…meant to learn everything.
Hello and welcome to the 81st edition of our fortnightly newsletter, Things in Education.
Think of the time when you were in middle school or high school and you were told, “Two objects of different masses will reach the ground at the same time if they are dropped from the same height.” This did not make sense to us as students, and it still probably doesn’t even to this day. Why? Because it goes against everything that we have seen and experienced. It is the same with Newton’s second law—a body at rest or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line remains in the same state unless an external force works on it. It means that if a ball is rolling on a flat surface, it will continue to do so until some force stops it. Apparently, this is also not what we have seen and experienced. On the other hand, when we learn that water is needed for plants to grow and be healthy, we find it sensible and acceptable. Maybe because we have seen that plants without water shrivel and their leaves droop, and well-watered plants seem healthy. So things that agree with our observations and experiences are easier for us to accept and hence understand than things that go against our observations and experiences.
Why is this so? And what does that have to do with teaching and learning?
Why are some things easy to learn?
Humans, and hence human brains, have evolved from their ancestors, and the human brain has helped humans survive and thrive. Some of these traits that were particularly useful were observing, communicating by speech (orally, at least), making judgements about safety, etc. The regions of the brain that allow for these have evolved over time and have become good at these things. So in the context of learning and teaching, you will see that students at an early stage learn to speak much quicker than they learn to write. In most cases, speaking happens even before ‘formal’ education begins. Similarly, students are quicker at seeing and understanding things than reading and understanding things. For example, infants see and recognise faces and their surroundings. Things that students would find intuitive and easier to understand could be thought of as primary knowledge.
Why are some things more difficult to learn?
Students find it hard to master reading, doing mathematical operations and calculations in writing, writing itself—much harder than the knowledge listed in primary knowledge. The regions of the human brain that help with this knowledge have had less evolutionary time to adapt to these tasks. So what essentially happens is that when we write or read or do complex mathematical operations, different parts of the brain are working together. These parts of the brain were never meant to work together but have been recruited to work together to help a student write. Creating a written code to communicate what was spoken is a huge ‘burden’ on the brain. Trying to perform mathematical operations is a huge ‘burden’ on the brain. This type of knowledge is secondary knowledge. Students are going to find this type of knowledge more difficult to learn and understand.
Cognitive load, working memory, and primary and secondary knowledge
Looking through the lens of primary and secondary knowledge while planning lessons helps us understand the cognitive load on students’ working memory. When a task is more complex, more working memory is used. Recently, it has been noticed that processing information to acquire primary knowledge puts only a little load on working memory. For example, speaking is a complex task—needs motor skills, gestures, sounds, etc. But the cognitive load on the working memory to learn to speak is not high. On the other hand, while acquiring secondary knowledge, load on working memory is closely related to the complexity of the task. This means that cognitive load on the working memory is more of an issue for secondary knowledge acquisition.
How does all this help while teaching in the classroom?
There are two major components that we can take away from all of this—one is motivation and the other is scaffolding.
Primary knowledge will require much less external motivation for students to acquire because it is not a difficult task—it is almost natural. Millions of years of evolution has made specific areas of the brain adapted to acquiring primary knowledge, making it easier. So motivation for students to learn this will be high. This knowledge was supposed to keep humans safe, so there is an inherent motivation to acquire this knowledge. For example, an early human may have seen that some of them died after eating red fruit. This made them wary of eating red fruits. They perceived this pattern and stopped eating red fruits.
On the other hand, secondary knowledge is hard. Let’s take the example of critical thinking and the red fruit example from above. Anecdotal evidence that eating some red fruits killed some humans was enough to make a conservative strategy not to eat red fruits—safety first, and easy. While critical thinking would be to test all red fruits in their region, eating them in different amounts and then reaching a conclusion on whether eating red fruits kills humans or not. And you can see here that this way of thinking would not have made early humans safer. So, our brains have not evolved to think critically.
So, in acquiring secondary knowledge, we are training the brain to use different parts of itself that were never meant to work together to learn new skills and concepts. And to facilitate this, it is important to approach it step by step, in a scaffolded manner.
Looking at knowledge acquisition as a two-tier process helps us understand the importance of the systematic phonics approach. It helps us understand why critical thinking is so difficult. It helps us understand that our number sense works till the number 3 and beyond that mathematical operations become difficult. So when planning for lessons in the future, see if you can identify primary and secondary knowledge. It may help by reducing the time you are spending on primary knowledge transfer. And it may help in getting better learning outcomes in secondary knowledge transfer by slowing it down more, breaking it down more and giving students more time and support.
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Edition: 3.29
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