Research School Network: Making Connections #2 – fortnightly blog and one-sider PDF Connecting evidence to practice

Unity Research School Director, Andy Samways, launches a fortnightly one-sider PDF designed to help link evidence-informed strategies with classroom practice.

The second one is all about working memory and dual coding, (other terms associated with this include cognitive load):

Making Connections Issue #2 – Working memory and dual coding

FACT: Working memory* plays an essential role in everyday life, especially in supporting learning in school. 

*In simple terms, working memory can be described as holding short-term (i.e. temporary) information in your mind while using that information to accomplish a task. 

Important characteristics to understand about working memory in humans are that:

• it can only hold a limited amount of information
• the information in working memory is transitory. It is only held briefly in order to attempt to accomplish a task or activity and then it is gone (unless other measures are taken to convert it into a more long-term memory).

ISSUE:
Working memory plays an essential role in everyday life, especially in supporting learning in school but is both limited and transitory (as shared in Making Connections #1)

HOWEVER, AS PAUL KIRSCHENER WRITES IN OLIVER CAVIGLIOLI’S ​‘DUAL CODING WITH TEACHERS’:

• combining words & images (DUAL CODING) effectively facilitates learning; their impact is additive (from work of Paivio, 1971)
• if the same information is offered to you in two different ways, it enables you to access more working memory capacity
• in addition, you not only boost the information traces in your long-term memory – it also allows you to remember or recognise the information in two different ways.
• by combining an image with a complementary word (written or spoken) you are maximising capacity in development of long-term memory
  
  

SO … to what extent are you aware of:

• The principles underpinning DUAL CODING
• How effective DUAL CODING can result in more processing capacity within learning
• How you can utilise DUAL CODING within your teaching
• the fact that DUAL CODING HERO OLIVER CAVIGLIOLI is giving a keynote masterclass at researchED Ipswich on 16/11/19 … fewer tickets left by the day so snap your up HERE!