Learning is immensely important in today’s society, whether it is being conducted in a classroom or generally throughout everyday life, and so a lot of pressure is placed on those teaching to do so successfully. Efficient teaching has the capability of significantly increasing a learner’s potential by providing him or her with enough knowledge to practice a new skill. However, with teaching and learning come a lot of implications that must be considered by teachers in order to effectively get the best outcome out of their teaching. Instructors overcoming those impediments through gaining an understanding of them, will lead to the creation of efficient learners. Through working memory and schema theory, I will be discussing the main implications that come with teaching and learning, as well as use my own detailed examples to explain how an understanding of the two can positively influence instruction in a classroom.
British psychologist Alan Baddeley refers to working memory as a brain system that provides temporary storage and manipulation of the information necessary for complex cognitive tasks such as learning (Baddeley, 1992). Working memory corresponds to consciousness or awareness, requiring the simultaneous storage and processing of information. It is divided into the central executive, the visuospatial sketch pad and the phonological loop. Information enters working memory once it has been selected by allocating attention to it, and that information is then processed for meaning. It is thus responsible for not only processing and maintenance, but also for complex cognition; the constructing of new knowledge. Cognitive Load Theory considers the limitations of learners’ working memory. The main implications for teaching and learning when it comes to working memory is its rapid loss during interference, as well as overloading its capacity. Maintaining information at a high state of activation distracts learners from the process of rehearsing and new information is promptly lost. Determining when working memory load is at its heaviest requires considering relations between all the elements concurrently. Baddeley’s working memory model supports the idea of a system that is used for storage and processing, however as the storage demand increases, the resource available for processing decreases (Baddeley, 1992). The working memory overload hypothesis is further supported by a task conducted by professors Carpenter and Just, in which they presented subjects with a series of sentences and asked them to recall the last word from each sentence. They reported that when the sentences were made more complex, the number of words which the subject could recall was reduced. This proved that when processing requirements of the task were increased, the subject’s storage capacity appeared to decrease, thus accentuating the instructional implication of working memory (Just & Carpenter, 1922).
An understanding of working memory can positively influence instruction in a classroom, as it gives those teaching the awareness needed to successfully avoid overloading the learners’ working memory. According to clinical psychologist Mark Katz, common signs of an overloaded working memory include making constant errors, abandoning the task and finding it difficult to learn material or follow instructions (Katz, 2011). Instructors can overcome such implications by monitoring the learners closely and evaluating the working demands of learning activities. For example, the longer the task, the more steps are necessary for its successful completion, and the less likely a new learner will be able to do so. For example, giving a 17-year-old student a mathematical problem and asking him to solve it using a brand-new equation, would require him to make significantly more steps, than it would for an experienced teacher that has previously organised similar knowledge. This demonstrates that by ‘chunking’ unfamiliar or non-meaningful content into meaningful groups based on available knowledge, the database in long-term memory is changed, and through that change there is an expansion in the capacity of working memory. Instructors may help students link new information with prior knowledge for the purpose of enhancing acquisition and automation of knowledge in long term memory, which will hugely benefit and build up their learning pace. This can be done through providing learners with visual diagrams that make links between their current and newly introduced knowledge, as well as simplifying tasks by focusing on the bigger picture initially, and adding in details as more knowledge is gained. Moreover, they can reduce working memory load through consistent rehearsal of newly-introduced content, by providing relevant homework and time for short revisions at the beginning of each lesson, in order to create a state of automatic processing and to keep information activated. Furthermore, teachers can use the dual coding theory and dual channel processing by using both visual and auditory memory aids, such as PowerPoints and podcasts, in order to boost a learners’ working memory. Additionally, in order to tackle the issue of duration, instructors may minimize interreference to promote focus, as well as make sure they’re using their time wisely, allowing enough for the purpose of enabling processing and avoiding the mention of needless information.
In his book ‘Remembering’, Frederic Bartlett discusses schema theory, referring to schemas as organised structures that capture knowledge and expectations of some aspect of the world (Bartlett, 1932) These organised knowledge structures represent generic concepts and categorize information according to the way in which we use it. Schemas can be thought of as major building blocks of cognition, as they’re held in our long-term memory, affecting what is in our working memory and what is selected in sensory memory. They are therefore the most commonly used framework for understanding long term memory, controlling its encoding storage and retrieval. Schemas can be classified into three types: linguistic, content and formal (Carrell, 1984). Linguistic schema refers to learners’ prior linguistic knowledge, including phonetics, grammar and vocabulary as traditionally recognized. Linguistic implications affect language learners the most, and involve misunderstandings regarding the pronunciation of newly-learned words, affected mostly by their mother tongue. Content schema is the background knowledge involving topic familiarity, cultural knowledge and previous experience. An implication of teaching content schema is that sometimes through unnecessary information, instructors fail to assist learners in making the link with their already organised structure. Formal schema is “abstract, encoded, internalized, coherent patterns of discoursed, and textual organization that guide expectations in our attempts to understand a meaningful piece of information” (Carrell, 1984), and an implication revolving around it is that sometimes instructors’ vagueness can lead to information being processed in the wrong schemas of learners due to lack of specification and information provided. Generally, it is understood that the first impression of schemas is crucial and can result to major implications; because schema selection is quick and automated, all information distributed by the instructor will be assimilated into some schemas. This means that schemas can easily be misprocessed, complicating the process of their organization into the learner’s brain.
If instructors have a thorough understanding of schema theory, they will know what obstacles they need to overcome in the classroom, for the purpose of creating more efficient learners. The implication of linguistic schemas can be overcome through the initial rehearsal of phonetic practices, for example, an instructor teaching the pronunciation of a new word in a new language, can start off by having the class repeat the correct pronunciation after him repeatedly. This will assist learners in transferring that certain phonetic practice from working memory to long term, assigning it to a schema. Instructors can also use phonetic transcriptions to further promote learners’ proper pronunciation. Content schema implications rely heavily on the instructor’s clarity; the key to overcoming this is beginning the instruction by explicitly stating to the learners which prior-knowledge topics the new topic could possibly relate to, rather than going into complicated and meaningless elaborations. An example of this would be the instructor starting the economics lesson by stating the topic ‘European economy’, rather than discussing his friend’s high-paying occupation at a French bank. Furthermore, formal schema implications can be dealt with by making sure enough information is provided to learners, as a lack of it can often lead to learners’ making assumptions and linking new information to wrong schemas. This can be avoided through the provision of an appropriate amount of material distributed depending on each topic’s level of importance. For example, asking students to provide a one-page response for a question that should require a one-word answer can be misleading, making learners misinterpret the importance of the topic being learned. Overall, the purpose of schemas is automation, something that can be achieved by practicing skills until they do not require consciously controlled and effortful processing. In order to reach schema automation, is it is vital that relevant schemas are mentioned before the introduction of new knowledge. This will help instructors in assisting their students to construct new or modify available schemas accordingly, while relevant material is processed and irrelevant material is discarded. With the correct initial approach by an instructor, schemata implications can be dealt with in a timely manner, speeding up the process of allocation and thus positively influencing their instruction.