Making Connections #3 - Working Memory &…

5 October, 2019 —
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Making Connections #3 – Working Memory & Cognitive Load

Connecting evidence to practice – a fortnightly one-side pdf

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by Unity Research School
on the 5th October 2019

In this third edition of Making Connections, Andy Samways connects working memory and cognitive load and signposts some useful reading with clickable links.

WORKING MEMORY:

MEMORY THAT INVOLVES STORING, FOCUSING ATTENTION ON, AND MANIPULATING INFORMATION FOR A RELATIVELY SHORT PERIOD OF TIME (SUCH AS A FEW SECONDS)

COGNITIVE LOAD:

COGNITIVE LOAD THEORY, DEVELOPED FROM THE WORK OF JOHN SWELLER, IS BASED ON THE TYPES OF INFORMATION HELD IN WORKING-MEMORY AT ANY ONE TIME. THESE ARE KNOWN AS:

INTRINSIC LOAD
EXTRANEOUS LOAD
GERMANE LOAD

ADDED TOGETHER, THEY MAKE UP THE CAPACITY OF THE WORKING MEMORY.

Both these aspects play significant roles within our classrooms as well as professional learning.

‘Many of the learning activities that children are engaged with in the classroom, whether related to reading, mathematics, science, or other areas of the curriculum, impose quite considerable burdens on working memory. Activities often require the child to hold in mind some information (for example, a sentence to be written down) while doing something that for them is mentally challenging (such as spelling the individual words in the sentence).
Understanding working memory – a classroom guide, Gathercole and Alloway, 2007