Loyal readers may remember my attempts to wade through the Top 20 Principles of Psychology for Teaching & Learning report from the APA. If you haven’t already read it, don’t bother. This remarkably concise digest, produced by Deans for Impact does the job much better. Well-informed readers probably won’t learn anything new, but I’ve not come across another document which presents the evidence so clearly and gives such unambiguous advice to teachers.
Basically, a group of American independent school heads, ably supported by Daniel Willingham and Paul Bruno, have summarised pretty much everything a busy teacher ought to know about how children learn, remember, solve problems, transfer to new contexts. It also covers motivation and quickly torpedos the most common misconceptions with laudable brevity:
The report also includes an immensely useful bibliography, which would be an excellent jumping off point for anyone wishing to get to grips with understanding the science of learning.
Do please read and share as widely as possible; this document ought to be distributed to every teacher in the UK.
Thanks for alerting us all to this quite excellent resource, David! I’ve only just skimmed it quickly but agree that it deserves to be essential reading. However don’t underestimate the benefit we all enjoy from working through your own perceptive and illuminating review of the principles covered in the report!
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Overall, I found it a nice high quality summary. I do have a quibble that the original paper on cognitive load and working memory was focused too strongly on reducing load, so much of the research since has followed that trajectory. I find that a much better development of the findings is that it is vital that we use working memory fully in on-point tasks, whereas most writing on it (including this summary, IMO) focuses almost entirely on reducing it. This latter is a recipe for disastrous results.
Hi Brett -this is a discussion about germane cognitive load, isn’t it? The real trick is for teachers to get the load ‘just right’ in order for students to be thinking hard about content. The problem with this is that it makes CLT unfalsifiable and so Sweller et al have shied away from it. However, the ‘disastrous results’ you predict are more than mitigated by the advice offered in principle 2 (transfer to long-term memory) and 3 (problem soving) and 4 (transfer to new contexts). If teacher understand and follow all the advice rather than just some of it, it’s unlikely they will conclude that their entire efforts ought to be about getting rid of any cognitive load whenever it appears.
It is indeed about germane cognitive load. A lot of the issue I have seen from Sweller is that the original work seemed pretty clearly designed (or at least was interpreted by Sweller et al) to promote a traditionalist teaching program. When people pointed out that it didn’t really work because the type of load matters, he was reluctant to accept it (for the reasons you cite). But that means the original theory (and the implications he drew from it) still doesn’t really work. Well, making sure you don’t overload working memory is still relevant, but without the ability to distinguish between different types of load, the pedagogical theory is still badly one sided.
I find myself thinking that cognitive load theory which could distinguish between germane and extraneous load on a non- ad hoc basis would be incredibly useful, as it would help instructors choose effective methods. And such a theory is not definitionally unfalsifiable. It is contingently unfalsifiable based on our limited understanding of what load is effective and what is not. It is certainly within the realm of possibility that future work in cognitive science could push back our lack of understanding. If we follow Sweller’s lead and reject germane load then we really are stuck with a theory that is so stunted as to be near useless (and sadly, is often used to justify counterproductive practices in the name of cognitive load.
While the paper certainly gives evidence that counters the worst impulses from Sweller. However, because the results are never synthesized, the reader is left not with a nuanced and balanced theory, but rather with strong but conflicting advice. This seems problematic.
I think the answer to all this is Robert Bjork’s theory of ‘desirable difficulties’ – my latest book is all about this
[…] Loyal readers may remember my attempts to wade through the Top 20 Principles of Psychology for Teaching & Learning report from the APA. If you haven’t already read it, don’t bother. This remarkably concise digest, produced by Deans for Impact does the job much better. Well-informed readers probably won’t learn anything new, but I’ve not come […]
[…] that cognitive science is able to tell us, no, it isn’t. The recent Deans for Impact report The Science of Learning, neatly summarises the best we know about how people learn. We know a fair bit about how we […]
[…] Psychology for Teaching and Learning and the very readable Deans for Impact paper, The Science of Learning. Yesterday I came across this new report, Learning About Learning: What Every new Teacher Needs to […]