Working Memory: What Do We Need to Know?

This is an extract from a post by Alex Quigley about teacher development - CPD, and working memory.

I quote it because I think it is way too complicated.

I think this is our main problem in schools - we make most things way too complicated. This sounds like I also believe that working memory is key.

We’ll see.

A worked example: working memory

Professor Dan Willingham suggests we should have a ‘mental model of the learner’ to help train new teachers. Principles from cognitive psychology, like better understanding memory, can offer some of the why that informs how and what we teach. 

I am convinced that understanding the limits of working memory is one of the most useful theories for teachers to understand. If pupils’ learning is always compromised by their ability to remember only small chunks of new information, it poses obvious implications for how we teach.

An understanding of working memory can inform curriculum design and sequencing, teacher explanations, modelling, scaffolding, chunking down complex tasks, and more. It can better inform key skills, such as developing pupils as successful writers. 

Coaching a teacher how to live model writing on the whiteboard is unlikely to be deployed with consistent successful without a rich mental model of why working memory impacts on pupils’ thinking and their writing. 

In Nuthall’s memorable description, “it’s like being told how to drive a car without being given any understanding of how the car and its engine work.” When the proverbial car breaks down, and our teaching attempts fail, teachers are left to fumble around with little clue what to do. 

His post introduces the complexity of how we might understand working memory in schools, in particular the working memory of teachers.

He sees working memory as one of the main reasons CPD fails.

He quotes Nuthall again:

“In most cases, there is a description of what to do and how to do it, but no description of why it might work. There is no explanation of the underlying learning principles on which the method or resources have been constructed. The result is teachers are constantly being encouraged to try out new ideas or methods without understanding how they might be affecting students learning.”

Graham Nutthall, ‘The Hidden Lives of Learners’ 

In other words, I think he is arguing that when teachers understand the why, and the why is in working memory, the what of what they have to do will make sense. So they’ll do it better.

I think there is a simpler way

Working memory is not the problem we think it is.

We know that working memory, on average, is limited to 4 new pieces of information. If I take this and make sure that my powerpoint slides have a maximum of 4 bullet points, or 4 new words, or 4 steps, or 4 instructions, I know my students, on average, can’t fail to understand.

If I want to play safe, I’ll simply default to 3. We are psychologically much more likely to think in 3s than in 4s. You can see this pattern everywhere.

So, 3s it is.

I’m going to chunk everything in 3s. That’s it. What is the why? To help my students keep each of the three in mind.

Do I need any more nuance? No. If I forget the ‘why’ but still keep the habit, will it still work? Yes.

But there is a more important idea.

If I apply this rule frequently - chunk things in 3s - I will notice the effects. The effects will give me the why’s. Not the other way around.

CPD has to make change as simple as possible. This makes it scaleable. This makes it easy to implement.

Paying attention to what the effects are in the classroom will reveal the whys again and again. The why’s will be embedded over time.

Let’s go back to Nutthall

In Nuthall’s memorable description, “it’s like being told how to drive a car without being given any understanding of how the car and its engine work.”

This is entirely the wrong metaphor.

CPD isn’t becoming the mechanic and the driver of the car. It is just becoming the driver of the car. The car in this instance is student learning - not teaching. The teacher drives student learning.

Think back to your driving lessons.

How many instructions did your driver give you at one time? One, right?

But what about your working memory? After lesson one, perhaps even during lesson one, your driving instructor could not care less about your working memory. You were out in the real world, with information flying at you from several directions.

You learned quickly because your brain was directed to one thing at a time - but the real world - the lesson’s resources - chucked a massive amount of stuff at you, all at once. You learned from that too.

Now, imagine a series of driving lessons planned with working memory in mind.

You’d still be manoeuvring in the car park after the first 10 lessons. Working memory should not limit your lessons. It should only limit what you focus on in the lesson.

Working Memory or KPIs?

The problem with CPD is not the why.

How many times have you thought that the CPD made sense, but then failed to make it a part of your teaching? It happens all the time, because change is hard, new habits are hard, and teaching is hard - under pressure, we focus on a problem and free up thinking time by reverting to our old habits - they are automatic, and take no effort.

This happens even when we love the ‘why’. It is why we default to volunteers and we give under 2 seconds thinking time. We all agree why we shouldn’t. We just can’t get the habit.

The problem is schools lack a mechanism to make a new habit.

One solution is the KPI (Key Performance Indicator).

Imagine you decide to introduce visualisers. You will typically see them used occasionally to demonstrate instructions, and rarely to display students’ work (unless it is a volunteer or a great example).

But what if you agreed a KPI?

Ask you heads of department: let’s go through your next 5 lessons and work out when the teacher could use the visualiser to make instructions more clear, and to assess student work or identify misconceptions.

In most subjects, they will find more than one instance in every lesson. That is the WHY.

Now imagine a learning walk. You will probably arrive at a time where the visualiser is not necessary. So you and your heads of department design a question: ‘Hello … at which point in the lesson will you be putting students’ work under the visualiser?’

This is not a prompt to catch teachers out. It is a prompt to help them change a habit.

So, what is your KPI for teachers to be able to tell you when they will use it? 80%, 90%, 100%? You take the average of whatever your heads of department tell you - and all leaders, and all subject leaders ask this question every time they visit a lesson.

You regularly do student voice and ask how often their books get put under the visualiser. Which teachers have the best habits? Which teachers rarely use the visualiser?

You share the good practice of the first group - how did you form this habit? What are you learning from it? Are the students learning more because of it?

Then you share this with the second group. And you ask them, when should colleagues visit your lesson to help you embed this habit in your teaching?

What is my KPI for the visualiser in my own lessons? 100% of lessons where students write. How else will we improve writing in real time?

If you want a complete suite of ways to improve your teaching, you might be interested in The Slightly Awesome Teacher, where edu-research meets commons sense.