Writing this book was truly a joint enterprise. The authors collaborated over a three year period in a most productive way. Many people and organizations contributed helpful support and insights.
We acknowledge the James S. McDonnell Foundation of St. Louis, Missouri, for their grant “Applying Cognitive Psychology to Enhance Educational Practice” awarded to Henry Roediger and Mark McDaniel, with Henry Roediger as the principal investigator. This grant supported eleven researchers who collaborated for ten years on research to translate cognitive science into educational science. Many points in our book come from the research the McDonnell Foundation supported. We thank the other nine members of our group, from whom we have learned much: Robert and Elizabeth Bjork of the University of California at Los Angeles, John Dunlosky and Katherine Rawson at Kent State University, Larry Jacoby of Washington University, Elizabeth Marsh of Duke University, Kathleen McDermott of Washington University, Janet Metcalfe at Columbia University, and Hal Pashler at the University of California at San Diego. We particularly thank John Bruer, president of the McDonnell Foundation, and Susan Fitzpatrick, vice president, for their guidance and support, as well as the James S. McDonnell family.
We would also like to thank the Cognition and Student Learning Program of the Institute for Education Sciences (U.S. Department of Education) for a series of grants that have aided research by Roediger and McDaniel in school settings, in collaboration with Kathleen McDermott. The work we conducted in Illinois at Columbia Middle School and Columbia High School would not have been possible without this support. We thank our program officers at CASL, Elizabeth Albro, Carol O’Donnell, and Erin Higgins. In addition, we thank teachers, principals, and students at the Columbia Schools, in particular, Roger Chamberlain (principal at Columbia Middle School when we began our research there) and Patrice Bain, the first teacher who pioneered implementation of our research in a classroom. Other teachers who permitted us to conduct experiments in their classrooms include Teresa Fehrenz, Andria Matzenbacher, Michelle Spivey, Ammie Koch, Kelly Landgraf, Carleigh Ottwell, Cindy McMullan, Missie Steve, Neal O’Donnell and Linda Malone. A great group of research assistants has helped with this research, including Kristy Duprey, Lindsay Brockmeier, Barbie Huelser, Lisa Cressey, Marco Chacon, Anna Dinndorf, Laura D’Antonio, Jessye Brick, Allison Obenhaus, Meghan McDoniel, and Aaron Theby. Pooja Agarwal has been instrumental in this project every step of the way, leading the research on a day-to-day basis while she was a graduate student at Washington University and then overseeing the project as a postdoctoral fellow. Many of the practical suggestions in the book came from our classroom experiments.
Dart NeuroScience of San Diego, California, supported our research on memory athletes through a generous grant. Roediger served as principal investigator and was joined by David Balota, Kathleen McDermott, and Mary Pyc. We tested several memory athletes in this project, and we appreciate James Paterson for letting us use his story in the book. We are especially grateful for the support of Tim Tully, Dart’s chief scientific officer, who first approached us with the idea of identifying individuals with highly superior memory abilities.
Our granting agencies were generous in their support, but we provide the usual disclaimer that the opinions expressed in this book are those of the authors and do not represent the views of the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, or Dart NeuroScience.
Roediger and McDaniel would like to thank the many students and postdoctoral fellows who worked with us and helped with the projects described in this book. Graduate students who worked with Roediger on relevant projects during this period are Pooja Agarwal, Andrew Butler, Andy DeSoto, Michael Goode, Jeff Karpicke, Adam Putnam, Megan Smith, Victor Sungkhasettee, and Franklin Zaromb. Postdoctoral fellows included Pooja Agarwal, Jason Finley, Bridgid Finn, Lisa Geraci, Keith Lyle, David McCabe, Mary Pyc, and Yana Weinstein. Research staff that worked on the project include Jane McConnell, Jean Ortmann-Sotomayor, Brittany Butler, and Julie Gray. Mark McDaniel would like to thank his students who worked on research pertinent to this book: Aimee Calendar, Cynthia Fadler, Dan Howard, Khuyen Nguyen, Mathew Robbins, and Kathy Wildman, and his research-assistant staff, Michael Cahill, Mary Derbish, Yiyi Liu, and Amanda Meyer. His postdoctoral fellows who worked on related projects were Jeri Little, Keith Lyle, Anaya Thomas, and Ruthann Thomas.
We are indebted to those individuals from many walks of life who shared their stories of learning and remembering to help us illustrate the important ideas in this book. We thank Ken Barber at Jiffy Lube International, Bonnie Blodgett, Mia Blundetto, Derwin Brown, Matt Brown, Patrick Castillo, Vince Dooley, Mike Ebersold, Nathaniel Fuller, Catherine Johnson, Sarah Flanagan, Bob Fletcher, Alex Ford, Steve Ford, David Garman, Jean Germain, Lucy Gerold, Bruce Hendry, Michael Hoffman, Peter Howard, Kiley Hunkler, Thelma Hunter, Erik Isaacman, Karen Kim, Young Nam Kim, Nancy Lageson, Douglas Larsen, Stephen Madigan, Kathy Maixner, Michael Matthews, Kathleen McDermott, Michael McMurchie and Rick Wynveen at Renewal by Andersen, Jeff Moseley, James Paterson and his students at Bellerbys College (Stephanie Ong, Victoria Gevorkova, and Michela Seong-Hyun Kim), Bill Sands, Andy Sobel, Annette Thompson and Dave Nystrom at Farmers Insurance, Jon Wehrenberg, Mary Pat Wenderoth, and Michael Young. We thank Lorri Freifeld at Training magazine for introducing us to the leaders of exemplary corporate training programs.
Several people kindly read earlier drafts of the book or selected chapters. We thank Ellen Brown, Kathleen McDermott, Henry Moyers, Thomas Moyers, and Steve Nelson. As is customary in the sciences, five of our peers from the scientific community were recruited by our publisher to review the book anonymously in manuscript: we thank the three who have subsequently identified themselves–Bob Bjork, Dan Schacter, and Dan Willingham–and the two whose identities remain unknown to us.
Finally, we thank Elizabeth Knoll, our editor, and the professional staff at Harvard University Press for their insights, guidance, and devotion to the quality of this book.