Teaching, Reloaded

Cognitive Load Theory: Examples for the Classroom by Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation, Department of Education, New South Wales
September 1, 2017

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What is the relationship between working memory, teacher choice in curricular instruction, and student learning? "Cognitive Load Theory in Practice: Examples for the Classroom" provides thoughtful responses to this question, laying out clearly the topic that educational researcher Dylan Wiliam has called "the single most important thing for teachers to know." This resource from the New South Wales Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation articulates seven different strategies for optimizing cognitive load for students, and then demonstrates two ways of incorporating each specific principle into practice in the classroom. Just as important, this publication offers a clear decision tree to help teachers think about which of the seven strategies may be most helpful, something sure to be useful to teachers who are less familiar with this material. The information about working memory, schema, and long-term memory is presented visually and with text, embodying the principles of dual-coding that this resource explains to its readers. This resource will be useful for teachers at any stage of their career and will be particularly valued by those leading teacher-training programs or those looking for clear and concrete ways to incorporate into their classrooms more teaching based upon the science of learning.