This book is so good, so influential, so important for teachers to read that the review needed to be split in half!
What follows covers the first 4 chapters.
Kate Jones and Tom Bennett have assembled a team of real excellence for this brilliant addition to the hugely popular ResearchEd guide to series and the team certainly do not disappoint.
Each chapter is characterised by a realistic but determined view on how to apply research in some of the most talked-about areas of cognitive science into every-day classroom practice. The authors skillfully summarise the prominent research in their chapter and share broad implications of the research findings. This consistently sets the scene for the in-depth look at what this means for classroom teachers wanting to make an evidence informed difference to their practice. While each chapter could happily stand alone in its own right, the cross overs and connections between theories are made explicitly clear throughout and allow the reader to build an understanding of the importance of an evidence informed mindset rather than simply blindly following recommended strategies and ideas.
Jade Pearce’s chapter on cognitive load theory provides an excellent summary of the key points of the research, including five driving principles of the theory. She provides a set of cognitive load effects that serve to reduce extraneous load and optimise intrinsic cognitive load. One of these effects is the spacing effect and this represents a key cross-over with other influential research around this particular theory, showing from the outset that cognitive architecture is something that is best understood by considering theories in combination rather than isolation. We found one of the most useful and impressive parts of the chapter to be the author’s tackling of intrinsic cognitive load through the lens of element interactivity. Having carried out a small-scale research project some years ago in this very area, I was both intrigued and impressed with the clarity that Jade Pearce tackled something so complex. She presents the main challenge of element interactivity to be the fact that when elements interact with each other as part of the learning process, they are required to be processed at the same time in working memory. This makes the problematic impact on working memory abundantly clear and allows the keen reader to begin thinking about how to isolate elements in teaching episodes before explicitly drawing attention to the interactivity – surely an area that would benefit from further research. That is the mark of a great piece of informative writing – when it makes you think about the implications and possibilities for yourself and question what could come next to further enhance our collective understanding.
Sarah Cottingham’s work around schema creation and development is well known. Her take on Ausubel’s theory of subsumption as part of meaningful learning was a masterpiece and she broadens that particular part of the discussion around meaningful learning expertly here. The author first defines schema for the purposes of the discussion in the chapter, yet does so in such a way as to leave space for debate and counter-opinion around this definition. This was a refreshingly non-binary way of presenting the beginning of her compelling argument. Sarah Cottingham then approaches the issue of how schemas are formed and proposes that teachers can help them form through explicit reference to the links that connect related material. The idea is that when we want to form a new understanding, we should present students with what we already know and then add in the new knowledge. The interactivity between these two bodies of knowledge becomes our new understanding and so we have added to our schema because we have built on what we already know, allowing the embedded previous understanding to act a type of cue for the new. This process of assimilation points to the importance of very deliberate, very long-term curriculum planning and makes us think about the importance of planning curriculum content around key, repeating concepts – these concepts become the abstract hook to hang the hat and coat of more concrete knowledge on as we build the schema around that key concept. You can listen to Chris and I talk in detail about this idea as part of a Teacher talk radio episode here. There are further implications of the theory of schema building that Sarah Cottingham unpacks in the chapter and one big piece of thinking that we have done since reading is around the usefulness of interleaving when developing an understanding of how two closely related yet crucially different ideas or bodies of knowledge relate and interact.
‘This is not to say that is all there is, rather this is probably sufficient for most teachers, most of the time’. This quote from Adam Boxer’s chapter on dual coding theory is a reassuring reminder of the parameters of cognitive science informed instruction. Engagement with the application of research into practice is likely to lead to better teaching and while there is space to develop real expertise through continually questioning, refining and checking one’s practice against the research base, it is likely that by thinking in a reflective way, informed by the evidence base is going to improve teaching to a greater or lesser extent. What follows is a logical exploration of dual coding as an evidence base for teachers to draw on. Simultaneously presenting information through words and images produces better learning and the author makes and explains this point in a typically accessible way given the pertinence of the point. This feeds nicely into the next section where he presents the theory that by activating both auditory and visual communication channels, we effectively reduce the cognitive load on each channel, thereby effectively increasing the available space in working memory. This simple theory of an admittedly complex process offers us a clear understanding of why dual coding is something worth facilitating for teachers. Too often we are told to blindly follow strategies and approaches because ‘the evidence says they work’.
What Adam Boxer does in his chapter is show us why dual coding is something that teachers should aspire to help students do and this, allows us to think more widely about the further implications of the theory because we are given the understanding of why the theory fits into our cognitive architecture. This is empowering for teachers because it gives us a framework for thinking about instruction in a way that hands back autonomy around how we apply what we now know and, how we take it further. The author then continues into the section of the chapter where practical applications are offered in a logical order. For example, he starts with ‘where possible, use diagrams’ and then moves on to explaining why images and related words should be kept together in space when we use diagrams. This also draws a connection to another key cognitive load theory – the split attention effect, again reminding us that cognitive science is not linear but instead inter-connected. The highlight of the chapter for me, was the granular attention to detail that Adam Boxer shows when he describes his suggestion to build up parts of models alongside the related part of explanation rather than present the complete model and then explain each part as a component of the whole. While this is not a case of ‘always do this and never do the other’, we are given such a sound appraisal of the merits of the approach that we come away feeling, again, equipped to think carefully about which approach is best for any given context. Providing the freedom to think contextually and the guidance to think efficiently and in an evidence informed way, is hard. Adam Boxer nails it.
Jonathan Firth brings us his chapter on Interleaving and having recently read Jade Pearce and Isaac Moore’s Desirable difficulties in action, I was thrilled to see the reinforcement of so many of the points they made in their book and then hugely enjoyed Jonathan Firth’s additions to that. The distinction between interleaving and spaced practice was as clear as day and is such an important distinction to grasp. The central point here, and it is one that the author really pursues, is that interleaving is useful to us when we want students to master the differences between two related but different items. This not only chimes with what Jade Pearce and Isaac Moore write but also with David Ausubel and Sarah Cottingham when they write about the need to continually draw student attention to the differences between existing knowledge and new, related knowledge in order to prevent over-assimilation. As Jonathan Firth writes, ‘similarity matters’. The value of interleaving comes from the similarity between the items we want to interleave. He also reinforces one of the book’s repeated themes around teacher autonomy and where this should sit alongside cognitive science principles. He writes that ‘judgement on the part of the teacher is necessary in order to determine where potentially confusing contrasts may arise for a particular learner or class’. Again, it is the teacher’s thinking and contextual application that is the key to successful implementation of the principles that emerge from this aspect of cognitive science. Jonathan Firth also goes into the difference between spacing and interleaving and explains how the timescales involved in interleaving are closer together than when utilising the spacing effect. This is thoughtfully put together and reassuringly builds on earlier chapters, maintaining the clear through line of the book. The summary of the chapter brings us back to the key points and my attention was drawn back to the importance of setting the boundaries of a concept and using interleaving to emphasise this. Knowing what something isn’t is as important as knowing what it is.
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