How learning works — cognitive science fundamentals

Cognitive science has produced a body of knowledge about how new information enters the mind, is processed, stored, and made retrievable — and most of it contradicts the intuitions that guide conventional education. Learning is not transfer but construction: the mind builds understanding by connecting new material to existing structure, and without that connection, information does not persist. Understanding how learning actually works — encoding, working memory limits, retrieval practice, interleaving — transforms both how we teach and how we study.