A theoretical look at how to incorporate cognitive research into subject curriculum design
Written by: Miles Winter
4 min read
Amanda Spielman (Spielman, 2017) has said ‘at the very heart of education sits the vast accumulated wealth of human knowledge and what we choose to impart to the next generation: the curriculum.’
As a physics teacher, the new, more rigorous exam specification has come as a bit of a shock. Not because of its content — it is still physics, but because of the volume and un-connectedness of the content that has to be delivered. We need a curriculum that maximises the learning of subject content, and I hope that insights from the science of learning can help us to address this. While teachers may have been intuitively employing ideas relating to retrieval practice and cognitive load for many years, explicit action gains far greater results (Spada and Tomita, 2010). By setting up interlinking small-scale studies within our school, we can apply the results of larger university and researcher led studies and see what works in our context. At Harris
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This article was published in February 2018 and reflects the terminology and understanding of research and evidence in use at the time. Some terms and conclusions may no longer align with current standards. We encourage readers to approach the content with an understanding of this context.
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