I remember loving the subject Social Studies as a high school student. I still remember how good my teacher was in explaining the lessons. However, I could not recall everything that he has discussed. I feel like there was too much information in the given lesson which is difficult for me to handle in just one sitting. No matter how I loved the subject and how good he discussed the lessons, I always wondered how I never had a perfect score in exams and quizzes.
The typical scenario of a mundane classroom setting, in my opinion, fails to consider the underlying concepts of learning and cognitive theories which could help improve students’ mental retention.
Understanding cognitive theories helped me explain the reason for my question. It also gave me ideas on how to improve my personal learning experience and future strategies for instruction.
The Multi-Store Model emphasizes the importance of practice or rehearsal in the form of maintenance and elaboration for better information retrieval. This explains how I find it seemingly easy to grasp mathematical solutions while being explained by the teacher while writing in the blackboard but I fail to retrieve specific steps on solutions during exams. I understood that highly technical skills and concepts should be practiced so short-term memory would transfer the information into the long-term memory.
Levels of Processing Theory explains how attributing meaning and associations to concepts leads to better recall than echoing words or reading and reading all over again without elaboration.
The Dual Coding Theory explains why I could easily memorize information which are explained both narratively and in dubbed videos. Encoding information into different codes strengthens memory. Symbolic codes could serve as supplements to analogue codes and vice versa.
My favorite theory is on Cognitive Load. Just like the example cited in the first part of this blog, retrieval failure has nothing to do with the teacher’s good discussion, but the load of information that could not be accommodated by my working memory. Unconsciously, I have been applying chunking in order to adapt to a heavy cognitive load since my high school days. Breaking the lessons with intrinsic cognitive load into smaller parts by attributes or timelines lightens the load for the working memory. I also tried talking lessons to a friend or listening to podcasts or watching videos as supplements for learning. In order for the working memory to lighten the load, utilizing different channels (visual and auditory) could be helpful
Learning about these theories would enable me to develop methods of storing and mastering information beyond just “good discussions” to help my students retain and use them as long as possible.
Hinuha 