I was not the person this book was written for. I was expecting one thing and I got something completely different

<i>Evidence-Informed Learning Design: Creating Training to Improve Performance</i> by Mirjam Neelen and Paul A. Kirschner argues that talent development professionals should rely on what's known in learning science and not what's the latest fad in corporate training. The publisher gave me the opportunity to read this book prior to publication, but the review is completely my own.

First, I completely agree with Neelen and Kirschner's general tenet that often fads drive what happens in corporate learning programs. Second, I also agree that talent development professionals should look to learning science as a way to improve learning experiences and learning outcomes. However, I don't necessarily agree that this is a new concept or that the profession is "immature," because " "The main reason is that we’re insufficiently aware of the evidence we can draw upon to design great learning experiences. Another reason is that sometimes we don’t know how to judge the available evidence." Admittedly, I'm a university professor who specializes in talent development and has written a textbook in this area myself. As a longtime member of both the Association for Talent Development and the International Society for Performance Improvement, I've heard discussions about evidence-based learning practices for a long time now.

Beyond this area of contention, I think the book is pretty good. One of the parts I really liked about the book, which is different from similar books on this topic, is that they do talk about evaluating research. I really appreciated the discussion that not all research is the same and that it's important to differentiate between high- and low-quality research.

Probably my favorite feature of the book are the numerous case studies integrated to really help readers fully understand and apply the book's content. Often books like this are focused on the research and not necessarily demonstrating how this could be applied to real-world learning scenarios.

Overall, I think this is a book and would recommend to anyone either studying talent development academically or is working in the industry. There is a lot of great information within this book that can definitely improve learning outcomes, which should be the goal of any talent development professional.

These books are amazing: they're useful, well written and full of ideas for anyone working in L&D.
It was an informative read that I strongly recommend.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.