Another fun point about Kim et al, while they profess a belief in some interest in learning they clearly have very little actual motivation to learn something.
How difficult would it be to discuss their ideas with someone researching cognitive load theory?
They clearly haven’t bothered. Perhaps even university researchers are not as intrinsically motivated to learn as they would like to imagine.
These seems like the worst part of the whole article:
"while recognising the importance of long-term memory for exams, as teachers we don’t want our students to simply regurgitate what they have learnt, we want them to be active, imaginative, and creative learners and that means, contrary to CLT, that working memory, properly conceived, is central to learning at school, not long-term memory. And, very importantly we want our students to pay attention. Attention is so much a part of what working memory does that it is sometimes claimed working memory and attention are two sides of the same coin."
Putting aside that this is a non-sequitur for their preferred theory, doesn't every proponent of CLT fully agree that working memory and attention are 'central to learning at school'? Specifically because they are the only ways to get anything into long-term memory? Am I missing something or are they just incapable of imagining anything other than a ridiculous strawman of CLT?
I assume it has something to do with the section afterwards:
"They did, however, cite Geake (Citation2009) in their list of 18 references, no doubt because he discusses the limited capacity of working memory, he uses the term ‘working memory load’ and notes it ‘could be a bottleneck for academic performance’ (p. 68). However, and crucially, he goes on to say that much more is demanded of the brain than remembering a limited number of items and, very tellingly, neuroscience research shows the temporary storage of information in working memory ‘is an epiphenomenon, an outcome of what working memory is about’ (p. 69). In other words, it’s a by-product of working memory that has no effect on the neural processes involved"
Evidently, I'm not clever enough to figure out what any of this has to do with debunking CLT (even in their strawman conception). Seems totally consistent with CLT to me
My guess is the shoved the Global neurological jargon in there to sprinkle the bs with some sciency stuff.
I find these arguments where every claim comes with a full citation so awkward.
We don’t cite Einstein’s papers or any settled science when we use them to support an argument.
Any time someone makes a claim with a citation it amounts to an admission this is just something some got published. To make it worthwhile they should explain why we can rely on this information being more than just a hypothesis.
At minimum they should express some reason we should have confidence in the claim.
A view might be that the citation adds weight but for me without support it looks like they want the act of citation to do all the work because they can’t.
True. I’m not an expert but it seems it involved a relatively simple mutation that enabled something that was previously switched off. The longer argument about writing—which I decided there was no space for—is that even though it’s a few thousand years old, for much of that time, it’s been the preserve of a small elite. Mass literacy is only a few hundred years old at tops.
I get it but you're wrong. People who could read stone tablets had a big advantage keeping track of the value of their labour. Cognitive adaptations are particularly general, as adaptations often are. Better reading potential will correlates with a whole bunch of phenotype rewarded by natural and sexual selection. This is not the forum, just trying to give you a heads up about the time frame argument.
You're also not properly taking into account the complexity in mutations required to develop a biology primary basis for reading and writing. Lactose tolerance had immediate survival benefits for everyone (not just a small part of the population) and is a relatively simple mutation. Reading/writing comprehension has neither of those things going for it. The time frame argument doesn't need to be bullet proof - it just needs to give a plausible explanation as to why reading/writing isn't like spoken language, genetically speaking -and it does
Another fun point about Kim et al, while they profess a belief in some interest in learning they clearly have very little actual motivation to learn something.
How difficult would it be to discuss their ideas with someone researching cognitive load theory?
They clearly haven’t bothered. Perhaps even university researchers are not as intrinsically motivated to learn as they would like to imagine.
These seems like the worst part of the whole article:
"while recognising the importance of long-term memory for exams, as teachers we don’t want our students to simply regurgitate what they have learnt, we want them to be active, imaginative, and creative learners and that means, contrary to CLT, that working memory, properly conceived, is central to learning at school, not long-term memory. And, very importantly we want our students to pay attention. Attention is so much a part of what working memory does that it is sometimes claimed working memory and attention are two sides of the same coin."
Putting aside that this is a non-sequitur for their preferred theory, doesn't every proponent of CLT fully agree that working memory and attention are 'central to learning at school'? Specifically because they are the only ways to get anything into long-term memory? Am I missing something or are they just incapable of imagining anything other than a ridiculous strawman of CLT?
It is hard to know what to make of it.
I assume it has something to do with the section afterwards:
"They did, however, cite Geake (Citation2009) in their list of 18 references, no doubt because he discusses the limited capacity of working memory, he uses the term ‘working memory load’ and notes it ‘could be a bottleneck for academic performance’ (p. 68). However, and crucially, he goes on to say that much more is demanded of the brain than remembering a limited number of items and, very tellingly, neuroscience research shows the temporary storage of information in working memory ‘is an epiphenomenon, an outcome of what working memory is about’ (p. 69). In other words, it’s a by-product of working memory that has no effect on the neural processes involved"
Evidently, I'm not clever enough to figure out what any of this has to do with debunking CLT (even in their strawman conception). Seems totally consistent with CLT to me
My guess is the shoved the Global neurological jargon in there to sprinkle the bs with some sciency stuff.
I find these arguments where every claim comes with a full citation so awkward.
We don’t cite Einstein’s papers or any settled science when we use them to support an argument.
Any time someone makes a claim with a citation it amounts to an admission this is just something some got published. To make it worthwhile they should explain why we can rely on this information being more than just a hypothesis.
At minimum they should express some reason we should have confidence in the claim.
A view might be that the citation adds weight but for me without support it looks like they want the act of citation to do all the work because they can’t.
Lactose tolerance occurred over a few thousand years due to the advantages it conferred in European agricultural societies.
True. I’m not an expert but it seems it involved a relatively simple mutation that enabled something that was previously switched off. The longer argument about writing—which I decided there was no space for—is that even though it’s a few thousand years old, for much of that time, it’s been the preserve of a small elite. Mass literacy is only a few hundred years old at tops.
I get it but you're wrong. People who could read stone tablets had a big advantage keeping track of the value of their labour. Cognitive adaptations are particularly general, as adaptations often are. Better reading potential will correlates with a whole bunch of phenotype rewarded by natural and sexual selection. This is not the forum, just trying to give you a heads up about the time frame argument.
You're also not properly taking into account the complexity in mutations required to develop a biology primary basis for reading and writing. Lactose tolerance had immediate survival benefits for everyone (not just a small part of the population) and is a relatively simple mutation. Reading/writing comprehension has neither of those things going for it. The time frame argument doesn't need to be bullet proof - it just needs to give a plausible explanation as to why reading/writing isn't like spoken language, genetically speaking -and it does