There’s a tendency within the teaching and learning professions to only view cognitive load from the perspective of Cognitive Load Theory. This is wholly understandable, seeing as CLT provides a us…| The Emotional Learner
Over fifty years ago, the American educational psychologist David Ausubel stated that ‘the most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows’ (Ausubel, 1968). To paraphrase Ausubel, once we know that, we can then teach (and learn) accordingly. According to Hambrick and Engle, this view espoused by Ausubel is ‘one of the […]| The Emotional Learner
We know timing is important for learning. But time isn’t just about the duration of short-term and working memory; it’s also the spacing out of learning so that we can exploit the way we retain learned information. We call this the spacing effect. A related phenomenon concerns the order in which we present information. For […]| The Emotional Learner
The spacing effect is a curious beast. It’s certainly not new, the general premise dating back to Robert Hooke’s lecture to the Royal Society of London in 1682. Despite Hooke’s contribution, the phenomenon is generally attributed to Ebbinghaus’s memory experiments, published in 1885. That still makes it an old idea. Adolf Jost then confirmed these […]| The Emotional Learner
A particularly potent view within the learning sciences posits that learning in generative (see, for example, Fiorella, 2023; Enser & Enser, 2020). In this respect, learners are viewed as generating understanding by, amongst other means, connecting new information to what they already know. This notion is consistent with our instinctual views of learning and gels […]| The Emotional Learner
If there’s one topic in education guaranteed to lead to fierce debate, it’s behavioural genetics. Opposing sides take up their positions based on nature or nurture; whether academic achievement is based mainly on heritability or environmental influences. Publications such as Robert Plomin and Kathryn Asbury’s G is for Genes and Plomin’s more recent Blueprint: How […]| The Emotional Learner
Simon Gibbs, Routledge 2018 Simon Gibbs has written a compelling and timely account of the UK teaching profession. With teacher recruitment numbers falling and many teachers leaving the profession, this book is certainly a welcome addition to the growing number of works exploring the impact of so-called neo-liberal ideologies on the role of teachers. Early […]| The Emotional Learner
We learn many things in our lifetime, from learning to walk and talk, read and write, ride a bike and drive a car. The list seems endless, because it probably is. Learning takes on different forms. Learning to walk, for example, differs a lot from learning algebra, or how to evaluate a Sylvia Plath poem. […]| The Emotional Learner
Can we divide cognitive science into soft and hard varieties? I’m not sure, but I’ll give it a go. Hard cognitive science represents aspects of learning related to areas such as memory, including processes such as encoding and consolidation and models such as Cognitive Load Theory, working memory, and so on. Soft cognitive science would […]| The Emotional Learner
Can listening to Mozart make you better at mathematics? Can learning a musical instrument make you cleverer? We know from studies that some types of learning, such as learning a foreign language or how to play a musical instrument, can slow cognitive decline in later life. But what is their impact on learning more generally? […]| The Emotional Learner
