For instance, instead of sticking to one study location, simply alternating the room where a person studies improves retention. So does studying distinct but related skills or concepts in one sitting, rather than focusing intensely on a single subject.

As Robert A. Bjork, a psychologist at the University of California, reported in the New York Times, these principles have been known for some time but schools and businesses don’t pick them up.

Take the notion that people have specific learning styles, that some are “visual learners” and others are “auditory learners”; some are “left-brain” students, others “right-brain.” Recent research found almost zero support for such ideas. “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing,” the researchers concluded. Ditto for teaching styles. According to the researchers, “We have yet to identify the common threads between teachers who create a constructive learning atmosphere.”

But individual learning is another matter, and psychologists have discovered that some of the most hallowed advice on study habits is flat wrong. For instance, many study skills courses insist that students find a specific place, a study room or a quiet corner of the library, to take their work. The research finds just the opposite. In one classic 1978 experiment, psychologists found that college students who studied a list of 40 vocabulary words in two different rooms—one windowless and cluttered, the other modern, with a view on a courtyard—did far better on a test than students who studied the words twice, in the same room. Later studies have confirmed the finding, for a variety of topics.

The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and background sensations at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious. It colors the terms of the Versailles Treaty with the wasted fluorescent glow of the dorm study room or the elements of the Marshall Plan with the jade-curtain shade of the willow tree in the backyard. Forcing the brain to make multiple associations with the same material may, in effect, give that information more neural scaffolding.

“What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting,” said Dr. Bjork.

Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting—alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language—seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time. Musicians have known this for years, and their practice sessions often include a mix of scales, musical pieces and rhythmic work. Many athletes, too, routinely mix their workouts with strength, speed and skill drills.

Today’s HR Tip: Don’t accept all the stuff you have heard on learning styles at face value. Keep an eye open for further research in this field. Advise learners to vary their study habits as described above—they may just remember what you have been teaching them!

Andragogy tells us that adults generally develop a deep seated need to be self-directed. Thus, when adults find themselves in a situation in which they are not allowed to be self-directing, they tend to be resentful and resistant. For trainers this translates as:

1. Adults need to be involved in the planning and evaluation of their own instruction.
2. Experience (including mistakes) provides the basis for learning activities.
3. Adults are most interested in learning topics that have immediate relevance to their job or personal life.
4. Adult learning is problem-centered rather than content-oriented.

The bottom line—trainers need to adopt a facilitative style that involves people in their own learning and not think of themselves as simply purveyors of training content.