Research and Practice Summary

This reading will help you understand some of the theory behind this week’s topic. We will start by introducing some of the key concepts (these are in bold). You will also see some suggestions of how to put these concepts into practice. When using these concepts in your own practice you will need to take account of your pupils’ characteristics, the context of your classroom and the nature of the material that you are teaching.

Case study: part 1

Drawing on long-term memory to support working memory in Year 9 English

Hasan is teaching Macbeth to a Year 9 English class of mixed attainment. He wants his pupils to be able to explain the likely impact upon an Elizabethan audience of witches appearing on stage in Act IV Scene 1. They studied the Witch Craze in history last year, and they met Macbeth’s witches in Act 1 earlier this term.

How might Hasan prompt knowledge of witches from his pupils’ long-term memories to support their achievement of this learning objective?

Knowledge can be defined as familiarity, awareness or understanding of facts, information or skills. Knowledge can refer to a theoretical or practical understanding of a subject. It can be implicit (as with practical skill or expertise) or explicit (as with the theoretical understanding of a subject). Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: attention, perception, communication and reasoning; this can happen through experience or education.

If a pupil has a poor store of prior knowledge in their long-term memory (i.e. if they are a novice), they are likely to struggle to acquire new knowledge in lessons because their grasp of foundational concepts will not be secure and their working memory can become overloaded.

Case study: part 2

Hasan suspects that some of his pupils have poor or inaccurate knowledge of attitudes towards witches in the Jacobean period. What techniques could Hasan use to get a better idea of where pupils’ inaccuracies lie?

At the end of the previous lesson, Hasan did some quick-fire true/false questioning to quiz his pupils on their prior knowledge in their long-term memories and to bring misconceptions to the surface (e.g. ‘Witches lived in England in the past. True or false?’, ‘People believed witches conspired with the devil and had the power to change events. True or false?’).

Learning can be described as a lasting change in pupils’ capacities or understanding. Sometimes learning is defined as a change in long-term memory; a wider definition of learning might include changes in knowledge, values and attitudes.

Memory is an important factor in learning. Memory comprises two elements: working memory and long-term memory. The role of a teacher is to organise teaching so that it best supports pupils to process information in their working memory and store it within increasingly complex mental models in their long-term memory.

Regular, purposeful practice of what has previously been taught can help consolidate material and help pupils remember what they have learned.

To help your pupils to learn more effectively, you should:

• build in opportunities for regular, purposeful practice of what has been learned (e.g. by getting into the habit of building practice time into all of your lessons. Practice can be done singly, in pairs or in larger groups)
• help your pupils strengthen their long-term memories (e.g. for factual recall, by quizzing them to recall recent learning, and repeating this with longer intervals; for practical skills like catching or drawing, you can space their practice over a period of time)
• anticipate misconceptions that are common within the areas you teach and develop ways of catching and correcting these (e.g. by using a series of focused multiple choice questions to identify common misconceptions; the nature of incorrect answers can inform your teaching, so these questions are sometimes called diagnostic questions)

An example of a common scientific misconception is that the seasons are caused by the Earth moving closer to the sun. A good diagnostic question would include this as a plausible incorrect answer alongside the correct answer. Misconceptions are inevitably subject specific. Therefore, discussing with experienced colleagues typical misconceptions, ways of identifying them and overcoming them will support your development as a teacher.

Working memory is where information that is being actively processed is held. ‘Active processing’ can be thought of as being synonymous with ‘thinking’. The capacity of the working memory is limited, and it can be overloaded. (This is referred to as Cognitive Load.)

Information can enter the working memory either from the immediate environment or from the long-term memory. Having knowledge stored in the long-term memory therefore helps pupils overcome the limits of their working memory, allowing them to concentrate on the task in hand. Simply put: prior knowledge held in the long-term memory helps reduce working memory load. This enables pupils to think more efficiently using their working memory and to avoid cognitive overload.

To help your pupils avoid cognitive overloading their working memory, you can:

• take account of your pupils’ prior knowledge when planning how much new information to introduce (e.g. in the previous week, do a quick diagnostic assessment using mini-whiteboards or do some true/false questioning)
• break complex material into smaller steps (e.g. use partially completed examples to focus pupils on each specific step)
• reduce distractions that take attention away from what is being taught (e.g. removing unnecessary animation or images from a PowerPoint slide or simplifying and sequencing instructions so that they are clearly and logically stated)
• remind pupils of what they have already been taught and how the new information that they are being introduced to relates to this (e.g. by explicitly comparing content in the current lesson to that in past lessons)

Case study: part 3

What did Hasan do?

In today’s lesson, Hasan set up table discussions with these two questions: Why did people believe in witches in the 16th century? What did people believe about a witch’s powers? He took feedback from table captains. This helped Hasan to gain a closer understanding of his pupils’ knowledge. He was also able to correct misconceptions in their long-term memories at this stage.

To prompt knowledge from their long-term memories (from earlier this term), Hasan then posed a series of short-answer questions for the pupils to answer and show on their mini-whiteboards. For example:

• how many witches appear in Macbeth?
• in which Act do they first appear?
• who do they tell their prophecy to?
• who saw the witches?
• how did the characters in the play react to the witches?

Hasan has now freed up space in his pupils’ working memories to work on the main task, which is about audience reaction to the witches.

He shows them a Globe Theatre video about features of Elizabethan theatre, such as male casting, lighting, sound effects and being open to the elements. He then models for them what a good outcome might look like, identifying key features. Individual pupils write a first draft in this lesson, ready for some peer assessment and redrafting next lesson.

This lesson explicitly links what the pupils have learned longer ago and more recently to what they need to work on now. Hasan took 5 minutes from a previous lesson to check misconceptions in their long-term memories using true/false questions.

In the main lesson, he used table discussion and short-answer questions with mini-whiteboards to bring to the surface the knowledge from their long-term memories and to free up space in their working memories. He then used a model to scaffold their writing and will use the next lesson to provide instant feedback through peer assessment.

Which of these strategies is Hasan likely to find useful in aiding his pupils’ working memories?