{"id":6674,"date":"2022-08-07T08:00:17","date_gmt":"2022-08-07T13:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/braindevs.net\/blog\/blog\/?p=6674"},"modified":"2022-07-10T11:38:50","modified_gmt":"2022-07-10T16:38:50","slug":"the-best-book-on-cognitive-load-theory-ollie-lovell-to-the-rescue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/the-best-book-on-cognitive-load-theory-ollie-lovell-to-the-rescue\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Book on Cognitive Load Theory: Ollie Lovell to the Rescue"},"content":{"rendered":"

Teaching ought to be easy.<\/p>\n

After all, we have a functionally infinite amount of long-term memory<\/em>. You don’t have to forget one thing to learn another thing — really.<\/p>\n

So: I should be able to shovel information and skills into your infinite long-term memory. Voila! You’d know everything<\/p>\n

Alas, to get to your long-term memory, “information and skills” have to pass through your working memory. This very narrow bottleneck\u00a0<\/strong>makes learning terribly difficult — as teachers and students well know.<\/p>\n

If only someone would come up with a\u00a0theory<\/em> to explain this bottleneck. If only that theory would help teachers and students succeed despite its narrow confines.<\/p>\n

Good News, with a Twist<\/h2>\n

Happily, that theory exists<\/em>. It’s called “cognitive load theory,” and several scholars in Australia (led by John Sweller) have been developing it for a few decades now.<\/p>\n

It explains the relationship between infinite long-term memory and limited working memory. It explores practical classroom strategies to solve the problems created by this relationship.<\/p>\n

Heck, it even muses upon evolutionary explanations for some quirky exceptions to its rules.<\/p>\n

In other words, it has almost everything a teacher could want.<\/p>\n

Alas — [warning: controversial opinion] — it does include one glaring difficulty.<\/p>\n

Cognitive load theory helps educational psychologists talk with other educational psychologists about these topics.<\/p>\n

However, it relies on on a long list of terms, each of which describes complex — sometimes counter-intuitive — concepts.<\/p>\n

If you start reading articles based on cognitive load theory, you might well discover that …<\/p>\n

… a particular teaching practice works\u00a0this<\/em> way<\/em> because of the “split attention effect” (which doesn’t mean exactly what it sounds like),<\/p>\n

… but it works that way<\/em> because of the “expertise reversal effect,”<\/p>\n

… and “element interactivity” might explain these contradictory results.<\/p>\n

For this reason, paradoxically, teachers who try to understand and apply cognitive load theory often experience cognitive overload.<\/p>\n

As a result, teachers would really benefit from a book that\u00a0explains cognitive load theory so clearly as not to overwhelm our working memory<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Could such a book exist?<\/p>\n

Ollie Lovell To The Rescue<\/h2>\n

Yes, reader, it exists. Oliver Lovell has written\u00a0Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory In Action<\/em> (as part of Tom Sherrington’s “In Action” series).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lovell’s book does exactly what teachers want it to do: explain cognitive load theory without overloading our cognitive faculties.<\/p>\n

Lovell accomplishes this feat with three strategies.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, he has an impressive ability to explain cognitive load theory concepts with bracing clarity.<\/p>\n

For instance, let’s go back to that “expertise reversal effect.”\u00a0Why<\/em> might a teaching strategy benefit a novice but not an expert?<\/p>\n

Lovell’s answer: redundancy. Redundant information taxes working memory. And, crucially:<\/p>\n

“What is redundant for an expert is not redundant for the novice, and instructional recommendations are reversed accordingly.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s the “expertise reversal effect.”\u00a0Pithy, clear, sensible.<\/p>\n

Because he writes and explains so clearly, Lovell helps teachers understand all that cognitive load theory terminology without feeling overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

Second<\/strong>, Lovell gives examples.<\/p>\n

SO MANY CLASSROOM EXAMPLES.<\/p>\n

Whatever grade you teach, whatever topic you teach, you’ll find your discipline, your grade, and your interests represented. (I believe Lovell is a math teacher; as a high-school English teacher, I never felt slighted or ignored.)<\/p>\n

Geography, piano, computer programming. It’s all there.<\/p>\n

Knowing that clear explanations of worked examples can reduce working memory load, he provides plenty.<\/p>\n

Practicing What He Preaches<\/h2>\n

Third<\/strong>, Lovell simplifies needless complexities.<\/p>\n

Students of cognitive load theory will notice that he more-or-less skips over “germane” cognitive load: a category that has (ironically) created all sorts of “extraneous” working memory load for people trying to understand the theory.<\/p>\n

He describes the difference between biologically primary and biologically secondary learning. And he explains the potential benefits this theory offers school folk.<\/p>\n

However, Lovell doesn’t get bogged down in this niche-y (but fascinating) topic. He gives it just enough room, but not more.<\/p>\n

Heck, he even keeps footnotes to a minimum, so as not to split the reader’s attention. Now\u00a0that’s<\/em> dedication to reducing working memory load!<\/p>\n

Simply put: Lovell both explains\u00a0and enacts\u00a0<\/em>strategies to manage working memory load just right.<\/p>\n

In Brief<\/h2>\n

No doubt your pile of “must read” books is intimidatingly large.<\/p>\n

If you want to know how to manage working memory load (and why doing so matters), Lovell’s\u00a0Cognitive Load Theory in Action <\/em>should be on top of that pile.<\/p>\n

\n

A final note:<\/p>\n

I suspect Lovell’s explanations are so clear because he has lots of experience explaining.<\/em><\/p>\n

Check out his wise, thoughtful, well-informed podcasts here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Teaching ought to be easy. After all, we have a functionally infinite amount of long-term memory. You don’t have to forget one thing to learn another thing — really. So: I should be able to shovel information and skills into your infinite long-term memory. Voila! You’d know everything Alas, to get to your long-term memory, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":6677,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[15,194,30],"class_list":["post-6674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-lb-blog","tag-classroom-advice","tag-cognitive-load-theory","tag-working-memory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6674"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6680,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6674\/revisions\/6680"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.braindevs.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}