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The Best Book on Cognitive Load Theory: Ollie Lovell to the Rescue
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August 07, 2022

The Best Book on Cognitive Load Theory: Ollie Lovell to the Rescue

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Teaching ought to be easy.

After all, we have a functionally infinite amount of long-term memory. You don’t have to forget one thing to learn another thing — really.

So: I should be able to shovel information and skills into your infinite long-term memory. Voila! You’d know everything

Alas, to get to your long-term memory, “information and skills” have to pass through your working memory. This very narrow bottleneck makes learning terribly difficult — as teachers and students well know.

If only someone would come up with a theory to explain this bottleneck. If only that theory would help teachers and students succeed despite its narrow confines.

Good News, with a Twist

Happily, that theory exists. It’s called “cognitive load theory,” and several scholars in Australia (led by John Sweller) have been developing it for a few decades now.

It explains the relationship between infinite long-term memory and limited working memory. It explores practical classroom strategies to solve the problems created by this relationship.

Heck, it even muses upon evolutionary explanations for some quirky exceptions to its rules.

In other words, it has almost everything a teacher could want.

Alas — [warning: controversial opinion] — it does include one glaring difficulty.

Cognitive load theory helps educational psychologists talk with other educational psychologists about these topics.

However, it relies on on a long list of terms, each of which describes complex — sometimes counter-intuitive — concepts.

If you start reading articles based on cognitive load theory, you might well discover that …

… a particular teaching practice works this way because of the “split attention effect” (which doesn’t mean exactly what it sounds like),

… but it works that way because of the “expertise reversal effect,”

… and “element interactivity” might explain these contradictory results.

For this reason, paradoxically, teachers who try to understand and apply cognitive load theory often experience cognitive overload.

As a result, teachers would really benefit from a book that explains cognitive load theory so clearly as not to overwhelm our working memory.

Could such a book exist?

Ollie Lovell To The Rescue

Yes, reader, it exists. Oliver Lovell has written Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory In Action (as part of Tom Sherrington’s “In Action” series).

Lovell’s book does exactly what teachers want it to do: explain cognitive load theory without overloading our cognitive faculties.

Lovell accomplishes this feat with three strategies.

First, he has an impressive ability to explain cognitive load theory concepts with bracing clarity.

For instance, let’s go back to that “expertise reversal effect.” Why might a teaching strategy benefit a novice but not an expert?

Lovell’s answer: redundancy. Redundant information taxes working memory. And, crucially:

“What is redundant for an expert is not redundant for the novice, and instructional recommendations are reversed accordingly.”

That’s the “expertise reversal effect.” Pithy, clear, sensible.

Because he writes and explains so clearly, Lovell helps teachers understand all that cognitive load theory terminology without feeling overwhelmed.

Second, Lovell gives examples.

SO MANY CLASSROOM EXAMPLES.

Whatever grade you teach, whatever topic you teach, you’ll find your discipline, your grade, and your interests represented. (I believe Lovell is a math teacher; as a high-school English teacher, I never felt slighted or ignored.)

Geography, piano, computer programming. It’s all there.

Knowing that clear explanations of worked examples can reduce working memory load, he provides plenty.

Practicing What He Preaches

Third, Lovell simplifies needless complexities.

Students of cognitive load theory will notice that he more-or-less skips over “germane” cognitive load: a category that has (ironically) created all sorts of “extraneous” working memory load for people trying to understand the theory.

He describes the difference between biologically primary and biologically secondary learning. And he explains the potential benefits this theory offers school folk.

However, Lovell doesn’t get bogged down in this niche-y (but fascinating) topic. He gives it just enough room, but not more.

Heck, he even keeps footnotes to a minimum, so as not to split the reader’s attention. Now that’s dedication to reducing working memory load!

Simply put: Lovell both explains and enacts strategies to manage working memory load just right.

In Brief

No doubt your pile of “must read” books is intimidatingly large.

If you want to know how to manage working memory load (and why doing so matters), Lovell’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action should be on top of that pile.

A final note:

I suspect Lovell’s explanations are so clear because he has lots of experience explaining.

Check out his wise, thoughtful, well-informed podcasts here.

Conflicting Advice: What to Do When Cognitive Science Strategies Clash?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
July 20, 2021

Conflicting Advice: What to Do When Cognitive Science Strategies Clash?

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Teachers like research-informed guidance because it offers a measure of certainty.

“Why do you run your classes that way?”

“Because RESEARCH SAYS SO!”

Alas, we occasionally find that research encourages AND DISCOURAGES the same strategy simultaneously.

What to do when expert advice differs?

In fact, I got this question on Thursday during a Learning and the Brain Summer Institute. Here’s the setup.

“Difficult” Can be Good

Regular readers know that desirable difficulties help students learn. As explained by Bob Bjork and Elizabeth Ligon Bjork — and researched by countless scholars — some degree of cognitive challenge enhances long-term memory formation.

In brief: “easy learning doesn’t stick.”

And so: why do spacing and interleaving help students learn? Because they ramp up desirable difficulty.

Why is retrieval practice better than simple review? Because (among other reasons) review isn’t difficult enough. Retrieval practice, done correctly, adds just the right amount of challenge.

And so, if you attend Learning and the Brain conferences (like this one on “Teaching Thinking Brains”), or if you read any of the great books about long-term memory formation, you’ll hear a lot about desirable difficulty.

Memory at Work

Cognitive scientists who don’t focus on long-term memory might instead focus on a distinct mental capacity: working memory. 

Working memory allows us to gather information — facts, procedures, etc. — into a mental holding space, and then to reorganize and combine them into new patterns and ideas.

In other words: it’s absolutely vital for thinking and learning. If students are learning academic information, they are using their working memory.

Alas, all this good news comes with some bad news: we don’t have much working memory. And, our students probably have less than we do. (For evidence, try this mental exercise: try alphabetizing the workdays of the week. No problem alphabetizing 5 words? Now try alphabetizing the twelve months of the year. OUCH.)

For this reason, effective teachers pay scrupulous attention to working memory load. Every time we go beyond working memory constraints, we make learning MUCH HARDER.

In fact, I think working memory is so important that I wrote a lengthy series of blog posts on the topic. I’m kind of obsessed. (Heck: I even wrote a book on the topic, called Learning Begins.)

Trouble in CogSci Paradise

Because both topics — desirable difficulties and working memory — provide teachers with important and powerful insights, I devoted much of last week’s workshop to them. Almost every day, in fact, we talked about both.

On Thursday, one participant asked this wise and provocative question:

Wait a minute. You’ve told us that desirable difficulties help learning. And you’ve told us that working memory overload hinders learning.

But: isn’t desirable difficulty a potential working memory overload? Don’t those two pieces of advice conflict with each other? Won’t “spacing” and “interleaving” vex working memory?

Yes, reader, they certainly might.

So, what’s a research-focused teacher to do? Team Desirable Difficulty tells us to space and interleave practice. Team Working Memory tells us to beware overload. How can we make sense of this conflicting advice?

This (entirely reasonable) question has two answers: one specific, one general.

A Specific Answer

When we consider the tension between “working memory” and “desirable difficulty,” we can focus for a moment on the adjective “desirable.”

In almost every case, working memory overload is UNdesirable.

So, if our teaching strategy — spacing, interleaving, retrieval practice, metacognition — results in overload, we shouldn’t do it: it’s not desirably difficult. We should, instead, back off on the difficulty until students can manage that cognitive load.

How do we get that balance just right?

We use our teacherly experience and insight. If I create a homework assignment with lots of interleaved practice AND ALL MY STUDENTS DO TERRIBLY, then interleaving wasn’t desirably difficult. (Or, perhaps, I taught the concepts ineffectively.)

In this case, I know the next night’s assignment should be working-memory-friendlier.

No research can tell us exactly what the best balance will be. Our expertise as teachers will guide us.

The General Answer

Researchers and teachers have different goals, and follow different practices. In brief: researchers isolate variables; teachers combine variables.

We think about stress and about working memory and about alertness and about technology and about spacing and…

That list goes on almost infinitely.

For that reason, I chant my mantra: when adopting cognitive science approaches to teaching, “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

That is: don’t just DO “spacing and interleaving” because research tells us they’re good ideas. Instead, we have to THINK about the ideas that guide spacing and interleaving, and be sure they make sense at this particular moment.

Should we have students meditate at the beginning of each class? It depends on our students, our school, our schedule, our culture, our curriculum, our goals, and … too many other variables to list here.

Should we ban laptops from classrooms? Ditto.

Should high schools start later? Ditto.

Should 3rd graders learn by doing projects? Ditto.

Should students read on exercycles? Ditto.

One isolated piece of research advice can’t effectively guide teaching and school-keeping decisions. We have to combine the variables, and think about them in our specific context.

Simply put: we can’t just “do what the research says.” It’s not possible; different research pools almost certainly conflict.

Instead, we’re doing something more challenge, more interesting, and more fun.

Let the adventure begin!

The Source of Student Motivation: Deeper than We Know?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
November 10, 2020

The Source of Student Motivation: Deeper than We Know?

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Usually I blog about specific research findings that inform education.

Today — to mix things up — I thought it would be helpful to talk about an under-discussed theory pertinent to education.

This theory helps us at least two ways:

First: it gives useful insights into student motivation. (Teachers want to know everything we can know about motivation.)

Second: it provides useful background for a second up-n-coming theory — as I’ll describe below.

Education and Evolution

Let’s zoom the camera WAY BACK and think about individual human development from an evolutionary perspective.

Certain human interests and abilities can promote our evolutionary fitness.

Tens of thousands of years ago, humans who — say — understood other people and worked with them effectively probably had a survival advantage.

So did humans who took time to make sense of the natural world around them.

Oh, and the physical world as well.

Given those probabilities, humans who learned about people, the natural world, and the physical world would — on average — thrive more than those who did not.

If that’s true, then we probably evolved to learn those things relatively easily. (Obviously, this is a great oversimplification of evolution’s complexities.)

For instance: we rarely teach children to recognize faces — our species evolved to be good at that. We don’t teach them to walk or talk; they do so naturally. (We encourage and celebrate, but we don’t need to teach.)

We don’t have to encourage people to explore the natural or physical world. Throwing rocks, climbing trees, jumping in puddles, chasing small animals: we evolved to be intrinsically interested in those things.

Primary and Secondary

Evolutionary Psychologist David Geary describes these interests as biologically primary. We evolved to be interested in and learn about what he calls “folk psychology” (people), “folk biology” (the natural world), and “folk physics” (the physical world).

Geary contrasts these several topics with others that we learn because human culture developed them: geometry, grammar, the scientific method, reading. He calls such topics biologically secondary because need for them does not spring from our evolutionary heritage.

We are MUCH less likely to be interested in biologically secondary topics than biologically primary ones. We didn’t evolve to learn them. Our survival — understood on an evolutionary scale — does not depend on them.

Said the other way around: if I don’t explicitly teach my child to walk, she’s highly likely to do so anyway. If I don’t explicitly teach my child calculus, she’s highly unlikely to figure it out on her own. (Newton and Leibnitz did…but that’s about it.)

If you’re keen to understand its nuances, Geary’s 100 page introduction to his theory is here.

Implications: Motivation

If Geary’s correct, his theory helps answer a persistent question in education:

Why don’t students love learning X as much as they loved learning to climb trees/play games/mimic siblings/build stick forts/etc.?

This question usually implies that schools are doing something wrong.

“If only we didn’t get in the way of their natural curiosity,” the question implies, “children would love X as much as those other things.”

Geary’s answer is: playing games is biologically primary, doing X is biologically secondary.

We evolved to be motivated to play games. Our genes, in effect, “want” us to do that.

We did not evolve to learn calculus. Our culture, in effect, “wants” us to do that. But cultural motivations can’t match the power of genetic ones.

In effect, Geary’s argument allows teachers to stop beating ourselves up so much. We shouldn’t feel like terrible people because our students don’t revel in the topics we teach.

Schools focus on biologically secondary topics. Those will always be less intrinsically motivating (on average) than biologically primary ones.

Implications: Cognitive Load

A second theory — cognitive load theory (CLT) — has been getting increasing attention in recent months and years.

CLT helps explain the role of working memory in human cognition. (Frequent readers know: I think working memory is the essential topic for teachers to understand.)

In recent years, CLT’s founders have connected their theory to Geary’s work on biologically primary/secondary learning.

That connection takes too much time to explain here. But, if you’re interested in cognitive load, be aware that Geary’s work might be hovering in the background.

Watch this space.

Reactions

Some scholars just love the analytical power provided by the distinction between biologically primary and secondary learning.

Paul Kirschner (twitter handle: @P_A_Kirschner), for instance, speaks of Geary’s theory with genuine admiration. (In one interview I read, he wished he’d thought of it himself.)

Others: not so much.

Christian Bokhove (twitter handle: @cbokhove), for instance, worries that the theory hasn’t been tested and can’t be tested. (Geary cites research that plausibly aligns with his argument. But, like many evolutionary theories, it’s hard to test directly.)

I myself am drawn to this framework — in part because evolutionary arguments make lots of sense to me. I do however worry about the lack of more evidence.

And: I’m puzzled that so little work has been done with the theory since it was first published in 2007. If it makes so much sense to me (a non-specialist), why haven’t other specialists picked up the topic and run with it?

For the time being, I think teachers should at least know about this theory.

You might start considering your students’ interests and motivations in this light — perhaps Geary’s distinction will offer a helpful perspective.

And, I don’t doubt that — as cognitive load theory gets more attention — the distinction between biologically primary and secondary learning will be more and more a part of teacherly conversations.

Obsessed with Working Memory [Reposted]
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August 04, 2020

Obsessed with Working Memory [Reposted]

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I’m on vacation for the month of August, and so we’ll be reposting some of our most-viewed articles.

We’re starting with our series on working memory: one of the most essential concepts from the field of cognitive science.

When I attended my first Learning and the Brain conference, I had never even heard of working memory.

Now, I obsess over working memory. And, I think all classroom teachers should join me.

Heck, I think everyone who cares about learning, curriculum, teacher training, and education should think about working memory. All. The. Time.

In this series of posts, I’ll start by defining working memory (WM) today. And in succeeding posts, I’ll talk about using that knowledge most helpfully.

Trust me: the more we think about WM, the more our students learn.

Working Memory: An Example

As an example of WM in action, I’m going to give you a list of 5 words. Please put those words in alphabetical order. IN YOUR HEAD. (That’s right: don’t write anything down…)

Okay, here’s the list:

Think of the five workdays of the week. (Hint: if you live in a Western society, the first one is ‘Monday.’)

Now, go ahead and put those five words into alphabetical order. Don’t peek. I’ll wait…

 

Probably you came up with this list:

Friday, Monday, Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday

I do this exercise with teachers often. For most everyone, that’s fairly simple to do. I’m guessing you got it right quite easily.

Working Memory: A Definition

To succeed at that task, you undertook four mental processes.

First, you selected relevant information. Specifically, you selected the instructions that you read. And, you looked into your long-term memory to select the workdays of the week.

Next, you held that information. If you had let go of the instructions, or of the days of the week, you couldn’t have completed the task.

Third, you reorganized the days of the week according to the instructions. You started with a chronological list (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…), and converted it into an alphabetical lest (Friday, Monday, Thursday…).

In many WM tasks (but not this one), you might not only reorganize, but also combine information. If, for instance, you added up 7+12+4+18+6 in your head, you selected, held, and combined those numbers into a new number.

So:

Working memory is a limited, short-term memory capacity that selects, holds, reorganizes, and combines information from multiple sources.

In a later post, I’ll talk about some finer points in the definition of WM. For the time being, focus on those four verbs: select, hold, reorganize, combine.

Working Memory: An Acronym

Because WM is so important, it would be great if there were a handy acronym. Happily, there is!

Select

Hold

REorganize

Kombine

What does that get you? SHREK! (I know: I misspelled ‘combine.’ But: I lived in Prague for a year, so you can forgive me for that useful alteration.)

Working Memory in the Classroom

Now, ask yourself: which of these classroom tasks requires working memory?

That is: in which of these cases do your students have to select, hold, reorganize, and/or combine information?

Solving a word problem.

Comparing W.E.B. du Bois and Booker T. Washington.

Transposing a song into a new key.

Applying a new phonics rule to various combinations of letters.

Choreographing a dance routine.

The correct answer is: ALL OF THEM.

In fact, practically everything we do in school classrooms requires working memory. Often, it requires A LOT of working memory.

To Sum Up

We use WM to select, hold, reorganize, and combine (SHREK) information.

Students use WM constantly in classrooms, for practically everything they do.

Simply put: no academic information gets into long-term memory except through working memory. It’s that important.

Up next: we’ll highlight key facts about WM. Then we’ll talk about using that knowledge in your teaching.

This series continues:

Part II: Three Core Ideas for Working Memory

Part III: Anticipating Overload

Part IV: Identifying Overload

Part V: Working Memory Solutions

Part VI: Working Memory Resources

What’s Better Than Caffeine (And Doesn’t Require Electrodes)?
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
June 12, 2020

What’s Better Than Caffeine (And Doesn’t Require Electrodes)?

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Although we can’t improve our students’ working memory capacity, we can help them use the WM they’ve got more productively.

We have lots of teaching strategies to accomplish this goal. Well-designed visuals, for instance, divide WM demands between visual and auditory channels. In this way, they functionally reduce cognitive difficulties.

Our students could also do what our colleagues do: use caffeine to boost cognitive performance. When I have my morning tea, that jolt of caffeine doesn’t increase my working-memory capacity, but it helps me use it better. (In the short term, the cognitive result is the same.)

Is there anything else we can do that doesn’t involve drugs?

So Crazy That It Just Might Work

How about exercise?

If caffeine jolts me awake enough to help me use WM more effectively, couldn’t old-fashioned exercise have that same effect?

Researchers in Canada wanted to know just that. Is exercise as effective as caffeine in temporarily boosting WM performance?

To answer this question, they did all the things you’d want them to do. They had different groups of participants take WM tests before and after different combinations of caffeine and exercise.

They controlled for age. They controlled for the amount of caffeine that people usually drank. They controlled for the amount of exercise that people usually did. (If you want all the details, you can read ’em here.)

The result: sure enough, exercise temporarily boosts WM function as much as caffeine does.

And, it doesn’t lead to a post-caffeine crash they way caffeine use does. (Yes: the researchers did measure “caffeine withdrawal symptoms.”)

In this case, 20 minutes of moderately paced walking did the trick. In schools, I’m thinking recess, or PE, or even passing time between classes just might serve the same function.

If we want our students to think more clearly, let them move.

But Can’t We Zap the Brain with a Gizmo?

Given the importance of working memory for schools, you’d think someone would make a brain zap app.

Oh wait, they have. Lots of times.

My friend Scott MacClintic just sent me a link to this “biolelectric memory patch,” which claims what you expect it to claim. (They have in-house research to show that it works!)

Happily, the article Scott sent me includes many reasons to be skeptical of this gizmo. If you’d like another set of reasons, you can check out this article over at JSTOR daily.

The short version is: recent decades have see LOTS of products claiming to enhance WM capacity. With alarming consistency, those products just don’t work. Lumosity’s wallet is $2,000,000 lighter after a fine for misleading claims. (You read that right: two million dollars.)

So, who knows, maybe at last this will be the brain gizmo that works. If I had two million dollars, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Until we get better research, we’ve got two proven strategies to help students use working memory well: skillful teaching, and exercise.

A Fresh Approach to Evaluating Working Memory Training
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
February 04, 2020

A Fresh Approach to Evaluating Working Memory Training

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Because working memory is SO IMPORTANT for learning, we would love to enhance our students’ WM capacity.

Alas, over and over, we find that WM training programs just don’t work (here and here and here). I’ve written about this question so often that I’ve called an informal moratorium. Unless there’s something new to say, or a resurgence of attempts to promote such products, I’ll stop repeating this point.

Recently I’ve come across a book chapter that does offer something new. A research team led by Claudia C. von Bastian used a very powerful statistical method to analyze the effectiveness of WM training programs.

This new methodology (which I’ll talk about below) encourages us to approach the question with fresh eyes. That is: before I read von Bastian’s work, I reminded myself that it might well contradict my prior beliefs.

It might show that WM training does work. And, if it shows that, I need to announce that conclusion as loudly as I’ve announced earlier doubts.

In other words: there’s no point in reading this chapter simply to confirm what I already believe. And, reader, the same applies for you. I hereby encourage you: prepare to have your beliefs about WM training challenged. You shouldn’t read the rest of this post unless you’re open to that possibility.

New Methodology

One problem with arguments about WM training is that sample sizes are so small. In one recent meta-analysis, the average sample size per study was 20 participants.

In a recent book on cognitive training, von Bastian, Guye, and De Simoni note that small sample sizes lead to quirky p-values. In other words, we struggle to be sure that the findings of small studies don’t result from chance or error.

Instead, von Bastian & Co. propose using Bayes factors: an alternate technique for evaluating the reliability of a finding, especially with small sample sizes. The specifics here go WAY beyond the level of this blog, but the authors summarize handy tags for interpreting Bayes factors:

1-3               Ambiguous

3-10            Substantial

10-30         Strong

30-100      Very Strong

100+         Decisive

They then calculate Bayes factors for 28 studies of WM training.

Drum Roll, Please…

We’ve braced ourselves for the possibility that a new analytical method will overturn our prior convictions. Does it?

Well, two of the 28 studies “very strongly” suggest WM training works. 1 of the 28 “substantially” supports WM training. 19 are “ambiguous.” And 6 “substantially” suggest that WM training has no effect.

In other words: 3 of the 28 show meaningful support of the hypothesis. The other 25 are neutral or negative.

So, in a word: “no.” Whichever method you use to evaluate the success of WM training, we just don’t have good reason to believe that it works.

Especially when such training takes a long time, and costs lost of money, schools should continue to be wary.

Three Final Notes

First: I’ve focused on p-values and Bayes factors in this blog post. But, von Bastian’s team emphasizes a number of problems in this field. For instance: WM training research frequently lacks an “active” control group. And, it often lacks a substantial theory, beyond “cognitive capacities should be trainable.”

Second: This research team is itself working on an intriguing hypothesis right now. They wonder if working memory capacity cannot be trained, but working memory efficiency can be trained. That’s a subtle but meaningful distinction, and I’m glad to see they’re exploring this question.

So far they’re getting mixed results, and don’t make strong claims. But, I’ll keep an eye on this possibility — and I’ll report back if they develop helpful strategies.

Third: I encouraged you to read von Bastian’s chapter because it might change your mind. As it turns out, the chapter probably didn’t. Instead it confirmed what you (and certainly I) already thought.

Nonetheless, that was an important mental exercise. Those of us committed to relying on research for teaching guidance should be prepared to change our approach when research leads us in a new direction.

Because, you know, some day a new WM training paradigm just might work.

von Bastian, C. C., Guye, S., & De Simoni, C. (2019). How strong is the evidence for the effectiveness of working memory training? In M. F. Bunting, J. M. Novick, M. R. Dougherty & R. W. Engle (Eds.), Cognitive and Working Memory Training: Perspectives from Psychology, Neuroscience, and Human Development (pp. 58–75). Oxford University Press.

Retrieval Grids: The Good, the Bad, and the Potential Solutions
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
January 20, 2020

Retrieval Grids: The Good, the Bad, and the Potential Solutions

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Retrieval Practice is all the rage these days — for the very excellent reason that it works.

Study after study after study suggests that students learn more when they pull information out of their brains (“retrieval practice”) than by putting information back into their brains (“mere review”).

So, teachers naturally want to know: what specific teaching and studying strategies count as retrieval practice?

We’ve got lots (and lots) of answers.

Flashcards — believe it or not — prompt retrieval practice.

Short answer quizzes, even if ungraded. (Perhaps, especially if ungraded)

Individual white boards ensure that each student writes his/her own answer.

So, you can see this general research finding opens many distinct avenues for classroom practice.

Retrieval Grids: The Good

One strategy in particular has been getting lots of twitter love recently: the retrieval grid.

You can quickly see the benefits.

In the retrieval-grid quiz below, students answer short questions about Macbeth. Crucially, the grid includes questions from this week (in yellow), last week (in blue), and two weeks ago (in red). 

Because students get more points for answering older/harder questions, the form encourages retrieval of weeks-old information.

So much retrieval-practice goodness packed into so little space. (By the way: this “quiz” can be graded, but doesn’t need to be. You could frame it as a simple review exercise.)

Retrieval Grids: My Worries

Although I like everything that I’ve said so far, I do have an enduring concern about this format: the looming potential for working memory overload.

Students making their way through this grid must process two different streams of information simultaneously.

In part of their working memory, they’re processing answers to Macbeth questions.

And, with other parts of their working memory, they’re processing and holding the number of points that they’ve earned.

And, of course, those two different processing streams aren’t conceptually related to each other. One is Macbeth plot information; the other is math/number information.

As you know from my summer series on working memory, that’s a recipe for cognitive overload.

Retrieval Grids: Solutions?

To be clear: I’m not opposed to retrieval grids. All that retrieval practice could help students substantially.

I hope we can find ways to get the grid’s good parts (retrieval practice) without the bad parts (WM overload).

I don’t know of any research on this subject, but I do have some suggestions.

First: “if it isn’t a problem, it isn’t a problem.” If your students are doing just fine on retrieval grids, then obviously their WM isn’t overwhelmed. Keep on keepin’ on.

But, if your students do struggle with this format, try reducing the demands for simultaneous processing. You could…

Second: remove the math from the process. Instead of requiring 15 points (which requires addition), you could simply require that they answer two questions from each week. You could even put all the week-1 questions in the same row or column, in order to simplify the process. Or,

Third: include the math on the answer sheet. If they write down the points that they’ve earned at the same time they answer the question, they don’t have to hold that information in mind. After all, it’s right there on the paper. So, a well-designed answer sheet could reduce WM demands.

Fourth: no doubt, as you read this, you are already coming up with your own solutions. If you have an idea that sounds better than these — try it! (And, I hope you’ll share it with me.)

To Sum Up

Researchers work by isolating variables. Teachers and classrooms work by combining variables.

So: researchers who focus on long-term memory will champion retrieval practice and retrieval grids.

Researchers who focus on working memory might worry about them.

By combining our knowledge of both topics, we teachers can reduce the dangers of WM overload in order to get all the benefits of retrieval practice.

That’s a retrieval-grid win-win.

When Good Classroom Assignments Go Bad
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
December 04, 2019

When Good Classroom Assignments Go Bad

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As an English teacher, I rather love this assignment for 9th graders reading Romeo and Juliet:

Choose a character from the play.

Write a short monologue–20 lines or so–exploring that character’s feelings about a particular moment, or another character.

Be sure to write in iambic pentameter.

This assignment lets my students explore a character’s point of view in thoughtful detail. It encourages empathy and imagination. And, it allows them to play with a poetic meter that’s been at the rhythmic heart of English literature since we had English literature.

So, again, as an English teacher I love it.

But as someone who knows from cognitive science, I fear it’s simply not going to work (for most 9th graders on the planet).

Good Intentions Meet Cognitive Limitations

Regular readers know that students use their working memory all the time to grok their classroom work.

Working memory is vital to all classroom learning. And, alas, we just don’t have very much of it.

And, this assignment (almost certainly) places far too great a demand on my students’ WM.

Students must use their WM to…

…choose among the characters of the play. (Yes: choices take up WM resources.)

…choose among the dramatic events their chosen character experiences.

…create a wisely empathetic response to a dramatic event. (Yes: creativity requires working memory.)

And, on top of that, to…

…express richly Shakespearean logic and emotion within a tightly structured, largely unpracticed poetic meter. (If you doubt that writing in iambic pentameter takes working memory, try rewriting this sentence in iambic pentameter. Your prefrontal cortex will be aching in no time.)

So much cognitive load will overwhelm all but the most inventive of students.

Solving the Problem

Given that this assignment could be so powerful, how might we adapt it to fit within working memory limitations?

Two strategies come quickly to mind.

First: redistribute the working memory demands. That is: don’t have them do all the WM work at the same time.

In this case, that suggestion can be easily implemented.

First night’s homework: choose the character, and describe or outline the dramatic moment.

Second night’s homework: write the monologue in modern English.

This approach spreads out the working memory demands over time. All the choosing, and some of the creativity, happens on the first night. The rest of creativity happens on night #2.

Second: reduce the working memory demands. Unless your students have practiced with iambic pentameter A LOT more than my students have, they’re likely to struggle to compose 20 fresh lines.

My own teacherly instincts would be to have them experiment with existing poetry. For instance, a fun sonnet might serve as a scaffold for early, tentative work.

In sonnet 130, Shakespeare famously laments the use of extravagant metaphors to hyper-praise women:

My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun.

Coral is far more red than her lips’ red.

…

And yet, by heav’n, I think my love as rare

As any she belied with false compare.

Can my students devise their own version of these sentiments? And, can the preserve the meter?

My boyfriend’s eyes are not as blue as sky.

For reals, his abs just aren’t what you’d call “shredded.”

…

And yet, by heav’n, I think my guy as hott

As any bae that Beyoncé has got.

Of course, scaffolding is called “scaffolding” because we can take it down. So, once students can manage iambic pentameter with this level of support, we can prompt them to devise more and more free-form iambic creations.

With enough practice, they might–some day–be able to compose 20 fresh lines of their own.

Obsessed with Working Memory: Resources
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August 22, 2019

Obsessed with Working Memory: Resources

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We’ve taken the summer to explore working memory together.

You know how to define it.

You know key facts about it.

You can anticipate and recognize working memory overload.

And, you can solve those WM problems.

To conclude this series, I’d like to give you a few extra WM resources to draw upon.

The Book, and The Web

I’ve written a book about working memory called Learning Begins. In fact, the articles from this summer draw heavily on the structure of that book. If you have enjoyed this overview, I hope you’ll enjoy its fuller exploration as well.

This post by Efrat Furst explores the relationship between working memory and long-term memory.

This gif by Nick Harvey Smith prompted GREAT discussions at a recent presentation on WM.

Adam Boxer summarizes Cognitive Load Theory here. As Boxer explains, CLT wasn’t created with teachers in mind. I myself find it a) really interesting and b) more jargony than is useful for most teachers. But, if you want a deep dive, this is a great place to dig. (More CTL resources here.)

You can test out your own working memory — and experience WM overload — here.

The Research and the Researchers

Unsurprisingly, psychologists and neuroscientists have published thousands of research studies on the subject of working memory. This list gives a brisk introduction to the topics, opinions, and approaches you can find once you start exploring.

 

What, exactly, are the differences between short-term, long-term, and working memory? Nelson Cowan has some answers.

Alan Baddeley offers the best known model of WM. He summarizes his research and opinions here.

How does WM develop during school years? Susan Gathercole has data.

Nope. WM training does not work. Really, just, no.

WM works more efficiently with information we already know well than with new information (like the information students get because “they can just look it up on the internet”).

Too many instructions tax working memory.

Frederique Autin and colleagues explain that we can free up WM by reducing students’ stress levels. The specific strategy: have them think differently about the cognitive challenge they face.

The relationship between WM and creativity? Shelley Carson has you covered.

We can free up WM capacity by using the right teaching strategies.

If you’re interested in a technical exploration of WM, executive attention, and the prefrontal cortex, check out Michael Kane’s work here.

And Finally, An Offer…

I love thinking about and talking about working memory. If you have a question or a crazy idea, feel free to email me: [email protected].

Obsessed with Working Memory: SOLUTIONS!
Andrew Watson
Andrew Watson
August 08, 2019

Obsessed with Working Memory: SOLUTIONS!

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At the beginning of July, we started an in-depth series of posts about working memory.

For starters, we learned how to define it: “a short-term memory capacity that selects, holds, reorganizes, and combines relevant information.” (Handy acronym: SHREK.)

We then focused on its key features. It’s essential for classroom learning. It’s alarmingly small. And we can’t make it bigger (artificially).

For all those reasons, teachers need to be experts at anticipating WM overload. For example: look out for these Dark Sides of the Force.

And, we need recognize WM overload when it happens. (That student who forgot his question while his hand was in the air? That was probably a working memory problem.)

Today’s task: start SOLVING all those problems that we anticipated and recognized.

Solutions, Part I: Rely on Long-Term Memory

First: connect new information to information that students already have in their long-term memory.

Why does this strategy work? Because ideas and facts in LTM require much less working-memory processing than information coming in from the outside world.

And so: if a new idea resembles something in LTM, then that pre-existing knowledge acts as a kind of cognitive crutch.

For example, whenever I teach my students about gerunds, I teach them the Beyoncé rule:

If you like it then you should have put an -ing on it.

My students already have that catchy tune in their heads. By attaching a new grammatical rule (“all gerunds end with ‘-ing’ “) to that catchy tune, I reduce its WM demands.

As a bonus, I also make them laugh.

Second: explicitly teach core facts and processes.

“Rote memorization” of “random facts” has gotten a bad reputation. It seems so not-21st-century.

Alas, we can’t think without knowledge.* If our students have already learned the foundational ideas, definitions, dates, and processes before they start grappling with complex cognitive work, they’re much more likely to succeed.

Why? Because all that prior knowledge in long-term memory reduces WM load.

Solutions, Part II: Spread Cognitive Work Over Time

This solution is so helpfully straightforward.

If a lesson plan overwhelms WM because it includes too much information RIGHT NOW, then don’t include all of it right now. Spread it out.

In some cases, that simply means reorganizing the lesson plan. Let students practice the first topic they learned before they move on to the next one.

Once they’re comfortable with a particular mental process, they’re ready to take more ideas on board. (Barak Rosenshine, I’m looking at you.)

In other cases, you might reconsider if this information needs to be included immediately.

Are you students struggling with several instructions? Spread them out.

Here’s a handy strategy: give one instruction, and wait for all students to complete it before giving the next. (I got this advice at the very first Learning and the Brain conference I attended. Pure magic.)

Note, too, how exceptions can be postponed.

In French, “all nouns that end in -ette are feminine.” Knowing that rule reduces students’ WM load: they have fewer variables to juggle as they tinker with adjectives and pronouns.

That rule, however, has an exception: “squelette” is masculine. But — this is crucial — my students don’t need to know that right now. Why would they need the word “skeleton”?They’re not watching CSI Paris.

So, I can reduce WM load by leading with the rule and postponing exceptions until they’re necessary. (You can alert your students that exceptions might show up later, so they don’t lose faith in your expertise.)

If you anticipate or recognize WM overload, ask yourself if you can put off some of this cognitive work until later in the lesson plan…or, later in the syllabus.

Solutions, Part III: Make Cognitive Work Auditory AND Visual

Schools rely a great deal on auditory processing. That is: students listen to us — and to each other — talking.

However, working memory has both auditory and visual processing capacity. If we use only half of it, we’re leaving substantial cognitive resources untapped. It’s like asking students to carry a heavy box using only one arm. Two arms would be So Much Easier.

This approach leads to some very straightforward strategies. Verbal instructions take up lots of working memory capacity. Written instructions take up less — because students don’t have to “select” or “hold” them.

Oliver Caviglioli has just written a genre-defining book on combining visual and verbal information: Dual Coding with Teachers. If you want to focus on this teaching strategy to reduce WM load, you should get your copy ASAP.

Solutions, Part IV: CUT

Let’s take this hypothetical:

You look at your lesson plan, and anticipate a great deal of working-memory overload. So, you start using these strategies.

You find ways to connect new information to ideas students already know (solutions, part I).

You find ways to spread information out over time (part  II).

You move lots of WM labor into the visual realm (part III).

And yet, you still worry the working-memory load might be too high. What can you do?

You’ve really got only one choice: take stuff out of the lesson plan — and maybe the syllabus. You’ve got to cut.

That’s a troubling answer. We don’t want to cut, because we want our students to learn it all. (And, we might be required to cover lots of things.)

But, here’s the reality: if my lesson plan/syllabus overwhelms my students’ working memory, then their cognitive processes will shut down. That is: their brains will cut stuff out automatically.

If I know that’s going to happen, the only responsible course of action is to make those cutting decisions for them. After all, because I’m the teacher, I know better which parts can be cut without long-term harm.

The Good News about Part IV

By the way: there is some hidden good news in this strategy. If we cut material from an overstuffed syllabus today, then our students are much likelier to learn the remaining ideas than they were before.

As a result, they’ll be better positioned to learn the ideas that come later in the curriculum.

As is so often the case: less might be more. That is, less information early in the curriculum might lead to more learning by the end of the year. Why? Because “less” allowed students to use their working memory more effectively, and hence create more long-term memories.

Concluding Thoughts

I’ve named several strategies here, and given quick examples.

However, to get the most from these ideas, you will adapt them to your own circumstances. As you’ve heard me say before: “don’t just do this thing; instead, think this way.”

That is: once you’ve started THINKING about working memory in your classroom with your students and your curriculum, you’ll see your own way to apply each strategy most effectively.

No one else can tell us exactly how to do it. Using our teacherly insight, wisdom, and experience, we will shape those ideas to fit the world in which we teach.

In sum: once we anticipate and recognize working memory overload, we’ve got many (MANY!) strategies to reduce that load. And, those strategies are flexible enough to work in every classroom. The result: our students learn more.

* If you’re skeptical about the importance of prior factual knowledge, you’re not alone. But, the research here is compelling. Check out

Why Don’t Students Like School? by Daniel Willingham

Seven Myths of Education by Daisy Christodoulou

Making Kids Cleverer by David Didau

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