At this time of year I am working with a lot of new students, and one of the things that I provide some guidance on is note-taking. This is, of course, very closely linked to the concepts of memory and metacognition:

• Memory, because learners need to retain some of what they study;

• Metacognition, because how they take notes depend on choices that reflect learned strategies and beliefs about learning.

I’ll share a few key ideas today in the hope that it’s relevant to your students – and perhaps also to your own reading and academic work.

Note-taking and multi-tasking

First, as we know, humans are not very good at multi-tasking. Working memory is limited, and its limited capacity means that extraneous information can harm performance.

This is a problem for note-taking, especially in classes and lectures. The live nature of a class means that students are forced to multi-task; they have to think about, reorganise and jot down information on one idea while new information is still incoming.

The problem is much reduced when students take notes in their private study time, e.g. while reading. However, they may still have bad habits (e.g. chatting or watching online videos while studying) that cause multi-tasking.

In class, teachers can allow short gaps of time for students to think about and review their notes – a strategy that was found helpful in this study.

Beliefs about note taking

The next problem is relevant to lectures especially. As students come to college/university for the first time, they may have a distorted idea of what a university lecture involves.

Many may try to note down as much as they can in the time available, writing things verbatim. Researchers tend to agree that it is preferable to aim for main ideas rather than the exact wording of lectures. In each short section of the lecture, students should try to capture the key thing that the speaker is trying to communicate.

Of course, it is sometimes important to note down specific details as well (names, results of research, etc), but the gist is often the thing that students need to retain.

Trying to make sense of new information and identify a main idea is also a form of deep processing, which can lead to better retention compared to a shallow strategy such as copying.

Noting versus listening

Given the challenges of note-taking in class, you might wonder whether students would be better off just listening intently rather than trying to take notes at all.

However, Kiewra (1991) and others have found evidence that note-taking does help people to process and make sense of new material. It also helps if learners have notes to refer to later. Each of these things (live note-taking & reviewing notes) independently benefits later assessment performance, and doing both is better still!

For this reason, it’s better to guide students on how to take notes rather than have them opt out entirely because they find it too difficult.

After the class

As mentioned above, the demands of note-taking are much reduced outside class, as students can take their time. In such situations, as long as they are wise enough to avoid multi-tasking and other distractions, they have the opportunity to engage fully with the material they are reading.

All the same, as we are probably all well aware, a problem can arise in the form of students’ choice of note-taking strategy in these contexts.

As I discussed way back in in update #23, research evidence suggests that re-reading and highlighting a text are poor strategies, meaning that there is less to be gained for a given amount of time invested.

As mentioned in the same post, mind-mapping is a popular strategy, but one that is rather time-consuming and which does not appear to be especially effective.

On the other hand, there is an argument students should organise their notes in the form of tables and diagrams (e.g., Luo & Kiewra, 2022).

One possible way to interpret this apparent contradiction is that organisation can boost understanding over the short-term, but is less effective at tackling forgetting (boosting performance but not learning; see update #89) when compared to strategies such as retrieval practice.

To resolve this, I’d still recommend that students organise new information e.g. into tables, Venn diagrams or flow charts, but that they aim for diagrams that are relatively quick to do, and see this as only the start of the process of learning the information – delayed active retrieval should be used to consolidate it.

I hope that helps. All the best for the coming week!

Jonathan

Last time: Rehabilitating Memory in Education

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Welcome to my 150th post! The status of memory in education seems an appropriate topic, and the title of this post mirrors that of my talk at a recent seminar on memory in education hosted by my department here in Scotland.

I will therefore focus today on an overview of the main ideas I shared at the event.

Early views

I began by discussing some of the early origins of how researchers see memory today.

• There is much overlap between the views of memory developed by early philosophers and how we now view memory in cognitive psychology. These include Locke’s view of memory as storage, Aristotle’s view that memory and ‘recollection’ (i.e. retrieval) are two separate processes, and Plato’s views on individual differences in memory.

• Psychologists began to build on this via the birth of experimental psychology in the 1800s (e.g. the work of Ebbinghaus). In addition, following Darwin’s theories, there was an increased focus on the function and purpose of memory.

Concerns about cramming

The term memory is often associated with last-minute cramming. How often do we hear people say that learning and studying focuses too much on memorisation?

From a psychological point of view, however, memory is not something that only becomes relevant when preparing for exams, and it is not only useful for shallow memorisation. Everything that we learn involves using human memory in some way.

A few of the key points I made in this part of my talk included:

• Linking concerns about memory/memorisation among educators to some early memory research that used meaningless stimuli (such as random words) or which oversimplified some aspects of the memory process, presenting it as more computer-like than it actually is.

• Possible associations that people make between cramming and behaviourist conditioning techniques (ironically, though, most behaviourists didn’t use the term ‘memory’; Miller, 2003).

I shared a few examples, such as this teacher quoted in the Scottish Government’s Hayward Report …

“… short courses lead to assessments which reward hoopjumping and memorisation and give no time for students to develop deeper knowledge and a love of their subject.”

and the following, from a research paper:

“Learning is not committing a set of facts to memory, but the ability to use resources to find, evaluate, and apply information.” (Lujan & DiCarlo, 2006).

A lot of this, of course, smacks of the idea that generic transferrable skills can be taught without a focus on subject knowledge, which was the focus of the final part of my talk.

Integrated view of memory

I concluded my talk at the memory and education event by outlining how modern psychologists have a much more nuanced view of memory. We recognise that there are many different types of memory underlying a range of functions (from physical skills to habits to meaningful understanding). We also know that memories are interconnected in schemas (see update #59) rather than being separate items, and that memories play a key role in everyday problem solving.

These aspects help to explain memory’s role in educational skills – something I’ve discussed in previous posts, such as: ‘Creativity—What’s the Role of Memory?’ (update #28).

These connections also point towards a more fundamental link between memory and thinking.

Even people who recognise the role of memory in skills, as noted above, may still feel that their phenomenological experience of thinking is somehow separate from using their memory. To put it another way, they may feel that knowledge-based thinking is something their mind does rather than something it is.

This argument becomes a bit stretched when we consider the many ways that the contents of memory can affect basic way that we perceive and think about the world, such as:

• The effect of personal (autobiographical) memories;

• The availability heuristic – making judgements based on information that comes readily to mind;

• Confirmation bias and other thinking biases.

All of this points to a psychology of memory that is deeply integrated with thinking and with our identity.

All the best for the coming week,

Jonathan

Last time: Promise and Pitfalls of Practitioner ‘Action’ Research, Part 3

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Hello! And welcome back to a series of posts on these updates that focus on action research. You can find parts 1 and 2 here and here.

This is the third and final part, and having discussed how action research can go wrong, this part will have a more positive focus, considering its benefits and providing some suggested guidelines.

The story so far

By action research, I mean research that reflects on and attempts to inform one’s own practice. It is carried out by the practitioner on their own students or context, and might include projects such as:

• Exploring a new pedagogical strategy;

• Investigating a change in classroom organisation or student support.

At first glance, it sounds like a great way to get realistic studies relevant to our own students and curricula. As I’ve mentioned, however, there are some real pitfalls!

One is ethical – without experience and ethics guidance, there are problems with carrying out research on students.

Another is methodological, with a key issue being that findings are hard to interpret without methodology and statistics expertise, and, especially with small groups of participants, can be ambiguous. As someone with a stake in the outcome, it can be hard for practitioners to analyse findings without bias creeping in.

There is also a risk that teachers focus only on what seems fun or fashionable, ignoring the most impactful areas where there is already a body of theory and evidence.

To cap all of that, organisations often encourage practitioners to share the findings of their action research, potentially amplifying errors and biases!

Recovering the promise of action research

Having sounded those notes of caution, I want to return to the idea that action research is potentially promising and valuable. There are cases where it can lead to uniquely useful research findings. For example:

• The classroom practitioner knows their students, meaning that students are more likely to act in a normal way. With an external investigator their behaviour may not reflect the norm;

• The practitioner knows the curriculum, and is therefore in a good position to identify specific areas of content that lend themselves to the application of an evidence-based technique. For example, in research on classroom quizzes, it would be preferable for a teacher to write the quiz than to use a generic one designed by a researcher;

• The teacher can easily follow a class over days and weeks, gathering data at several points. It’s much harder for a researcher to achieve this (which is why longitudinal research is rare in education).

• The process of getting involved in research is an amazing form of professional learning. Even if no useful findings arise, the engagement with theory, evidence and methodology can all help educators.

Some guidance points

Taking all of this into account, and assuming that many people do see the positives (or, in some cases, doing action research may simply be a requirement of their role!), what tips or guidance can we offer?

Here are my thoughts and ideas in a nutshell:

1. It’s best to start by becoming well acquainted with the research evidence. Rather than having a fun idea and trying to backfill this with evidence, a practitioner should focus on engaging with and applying research ideas in their classroom first. Doing so will greatly increase their awareness of issues and debates, and they will start to spot important gaps in what is known.

2. If the practitioner does not already have a relevant background relating to methodology and research ethics, it would be a good idea for them to engage with support in these areas, for example via a course or mentoring by a relevant colleague.

3. Ethical choices are best not left up to the individual practitioner-researcher. Organisations that do not already have ethics boards for oversight should establish these, drawing on support from partner organisations where needed.

4. At least to start with, the most important learning that occurs from practitioner research involves the increased awareness on the part of the practitioner, rather than ‘research findings’ that can be shared. As such, institutions should support practitioner autonomy, allowing staff time and support to explore areas of interest.

5. Having noted the importance of autonomy (see 4), it’s also worth pushing for practitioner research to focus on important, impactful issues where possible. To achieve this, organisations can share sets of priorities, but allow practitioners scope to opt out. Organisations should also highlight learning myths and fads, to discourage projects based on those ideas.

6. Initial sharing can take place internally within the organisation, and should place an emphasis on critique of methodology and questioning how to improve the findings, rather than assuming that everything a practitioner-researcher concludes must be true.

7. As a practitioner-researcher becomes more experienced, it may be valuable for findings to be shared more widely, e.g. via conferences and journal articles. However, this is very hard to do without institutional support. Organisations should think about how to put support in place rather than leaving busy teaching staff to figure this out for themselves.

To conclude

The above points reflect my own journey – as I said in a previous post, I started out as a practitioner researcher myself.

If you disagree with my take, I’d love to hear from you and consider your perspective.

Overall, it’s worth remembering that we all have to start somewhere when it comes to research, and a lack of experience in methodology is nothing to be ashamed of. All the same, I don’t think we can just assume that every teacher or educator can do research – not if we want the findings to be worthwhile. It’s a complex business, and if it’s to be done well, the practitioner-researcher deserves support.

Please consider sharing this post with relevant colleagues! Thank you!

Share

All the best for the week,

Jonathan

Last week: Memory in Education: A Seminar

I hope you are enjoying Memory and Metacognition Updates. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work – and consider sharing it with colleagues!! Thank you!

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Hi! I know that in many countries, lecturers, teachers and other educators are starting the term/semester soon. If that’s you, I hope it goes well.

I will be taking time out from our own Welcome and Development Week (a.k.a. freshers’ week) here at the University of Strathclyde to host a seminar on Sept 18th on the topic of memory and education, as I briefly mentioned in an update before the summer.

Memory and education

As discussed in my post on semantic and episodic memory recently, the role of memory goes far beyond the retention of facts, and is therefore relevant to everything we do in education and across life in general.

All the same, memory has something of a bad name in education. Many people see ‘memorisation’ as something to be avoided. And in part, rightly so – a lot of strategies used in both teaching and independent study emphasise shallow, inflexible retention of facts, and lead to rapid forgetting. True learning involves long-term retention and the ability to transfer what has been retained to new situations (Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015).

I therefore feel it’s worth exploring memory’s role in education today – not just the evidence but the philosophical basis of how we view and engage with it. The blurb for the seminar is as follows:

“Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.” – Gabriel García Márquez

Memory is a central but controversial topic within Education. In many educational systems, memorisation is both required and seen as undesirable. Many institutions and curricula explicitly focus on skills rather than knowledge, but skilled thinking is bound up with what a learner knows and can recall, for example when they engage in hypothesis testing or evaluation of a creative idea.

In addition, memory is not simply an individual cognitive process; it is also social, cultural and political. Educational sectors are shaped by collective memories, traditions, and inherited practices. There are major challenges in the selection of and therefore prioritisation among different cultural artefacts and perspectives.

At this seminar, we will hear perspectives on these issues informed by research from Education Studies and related fields, giving attendees a chance to consider and discuss memory’s role in education (both concepts broadly conceived).

Example issues which may feature in the talks and discussion include:

• What role should memory play in courses and curricula?

• What do teachers and lecturers need to know about memory processes?

• What educational challenges relate to cultural and collective memory?

• Historically, how have educational approaches reflected popular assumptions about memory?

More details

The seminar runs on 18 Sept 2026 and is organised by two of our research subthemes at Strathclyde: Advanced Pedagogical Theory and Higher Education Research & Pedagogy, and is supported by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain (PESGB).

You can see the talks that are happening on the day and sign up to come along if there is still space (it’s free, but places are limited!) here:

• Eventbrite link

That’s all for today … back soon with the final part of my practitioner research series of posts. All the best,

Jonathan

Last time: Promise and Pitfalls of Practitioner ‘Action’ Research, Part 2

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Way back in late 2025 I wrote a post on practitioner action research, and mentioned that I would later dive further into the issue (see update #131, “Promise and Pitfalls of Practitioner Action Research’).

It’s taken me a while, but I’m finally back with part 2 of that topic! I think that sharing this in the late summer is actually a pretty good time, given that many projects will be undertaken across the coming academic year. Perhaps you already have research in mind – if so, I hope this provides food for thought.

A brief recap – what is action research?

By action research, I mean research that reflects on and attempts to inform one’s own practice. It is carried out by the practitioner, rather than someone external, on their own students and in their own context. Overlapping terms that are widely used include practitioner research, practitioner enquiry, or teacher research.

Projects tend to be narrower and more classroom-focused than a lot of other education research. There are many things that could be researched, but examples might include:

• Checking to see whether a change in classroom organisation impacts on student behaviour or motivation, for example by giving questionnaires to students;

• Trying out a new form of group work and analysing the outcome based on test scores;

• Interviewing parents about their children’s experiences with primary-to-secondary transitions.

It’s easy to see the potential of doing very grounded research in real contexts. How much better does it sound to find out about behaviour in my own class than from the broader research literature, for example? This is the promise of practitioner action research.

However, as I raised in my earlier post, there are real risks of bias. Many interventions are studied by practitioners that already think that they are a good idea.

Consider, for example, the idea of flipped classrooms or technology use – they tend to be researched by enthusiasts rather than sceptics. Coupled with rather wobbly research methodology, and there is a lot of potential for educators to see what they want to see. Learning myths may persist because people find this pseudo-evidence from action research. These are the perils that I referred to before.

Why Errors Occur: A Scenario

Let’s consider a scenario to further illustrate how flawed conclusions can be drawn from action research:

Bob decides to explore the spacing effect (see update #39). The class does one task with spaced practice and one without, and test results are then compared using a statistical test. Bob concludes that spacing has not made a difference.

How should Bob respond? According to the logic of action research, they have a finding that is relevant to their unique context, and should decide not to apply the spacing effect in future because it (apparently) didn’t work. They may also be encouraged to share this with others as an example of good practice (🤯).

That would actually be a major mistake. We know from the broader research literature that the spacing effect does work. This leads two possibilities:

1. There is something about Bob’s context that is so unique that it overturns decades of research on learning and memory.

2. The experiment was flawed, leading to a false negative. For example, the sample size (limited to the numbers in a class) could be too small to detect a statistical difference, the tests may have differed in their difficulty level, or a lack of experimental control might have distorted the findings in any number of ways.

I would be very strongly inclined to believe possibility #2! Of course, the same logic holds if the teacher does find an effect. This is perhaps even more misleading and hard to avoid – people expect intervention X to work, their results show a difference of some kind, and so they conclude that their research has provided evidence for intervention X.

The problems are exacerbated by the fact that most teachers are not experts in research methodology and statistics, and may lack experience, too. That is before we consider issues about research ethics, which are also riskier with inexperienced researchers.

In defence…

But wait, you might ask—didn’t I actually write a book about research for teachers? Well, yes!

It might sound like I have really changed my mind about teachers engaging with research, but that’s not so. My 2019 book The Teacher’s Guide to Research (more here) does not suggest that teachers should blunder into research projects without ethical scrutiny, make changes on the basis of tiny samples, or share findings that lack sound evidence to support them. It also doesn’t suggest ignoring the existing theory and evidence on an issue!

In fact, The Teacher’s Guide to Research does not focus just on teachers doing research, but also engaging with it. There will often be more to be gained by engaging with existing research evidence on an issue than by carrying out your own project.

Take reading, for example. I think that a primary school teacher would be much better off reading reputable systematic reviews of research into reading than trying to figure out how reading develops via action research with their own class.

However, once a teacher has begun to understand the theory, the existing evidence as well as key areas of uncertainty, they may start to generate important questions that can help the education community as a whole understand how ideas are best implemented.

On balance, is action research a good use of time?

There no doubt are cases where good projects are done and where teachers have learned something useful. But we have to balance the time spent on this with other things that they could have been doing, such as:

• Reading up on learning and memory;

• Working on their classroom management skills;

• Developing better explanations and questioning;

• Upgrading their curricular knowledge;

The points are arguably more core to successful pedagogy than the majority of action research topics.

However, I still believe that engaging with research is highly valuable and motivating for teachers – at times even transformative. Even a poorly conducted study can be a good learning opportunity, and act as a stimulus to read evidence and to engage with the science of learning community.

And if we want to start engaging with research, then trying it out ourselves is definitely one of the best ways to understand the methodology of the research that we read.

So, I’m perfectly happy for all educators to engage in action research. I’d just warn against reading too much into findings – at least while one’s understanding of methodology is still developing.

This leads me on to the final part of this series of posts – where I talk about guidelines for successful projects. You can check it out next week!

Please consider sharing this post with relevant colleagues! Thank you!

Share

All the best for the week,

Jonathan

Last week: Episodic and Semantic Memory

I hope you are enjoying Memory and Metacognition Updates. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work – and consider sharing it with colleagues!! Thank you!

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Hello! As I briefly mentioned last time, today’s update will focus on the concepts of episodic and semantic memory. These are widely-discussed concepts in psychology, but I rarely see them covered in education courses or CPD.

Memory in education

A starting point is the definition of memory as a concept. If you ever find yourself trying to defend the relevance of memory to education, it’s worth noting the breadth of its definition as seen by mainstream psychology and cognitive science.

By this view, the role of memory goes far beyond the retention of facts. Human memory is involved in (Squire, 2004):

• Perceptual learning

• Skills & habits

• Emotional responses

• Memory for events

• Facts and understanding

And more … In short, anything that has a lasting impact on what we know and can do.

The role of memory in pedagogy or studying, therefore, should not be reduced to meaningless rote memorisation. When learners repetitively try to remember facts (which obviously can and does happen), this involves applying memory in a very narrow way, and one that fails to take advantage of how learning works best.

In most situations, we remember things far better if they are meaningful, contextualised, and practised in varied ways.

Associative links

When what we learn forms associative networks of understanding, we are using semantic memory – memory for what we know and understand. A new stimulus is linked to or contrasted with existing knowledge and skills. By forming such associations, new ideas become meaningful.

In contrast – as proposed by Tulving (1972) – remembering a specific event or piece of information leads to an episodic memory. This is a memory for a specific event or happening, such as the first time we were told something or when we experienced something in our lives.

For example, knowing that rivers are filled with fish or that you can sometimes swim in them draws on your semantic memory. You know it, but perhaps don’t recall a specific occasion when you learned these things. Recalling a particular time that you fished or swam in a river (if you ever did such a thing) draws on episodic memory.

Examples

If the previous points are not entirely clear, try testing yourself on the five statements below. For each one, ask yourself: “Can I vividly recall the event of learning this?” or “Do I just know the fact?”

1. What you had for dinner last night.

2. A bicycle has two wheels and pedals.

3. The weather on your last birthday.

4. That Paris is the capital of France.

5. A conversation you had last week.

When I’ve shown these to learners who are new to theories of memory, most find it easy to recognise that some of these things involve semantic memory and others episodic memory.

And although researchers have moved towards seeing the systems as closely intertwined, the idea that they have distinct features has persisted (Renoult et al., 2019).

In education

In education, goals are usually more aligned with deep knowledge (semantic memory) than with retaining isolated facts (episodic memory). What we really want from our students is a deep, interconnected understanding of how things work.

However, the experiences that lead to this knowledge can result in episodic memories. At the end of a class, for example, the students will leave with a memory of the specific activities and conversations that they have just had.

How does the learner get from one to the other?

This is an interesting and complex question, and one that is sometimes studied with reference to the brain systems involved. I won’t get into that aspect, but in general terms, the specifics and the conscious episodic memories tend to fade over time (at least for most people) while the gist of a concept is incorporated into semantic memory.

What can help this to happen? Educational experiences that cause us to notice differences, to make sense of tasks and to reflect on meaning. For example, one benefit of interleaving (see update #96) is that it involves contrasting subtly different examples.

Examples like interleaving show that while the process of semanticisation (yeah – what a term, right?) is not conscious, it can be supported via careful pedagogical choices.

Another example, famous for decades from the work of Piaget, is that children benefit from disequilibrium, as this forces them to reorganise their knowledge in order to accommodate conflicting information. In more everyday terms, they try to make sense of something that seems weird, and their knowledge changes accordingly. Such experiences don’t have to happen in the classroom, but they can.

As some of you may realise, all of this shows that semantic memory is based on schemas (see update #59), and that developing it involves the organisation and interconnection of knowledge (e.g. knowing what things link to and why they matter) just as much as it involves taking in new knowledge.

The ultimate goal, often, is expertise, and it has been widely recognised that experts differ from novices in the organisation of knowledge as well as in the amount that they know.

More on that last point another time!

All the best for the coming week,

Jonathan

Last time: Welcome Back (and Book News)

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Hello! Welcome back to these updates after a short (shorter than usual, actually!) summer hiatus.

I couldn’t wait to get back to things, and as I mentioned back in July, one of the first topics I’ll hit relates to the concepts of episodic and semantic memory – key concepts in the science of memory, but less fully covered in discussions of pedagogy compared to ideas like cognitive load and desirable difficulties.

Look out for that next week.

The following week, I’ll also be returning to the idea of practitioner ‘action’ research. I’ll cover some of the key pitfalls, but also provide some guidelines in a pair of new posts (following on from one that I wrote back in December – see update #131). I hope that these posts will be well timed for anyone who is undertaking classroom-based research in the coming months.

Book update

My forthcoming book, The Psychology of Education, is a textbook aimed at students of Education, particularly those new to the subject (either undergraduate or postgraduate). It is also very relevant to teaching courses and to teachers and other education professionals. I think it would be a very good resource for a CPD library, too!

Example topics that each have their own chapter include: Working memory, long-term memory, motivation, reading, writing, learning theories, brain and development, to name but a few … in short, a lot of core psychology/education content over 22 chapters in total.

The current status is that I have sent off the final edited draft, so the book is in production, and I will be dealing with copy-edit queries and proofs in the coming weeks. It therefore won’t be published for a few months yet, which is not great news for anyone just beginning a course next month – sorry! However, it will be out in plenty of time to review it ahead of the next academic year.

→ Publisher’s page here

Memory and education seminar

A wee reminder that I’m running a 1-day seminar in Glasgow on the theme of memory and education (broadly defined!). It’s free to attend. More info below:

Memory Seminar 2026 Cfp

232KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Link to attend the event:

→ Click here

Recommended read

Before I sign off, here is a recent read that I enjoyed and which is very relevant to readers of these updates:

Smith, M. (2026). Smarter: Lessons from the new science of learning. David Fulton.

Marc Smith is an author who I’ve worked with in the past, and whose expertise includes both memory and social-emotional side of learning. It’s a very readable and valuable book, and I’ve already cited it myself! You can also find Marc’s Substack posts here.

All the best for the coming week,

Jonathan

Last time: Summer Recap and What’s Next

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Hello! As I am shortly going to be spending some time away with my family, I’ll take a few weeks away from these updates, returning in August. It’s also an opportunity to recap the topics covered over the past academic year, sharing any that you might have missed.

Some highlights include a series of posts on learning myths, a few posts on interleaving and spacing, a couple of recent ones on potential areas of confusion in cognitive science. Most recently, as you may have seen last Monday, I shared the first co-authored post that I have done here (on variation and creativity).

There were a few posts on a Higher Education theme, including on lecturers’ understanding of learning and on university study skills. I also shared a couple of more philosophical updates, including a pair of posts about the purposes of education about potential misconceptions of cognitive science.

There were also posts on teacher research, digital distractions, classroom questioning, and more!

Full list from academic year 2025–26

So, these are the posts since last summer, in order, oldest first:

• Update 118: Welcome back to M&M updates

• Update 119: The dangers of digital distractions

• Update 120: Motivation: Fuel for self-regulated learning

• Update 121: Combining retrieval practice and generative learning

• Update 122: Retrieval practice and generative learning: Classroom implications

• Update 123: Getting to grips with cognitive science and education

• Update 124: Does retrieval practice cause forgetting?

• Update 125: Combining Interleaving and the Spacing Effect, Part 1

• Update 126: Combining Interleaving and the Spacing Effect, Part 2

• Update 127: What makes a difficulty desirable? Philosophical reflections

• Update 128: The learning styles myth

• Update 129: More on the learning styles myth: Classroom Implications

• Update 130: Why learning myths matter

• Update 131: Promise and pitfalls of practitioner action research

• Update 132: Welcome back to memory and metacognition updates

• Update 133: Interleaving, metacognition and children

• Update 134: Purposes of education

• Update 135: Purposes of education, part 2

• Update 136: Applying cognitive science to questioning – timing

• Update 137: Does retrieval practice work in real classrooms?

• Update 138: hould lecturers know how learning works?

• Update 139: Areas of confusion in cognitive science, part 1

• Update 140: Getting ready for college

• Update 141: Areas of confusion in cognitive science, part 2

• Update 142: Can a teacher do research?

• Update 143: Desirable difficulties, variation and creativity

Next up

So, what next? Even just listing the posts reminds me of a few things that I’ve been meaning to get around to, but now it will have to wait until after the summer!

In particular, there are two posts where I am planning to write one or more follow-up pieces. As already mentioned recently, I have more areas of confusion in cognitive science to cover. I also plan to revisit the topic promise and pitfalls of practitioner action research, which I had intended as a 3-part post, with the second part delving more into the pitfalls, and the final one suggesting some guidelines.

Other areas I plan to get to after the summer include

• Episodic and semantic memory – a very well-established idea in the science of long-term memory, but rarely covered in CPD for educators;

• Flawed applications of metacognition. I often hear about schools setting metacognition as one of their learning goals or policies, but the specifics often leave a lot to be desired. Likewise, I’d like to share more practical guidance on study skills.

So, all in all, lots to think about and write about!

Summer plans

My other immediate plan is to disappear on holiday. I’ll be staying in Scotland, and plan to go to Arran (shown in the image above) – a magical place, and one that my wife’s family have a very long connection with.

Other than that, I will be pressing on with various research projects, including the school-university transitions work that I mentioned recently.

I’m also nearing the final stages of my Psychology of Education textbook (currently working through some edits following feedback on the first draft). I’ll share more info on that next month.

Memory and education seminar

Before I sign off, just to mention that I am running a 1-day seminar in Glasgow on the theme of memory and education (broadly defined!). Somewhat philosophical in tone, but very much open to cognitive science issues, too. Are you interested in presenting or just coming along for the day? It’s free to attend. More info below:

Memory Seminar 2026 Cfp

232KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

I hope you get a break at some point, and have a great time if so. Thanks again for reading!

All the best for the coming week,

Jonathan

Last time: Desirable Difficulties, Variation and Creativity

Please note that my slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

This week the update has been co-authored by the fabulous Dr Claire Badger of InnerDrive. Claire and I previously worked on a book (Creativity for Teachers), and I reached out to her when I began drafting the post. She was kind enough to contribute her ideas and knowledge. It will also be published on the InnerDrive blog.

The concept of desirable difficulties has become well known among those interested in the links between cognitive science and education. We wanted to take this further today, by making at least a tentative link to creativity.

Just to remind you, desirable difficulties are features of a task that make things harder for students, leading to more errors, but are helpful for learning over the long term. Spacing out practice is an example of a desirable difficulty, as explained way back in update #10:

“The reason that desirable difficulties help is that they make practice more similar to real life. Instead of being predictable, passive and short-term, it becomes varied, active, and requires the retrieval of previously-learned memory and skills.” (read more).

Difficulties such as the spacing effect can boost both retention of studied material and transfer of that learning to new situation, in comparison with easier strategies such as re-reading. That’s what makes them desirable.

Links to creative thinking

So, how do desirable difficulties interact with creativity? One connection is fairly simple – the more we learn, the more potential we have to come up with new creative ideas. This is because higher-order skills such as creativity depend on knowledge stored in long-term memory.

One connection with desirable difficulties, therefore, is that any technique that leads to better retention in memory will indirectly be good for creativity.

It seems obvious when you put it that way, perhaps, but in our experience, this is not reflected in educational practice and discourse. Quite the reverse – memory-focused strategies are often seen as being in opposition to creativity. This is a false dichotomy, because:

• If you remember more, you have more basic building blocks from which to form new creative ideas;

• The evidence suggests that eminent creativity, for example by scientists and composers, tends to draw on an extensive period of learning.

You can read more about the links between memory and creativity in update #28.

Variation

Of course, having new creative ideas is not just about recalling from memory. You also need to make new connections among those ‘building blocks’ – putting old ideas together in new ways.

This can be helped by practising in a varied way, while rote repetition is unhelpful. Interestingly, varied practice is also a desirable difficulty, as studied by researchers like Robert Bjork (e.g. Bjork, 1994):

“Critical information needs to be multiply encoded, not bound to single sets of semantic or situational cues” (Bjork, 1994, p. 188).

Variation in the way we practice leads to ideas sticking better in memory, and improves the flexibility of those memories. We are more likely to recognise the relevance of previously learned ideas, and to apply them in new ways.

It’s a short step from there to creativity!

Indeed, creativity researchers Gube & Lajoie (2020) have contrasted the effects on expertise of repetitive practice with practice that is more varied:

• competence gained through simple repetition leads to a lack of flexibility in thinking;

• rote repetition leads to routine expertise – learners can do a familiar task well, but they lack flexibility;

• varied practice leads to the ability to transfer and innovate.

Overall, what this means for educators is that we should look for ways to vary practice, especially after basic mastery has been achieved. This could include mixing up the context of tasks, changing the location, making problems look superficially different, combining topics, and much more.

Adaptive Expertise

Routine expertise brings with it a certain level of automaticity. It frees up cognitive resources, making the expert more efficient in their thinking and actions. However, this can come at a cost, as routine expertise is highly domain-specific and doesn’t transfer well to other tasks.

For example, you might have a favourite meal that you can pull together very quickly without the need to consult a recipe book. However, you may struggle when faced with an unfamiliar kitchen or without access to your usual ingredients.

This situation contrasts with what is known as adaptive expertise. Adaptive experts have interconnected, flexible knowledge which allows them to respond more effectively to novel situations. A cook with adaptive expertise will have a much deeper understanding of why recipes work, and when faced with a change in circumstances, will be able to swap out ingredients and adapt the cooking methods to create a successful meal.

Within education, routine expertise might make students very efficient at a limited set of problems or tasks but put a ceiling on future progress. For example, a formula triangle in Science or a paragraph structure such as PEEL (point, evidence, elaboration, link) might help students be successful in the initial stages of learning but such students will probably struggle when required to complete more complex calculations or write a more original and analytical essay.

If we want our students to build adaptive expertise there are several things we can do. Varied practice, as discussed above, is one approach. Another is to carefully consider the nature of the supports and scaffolds that we provide. Simplicity and repetition can be valuable in the early stages, but we need to consider when these scaffolds are no longer required, pushing students out of their comfort zone so that they do not become overly reliant on familiar strategies.

Uncertainty

A further approach to building adaptive expertise in students is to make use of uncertainty in the pedagogical process.

There is plenty of research to support the idea that randomness and disorder can contribute to creativity (see e.g. Kim & Zhong, 2017; Stefl & Rohm, 2017). But how do we introduce uncertainty into schools without things descending into chaos?

Researcher Ron Beghetto (Beghetto, 2019) suggests that this might be achieved via ‘structured uncertainty’. Beghetto does not argue for the complete removal of structured activities where students are required to work through routine tasks. However, he does argue that if we never allow students to grapple with uncertainty, we are ultimately doing them a disservice.

His suggested approach involves what he calls ‘lesson unplanning’. Assuming that most learning activities can be thought of as having four elements – problem, process, product and criteria – lesson unplanning involves removing one of these elements to create some uncertainty:

1. Problem – students could come up with their own questions or problems to tackle;

2. Process – asking students to come up with multiple ways to solve a problem;

3. Product – varying the format of the outcome, such as replacing a past paper question with a video tutorial or debate;

4. Criteria – rather than relying on published mark schemes linked to high stakes assessments, could the class come up with shared criteria on what ‘good’ would look like for a particular assignment?

An important caveat is that students must have sufficient knowledge before embarking on lesson unplanning. If students are struggling with basic ideas, then introducing uncertainty is likely to cause confusion and potentially embed misconceptions.

So, whilst uncertainty is not usually included in lists of desirable difficulties, it deserves to be considered as a strategy that, although it may result in a dip in short term performance, ultimately leads to deeper learning. Particularly if your goal is to develop creative and curious students.

And all the best for the coming week,

Jonathan and Claire B.

Please note that my slides and similar materials are used under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.

Hello! A few of the updates I’ve shared recently connect in some way to how educators engage with research evidence.

I’m interested in how we act as (sceptical) consumers of research, how we stay open to adjusting our own ideas as we learn more about the evidence. I’m also very curious about what role teachers play in doing and sharing research.

My experience

Although my degree was in Psychology, I didn’t immediately start to apply these ideas to my pedagogy as a school and university teacher. I suppose I saw psychology research and teaching as two rather different worlds. Like a lot of new teachers, my practice was probably heavily influenced by tradition and by my own experiences, as well as by some of the fads policies of the time!

It was only when I began to get frustrated by practical issues such as forgetting and student underperformance that I began to look deeper into ideas like long-term memory and the spacing effect, and saw how potentially transformative these could be.

Nowadays, I consider myself both a teacher and a researcher, and I am sure there are plenty of other professionals who receive these updates similarly straddle these roles, even if not equally.

Recommended talk on the issue

The fascinating talk below by Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, shared with the Centre for Educational Neuroscience a few months ago, reflects well on these issues and comes from someone who has studied the issue of teacher research engagement. The title is, ‘How can teachers become learning scientists, and why would this improve education?’.

The big question that Dr. Tokuhama-Espinosa asks is why research on mind, brain and education has not been become better embedded in teacher education and in the education professions more generally. She makes several key points:

• Barriers include time, complexity of the ideas, consensus, and leadership;

• Teachers need to read (and produce) more ‘translational science’, including good books on cognitive science – such as Agarwal & Bain’s ‘Powerful Teaching’ (and perhaps also blogs like this one?);

• All of this requires changes to leadership.

The whole video is worth a watch!

Engagement in and with research

Being a teacher and a learning scientist could mean different things. It could involve:

• Engagement with research, reading it and trying to apply it;

• Sharing ideas and influencing practice to become more evidence-based;

• Carrying out your own research.

Where are you in the process of engagement with and in research? Do you carry out anything that you would consider to be research (or enquiry) of your own? If not, perhaps that could be something to explore in the next academic year.

Here’s an article co-authored by Dr. Tokuhama‐Espinosa if you want to find out more about her work in this area:

Tokuhama‐Espinosa, T., & Nouri, A. (2023). Teachers' mind, brain, and education literacy: A survey of scientists' views. Mind, Brain, and Education, 17(3), 170–174.

All the best for the coming week,

Jonathan

Last time: Areas of Confusion in Cognitive Science, part 2

I hope you are enjoying Memory and Metacognition Updates. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work – and consider sharing it with colleagues!! Thank you!

Please note that my blogs, slides and similar materials are shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license. This means you can use or adapt them with attribution for non-commercial purposes. If you wish to use my materials for other purposes, feel free to get in touch.