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PEDAGOGY

COGNITIVE SCIENCE AS A FRAMEWORK FOR ORGANISING GREAT TEACHING

To teach well, it makes sense that teachers understand how the brain, or more specifi cally “memory”, works. Isaac Moore takes us through the principles of cognitive science that un-derpin highlye ective teaching strategies.

By Isaac Moore

Cognitive science has given us a model, a framework to understand how learning happens. Our understanding of how learning happens is often represented using the model below:

This illustration of how we learn, by Tom Sherrington (original model is in Why Don’t Students Like School by Daniel Willingham), shows that there are three components to how learning happens:

• ATTENTION:

The gateway of information from the environment to our working memory. The environment is full of both useful and unhelpful signals to students when we teach. An environment that is full of useful information (a classroom where there is no disruption and a corridor that is calm and orderly) is supportive of good teaching and learning, which is the core business of any school. This is the fi rst key aspect of great teaching and school improvement.

• WORKING MEMORY:

Our working memory is where we make sense of information, where we make meaning, where thinking takes place. Our working memory has a fl ow of information from both the environment and our long term memory, if there is prior knowledge stored in it and retrievable. Making sense of new information from the environment requires knowledge stored in our long term memory. The capacity of our working memory is limited when trying to make sense of new information if there is no prior knowledge to activate.

• LONG TERM MEMORY (LTM):

Long Term Memory is where knowledge is stored and retrieved from. Its storage capacity is unlimited. LTM is commonly divided into explicit (declarative) and implicit (nondeclarative) memory [Schacter & Tulving, 1994]. Explicit memory can be further subdivided: episodic memory refers to personal events that are associated with specifi c times and locations, whereas semantic memory corresponds to general facts and knowledge about the world. Implicit memory, on the other hand, encompasses e ects of prior experience that are often not available to consciousness, such as priming, habits, and skills.

This model from cognitive science has some implications for how we teach and how school leaders go about improving schools. I have organised some of these implications under the following four principles;

PEDAGOGY

PRINCIPLE 1: WHAT WE KNOW DETERMINES WHAT WE LEARN AND HOW QUICKLY WE LEARN

The ‘Matthew E ect’ applies here- As explained above, meaning making happens when in-formation garnered through paying attention and knowledge from the LTM (prior knowledge) combine in our working memory. The network of knowledge in our LTM makes it possible to make sense of new information quickly and durably.

Our students that have prior knowledge to bring to lessons end up having more knowledge, those without prior knowledge struggle to learn new things. The students that struggle to know because they lack prior knowledge may become demotivated and give up on learning.

What are the implications of this principle for how we teach and improve our schools?

E ective sequencing in SoL: This is essential to ensuring that students have the prior knowledge they need for upcoming lessons. How do you know when your curriculum has been e ectively sequenced? There are no hard and fast rules but there are a few things you can do and some questions you can ask to continue to improve your sequencing of knowledge and skills in your subject. Some of these include:

1. What is the purpose of my subject curriculum?

2. What are the knowledge/skill endpoints that we want to teach to all students in my subject?

3. What knowledge do students need to have to reach each endpoint? 4. What knowledge should precede what knowledge when we teach?

5. How are we going to know when students have learned the knowledge and skills we have sequenced?

6. How should we teach to ensure all students learn the curriculum?

7. What should we do when they have not learned the curriculum?

There are more questions you can ask, for example, what do others in my subject associa-tion consider to be an e ective sequence?, how is the prior knowledge from primary refl ect-ing in the sequence from some of the best schools?, Does this sequence work in my con-text?

The questions above are helpful when sequencing your curriculum. When your curriculum is e ectively sequenced, it becomes the progression model. Care must be taken to ensure that how we teach and assess do not render the curriculum ine ective. Making the curriculum the progression model means you are constantly asking questions and using the most e ective pedagogy when you teach. It means CPD in subject teams to up-skill everyone so as to safeguard the educational entitlement of all students, especially SEND and disadvantaged students.

Durable knowledge storage and retrieval

In A new theory of disuse and an old theory of stimulus fl uctuation, [Bjork & Bjork, 1992] take the starting point that any item of information may eventually become unrecallable, regard-less of how accessible and overlearned it may be at a point in time. This means that the knowledge we teach our students becomes unrecallable over a period of time, no matter how well-learned it was at a point in the past. This a ects what prior knowledge students are able to take with them to lessons. Bjork also argued that it is simply a mistake to think that when we fail to retrieve information, that this is a failure of our memory system. We all know about students that think there is something wrong with their memory simply because they failed to recall something that they had encountered before.

In their new theory, Bjork et al proposed the following fi ve assumptions;

1. An item in memory has two strengths- storage and retrieval strengths. Storage strength measures how well learned knowledge is and retrieval strength measures the current ease of access to the knowledge in our memory.

2. The storage strength of a knowledge item grows as a pure accumulation process, as a function of opportunities to study or recall the knowledge item.

3. There is no limit on storage capacity, but there is a limit on retrieval capacity

4. Retrieving knowledge from memory and studying both increase the retrieval strength of a knowledge item, as well as its storage strength but retrieval is the more potent outcome.

5. The retrieval of an item from memory decreases owing to the learning or retrieval of other items.

What does this all mean for the prior knowledge of our students and teaching?

Retrieval strength is measured by current performance like answering questions in lessons and in a test. Storage strength is the degree to

which memory representations (i.e., knowledge and procedures) are integrated with other memory representations. This can not be directly measured but we can know if storage strength is increasing by asking how easy it is to retrieve knowledge in the future and when we relearn something we forgot, how quick it is to relearn it.

The ultimate goal for all teachers is to reduce retrieval strength for our students and increase storage strength- this is what learning is about. When retrieval strength is high, regardless of storage strength, not a lot of learning is taking place. When retrieval strength is low (not able to retrieve at that point in time), our students make the greatest gain in learning. It turns out that forgetting is actually good for learning.

The testing e ect is a way to improve storage strength. Retrieving knowledge from our LTM improves storage strength even when we fail, for as long there is an opportunity for feed-back. The spacing e ect is another way to boost the storage strength of our students.

When we combine both the testing e ect and the spacing e ect, we maximise the gains from these two e ects. All teachers should have the spaced testing e ect planned into their curriculums. How the testing e ect works varies for subjects, so be careful and take the time to fi nd out how to make this e ective for your subject.

PEDAGOGY

PRINCIPLE 2: WE LEARN ONLY WHEN WE THINK, WHEN WE THINK HARD

A calm and quiet environment

The model of how we learn that has been adapted from Daniel Willingham’s book shows the importance of attention to thinking and learning. We think about what we pay attention to. Inattention to the core purpose of the classroom is costly. When the environment is noisy and chaotic, all students miss out of learning, but SEND students tend to miss out more. Good schools close the gap for SEND students and disadvantaged students by ensuring the learning environment is calm and orderly. The learning environment is not just the classroom, it includes the corridors and every part of the premises. The responsibility for a calm and orderly environment lies with SLT.

Whatever the behaviour ideology of the headteacher of a school, if the environment is not calm and orderly, if the behaviour of some students make the environment chaotic and un-safe for the students that are most in need of a calm and safe environment, then that is clearly a failure of leadership. Do you believe in restorative practice? Does the implementa-tion cause the school to become disorderly? Is a minority of students making learning di cult for others? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then that is a clear failure of leadership.

Thinking and participation ratio

The goal of every lesson is learning, but learning only happens when students think and think hard. We don’t want just a few students to think hard, we want all students to think hard. Doug Lemov fi rst coined the term ratio in Teach Like A Champion 2.0 . Adam Boxer wrote an excellent blog on ratio and ways to increase both thinking and participation ratio. It means There are 2 types of ratio- Participation ratio concerns how many students are participating in an activity (mental or physical) and how often and thinking ratio concerns how hard students are thinking when they participate.

How can a class teacher increase thinking and participation ratio? The most e ective way I have found is through the use of mini whiteboards. Other strategies include Wait Time, Cold Call and independent practice in lessons.

Routines to focus attention

Having a calm and orderly environment and classroom is not enough for all students to learn and thrive in school. We need to have routines that all teachers and students know and un-derstand. When routines become habits, we expend less cognitive resources on remember-ing and doing them. This is especially important for some SEND students and students that have had their working memory impaired by hardship. The routines need to be simple to fol-low and be explicitly taught. Corridor routines to keep everyone safe and get everyone to lesson on time and classroom routines to inject some e ciency into what we do need to be taught by all to all.

PRINCIPLE 3: OUR WORKING MEMORY IS LIMITED WHEN WE LEARN SOMETHING NEW

Explicit Instruction

Explicit instruction places the teacher at the centre of teaching as the knowledge expert. The class teacher gives guided instructions to all students from the front of the classroom. It is highly structured and engaging (not boring at all). In explicit instruction teaching, students are novices and the teacher is the expert. The teacher breaks down the knowledge to be taught sequentially, with lots of guided practice. Teachers typically use worked examples to model what to do and how to do it and gradually release responsibility to students so that they can engage in independent practice. Terms like I do-We do-You do and faded guidance are associated with explicit teaching.

Materials designed with cognitive load in mind

The resources and materials we use in lessons should be designed with cognitive load in mind. Powerpoint slides with lots of texts are unlikely to help all students. Slides of a few carefully selected texts would be better. Better still, a diagram/ image on a slide and words from the teacher that explain the idea that the image represents is even better. Nothing beats drawing live (if you can) and explaining at the same time.

PRINCIPLE 4: FLUENCY ARISES THROUGH FLUENCY OVER TIME

SLOP (Shed load of practice) in lessons and at home

For students to develop fl uency, they need to do a shedload of practice in lessons and at home. Independent practice sessions in lessons increase participation ratio, they also help students to use knowledge fl uently. The questions should allow all students to start with min-imal guidance but the challenge should be ramped up. A lot of schools and subjects now use booklets for this purpose. There needs to be variation to the questions that students practise with. Have you ever been told by students that you did not teach them something, even though you did? Sometimes, the questions we give to students to practise on are so narrow that students struggle to gen-eralise their understanding. Variation theory is an excellent teaching method to help solve this problem. It is primarily used in Maths, but it can be used in any subject to design the questions we give to students. More about it here

Teach students about eff ective learning strategies

The work of Dunlosky [Dunlosky, 1993] is very important here. Many students revise, but a lot of students tend to choose strategies that are ine ective because such strategies make the revision material seem familiar. Students will choose reading/rereading their notes/ highlighting notes over using the testing e ect. Why? Because they fi nd the testing e ect less familiar and e ortful. Students tend to choose mass practice over using the spac-ing e ect. Why? Because the spacing e ect is e ortful.

Teachers therefore need to teach students about the learning strategies that are e ective and support students to use these strategies at home. The teaching needs to be explicit- teacher models how to make a revision plan using spaced retrieval; teacher supports students to make the next revision plan; students make revision plans independently.