Principal's Report

Report from Westall Secondary College

Principal 2024

Dear Westall Secondary Community,

It’s now halfway through Term 3 and students are well underway with assessments and learning for semester two. Midyear reports have been used to set goals for the 2nd half of the year. Students are working diligently to achieve their personal best. Teachers and education support staff are following our instructional model and “Westall Way” to support students in this pursuit.

I wanted to share the latest teaching and learning model that has been disseminated to all Victorian Government schools. The model is available via this link.

24-091 Victorian Teaching and Learning Model 2.0_v5.indd (education.vic.gov.au) 

This model perfectly aligns with our “Learn the Westall Way”. The elements of learning, how memory, recall and application work, attention, focus, regulation and a positive learning environment. The elements of teaching, good planning, curriculum documentation and assessment, connecting students to the learning, explicit instruction and teaching and supported application.

“Learn the Westall Way” charts are in every classroom and all staff follow these steps to ensure consistency of process/teaching from class to class. In turn this reduces cognitive load on students. 

Why cognitive load theory? 

To improve student performance, teachers need to understand the evidence base that informs and helps improve their practice. An area of research with significant implications for teaching practice is cognitive load theory. Cognitive load theory was recently described by British educationalist Dylan Wiliam as ‘the single most important thing for teachers to know’ (Wiliam 2017). Grounded in a robust evidence base, cognitive load theory provides theoretical and empirical support for explicit models of instruction. Research in cognitive load theory demonstrates that instructional techniques are most effective when they are designed to accord with how human brains learn and use knowledge. This paper describes the research on cognitive load theory and what it means for more effective teaching practice. The first part of the paper explains how human brains learn according to cognitive load theory and outlines the evidence base for the theory. The second part of the paper examines the implications of cognitive load theory for teaching practice and describes some recommendations that are directly transferable to the classroom.

What is cognitive load theory? 

Cognitive load theory is built upon two commonly accepted ideas. The first is that there is a limit to how much new information the human brain can process at one time. The second is that there are no known limits to how much stored information can be processed at one time. The aim of cognitive load research is therefore to develop instructional techniques and recommendations that fit within the characteristics of working memory, to maximise learning. Cognitive load theory supports explicit models of instruction, because such models tend to accord with how human brains learn most effectively (Kirschner, Sweller & Clark 2006). 

Explicit instruction involves teachers clearly showing students what to do and how to do it, rather than having students discover or construct information for themselves (see Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation 2014, pp. 8-12). Hattie summarises explicit instruction as an approach in which: The teacher decides the learning intentions and success criteria, makes them transparent to the students, demonstrates them by modelling, evaluates if they understand what they have been told by checking for understanding, and retelling them what they have been told by tying it all together with closure. (Hattie 2009, p. 206) 

Cognitive load theory emerged from the work of educational psychologist John Sweller and colleagues in the 1980s and 1990s (see especially Sweller 1988, 1999). They assert: The implications of working memory limitations on instructional design can hardly be overestimated … Anything beyond the simplest cognitive activities appear to overwhelm working memory. Prima facie, any instructional design that flouts or merely ignores working memory limitations inevitably is deficient. (Sweller, van Merrienboer & Paas 1998, pp. 252-253) Cognitive load theory is based on several widely accepted theories about how human brains process and store information (Gerjets, Scheiter & Cierniak 2009, p. 44). These assumptions include that human memory can be divided into working memory and long-term memory; that information is stored in the long-term memory in the form of schemas; and that processing new information results in ‘cognitive load’ on working memory which can affect learning outcomes (Anderson 1977; Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968; Baddeley 1983). 

How the human brain learns 

To understand cognitive load theory, it is necessary to understand how working memory and long-term memory process and store information. Working memory is the memory system where small amounts of information are stored for a very short duration (Peterson & Peterson 1959) Working memory roughly equates with what we are conscious of at any one time. Clark, Kirschner and Sweller call it ‘the limited mental “space” in which we think’ (2012, p. 8). Research suggests that an average person can only hold about four chunks of information in their working memory at one time (Cowan 2001), although there is evidence to indicate differences in working memory capacity between individuals (see, for example, Barrett, Tugade & Engel 2004). Long-term memory is the memory system where large amounts of information are stored semi-permanently (Atkinson & Shiffrin 1968; Tulving 1972). Clark, Kirschner and Sweller call long-term memory ‘that big mental warehouse of things (be they words, people, grand philosophical ideas, or skateboard tricks) we know’ (2012, p. 8). Cognitive load theory assumes that knowledge is stored in longterm memory in the form of ‘schemas' A schema organises elements of information according to how they will be used. According to schema theory, skilled performance is developed through building ever greater numbers of increasingly complex schemas by combining elements of lower-level schemas into higher level schemas. There is no limit to how complex schemas can become. An important process in schema construction is automation, whereby information can be processed automatically with minimal conscious effort. 

Automaticity occurs after extensive practice (Sweller, van Merrienboer & Paas 1998, p. 256).

I encourage you to google more about cognitive load theory, learning, memory and explicit instruction. The research around this is irrefutable and having some knowledge in this space helps you support your sons and daughters with their learning.

Until next time

Mr Tristan Lanarus

Principal