Skip to main content
CONTACT

Wired for Brilliance, coming soon.

A page-turning tour of your own brain—how you learn, how it shapes who you become, and what it means for the future of our schools, workplaces, and even our own backyards.

Chris Sturgis and Sydney Schaef offer a refreshing look at the leading research about learning, across the domains of cognition, emotion, and motivation.

Busy parents, board members, educators, and workforce learning leaders—this one's for you.

Praise for Wired for Brilliance

A breakthrough. Updates our thinking about organized education better than anything l've read in years. A must read for all parents, students and citizens.
Seth Godin
Author, Stop Stealing Dreams
This book offers an accessible invitation to consider learning as a deeply human process—shaped by emotion, relationships, and the search for meaning. By foregrounding the integration of feeling and thinking, it contributes to a growing conversation about what it means to support adolescents in developing not only knowledge, but purpose.
Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Director, Center for Affective Neuroscience, Development, Learning and Education (CANDLE)
University of Southern California
Wired for Brilliance is an essential read for every school board member and policy maker who wants to put students first. Drawing on the latest research about learning, this book translates complex findings into clear, actionable insights that can shape smarter, evidence-based education policies. Whether you're setting budgets, designing curricula, or rethinking school structures, this is the informed foundation every decision deserves.
Dr. Lucy L. Pane
Teacher educator and former school board member

Why Wired for Brilliance?

After leaving CompetencyWorks, I kept circling a single question: How do we accelerate education’s diffusion of innovation? We’ve got a powerful cadre of innovators and early adopters, but what about the early and late majority?

Replication via a step-by-step map often yields mediocre results. So what’s the snag? Replication without the learning sciences just doesn’t work. Think about it: Innovators design with clear outcomes powered by the learning sciences. But replication focuses on program and practice. Yes, the research is definitely seeping into schools—most have piloted at least one program aligned with it. But the hard work of system-wide alignment, moves far too slowly and everyone feels the cost.

Sydney Schaef and I wrote Wired for Brilliance (working title) to unlock the learning sciences by boiling it down to clear, actionable language. We cover cognition, emotion, and motivation, or Head, Heart, and Heat, in plain terms. The zone of proximal development becomes Learning Zone. And systems redesign starts with the ABCs of Learning: agency, belonging, and competence. Out with education jargon; in with a shared language for a shared vision.

Wired for Brilliance reveals how much traditional schooling can inhibit learning—and helps more educators, parents, and system leaders see the possibilities for what school can be. When everyone understands how we learn, we’ll have the momentum for heavy-lift systems change where every kids will discover their brilliance.
— Chris Sturgis

Related Blogs

VISIT THE BLOG

Stay Updated

Join the community to receive updates and resources related to the Wired for Brilliance.
Resources and insights about how schools and districts are using learning science to create lasting improvements.
About Blog Book