Understanding emotions, learners and achievement
The Dutch psychologist Adriaan de Groot doesn’t always get the same kind of recognition as other cognitive psychologists, his name often restricted to paragraph or two in psychology textbooks or a brief citation in the work of others such as Anders Ericsson, Alan Baddeley and John Sweller. Nevertheless, De Groot has been described as ‘theContinue reading From Novice to Expert: The Role of Long-term Working Memory
Collaborative learning can be described as two or more learners actively pursuing and contributing to a shared goal, or trying to share the effort required to reach that goal. It has become a mainstay of educational practice. During my time as a teacher there was always an expectation that most lessons would involve some elementContinue reading Collaborative learning and Cognitive load
I’ve stated elsewhere that working memory is limited and that these limitations can hamper our ability to learn new things and carry out complex tasks. I’m implying here that learning and remembering are either the same or very similar, so I’m referring to learning in a rather narrow way, but stay with me on this.Continue reading Cognitive load and cognitive offloading
In his 2019 review of twenty years of Cognitive Load Theory, John Sweller explores several avenues of further investigation. One such avenue relates to emotions, stress and uncertainty and how these factors influence cognitive load. Within the education community aspects of cognition in learning are often starkly separated from seemingly non-cognitive factors. Curiously, the formerContinue reading Cognitive Load, emotion and buoyancy
The term cognitive load has been around for a long time but definitions have tended to shift and often depend on theoretical positions. Early researchers rarely attempted to define cognitive load at all. In a 1966 paper, Levine describes cognitive load as the amount of information that the observer is required to store in memoryContinue reading What do we really mean by cognitive Load?
Working memory limitations indicate that we should design learning in such a way as to reduce cognitive load. Working memory is a resource with limited capacity and duration – there is only so much we can attend to at any one time. This is not just a proposal of working memory theory – it’s alsoContinue reading instructional design: Working memory & expertise reversal
The term non-cognitive skills has become increasingly prevalent within education over the past few years. But what do we actually mean by non-cognitive, how do these skills differ from cognitive ones and is any aspect of learning truly non-cognitive anyway? The roots of non-cognitive skills lie in the writings of sociologists Samuel Bowles and HerbertContinue reading What are non-cognitive skills?
Memory is essential for learning. In fact, memory is essential for life. Without memory, we would exist in the perpetual present, a void where we are unable to recall a past and incapable of anticipating a future. We wouldn’t recognise our loved ones or be able to plan our futures. And we wouldn’t be ableContinue reading A Memory Primer
The Emotional Learner 