Recently, I was preparing for a podcast interview with the wonderful Jennifer Gonzalez (Cult of Pedagogy) and one of the last questions centered around a piece of advice I would give to teachers after years of reading and writing about cognitive sciences. It is tough to boil down over a century of research into a single thought or phrase. But, as a teacher, it is nice to have a somewhat all-encompassing focus to shape how you think about the classroom and instruction. I thought about it for a bit and came up with this:
Less is More. More is Too Much.
When it comes to designing the classroom environment and instruction, this is where I start…with what we know about how we learn and understanding the constraints of human memory. It simply does not matter what you teach or who you teach, if how you design the classroom and instruction doesn’t jive with memory processing, you very well could be missing the mark of student learning. As Sweller, Ayers, and Kalyuga wrote “Without knowledge of human cognitive processes, instructional design is blind.”
I don’t know what it is about the teacher brain, and maybe it’s just me, but I believe there’s this pull to increase the complexity of instructional methods when teaching more intricate or in depth material. For me, the thinking goes something like, “Okay, this is a complicated concept for students to understand, so I really need to dress up the teaching.” But, this is directly in conflict with what we know about memory and learning and how we should instruct.
One component of memory to always consider when designing instruction is working memory. Whatever we are consciously thinking about or attending to is what is in our working memory. If I asked you to think about what you ate for breakfast and you recall eating that bacon, egg, and cheese burrito (a favorite of mine), that is the information that is in your working memory. Whenever we instruct students and they are successfully sensing and attending to the lesson, that information is in their working memory for a bit of time. This is a necessary stop for the processing of information eventually into long-term memory. There are two constraints on working memory, though:
1. It is limited in capacity. It can only hold around four chunks of information at any one time.
2. It is also limited temporally. It can only hold that information for 15-30 seconds.
Knowing this, teachers need to be very cognizant of what is important for students to attend to in order to more successfully learn material. If the content is quite complex in nature or if students need to hold several different elements (ideas, terms, et cetera) in their mind at any given time in order to understand a larger concept (high element interactivity), that will occupy a large portion of their limited working memory capacity. If we also teach this intricate concept using instructional practices that are, by their nature, complex, we will likely overload student working memory. At that point, students will likely either consciously or unconsciously begin self-selecting what is more important to attend to in order to complete the task. Or, they will attempt to task switch; move back and forth between the content and the instructional strategy. There is evidence that task switching is detrimental to learning, too. Should they pay attention to the material? Should they pay attention to the complicated nature of the instruction or task? This obviously places the student in a bad spot and they will likely not be successful with either learning the material or participating in the instruction.
So, instead of turning on the ‘bells and whistles’ of teaching when the material is complex, do the opposite. Streamline and simplify instruction. Let the content shine and be the main event. As much as possible, allow the students’ limited working memory to be filled with the information to be learned and not the ‘how to’ of some more complex instructional strategy. Work within the confines and constraints of memory processing. You are no longer blind. See the light.
Less is More. More is Too Much.
A lot of the ideas above are grounded in a cognitive load theory. I’ve written a bit more about this theory and how it impacts how I think about learning in my classroom here.
For a more expansive and encompassing look at how I think about and design my classroom and instruction based upon these ideas, I recommend my book Do I Have Your Attention? Understanding Memory Constraints and Maximizing Learning. You can find more information about the book, loads of endorsements, and order links here.
Feature image by Brett Jordan on Unsplash.
“Streamline and simplify instruction.” I couldn’t agree more! Excellent piece. Here’s how I’ve written about this: Occam’s Razor to the Rescue: Simplify the subject, not the student. https://harriettjanetos.substack.com/p/occams-razor-to-the-rescue?r=5spuf
Thank you!