David Sanchez-Brown - How do we nurture a resilient, hardworking attitude to sixth form study?

Retrieval practice has been shown to be highly effective at increasing the information that a person is able to remember. It is suggested that quizzes are used that are spaced before, within, and after a lesson in order for students to be able to practice and quiz themselves on what they can remember. This method, like the two previous method already mentioned, does not take a huge amount of time to implement but is highly effective. This method should be approached with caution as questioned asked should provide a good level of challenge in order for students to remember what they have learnt. Additional, many times multiple choice questions or short answer questions are used which do not challenge the high attaining students to think deeply. References Barnett, S., & Ceci, S. (2002). When and where do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer. Psychology Bulletin, 128(4), 612-637. http://doi.org/10.1037//0033-2909.128.4.612 Clark, J., & Paivio, A. (1991). Dual coding theory and education. Educational Psychology Review, 3(3), 149-210. Retrieved from: www.jstor.org/stable/23359208 Cuevas, J., & Dawson, R. (2018). A test of two alternative cognitive processing models: learning styles and dual coding. Theory & Research in Education, 16(1), 40-64. http://doi.org/10.1177/14778517731450 Kornell, N., Hays, M., & Bjork, R. (2009). Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 35(4), 989-998. http://doi.org/10.1037/a0015729 Lehman, M., Smith, M., & Karpicke, J. (2014). Toward an episodic context account of retrieval-based learning: dissociating retrieval practical and elaboration. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 40(6), 1787-1794. http://doi.org/10.1037/x1m0000012 Plass, J., Moreno, R., & Brunken, R. (2010). Cognitive Load Theory. Retrieved from: www.cambridge.org/9780521860239 Shibli, D., & West, R. (2018). Cognitive load theory and its applications in the classroom. Impact. 2, 18- 20. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=asn&AN=16332&site=eds-live Siler, J., & Benjamin, A. (2019). Long-term interference and memory following retrieval practice. Memory and Cognition, 48(4), 645-654. http://doi.org/10.3758/s13421-019-00997-3 Sumeracki, M., Madan, C., & Weinstein-Jones, Y. (2018). Four simple strategies from cognitive psychology for the classroom. Essays from E-xcellence in Teaching, 17, 13-21. Retrieved from http://teachpsych.org/ebooks/eit2017/index.php Sumeracki, M., Weinstein-Jones, Y., Noel, C., & Schmidt, S. (2019). Encouraging knowledge transfer in food science and nutrition education: suggestions from cognitive research. Journal of Food Science Education, 18(3), 59-66. http://doi.org/10.1111/1541-4329.12158

Kelly Wiltshire - How can we help students to make meaning in geography? Using dual coding and graphic schemas

Rationale for my study

I chose to research this area because during 2019-2020 with the year 11 cohort, I have been trying to improve our knowledge acquisition and recall. After looking at a sample of exam papers from the 2019 cohort and looking widely at their scores for different exam question across different I realised that the exam techniques that we had been focusing on during their 2 year GCSE journey had benefitted our highest ability students the most. In addition, these students tended to be those who were most engaged with revision during lesson time, after school and independently. I could see this by looking at Seneca and engagement with GCSE Pod. This disappointment came from in 2019 we had more students than we expected achieve grade 3’s. It was a shock for us, and it felt as though as a department we had taken a massive step backwards. On reflection, as a team we had not been as targeted and impactful with all of our efforts. We had lost sense of what would make the difference in exam questions and dusted ourselves down to try again from September 2019 onwards.

In 2018, we had achieved a big step forward in results and revision for us was all about the content, because interpretations of the mark schemes were hazy, there was not clarity from the exam board and so I focused on what I did know – the content. By the time the 2019 cohort same around, we had been focusing on exam technique and how to interpret sources and how to answer questions, but in hindsight we assumed that content revision would happen by students independently and it is evident now that it did not. To reflect on this further, I recalled some exam papers from the 2019 cohort and by looking closely at these papers it became apparent that these students where often missing out exam questions. When I drilled down further it was often questions with subject specific terms or tier three language. When I looked back at the medium term plans and lesson plans, the words were there and been taught. In the detailed glossaries and the typed up knowledge organisers that were shared with students, the words were there. However, the resources that had taken time to produce did not have the impact that I had intended and 2019 was about looking about how to make what we do have impact.

To help reverse the dip in grades, I attended an online Edexcel CPD session where the speaker was considering approaches to support students in making the step up from grade 3 to 4, and grade 4 to 5. I was able to look at samples of exam papers from students beyond our cohort, answers not dissimilar to our own cohort, and see that students could achieve marks in the 1-4 mark questions (state / define, identity, describe, explain and suggest). I was able to see that despite some quite clumsy sentence structures or simple ideas, students were able to score marks and therefore achieve higher grades. What made the difference what was student were using the correct key terms in their answer but more importantly had been able to recall and have a clear understanding of the key terms in the question, meaning that the student could achieve marks.

Figure 1 – Sample answer from Edexcel showing use of key terminology by student (Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Geography A and B: Supporting lower ability learners 11/11/2019). A Grade 4 student who had a good grasps of using terms like ‘younger generation’, ‘traditional jobs’ and ‘unemployed’.

As a department, we had previously focused on how best to approach questions, with a clear focus on structure for their answers with also a focus on the question requiring a lengthier response. It became clear with the 2019 cohort we had made a mistake and we had an opportunity with the 3 year GCSE and the time that we had allocated from January with the year 11’s was to really focus on recalling and being able to use keywords and key ideas. Some of our students in 2019 wrote extended answers but lacked ‘specificity’. This grade 3 answer (see below) from Edexcel showed me that with the correct knowledge recall ,a student who performed poorly in other questions, was able to achieve 5/8 because they had applied the right knowledge and used the correct terms to support their ideas.

Figure 2 – Sample answer from Edexcel showing effective recall of a named example (Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Geography A and B: Supporting lower ability learners 11/11/2019). By recalling SPARC and Mumbai’s monorail this student could reach mid-level 2 due to good AO1/AO2 (Knowledge and understanding) and some AO3 (judgement and application). However I was also aware of this:

Figure 3 - Sample answer from Edexcel showing a grade 5 students answer (Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9-1) Geography A and B: Supporting lower ability learners 11/11/2019). A misunderstanding of key words leading to an incorrect answer from a Grade 5 student. The answer above ‘should’ be an easy question. Now we have one tier of entry, the rationale behind the multiple-choice question are that students aiming for grades 1-3 should be able to access these questions. However, the reality is that our CEC students in 2019 performed badly on this question with an average score of 0.55 for all students. When I attended the training the suggestion from the speaker was that students had not effectively recalled the word ‘fetch’ and therefore had not understood the question fully and recorded an incorrect answer. I suspect this was the case for some of our CEC students. We therefore as part of our Faculty Improvement plan had a range of targets, but two aspects that we decided to focus on were a) Enhance literacy provision through embedding key word vocabulary in lesson planning and b) Embed deeper recall activities in planning. For us with the cohort of year 11’s in 2020 we chosen to focus on how best we can support students with revision and I began to explore how dual coding could work to support recall. It was important that I research the best ways to help students ‘make meaning’ and be able to understand, recall and use key terms.

Cognition and dual coding.

Metacognition and self-regulated learning (SLR) have been advocated by many, and have significant support being seen as a potentially effective and low cost way of impacting learning (EEF, May 2020). The EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) believes that these approaches aim to help pupils think about their own learning more explicitly and that self-regulated learning can be broken into three essential components: cognition, metacognition and motivation (EEF, 2020). I have chosen to research about cognition to explore the mental processes by which students are able to know, understand and learn. We have for a long time made use of visual imagery in geography, indeed in the department, we have sought to try and include more ‘WOW’ moments this year by using clear, though provoking and visually impressive photos. As a geographical discipline, diagrams have always been an integral part of making sense of physical and human processes and therefore I was keen to explore the use of images or visual codes to help students understand key words. The Chartered College of Teaching (2009) stressed that when producing PowerPoints “less is more. Reduce the amount of text and diagrams to as few as necessary, but no fewer. This will ensure that you do not overload your students’ limited

working memory capacity” and this was something that I was also acutely aware of the need to consider. I have admitted in my CPD Journal last year that I am not a big fan of reading (sshhhhh don’t tell anyone!!!!!) but I have found that over the last two years my engagement on Twitter has helped me to explore academic literature in a way that juggling parental and teaching responsibilities previously would not have allowed. Writing this after a significant period of lockdown has also enabled me to engage in CPD lectures that I previously would not have had the privilege to attend. As someone who quite likes to talk (and listen!) I have found the online live CPD talks an effective way of engaging with theories linked to cognitive science and its use in the classroom. I have been aware of the work of Oliver Caviglioli and his work on Dual Coding on Twitter (@olicav) but also attended his Seneca talk on 20/5/20 (see for bibliography for recording). In addition, I completed his Seneca CPD course online. During his talk in May, his opening point was that ‘ideas are objects, they need to have a new way of organising them’ and this helped me to think beyond just the idea of linking an icon to a word to help students remember it. It is also about sequencing, layout and structuring of images and words. It also made me think that words are not bad, I do not need to replace all the text on my resources with images, but that instead I need to consider how these images can be linked to create a ‘graphic schema’. This has also meant that this CPD Literature review needed to evolve to be more about Graphic Schemas, rather than just dual coding.

Cognitive Load Theory

Cognitive load theory has developed from the work of Australian educational psychologist John Sweller (Sweller , 1994). Simplified it seeks to explain how students can only processes some much new information at once in their ‘working memory’ at any one time. Sweller defines the types of memory as intrinsic load, extraneous load and germane load. When put together these make up the capacity of the working memory. Intrinsic load is related to the inherent difficulty of the subject matter being learnt. It is influenced by how complex the material is and how much a student already knows about the topic. For example, 2 + 2 + 4 has less intrinsic load than 93 x 543, while understanding the workings of the human respiratory system has more intrinsic load than knowing where the lungs are situated in a human body. Extraneous load is bad for learning because it can hinder the construction of long-term memories. It refers to any extra and unnecessary thinking that students have to do that does not contribute to learning. Unlike intrinsic load, extraneous load is related to how the subject material is presented rather than its inherent difficulty and, as teachers, we can either heighten or reduce its effect. The third type of cognitive load, germane load, is desirable. It is the load placed on working memory that contributes directly to genuine learning – in other words, the nourishing and productive thinking that causes our students to form and consolidate long-term memories. (taken from The Chartered College of Teaching, 2019)

Importantly within the Dual coding course, Caviglioli makes reference to John Sweller (1988) and the idea of the ‘Cognitive Load theory’. It is important to think about this, as my initial impression of dual coding was that images would help students make meaning. The Cognitive Load theory for me