This looks at how technology in other cultures. In the introduction, in which the author relates the extremely good safety record of “robotaxis”, which are fully autonomous vehicles, the author asks the question: would these robotaxis perform as well in other countries. The USA has 4-way traffic intersections and rules about whose right of way it is (which the author cyncially notes is usually the driver who is most offensive!).

Chapters look at how technology is used around the world, online communities, and building a culturally just infrastucture, amongst other topics.

   

What happens when the very idea of being “gifted” becomes obsolete?

The author, Mechelle Gilford, explores how AI may render our usual way of interpreting the concept of “gifted” obsolete. For example, she relates a fascinating story of an autistic boy who addresses his teachers by their car licence plate numbers rather than names, and can recite from memory every route the school buses take. However, he cannot write an essay to save his life. But working with ChatGPT in an interative, ie back and forth way, the AI interprets his ideas and understanding until an essay emerges that expresses exactly what he wants to convey. I’m looking forward to reading the whole book.

Just a quick note by way of disclosure: Mechelle and I know each other. We met many moons ago at, if memory serves me well, a Mirandanet conference.

   

This is surprisingly readable. I say “surprisingly” because I don’t always find medical-related stuff easy reading. I associate AI in the context of medicine with being able to trawl through test results to find hidden patterns, thereby revealing potential new treatments. However, Dr Bot discusses something I hadn’t really considered, which is that people tend to reveal more to a chatbot than to a human being, especially when discussing sexual issues. Bear in mind that medical chatbots these days are somewhat more advanced than the one you may recall from a few decades ago: Eliza.

Rather depressingly, the author suggests that some doctors would fail the Turing Test. Ooops!

   

(Carlo Rovelli, Allen Lane, £10.99)

Rovelli draws readers into his world by describing the development of theories that scientists have posited to try and explain our world and the universe beyond. He does this by expressing his awe at the unseen reality behind our physical realm, and in so doing, entices others to take a similar interest themselves. Disappointingly, there appear to be few differences between this edition and Rovelli’s original, published 10 years ago, with Rovelli’s declarations that ‘Exciting new ideas are in the process of being explored’ leaving us wondering about the (presumed) discoveries that have emerged in the intervening decade. That aside, however, you could regard this book as a highly readable entry point to the study of physics - an intriguing taster of the main course.

This review was originally published in Teach Secondary magazine.

   

I published this article on 7th November 2021. I've added a bit and deleted a link to a now-defunct website and replaced it with another one. Apart from those changes, I still agree with everything I said back then.

In this article…

Introduction

A question: is Cognitive Load Theory another example of the emperor’s new clothes?

What is CLT?

One of the best explanations I’ve come across is that published on the Twinkl Education Blog:

These days you can hardly open any educational publication without coming across references to, or someone extolling the merits of, CLT. However, I’m afraid I can’t accept that as proof of the validity of a theory.

So what are my objections?

For one thing, there is such a thing as publication bias (which is one of the aspects of research covered in the book called Science Fictions).

Secondly, during my time in education I’ve noticed that theories have a habit of becoming flavour of the month, and then being replaced by a different flavour of the month, either because a “better” one comes along, or because it’s shown to be unhelpful or wrong (think of learning styles, which was all the rage at one point).

Now, I’m aware that Dylan Wiliam has spoken in favour of CLT:

I've come to the conclusion Sweller's Cognitive Load Theory is the single most important thing for teachers to know https://t.co/MkJJLruR8g

— Dylan Wiliam (@dylanwiliam) January 26, 2017

That being the case, it would be tempting for me to assume I must be wrong then. However, Dylan Wiliam is an expert, in particular, in assessment for learning, so while one might have respect for him as an educationalist, does that mean that everything he says is objectively correct? I recently reviewed a book summarising various educational theories, and I could say the same thing about several of them.

Just to be clear, I’m perfectly happy to allow myself to be convinced that I’m wrong, and that Wiliam is right. I simply don’t think I should take his word for it, because I think it’s not healthy in educational discussions to unquestioningly agree with something because of who it was that said it. I wrote about this in The Trouble With Gurus. (Interestingly enough it’s an issue that is not confined to the field of education. In The Great Cholesterol Con (Amazon Associate link), Dr Malcolm Kendrick talks about “eminence-based medicine”, as opposed to evidence-based medicine.)

Counter-evidence

Firstly, Sweller’s and other’s research was, as far as I know, based on small numbers of older students in the fields of science and maths and, to some extent, education technology (in particular spreadsheets). Therefore, I don’t regard the theory as de facto applicable to secondary school (or primary school) pupils studying Computing (or anything else).

Secondly, when it comes to “working memory” (WM), not only does that differ from person to person, but even subject to subject. For example, I can remember the lyrics of a song after listening to it once, but if someone gives me their phone number I will have forgotten it by the time I’ve finished dialling the area code.

Thirdly, my understanding of WM theory is that people can hold only between 4 and 7 items in their heads at a time. Well, I’m no genius, but I’ve had no trouble organising a staff rota for 120 students, 17 staff and 30 rooms in my head. (I was designing a spreadsheet to solve that particular challenge while driving home. In so doing, I actually found the solution. I wasn’t expecting that!) And aren’t composers able to hold several strands of a piece in their mind at once, for example base, treble, various instruments?

Fourthly, the practical implication of CLT is that teachers should break up the material into small chunks. How small? There was once a huge trend for so-called competency-based education, in which students would learn individual bits. It sometimes led to a situation where they could do each single bit, but had no idea of how to put it all together. Plus that must differ from student to student too. If the chunks are too small, I think there could be quite a few bored students in the class. (As it happens, I’m currently reading Teaching Machines, by Audrey Watters, and according to her one of the criticisms of breaking down subjects into bite-sized gobbets for so-called teaching machines (they were mostly testing machines) and programmed learning is that the resultant material was so boring. I would also add that it’s really hard, if not impossible, to see the big picture when all you’re given is small, easily digestible chunks.)

Fifthly, there is a matter of common sense. When I was doing ‘A’ Levels our teacher advised us to separate similar subjects by a completely different subject when doing revision. For example, revise French, then History, then German, because by doing History in the middle you’d be giving the language part of your brain a rest. Not very scientific, I’ll grant you, but common sense, and you don’t need to invoke CLT or WM.

Finally, I’ve included some references below. I’m not sure how far all of them are available in the public domain, so I’ve cited a few excerpts and made one or two comments.  

Further reading

Was CLT a myth? https://researchschoo

Four problems with Cognitive Load Theory

This advice to teachers from Hello World magazine #17 sounds to me like competency-based teaching, in which a student could be an expert in all the different individual elements and have no real understanding of the whole.

 Finally, this review:

Review: Cognitive Load Theory: A Step Forward?

Reviewed Work: Cognitive Load Theory by Jan L. Plass, Roxana Moreno, Roland Brünken

Review by: Martin Valcke

In Educational Technology

Vol. 51, No. 3 (May-June 2011), pp. 53-55 (3 pages)

In reference to the fact that researchers have to ask learners about how much they can “take in” at any one time (because they cannot look inside their heads):

Also:

Concluding remarks

In answer to the question I posed at the beginning of this article, yes I do think that Cognitive Load Theory is yet another example of the emperor’s new clothes. (We seem to get a lot of this in education.) However, as I said earlier, I’m happy to be convinced of the error of my ways. In the meantime, I won’t be recommending CLT to my trainees or conference delegates any time soon.

Since writing the above paragraph, I've continued to read articles about CLT, and I still remain to be convinced of its efficacy. I listened to a podcast about it, which consisted of four people droning on about good and important CLT is in terms of the so-called need to limit the amount of new information you give students at any one time. What was missing?

• Any critical evaluation of CLT.
• Any indication of what constitutes an acceptable amount of information to throw at students at a particular point in time...
• ... or how to ascertain what that might be in the first place.

I think CLT is one of those theories or concepts that sounds sensible at first, but which then simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny once you start pulling it apart.

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