A reflection on working memory
I have been reading some more educational research recently, and I am going to be posting some reflections on what I have taken away from the articles I have been reading. So here is the first.
Author: Daniel T Willingham
"…successful thinking relies on four factors: information from the environment, facts in long-term memory, procedures in long-term memory, and space in working memory. If any one of them is inadequate, thinking will likely fail."
An overview
This article looks at the cognitive reasons for students not enjoying school. It is a nice introduction to the ideas of cognitive science and explains how the brain works, and that, most importantly, "the brain is not designed for thinking. It's designed to save you from having to think".
It starts by explaining that "people are naturally curious…(but) unless the cognitive conditions are right, people will avoid thinking", and goes on to look at what we mean by the right cognitive conditions. Willingham explores the idea that people like to solve problems, as long as they are achievable and solvable. When a problem is too hard, we give up and it is not a rewarding experience. When it is too easy, we don't need to solve a problem at all, and it is boring. The level of the problem must be right.
Willingham then goes on to look at how the process of thinking works, and explains a simple model made up environmental factors, working memory and long-term memory. The crux of the article is that working memory is limited, and that "thinking occurs when you combine information (from the environment and from long-term memory) in new ways. That combination happens in working memory". For this to happen though, you need the information to start with. If this is not stored in long-term memory, or available in the environment, then working memory has to be used to find this information, and this reduces the working memory available to actually solve the problem.
Willingham finally goes on to look at the implications in the classroom, and has these broad titles to consider from this evidence:
Be sure that there are problems to be solved
Respect students' limited knowledge and space in working memory
Identify key questions and ensure that problems are solvable
Reconsider when to puzzle students
Act on variations in student preparation
Change the pace
Keep a diary
"Most or all of what we tell students about … thinking strategies is impossible to use without appropriate background knowledge."
My reflections
For me one of the key points that I have taken from this article is the importance of not overloading the working memory. If students need to use their working memory to actively recall facts then this is space they can't use to solve the problem at hand. I will definitely be letting my students know this, as many of them have a reluctance to write their working down (just this week I explained this idea to my S3 class in terms of laptops running slowly when lots of programs are open). Writing information down makes it environmental, and frees up some space in working memory to work on the problem. I also want to focus a bit more on getting students to develop their long-term memories, and I will have to think about how I am going to approach this.
Another important takeaway for me is the idea that students need the skills and knowledge to solve a problem, before attempting it. As Willingham states, "thinking requires knowing facts" and "the more you know, the easier it is to learn new things". Often I will start a lesson with a problem for students to think about that leads into the learning for the current lesson or to generate some curiosity, but this suggests that this might immediately put them off the class, whereas showing them this after they have the required skills and knowledge will allow them to tackle the problem successfully. I am not sure how I feel about this, as I find that a problem to start the lesson has benefits for behaviour and getting started quickly, but I will spend more time making sure that these problems are accessible based on the students current knowledge.
"Working on problems that are at the right level of difficulty is rewarding, but working on problems that are too easy or too difficult is unpleasant"