The New York Times is reporting the death of Chaser, a dog who changed the way we think about canine cognition.
We used to think that dogs could learn a handful of words, especially if they got treats afterwards.
Chaser learned over 1000 words — yes, 1000. And, she learned them not because she got treats, but because she enjoyed playing.
Importantly, Chaser learned not only nouns, but verbs. Even prepositions!
The video below shows one of Chaser’s most impressive challenges. In it, Neil DeGrasse Tyson lays down several toys that Chaser already knows. He also adds a new toy: a stuffed image of Charles Darwin.
What will Chaser do when Tyson asks her to “get Darwin”? Will she be able to figure out that the name she hasn’t heard before goes with the toy she hasn’t seen before?
Parents begin teaching children well before schooling starts. Obviously.
In fact, parents often teach children topics that we might consider “academic”: say, how to read, or, how to count.
Researchers might investigate this parental pre-school teaching with some reasonable hypotheses.
For instance:
Presumably, the way that parents teach reading influences the reading skills that their children develop.
Likewise, presumably, the way parents teach numbers and counting influences the math skills that their children develop.
Let’s ask a more counter-intuitive question:
Does the way that parents teach reading influence their children’s math skills?
In other words, does early teaching in one discipline influence understand in a different discipline?
That question might raise skeptical eyebrows, for a number of reasons. In particular, most research that asks this kind of transfer question comes back with a negative answer.
That is: learning in one discipline (say: playing piano) doesn’t usually make you better at another discipline (say: doing calculus).
Today’s Study
Researchers in England wanted to explore this surprising hypothesis. They had hundreds of parents fill out questionnaires. Some questions focused on parental approaches to reading:
How often does the child discuss the meaning of a story with an adult?
or
How often is the child encouraged to name letters or sound out words?
Other questions focused on parental approaches to numbers:
How often is the child encouraged to identify numbers in books or the environment?
They then tested the children on a variety of number and math skills.
Can you put two ducks in the pond?
Can you point to the number 5?
If two horses are on the path, and another joins them, how many horses are on the path?
So, what did they find? Did either of the reading approaches predict number and math skill? Did they predict those skills better than the parents’ direct focus on numbers and math?
The Results
Yes, and yes.
The parents’ approach to reading predicted math success better than the parents’ focus on numbers.
And, when comparing the two approaches to reading,
A focus on letters and sounds led to better math performance than did a focus on the meaning of the story.
In the dry language of research:
Only letter-sound interactions could predict statistically significant unique variance in counting, number transcoding and calculation.
What Should Parents Do?
This research pool is deep and complicated, and — as far as I can see — we’re not yet able to offer definitive parenting advice.
So, this study found that parental focus on letter-sound interactions improved later math skills.
But:
Self-reports aren’t always reliable (although they’re very common in this field), and
The differences weren’t all that great, and
We have many different goals when we teach children to read.
That is: if our only goal were to help students understand numbers, then this study would encourage parents to focus substantially on letter-sound relationships.
But, of course, we want our children to think about the meaning of stories too. That’s one way they learn important developmental lessons. That’s how they think about meaning in their own lives.
This study — especially if it’s confirmed by later research — encourages us to use several strategies to teach our children about words and reading.
And, it gives us reason to think that those multiple approaches will help them with books, and with numbers too.
We’ve posted frequently about the Mindset Controversy in recent months.
The short version goes like this:
After several decades of enthusiastic reception, Dweck’s work on fixed and growth mindset has come under increasingly skeptical scrutiny.
A well-publicized meta-analysis showed only small effects — both of mindset itself, and of growth mindset interventions.
And, some non-replications have recently added new voices to the mindset-skeptical chorus. At the beginning of this month, for example, I wrote about a non-replication in Argentina.
During these months, I’ve been wondering: when would Dweck herself respond? And, what would she say?
The TES Interview
Dweck recently gave an interview to TES in which she started to answer some of these questions.
First — unsurprisingly, to me — Dweck is open to the criticism she’s reading:
We have produced a body of evidence that says under these conditions this is what happened. We have not explored all the conditions that are possible.
Teacher feedback on what is working and not working is hugely valuable to us to tell us what we have not done and what we need to do. [emphasis added]
In other words: if people are trying mindset interventions and they’re not working, she wants to know about that. She’s not pretending those concerns aren’t real.
What Should Teachers Do?
Second, Dweck emphasizes that mindset interventions should not be one-time events.
Anything that happens just once — “a chart at the front of the room, a lecture where you define the two mindsets” — isn’t likely to work.
Instead, we should focus on “the policies and practices in the classroom. It is not about teaching the concept alone, it is much more about implementing practices that focus on growth and learning.” [emphasis added]
That is: if we tell students about the perils of fixed mindsets and the benefits of growth mindsets, we might feel like we’ve set them on the right path.
But: if our own language, classroom methods, and grading policies imply fixed mindsets, then that mindset mini-lesson won’t help very much.
I do NOT think that teachers should tell students about working memory. If we do — ironically — we’re just using up their scarce working-memory resources.
Instead, we should use our knowledge of WM to modify and hone our teaching practices.
So, too, with mindset. Our students don’t need us to tell them the theory. They need us to act on our own knowledge of the theory — to modify and hone our teaching practices.
That approach will take more sustained effort. It might not have a dramatic, immediate effect. But, given Dweck’s four decades of research, it’s much likelier to yield the subtle, long-term benefits that enhance learning.
Full disclosure: I’m not a neutral observer in this debate. I’ve just published a book on Mindset. Your opinion about my opinion might reasonably be swayed by that knowledge.
If you’re interested in such a book, you can see Rebecca Gotlieb’s review here.
In this post, we’ll see how you can identify WM overload when it does happen.
“Wait…Back Up A Step…”
Why should you even want to identify WM overload when it happens?
After all, the last post was about anticipating it. If teachers can predict when WM overload might happen, shouldn’t we just prevent it every time?
That’s a reasonable question. The answer is: not exactly.
First: students have different levels of WM capacity. So, you might anticipate overload for most of your students. But you might not get the level of WM challenge exactly right every time.
Second: you want to nudge up against WM boundaries from time to time. Remember (as we’ve discussed in MANY posts), some level of desirable difficulty improves learning.
One way to raise difficulty is to increase the WM challenge. If you don’t test WM boundaries every now and then, you might not be challenging your students enough.
And, when you do test those boundaries, you’re likely to edge over that boundary from time to time.
Going beyond WM limits is a normal part of teaching. Doing so isn’t a terrible thing.
But: doing so without a) realizing it, and b) fixing it right away — now THAT’S a terrible thing.
“Okay, How Do I Identify WM Overload?”
The easy method. Look at the student’s face. If you see a desolately blank stare, you know what just happened: WM crash.
For fun, watch this video. Unless you’re a biology teacher, you’ll feel your WM curl up like a tiny helpless rodent. You might hear it whimper. Go look in the mirror. THAT’S the face you’re looking for.
“Are There Harder Methods?”
Sure.
Working memory is a cognitive system that holds and processes information. When students struggle to do both at the same time, THAT’S WM overload.
Some examples will clarify.
If I tell students to follow these 6 instructions, they have to a) HOLD all six instructions, and b) PROCESS them one-at-a-time. If they can’t do that, that’s WM overload.
Or,
If students can’t gather information from several websites into one Word document, they’re struggling to a) PROCESS the logic of the work their doing, while b) HOLDING their place in that logic.
Or, here’s one you see almost every day.
A student raises her hand. I say: “wait just a moment,” and finish a sentence or two. When I come back to her and say “what’s your question,” she looks abashed. Sheepishly, she admits: “I forgot.”
In this case, my student had to HOLD her question. And, she had to PROCESS new information: the sentence or two that I spoke. That combination went beyond her WM limits.
Or, this one used to make me CRAZY:
A student raises his hand. I say: “wait just a moment,” and remind the class that the paper is due Friday at 3 pm, in the box outside my office.
When I come back to that student and say “what’s your question,” he earnestly asks: “When is the paper due, and where should I turn it in?”
I used to get SO MAD at that student.
But now I know, I overloaded his WM. He was HOLDING his question so hard that he couldn’t PROCESS the information I was giving. (Joseph, if you’re reading this blog, I apologize.)
Once you start looking for them, you’ll see holding while processing problems all the time.
When you see those problems, you know that your students have run out of WM.
“Got It. Anything Else?”
Let’s do one more.
Human working memory systems necessarily interact with our attention systems.
If your students are not paying attention in a way that surprises you, you might have a WM problem, not an attention problem.
That is: if you think to yourself, “They’re usually so focused during 2nd period. I wonder what’s going on today? They’re kinda off the wall… ,” stop and consider the WM demands of the work they’re doing.
They might be exhibiting an attentional symptom of a working memory problem.
Up Next: SOLUTIONS
We’ve spent lots of time ANTICIPATING and IDENTIFYING working memory problems.
In the next two posts, I’ll FINALLY talk about solving those problems.
I like a good nap. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a bad nap.
But for this blog we must ask: can naps benefit learning?
We’ve written often about the importance of a good night’s sleep for learning. But, nap sleep might not have the same benefits as nighttime sleep.
Of course, we do have suggestive studies from the sleep lab. This study, for instance, shows that naps including both slow-wave sleep and REM sleep do boost learning.
But, what happens when we test naps in school? Do we show benefits there?
In other words: do actual students learning actual school stuff from actual teachers benefit from naps at school?
A Promising Start
This study from Brazil answers those questions with a resounding YES.
Researchers had 5th graders study either history or science during the first period of the day. Some napped during the 2nd period, while others studied another topic.
Over the course of six weeks, students learned more on the days that they napped compared to the days they didn’t. On average, they scored 10% higher on the content taught pre-nap.
This finding held true for longer naps (between 30 and 60 minutes), but not shorter naps (less than 30 minutes).
Slight Hesitations
Long-time readers know that I try to be especially skeptical about research findings that I want to be true. Because I like naps so much, I’m pushing myself to be skeptical here. For that reason, I raise these questions:
First: the study includes 24 students. That’s 24 better than 0, but it’s still quite a small study. I hope researchers follow this up with a few hundred students.
Second: I wonder about cultural influences. Does napping have a role in Brazilian culture that differs from its role others? I’m not sure why cultural influences would change the benefits of napping, but I’d like to see this research replicated in other cultures.
Third: This “nap” comes quite early in the morning: from 8:10 to 9:20 AM. I would have thought post-lunch naps to be more beneficial. The researchers explain that school begins quite early in Brazil — but, the timing of naps should clearly be studied.
School Implications
Despite my attempts at skepticism, I do think we should seriously consider investigating this question at scale. If students could in fact learn information better by sleeping at school, the benefits to both health and cognition could be dramatic.
After all, I’ve been “studying” naps on my own for years, and can report highly positive results.
We’ve got many reasons to believe that technology — whatever its benefits — can distract from learning.
Heck, according to one study, the mere presence of a cellphone reduces available working memory. YIKES.
Unsurprisingly, we often hear calls for technology-free zones in schools. Laptop bans have ardent champions.
One group of researchers wanted to know: what effect might a technology ban have on the tone of the classroom?
Would such a ban complicate the students’ relationship with the professor?
Would it affect their engagement with the material?
And, of course, would it benefit their learning?
The Study
One professor taught four sections of the same Intro to Psychology course. Cellphones and laptops were forbidden from two sections, and allowed in two.
At the end of the course, researchers measured…
Students’ rapport with the professor: for instance, students rated statements like “I want to take other courses from the professor,” or “I dislike my professor’s class.”
Students’ engagement with the class: for instance, “I make sure I study on a regular basis,” or “I stay up on all assigned readings.”
Students’ grades — on 3 exams during the term, and on their overall final grade.
That’s straightforward enough. What did they find?
The Results, Part I: Hang On to your Hat
You might predict that a technology ban would improve class tone. Freed from the distractions of technology, students can directly engage with each other, with their professor, and the material.
You might instead predict that a ban would dampen class tone. When teachers forbid things, after all, students feel less powerful.
Hutcheon, Lian, and Richard found that the tech ban had no effect on the students’ rapport with the professor.
They also found that the ban resulted in lower engagement with the class. That is, on average, students in a tech-free class said they did class readings less often, and put forth less effort.
This finding held true even for students who preferred to take notes by hand: that is, students who wouldn’t be inclined to use laptops in class anyway.
The Results, Part II: Hang On Tighter
The researchers hypothesized that students in the technology-ban sections would learn more. That is: they’d have higher grades.
That’s an easy hypothesis to offer. Other researchers have found this result consistently (famously, here).
However, Hutcheon and Co. didn’t get that result. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups.
But, they got a result that did approach significance: the technology-ban sections learned less. On the final exam, for instance, the tech-ban sections averaged an 84.30, while the tech-permitted sections averaged an 88.04.
The difference between a B and a B+ might not be statistically significant…but it sure might feel significant to those who got the B.
What On Earth Is Going On?
The researchers wonder if the tone of their tech ban led to these results. To be honest, when I read the policy on “Technology Use in the Classroom,” I thought it sounded rather harsh. (For example: “Repeated infractions will result in points lost on your final grade.”)
So, perhaps a more genially-worded ban would impede class engagement less, and allow for more learning.
But, that’s just a guess.
For me, the crucial message appears in the authors’ abstract:
“[T]hese results suggest that instructors should consider the composition of students in their course prior to implementing a technology ban in the classroom.”
In other words, technology policies can’t be the same everywhere. We teach different content to different students in different schools. And, we are different kinds of teachers. No one policy will fit everywhere.
To be crystal clear: I’m NOT saying “This study shows that a tech ban produced bad results, and so teachers should never ban technology.”
I AM saying: “This study arrived at helpfully puzzling results that contradict prior research. It therefore highlights the importance of tailoring tech policies to the narrow specifics of each situation.”
As I’ve said before, teachers should follow relevant research. And, we should draw on our best experience and judgment to apply that research to our specific context.
Reasonably enough, she argues that it depends on our definition of “critical thinking.”
Let’s consider two different kinds:
Type I Critical Thinking: Within Disciplines
Type II Critical Thinking: Across Disciplines
Kaminske’s answer goes like this:
Teaching critical thinking within disciplines (type I) is hard, but can be done.
Teaching critical thinking across disciplines (type II) is really hard, and can sort of be done.
Type I: Critical Thinking Within Disciplines
When we learn a lot about any particular subject, our increased knowledge of that subject allows us to think critically about it. Especially if we practice thinking critically.
So, for example, I’ve spent most of my life acting in, directing, and studying plays. I can (and do) think critically about the theater quite often.
I can tell you why the set worked, but the costumes didn’t. I can explain why this actor’s performance suited the first act of the play but not the second. I can opine that the director’s background (she does musicals more often than plays) has shaped her interpretation of this distinctly un-musical script.
Important warning:
This expertise takes quite a long time and explicit practice to develop. In a famous foundational study from 1981, Chi et al. found that graduate students (!) in physics thought more like undergrads than like professors.
That is: after years of high-level physics study, they still weren’t proficient at seeing below the surface features of a problem to its deep structures. They hadn’t yet mastered critical thinking in their discipline.
They still needed more practice.
Type II: Critical Thinking Across Disciplines
Important warning #2: the critical thinking skills I developed in the theater almost certainly don’t apply in other disciplines.
My theater skill/knowledge certainly won’t help me categorize physics problems.
They won’t help me — in Kaminske’s example — draw expert judgments about different types and qualities of beer. (I’d need LOTS MORE beer expertise to do so. Care to join me?)
Here’s a test you might try: watch 10 minutes of a rugby match. If you — like me — don’t know nothin’ about rugby, you’re unlikely to have much insight into the game you saw.
Why? Because we need LOTS of specific knowledge about and experience in rugby to have critical rugby insights. Our ability to think critically about lesson plans doesn’t help here.
For instance, Kaminske teaches a course on Statistics and Research Methods. For the course, her students have to do a literature review, and write it up as a persuasive essay. All of her students have taken a college course on persuasive writing:
This writing course focuses on writing essays and constructing persuasive arguments. I know that my students know how to do this. I also know that they have no idea how to transfer those skills to my class.
That is: demonstrated critical thinking in one kind of analytical college writing doesn’t transfer to another discipline. She has to teach them explicitly how to do so.
To be clear: Kaminske holds out some hope about about cross-disciplinary critical thinking. Quoting research by van Gelder, she argues that some strategies — such as visualization — promote critical thinking skills in many disciplines.
And yet, that hope is tempered with caution. As a cognitive psychologist with an interest in science fiction movies, she has critical insights into the Matrix, and similar shows.
However, my ability to think critically about cognitive psychology in these movies/shows does not necessarily mean I can think critically about the cinematography or directing. …
Or that I can think critically about any number of things outside of my very specific areas of training and experiences. My critical thinking is very good in a specific domains and less good outside of that domain.
Classroom Implications
Teachers have a finite number of hours that we can spend helping our students think. We should choose the most effective strategies to get that job done.
When we want students to think critically, we can help them do so in two ways.
First: we can teach them more information and skills within a particular topic.
If I want my students to think critically about poetry, they should read a lot of poems, and learn a lot about authors and genres and analytical strategies.
Second: we can give them many opportunities to engage in critical work.
The more time they spend comparing poems, or figures of speech, or genres of love poetry, the more skilled they will become at the critical thinking necessary to do so.
We might wish that cross-disciplinary critical thinking strategies (our type II) existed. Perhaps some — like visualization — do help.
Given what we know about type II critical thinking, however, our most effective strategy will be to focus on type I.
A Final, Sheepish Confession
Honestly, I wish this conclusion weren’t true. I wish we could teach a general critical thinking skill that would apply to all realms of cognitive activity.
I really like how that sounds.
But, scholars starting with Daniel Willingham (back in Why Don’t Students Like School?) have shown that we need lots o’ disciplinary knowledge, and lots o’ specific practice.
I think I serve my students — and my readers — best by acknowledging that frank truth.
To develop our expertise, we must constantly ask these three questions:
First: As I look at my lesson plan, my syllabus, my test, my classroom, can I ANTICIPATE working memory overload?
Second: As I teach my class, can I IDENTIFY WM overload when it happens?
Third: How do I best MITIGATE or SOLVE those WM problems?
Today, let’s focus on ANTICIPATE.
#1: Information Processing
To anticipate WM overload, we should first look for places that require unusually high amounts of information processing.
Does this lesson include LOTS of new information? (Lots = “more than I usually do with this age group.”)
Does the lesson require students to put information together in new ways?
For instance: I’m working at a summer camp right now, and the assistant director told me about a lesson he had observed. A counselor was showing campers how to use a cook stove. To do so, he took about 20 minutes to show them all the steps involved.
GOOD NEWS: He showed the campers the steps correctly.
BAD NEWS: To use a cook stove, campers needed to learn lots of new information (what is a “valve regulator”?).
And, they needed to put all that information together into a new mental system.
12-year-olds simply can’t take in — and combine — that much new information. And: it’s easy to anticipate that problem.
#2: Dark Sides of the Force
As any Jedi Knight will tell you, the Force isn’t a problem. MISUSE of the Force is a problem.
So too, these two things I’m about to list aren’t bad. But, if we’re not careful about their use, we might overwhelm working memory.
Instructions: Of course, instructions help students do necessary steps, and can help them learn.
But, to follow instructions, students must remember them (that’s “holding”), and the follow them (that’s “reorganizing” and “combining”). So, following instructions take lots of WM.
If your students seem to get lost while following even simple steps, try giving just one instruction, and letting them finish that before they get the next. (More solutions in a later post.)
Choices: Choices can motivate students, and so facilitate learning.
But, when a student faces cognitive struggles, choices ADD TO WM burdens.
For example:
A student might come to me and say: “I hate this sentence — it sounds so awkward. How do I make it better?”
I could say: “Well, try using an active verb. Or, reduce the number of prepositional phrases. Or, use parallelism to organize the logic. Or, use subordination to vary the rhythm.”
Now, each one of those suggestions has merit. But, too many choices just might make the thinking harder, not easier.
#3 Don’t Miss the Obvious
Tired students have lower WM capacity. So: teenagers can do better work at 10 am than at 8 am.
Over-Stressed students have lower WM capacity. We do want students to face challenges, but not challenges they don’t think they can overcome.
Grand Recap
To ANTICIPATE WM overload:
Review your lesson plans and assessments to be sure they don’t include too much new information, or too many new combinations of information.
Look out for too many instructions and too many choices.
Pay attention to students’ energy level and stress level.
Notice, by the way, that these guidelines necessarily call on your teacherly instincts and experience.
I can say: “don’t give too many instructions,” but how many is too many? As a 5th grade math teacher, you’ll know that … well … that lesson plan had too many.
But, tomorrow’s LP has fewer instructions. Or, perhaps it has simpler instructions. The same number of instructions, if they’re simpler, might just solve the problem.
Research can’t answer that question. Research CAN tell us what to look out for in our classrooms. We have to use our experience to translate that guidance for our day-to-day work.
Mindset theory has faced increasing skepticism in recent years.
For four decades — literally!–Carol Dweck and other researchers ran thoughtful studies with thousands of students. Over and over, they found that students who think about about their work in particular ways (shorthand, “growth mindset”) do better than those who don’t (“fixed mindset”).
Like other areas of psychology (think “power poses”), Mindset Theory has been caught up in the “replication crisis.”
In brief: if Mindset theory is true, then a mindset intervention should help no matter who does the intervening. It should work when Dweck’s team does it with her students, and when I do so with mine.
If it works only for Dweck, well, that doesn’t really help the rest of us.
And, several researchers have found that various strategies didn’t replicate.
A much publicized meta-analysis, published last summer, suggests that Mindset interventions had very small effects. (I myself think this meta-analysis has been over-interpreted; you can see my analysis here.)
Ganimian had 12th graders at 100 (!) schools read a passage arguing that “persisting through difficult challenges can develop the brain.”
The 12th graders then wrote “a letter to a classmate of their choice on the three main lessons from the reading and how they might help him/her.”
To keep the growth mindset message fresh, those letters were posted in the classroom.
He compared these students to 12th graders at 102 other schools that had not used this intervention.
The results? Nada. Nothin’. Bupkis.
Specifically:
This intervention had “no effect on students’ propensity to find challenging tasks less intimidating.”
It didn’t increase the likelihood that they would pay attention in class.
By some rough/indirect measures, it didn’t have an effect on the participants’ academic success.
As Ganimian sums up his results:
In nearly all outcomes, I can rule out even small effects. …
This study suggests that the benefits of growth mindset interventions may be more challenging to replicate and scale in developing countries than anticipated.
What Should Teachers Do?
First: two clarifying points. a) Ganimian’s research hasn’t been peer reviewed and published in a journal. It is currently a working paper, hosted on his website.
And b) I myself am not a neutral source in this debate. I’ve written a book about mindset research, and so I read Ganimian’s work through that lens.
Second: I think mindset strategies are likeliest to have an effect when used all together as a consistent, unified approach to student motivation.
That is: I’m not at all surprised that a “one-shot” intervention doesn’t have big results. (Some research has found success with “one-shot” interventions; I’ve always been skeptical.)
So, if you want to use mindset research in your classrooms, don’t do just one thing, once. A motivational poster really won’t accomplish much of anything.
Instead, understand the interconnecting strategies that promote a growth-mindset climate, and use them consistently and subtly. Heck, I can even recommend a book that will show you the way.
Third: Here’s what I wrote last October:
We should not, of course, ask mindset to solve all our problems. Nor should we ask retrieval practice to solve all problems. Or short bursts of in-class exercise.
No one change fixes everything.
Instead, we should see Mindset Theory as one useful tool that can help many of our students.
In the first post of the series, we looked at the definition of working memory. Simply put, it allows brains to SHREK.
That is:
Select, Hold, REorganize, Kombine
This post considers three core ideas that we need to remember about WM.
1: Working Memory is CRUCIAL to Learning
“No academic information gets into long-term memory except through working memory.”
Simply put, students have to use WM to learn almost anything.
When students try to balance chemistry equations, they use WM.
When they sound out new words: WM.
When they compare Inca and Maya religions: WM.
When they transpose a song into a new key: yup, WM.
It is, in fact, hard to think of much that students do with low WM demands. For instance, when they sing “Happy Birthday,” that’s not much of a working memory task. After all, “Happy Birthday” is in almost everyone’s long-term memory.
Of course, if you’ve forgotten the name of the person whose birthday it is, you might feel your WM scramble when you sing: “Happy Birthday dear Hmm-Hmm, Happy Birthday to you.”
2: Working Memory is LIMITED
In the first post in this series, I asked you to alphabetize five days of the week. You could probably do that quite easily.
If, however, I asked you to alphabetize 10 months of the year, you would — almost certainly — crash before you got there. (Go ahead, try it. See what I mean?)
We have enough WM for five, but not enough for ten.
People experience WM overload frequently. For instance:
driving to an unfamiliar location requires lots of WM.
Let’s pause for a moment and put #1 and #2 together. Working memory is both CRUCIAL and LIMITED. That’s a very bad combination. (If you have a wry sense of humor, you might say it sounds like your school’s budget.)
So, let’s ask a vital question: how can we increase this vital cognitive resource?
3a: Good News about INCREASING Working Memory
We don’t have to do anything special. Working memory gets bigger as students get older.
In this way, WM is a bit like height. As long as we’re treating students (and their bodies) well, they get taller. As long as we’re treating students (and their brains) well, working memory gets bigger.
The details here get technical — after all, we have several different ways we can measure WM. But, you can be confident that your 4th graders have more WM than they did when they were in 2nd grade. And, the 6th graders have more WM still.
This growth levels off in our early 20s. Alas, WM probably begins to decline (very slowly) soon after. But, don’t worry. All the extra information you have in your long-term memory makes up for the very modest decrements in your WM.
3B: Bad News about INCREASING Working Memory
We can’t.
Better said: we can’t artificially increase WM, beyond the natural increase that comes with growth and schooling.
Better said: we can’t YET do that.
LOTS of thoughtful people are working very hard on this problem, and have had some intriguing wins.
But, as of this post, we don’t have broad data suggesting that we can train up students’ WM with specially designed computer games, or exercises, or special diet, or whatever.
To be clear: this is a controversial field, and very accomplished people have devoted years of work to it. I hope — at some point — that this breakthrough does happen.
1+2+3a+3b = ?
We know
#1: that working memory is CRUCIAL in classrooms.
#2: that it’s LIMITED.
#3a & #3b: that we CAN’T artificially make it bigger.
Put those three conclusions together, and you arrive at this conclusion:
Teachers have to work effectively WITHIN THE WM CAPACITY THAT OUR STUDENTS HAVE.
In fact, we should be EXPERTS at working effectively within their WM capacity.
Every time we go beyond their limited capacity, they experience WM overload.
And, when students experience WM overload, they stop learning. This is why I’m OBSESSED with WM.
How do we do that? How can we work effectively WITHIN their working memory capacity?
The next several posts will cover this essential topic.
