RESOURCES

Without an understanding of human cognitive architecture, instruction is blind. – Dr Vicki Likourezos, The Education Hub (March 3, 2021) Cognitive load theory helps us to understand how people generally learn and store new information, and the types of instructional practices that best support learning. It draws on the characteristics of working memory and long-term memory and the relationship between them to explain how people learn. Cognitive load theory emerged in the late 1980s from the work of John Sweller and his colleagues. The theory is based on our knowledge of the structure and processes of the human mind, known as human cognitive architecture. Human cognitive architecture helps us understand how we learn, think, and solve problems. It is considered to be a natural information processing system that generates various procedures designed to reduce cognitive load and facilitate the acquisition of biologically secondary knowledge held in long-term memory.