Cognitive Load Theory (CLT) has recently become ‘The Next Big Thing’ in teaching. Dylan Wiliam tweeted on 26 January 2017 that he had ‘come to the conclusion Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory is the single most important thing for teachers to know.’ This is an emphatic statement and it is important to consider the implications. As teachers, there are huge demands on our time, so when considering a new strategy it is essential to evaluate the evidence.
CLT, first researched by Sweller (1998) towards in the late 1980s, is based around the idea that our working memory – the part of our mind that processes what we are currently doing – can only deal with a limited amount of information at one time. Reif’s (2010) description of cognitive load is extremely useful: ‘The cognitive load involved in a task is the cognitive effort (or amount of information processing) required by a person to perform this task.’ There are a number of excellen
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