probably aren’t aimed at many but the most motivated and able students, but they are extremely relevant for teachers. I recently was listening to Alessandro Gelmi from the University of Bozen-Bolzano talk about his experience teaching Italian as a foreign language to German-speaking students:

Like many early-service teachers, Gelmi was dedicated, enthusiastic and passionate. He developed rapport, tried all sorts of methods and the kids wanted to learn but still they made disappointing progress. He was frustrated and went on to study education. Gelmi’s conclusion after years of research was that he failed because he simply didn’t know enough about the subject matter- this from a highly educated and passionate Italian native speaker!

As teachers we need to know our content so well that we can communicate our love for it. We need to be able to learn deeply and thoroughly (and frequently) so that we can take every new topic and break it apart to find the specific aspects that will best exhibit the wondrous complexity of that topic and its place in the wider world.

Next time I will take a look at my own personal learning habits and reflect on how they could be applied to teaching.

1. Matuschak did co-author a book called Quantum Country with Michael Nielsen, however Nielsen was the one with expertise in physics.