Category Archives: L&B Blog

Teachers who want to rely on cognitive science to improve our teaching have SO MANY good options to choose from:

The best ways to help students practice,

The best ways to help explain new material,

Even the best ways to help students feel connected to one another.

This good news, however, can quickly become bad news.

How can we keep track of all this guidance?

How can we balance and combine all these suggestions?

As I’ve written elsewhere, we’re lucky to have an increasing number of books that bring all these pieces together. (I wrote about Teaching and Learning Illustrated just a few weeks ago.)

Another EXCELLENT candidate in this field has been published for a US audience in recent months: Walkthru: 5-Step Guides to Build Great Teaching by Tom Sherrington and Oliver Caviglioli.

Many books in this field summarize and organize research into coherent topics and flow charts.

Sherrington and Caviglioli – long time educators, both – take a different approach. They start from the assumption that teachers want to do something practical with the research right now.

With that in mind, they sort dozens of ideas into “Walkthrus”: a series of five concrete steps that teachers can take to focus on and improve a particular part of their teaching practice.

You want to be better at cold calling?

You want a new way to think about seating charts?

Maybe you’d like to create routines that foster a sense of classroom belonging?

For each of these goals – and DOZENS of others — you can pick a Walkthru and get down to work.

Here’s the fuller story:

The Background

Sherrington and Caviglioli build their Walkthrus on conceptual work done by many other scholars in this field. And – helpfully – they highlight these conceptual frameworks in the first section of their book, entitled “Why?”

MANY – perhaps most – of these frameworks will be familiar to long-time readers.

You’ve already heard about Caviglioli’s own work on dual coding.

I interviewed Blake Harvard for this blog many years ago.

Peps Mccrea’s book on Motivation gets the focus it deserves.

All the greats appear in this first section: Dan Willingham, and Generative Learning, and Shimamura’s MARGE model, and Cognitive Load Theory, and …

In effect, these 30 pages briskly summarize the essential thinkers, models, and frameworks of recent decades.

You might think this “Why” section as a Hall of Fame for this field.

Getting Practical

This sort of brisk summary can be inspiring, but it can also be overwhelming. What should we teachers DO with SO MUCH information?

Fear not!

Sherrington and Caviglioli spend the next 200+ pages answering exactly that question.

As a teacher – or instructional leader – you might pick one of the book’s broader sections: say, “Questioning and Feedback,” or “Behavior and Relationships,” or “Mode B Teaching.”

Or, you might pick one of the individual Walkthrus.

To take one example – literally at random – you might decide to work on helping students read. Happily, one Walthru focuses on “Building a Culture of Reading.” Steps here include:

Read Across the Curriculum, and

Embrace Reading Aloud, and

Embed Reading in Homework Tasks.

You can work through these steps at your own pace in an iterative cycle, which Sherrington and Caviglioli call “ADAPT” (see page 290).

In other words: teachers don’t need to do everything all at once. And we don’t need to figure out how to structure the application process.

Instead, Walkthrus walks us through the translation from theory (the “Why” section) to practice (the “What” section).

This strategy means that an enormous amount of research-based advice is repackaged into brief and manageable steps.

Some Important Notes

First: The USA version of Walkthrus distills the greatest hits from a 3-volume version published in the UK. If you’re REALLY into Walkthrus, you might look for that larger set.

Second: Sherrington and Caviglioli – of course! – make decisions about what to include (and not). Not all teachers or leaders will agree with all these decisions.

However: you can easily find points of agreement and focus there. The book’s structure, in fact, encourages you to do so.

Third: I share a publisher (John Catt) with these authors; in fact, I wrote a “blurb” for the book. I don’t think these factors have influenced my review, but you should have those facts as you weigh my opinions.

TL;DR

You’re looking for a resource that sums up the most important ideas for applying cognitive science to the classroom?

You’d like it to be simultaneously comprehensive and manageable?

Walkthrus just might be the book for you.

Beth Hawks has taught science for 25 years. She now serves as the science department chair at Grace Christian School in Raleigh, North Carolina. A graduate of Orla Roberts University, Beth has taught 8th grade Physical Science, Physics, Chemistry, Algebra IB, among other courses. She frequently provides professional development to colleagues in her role as resident brain enthusiast.

When I started teaching at my current school twenty-one years ago, one of the “areas for improvement” on my year-end evaluation was that I didn’t seek out professional development.  I couldn’t disagree.  Back then, it never occurred to me to seek it out.  Both schools I had previously taught in said, “It is professional development day.  Go over there and learn.”  

While I read about teaching, I did not attend very many workshops or conferences that took place on school days.  I hated being out of my classroom, and every teacher knows what a pain it is to develop sub plans.  

That all changed when a brochure showed up in my mailbox for the 2018 Learning and the Brain conference.  

Teachers get a lot of brochures advertising workshops and conferences from a variety of sources, and we ignore most of them. I was on my way to the recycling bin with this one when a keynote speaker whose book I had just read caught my attention, so I opened the brochure.  As I looked at the names and credentials of speakers and the topics of sessions, I was impressed.  

By the end of that morning’s door duty, I was prepared to beg.  I said to my administrator, “You know how I never want to go to anything?  I’ve never wanted to go to anything more than this!”  They approved my request provided that I would teach my academic team what I had learned upon my return.  

Deal.

What I found when I got to Boston was not just one great speaker, but an incredible collection of researchers, scientists, and educators with deep knowledge.  More importantly, they were down to earth and transparent, willing to answer questions and talk and follow up with me after the conference because they cared about improving my practice, not just getting a speaking gig.  I couldn’t get enough of being taught by these experts.  

When I returned home, I was given time in a faculty meeting to present about what I had learned.  I had so much to present, I asked if I could have two.  It was lovely knowing that what I had learned would benefit classrooms other than my own.

In 2019, I attended the Boston conference again.  While the first year had been great, this was the year that I absolutely fell in love with the science of learning.  From the keynote presentations of Barbara Oakley, David Daniel, David Rose, and Sarah Jayne Blakemore to the sessions of John Almarode and Marcia Tate, I came home with both theory and practical advice that changed my classroom practice dramatically.  

• I thought about encoding and engagement in new ways.  
• I made a clumsy attempt at interleaving.  
• I instituted more pre-questions and retrieval than ever before.  

Trying new methods was energizing because I was doing it with more sense of purpose and intention, knowing it was based on evidence.  

I emailed my principal from the airport and told her how much I had learned and that I was pretty sure I could develop a six session course for my colleagues.  She got it approved by our accrediting organization for CEU credit, and by January, nineteen of my fellow teachers were getting the benefit of my Learning and the Brain experience.  We had a great time learning together and brainstorming new ideas for our classes, which ranged from transitional kindergarten to AP Calculus.  

When we were all thrown into virtual instruction just two months later, it was reassuring to have a basis for decision making about what mattered regardless of location.  

• Encoding looked different than it had in my classroom, but I could still adapt what I had learned about encoding to this new context.  
• Retrieval would be done through an online chat rather than mini-whiteboards, but I could be confident about the fact that it was still important.  

Those who had taken the course expressed the same feelings, and I was grateful that I had been able to provide them with that reassurance by being a conduit of the Learning and the Brain experience. 

Because of this conference, I became a voracious consumer of cognitive science research.  Last year, when the school allowed me to run the six week course again, I had trouble staying within my time limits because I had learned even more from books, blogs, and podcasts that I would not have sought out without the experience of Learning and the Brain.  Now, I find myself making resource recommendations to the teachers around me several times a week.

This November, I had the awesome opportunity of bringing a friend with me to the conference.  Watching him appreciate the experience deepened my love for it even more.  I enjoyed introducing him to people I respect, and we both got to meet some of our academic heroes.  Talking through what we had learned on our walks back to the hotel helped us both learn even more.  While I appreciate that the virtual option exists for those whose budgets won’t allow travel, I greatly value the things that happen in person.  The ability to talk directly to someone whose work I admire (e.g. Daniel Willingham) can’t be replicated digitally.  I would recommend to anyone that they attend the conference in person if they can. 

I am writing this during Thanksgiving week, so let me end with this.  I am thankful for Learning and the Brain.  If that brochure had not appeared in my box five years ago, I would not have grown in my teaching as much as I have or been able to help my colleagues grow in theirs.  I am thankful so many educators get to learn and grow and communicate with each other, and I am grateful to call them friends.

Learning and the Brain exists so that we can talk about good teaching together.

Although such conversations can provide great benefits, they also run into problems.

We might disagree with each other’s beliefs.

Or, we might disagree about research methods.

Even when we do agree, we might struggle to communicate effectively about shared beliefs.

For example: jargon.

When specialists talk with each other about “theory of mind” or “p3” or “element interactivity,” the rest of us often think “what the heck does THAT mean?”

Effective communication stops when words don’t have recognizeable meanings.

Another, subtler problem also hampers communication:

Effective communication stops when we use the same word to mean different things.

Sometimes this problem happens between disciplines.

The word “transfer,” for instance, has different meanings in neuroscience, education, and psychology.

Other words get us all tangled up, even within the same discipline.

I’m looking at you, “chunking.”

Television for All

I believe I first heard the word “chunking” to describe this mental phenomenon:

Imagine I ask you to memorize this list of letters:

CN NAB CFO XHB OCB S

Or, I might ask you to memorize THIS list of letters:

CNN ABC FOX HBO CBS

From one perspective, those lists are identical. They are the same letters in the same order. I just moved the spacing around a bit.

But, when I moved those spaces, I “chunked” the letters.

That is: I organized those letters to align with your prior knowledge.

As teachers, we can reduce working memory load by “chunking”: that is, by aligning new ideas/information with ideas/information our students already have.

“Chunking” means “alignment with prior knowledge.”

Cool.

Or, wait a moment…

Curiouser and Curiouser

I’ve also heard “chunking” used in entirely different ways.

The second meaning: “break larger pieces down into smaller pieces.”

If I’ve got a list of ten instructions I want my students to follow, that list will almost certainly overwhelm their working memory. So, I could break that list down.

Three instructions.

Then three more.

An additional two, followed by the final two.

VOILA, I “chunked” the instructions.

Of course, this kind of chunking (breaking down into smaller bits) doesn’t mean the same thing as the first kind of chunking (aligning with prior knowledge).

Nor does it mean the same thing as the THIRD kind of chunking: forming a link with prior knowledge.

That is:

You could learn that “hamster” is another “mammal” that people keep as a “pet.”

You’ve formed a new “chunk”: mammals that are pets.

Or, you could learn that “Saratoga” is another surprising military victory, like “Agincourt” and “Thermopylae.”

You’ve formed a new “chunk”: unlikely military victories.

You see the problem here?

In Sum

So, as far as I can tell, “chunking” means either…

… aligining new information with prior knowledge, or

… breaking large information dumps into smaller pieces, or

… connecting new information with well-known information (which sounds like the first meaning, but isn’t exactly the same thing).

If I tell a colleague, “I think that part of the lesson would have benefitted from more chunking,” s/he doesn’t really know what I mean.

Even worse: s/he might THINK that s/he knows — but might understand chunking one way when I mean it another.

Ugh.

To be clear: I am IN FAVOR of all three strategies.

After all: all three ideas reduce working memory load. And, I’m a BIG FAN of reducing WM load.

However, when we use the word “chunking” to describe three different teaching strategies, we make our advice harder to understand.

That is: we increase the working memory demands of understanding strategies to reduce working memory demands. The paradox is both juicy and depressing.

So, I am enthusiastically in favor of all the strategies implied by the word “chunking,” but I think we should stop calling them “chunking.”

Instead, we should use more precise vocabulary to label our true meaning.

Here’s a common classroom problem.

As I’m explaning a complex concept, a student raises a hand.

“Just a moment,” I say, and finish my explanation.

Now I turn and smile at the student: “what was your question?” I ask.

All too often, the student answers, “I forgot my question.”

What’s going on here?

As is so often the case, the answer is: working memory overload.

Working memory HOLDS and PROCESSES information. When a student fails to hold and process, that’s working memory overload.

In this case, my student was processing my explanation, and so failed to hold the question.

The solution?

It might seem simple. Don’t ask students to hold questions while they process explanations.

Instead, I should answer students’ questions right away. Problem solved….

When Solutions Create Problems

Wait just a moment.

This “solution” I just offered might solve the student’s problem.

At the same time, it might create new problems.

The student’s question — even a well-intentioned one — might throw my explanation off track.

My students might lose their tentative understanding of my complex explanation.

I might lose my own train of thought.

So I fixed one classroom problem but now have yet another one. YIKES.

What’s a teacher to do?

First Things First

This example — but one of many — might throw our entire project into question.

Teachers turn to psychology and neuroscience to solve classroom problems.

However, if these “research-based solutions” simply transform one problem into some other headache, why bother with the research?

We could save time by sticking with the old problem, right?

I think the fair answer to that question is: “actually, no.” Here’s why…

Teachers don’t need research to solve classroom problems. We need research to solve COMPLEX classroom problems.

When our classroom problems are simple, we just solve them on our own. We are — after all — teachers! We specialize in problem solving.

For that reason, we turn to research only when the problem isn’t simple.

And for that reason, we shouldn’t be surprised when the answer isn’t simple either.

OF COURSE we can’t fix the “questions-interrupting-my-explanation” problem with one easy research-based step.

If it were so simple a problem, we would have solved it without the research.

Changing the Lens

As I’ve explored this question with wise teachers in recent weeks, I’ve been struck by a pattern:

PROBLEM ONE requires SOLUTION ONE.

But: SOLUTION ONE creates PROBLEM TWO.

And: it’s often true that PROBLEM TWO comes from a different cognitive function than PROBLEM ONE.

So, in the example above, I started with a working memory problem: my student coudn’t hold and process information.

My solution (“take questions right away”) created another problem — but not a working memory problem.

When I answer questions mid-explanation, my students lose focus. That is, the working memory problem has been transformed into an attention problem.

To solve this second problem, I need to switch from working memory solutions to attention solutions.

In other words, I need to think about a separate cognitive function. I’ll find solutions to this 2nd order problem in a different research field.

Again with the Mantra

If you’ve ever heard me speak at a Learning and the Brain conference, you know my mantra: “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

In other words: psychology research can’t provide teachers with a list of “best practices.” The strategy that works in my 10th grade English classroom at a boarding school might not help 1st graders add numbers in a Montessori program.

But: the thought process I follow with my 10th graders might lead to beneficial solutions for those 1st graders. The answer (“do this thing”) might be different, but the mental pathway (“think this way”) will be the same.

The point I’m making here is: these thought processes might require us to leap from mental function to mental function in search of a more successful solution.

A solution to a long-term memory problem might uncover a motivational problem.

The solution to an alertness problem might promt an orienting problem.

When I reduce my students’ stress, I might ramp up their working memory difficulties.

And so forth.

When we understand research into all these topics, we can anticipate that these solutions might unveil an entirely different set of troubles.

And by moving nimbly from research topic to research topic, we can ultimately solve that complex problem that once seemed intractable.

All this nimbling about takes practice. And, ironically, it might threaten our own working memory capacity.

But once we get used to thinking this new way, we will arrive at solutions that fit our classrooms, and that work.

Consider the following paradox:

Teachers need to give students instructions — of course we do!

After all, instructions help students do what they need to do, so that they can learn what we want them to learn.

At the same time, too many instructions might very well overwhelm working memory.

After all, the student has to HOLD the instructions in memory while PROCESSING each one individually. And: “holding while processing” is one handy definition of working memory function.

In brief: the right number of instructions can help learning, but too many instructions can impede learning.

I recently asked a group of wise and experienced teachers this question:

“Can you think of other teaching practices — like instructions — that are beneficial in small amounts, but might create working memory overload in large amounts?”

After some time to think and discuss, one teacher answered: group work.

After all, he mused, collaboration might simplify some mental processes. But collaboration itself creates additional mental taxes — all that negotiating and delegating and coordinating and explaining.

And disagreeing.

And resolving.

Are they ways that teachers can reduce those “mental taxes” so that students get the benifits without the penalties?

If only we had a research-based answer to those questions…

Inspired by this teacher’s observation, I hunted up this study.

Quadratics in Quito

To explore this question, researchers working in Quito, Ecuador worked with 15-year-olds solving quadratic equations.

Specifically, they wanted to know if practice collaborating helps students collaborate effectively.

As is always true, research design gets tricky. But the overall design makes sense.

Some students did practice solving quadratic equations collaboratively; others didn’t.

For a second round of math learning, all students were then sorted into groups for collaborative learning.

So, did students who practiced collaborating do better on later collaboration?

For complex equations: YES. Both three days later and seven days later, students who practiced collaborating did better solving problems than students who didn’t.

For simple equations: NO. If the mental work wasn’t very hard, students didn’t need to practice to collaborate effectively.

In light of these findings, the researchers’ recommendations make good sense.

If learners are novices, learning tasks are complex, and information distribution demands [extensive cooperation], teachers should prepare group members … using similar problems.

…

If task information does not demand [extensive cooperation], it is not necessary for the teachers to prepare learners to collaborate.

I want to highlight one part of this summary: “using similar problems.”

This research team emphasizes that “collaboration” is NOT a general skill. Collaboration will look different depending on the precise demands of the discipline and the topic.

So: students who “practiced” were given a VERY specific format for learning how to collaborate on this task.

If we want to get the benefits of practice for our own students, we should be sure to tailor the practice in very specific ways.

The Story Behind the Story: an Analogy and a Principle

A research article like this study always begins with a summary of earlier research findings, conclusions, and questions.

This summary includes a particularly helpful foundational inquiry.

When does collaboration increase WM load so much as to threaten learning?

When does collaboration reduce WM load enough to promote learning?

Is there some sort of taxonomy to consider or principle to explore?

To explain, I’ll start with an analogy.

Imagine I want to illuminate a yard at night.

For all sorts of reasons, it would be simplest to have one lamp to do so. Having multiple lamps just adds to the complexity and expense of the project.

So, if my yard is small enough to be covered by one lamp, then I should use one. Adding more lamps makes the project worse — more complicated, more expensive — not better.

But at some point, a yard gets big enough to need multiple lamps. If I use only one lamp, I just can’t illuminate the full yard.

In this case, the additional expense and complexity of having multiple lamps provides a meaningful benefit.

You can see where this is going.

Here’s a potential principle:

If a cognitive problem is simple enough, then one student can solve it on her own.

Adding other students (“collaborative leaning”!) increases the WM complexity of the situation without providing any additional benefit.

In this case, each student’s mental effort has become less effective, not more effective.

If, on the other hand, a cognitive problem gets complex enough, then it goes beyond any one student’s cognitive capacity.

In that case, the problem benefits from additional students’ cognitive efforts — even though all those extra students do increase the complexity of the problem.

At some tipping point, when a problem gets complicated enough, it needs to be divided into sub-tasks — despite the complexity of managing that work.

At that tipping point, well-structured and precisely-practiced collaboration probably is more beneficial than harmful.

TL;DR

Groupwork (probably) increases WM demands on simple cognitive tasks, but reduces WM demands for complex cognitive tasks.

To get the most benefits from collaboration, students should practice that skill — and teachers should tailor the practice to the precise demands of the cognitive work.

Zambrano, J., Kirschner, F., Sweller, J., & Kirschner, P. A. (2019). Effects of group experience and information distribution on collaborative learning. Instructional Science, 47, 531-550.