Research School Network: Cognitive load – to reduce or optimise? Hannah Cox reflects on the role of cognitive load in science teaching
—
Blog
Cognitive load – to reduce or optimise?
Hannah Cox reflects on the role of cognitive load in science teaching
Share on:
by Devon Research School
on the
Hannah Cox
-deputy Director of Devon Research School, Raising Standards Lead for Year 7 and acher of Science at Kingsbridge Community College.
I have been a teacher for 9 years and am passionate about the power of education. Teaching is a challenging profession, therefore I want to make sure my practice is as effective as it can be, for the benefit of the students in and out of my classroom. The work of the EEF is important in this endeavour; especially for our disadvantaged students. I feel privileged to working alongside an amazing team at the Research School and am excited to be sharing research findings and best practice with teachers across the South West.
As a science teacher, I’ve always been wary of overloading students’ working memory. Cognitive load refers to the amount of information our working memory can process at any given time. The plethora of stimuli students face in a classroom makes it vital for educators to consider strategies to manage student cognitive load so that the essential bits of what we are teaching embedded in students’ long-term memory, thus causing learning to occur. If we give students too much information they can become easily overwhelmed and even the most motivated, capable students will struggle to stay engaged.
The EEF’s Cognitive Science approaches in the classroom: a review of the evidence explores Managing Cognitive load. The report states that teachers use many ways to manage cognitive load in their classrooms, such as chunking content, using frameworks and scaffolds, being economic with their language when giving instructions and decluttering materials. A statement from the report that stood out to me and one I wish to explore further is:
The aim of strategies that focus on managing cognitive load is not to minimise cognitive load but to optimise it—minimising unnecessary load and ensuring that working memory remains focused on the information that is being taught.
The go-to person
I met with Emma Walsh, an experienced secondary school biology teacher, who is a role model in the clarity of her explanations and lesson resources. She is my go-to person for advice on this topic. We discussed why it is important to optimise students’ cognitive load and the methods she uses in her classroom practice to do this.
The why
When I asked Emma why she feels it’s important to optimise cognitive load, she said, “If you give students too much content all in one go, they will either give up, or they won’t know what they are learning, or they’ll get horribly muddled.” She explained that if we want students to be successful in our subjects, we must pay close attention to the information we are giving them. In addition, we should be careful to ensure it aligns what our exam boards expect our students to know. Students will feel successful as they have learnt something, but is it what they need to successfully answer an exam question?
The how
Emma used one of her recent Year 10 lessons about transpiration and translocation to provide me with concrete examples of strategies she used to optimise student cognitive load.
She explained to me that students need to be able to recognise xylem and phloem from microscope images from different parts of a plant (see below). When she showed me what these images look like they, I can see why students are likely to be overwhelmed.
Emma showed me how she uses a scaffolding technique to support with this task. Scaffolding such as prompts, cues, or targeted instructions can help learners navigate the working memory demands of tasks. Evidence shows that well-targeted scaffolds are an effective approach to support students to solve problems or learn from complex tasks (Belland et al., 2017).
One example is using simplified diagrams (see below) before showing the class more complex, microscope images. As she explained, “I model to the students where the xylem and phloem are in the diagrams, and then give them similar diagrams to identify the structures themselves. The idea is that we are building up to the challenge of microscope images rather than diving in straight away”
Interestingly, Emma reflected on her choice of one image, where the xylem was broken down into primary and secondary xylem structures. She said that one student asked about this, which posed a problem – while knowledge of the answer is not needed for the student to be successful at GCSE level, she wanted to credit the student’s attention to detail without overwhelming him and risking him not focusing on the essential content.
References
EEF. (2017). Cognitive science approaches in the classroom: a review of the evidence. London: Education Endowment Foundation.
Belland, B.R., Walker, A.E. and Kim, N.J. (2017). A Bayesian Network Meta-Analysis to Synthesize the Influence of Contexts of Scaffolding Use on Cognitive Outcomes in STEM Education. Review of Educational Research, 87(6), pp.1042 – 1081. doi:https://doi.org/10.3102/003465….
