Post

...the effectiveness of clear strategies like worked examples, goal-free problems, and the split-attention effect! And CLT is also a branch of cognitive psychology that unlike many others uses ecologically valid experiments (real classrooms with real teachers as opposed to labs)

The thing that really hit me when I first read Sweller's work as a classroom teacher was the sheer practicality of it. It gave me clear practical tools which were extremely effective.

Then there is this claim: "Isn’t didactic, direct instruction often infused with confusions that impact students’ ability to understand new material, especially students with special learning needs that appear largely marginalised in CLT?"

Students with special learning needs are not marginalised in CLT. In fact quite the opposite. As the father of an SEN child, I can confidently say that explicit instruction is highly effective for struggling learners and...

... many teachers who actually work with SEN pupils find CLT a hugely helpful framework to help them understand and help their students.

The next point on motivation I am l less sure about and fully prepared to be wrong but the claim that CLT assumes learners are passive recipients and ignores motivation is not accurate either I think.

It's fair to say that CLT doesn't take into account all contextual affective factors BUT Sweller highlights the importance of minimizing unnecessary cognitive load to keep learners engaged and motivated.

For example, overly complex materials can demotivate novices, which is why CLT advocates for scaffolding. So I would say that this critique conflates “minimizing cognitive load” with ignoring motivation, when in fact the two are closely linked in CLT.

This paper critiques CLT for being outdated and overly theoretical but does not propose a clear alternative instructional framework. So while advocating for a “dynamic, neuroscience-based” cognitive philosophy (fair enough),

I don't see any concrete experimental evidence or instructional strategies to replace CLT, which is itself a very coherent theory with practical recommendations.

As a general rule, education philosophy is good for critiquing stuff but not so good at actually helping teachers know how to teach their struggling year 7s on a Friday afternoon.

(Cool your jets Foucault-fans - Before you get out the torches and pitchforks, I did a PhD in education philosophy and I know how important it is, I'm just saying that there are other fields where more practical guidance is offered.)

So I read this point about learning as being "emergent and dynamic" (which undermines static theories like CLT) and I think 'yeah that sounds great but what doegs this mean for actual teachers beyond a nice sound bite?'

I mean sure, this perspective is philosophically interesting, but it lacks specificity about how teachers should apply it. CLT, on the other hand, provides clear, actionable strategies (e.g., worked examples, guided instruction, dual coding and even collaborative learning).

Also Sweller is pretty clear that WM >LTM is a dynamic process. He writes: "Working memory obtains information from long-term memory in order to provide an organized link to the environment...

...The environmental organizing and linking principle allows organized information to be transferred from long-term memory to working memory...".

So much of this paper I find utterly baffling For example: "Peter Ellerton (Citation2022) has recently noted, ‘CLT offers no recognition of the learner as an autonomous agent’ (p. 6)."

The whole point of Cognitive Load Theory is to HELP kids to be autonomous agents by giving them clear guidance and scaffolding. See point above on expertise reversal effect

We also encounter this old chestnut: "in opposition to much cognitive psychology that views the brain as a computer, the human brain ‘does not solve problem in the way a computer does’,"

Well CLT does not make such a claim. This has been very well debunked by @gregashman.bsky.social here: fillingthepail.substack.com/p/your-mind-...

...because it was considered contrary to Darwin’s theory of natural selection, or the ridicule suffered by Alfred Wegener when proposing his notion of continental drift. But in each case, as Mandel realised, they were on the right side of history."

Now I really hope the authors are not likening their paper to the discoveries of Mandel, Darwin and Wegener and taking the moral high ground of being on the 'right side of history'...

...in opposition to 'strong vested interests' (which frankly sounds conspiratorial) because that would make the whole paper ridiculous and that would be a shame as there are some important points raised, despite not being actually addressed.