Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching

Teachers have to manage a complex variety of cognitive factors in order to help their students learn. Stephen Chew and I created a framework, the Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching, to help guide teachers through the challenges that each of these factors presents (Chew & Cerbin, 2021). The framework consists of nine cognitive challenges that can impede students’ learning (See Table 1).

 Table 1: The Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching

These nine challenges are present in every teaching and learning context. Not only can each challenge impede learning, but they interact; each challenge influences and is influenced by others. Consider three common examples:

• When the amount of new information exceeds students’ working memory capacity, they are likely to be overloaded and unable to process it effectively. However, students with rich prior knowledge are less likely to be overloaded. Their prior knowledge enables them to interpret and process new information more quickly.
• Students who use ineffective study strategies may fail to acquire the prior knowledge they need to benefit from class lectures and assignments, which in turn may affect their mental mindset and influence them to believe they lack the ability needed to learn in the course.
• Students often multitask when studying and in class. A common student misconception is that it is easy to do two tasks simultaneously, such as texting a friend while listening to a teacher’s presentation. Students who multitask are unaware that multitasking divides their attention which can interfere with learning.

Each class and class period involves a unique combination of cognitive challenges. There is no single teaching method that will be effective in every learning context and class. What works for one class one day may not work well the next day. What works in your 10:00 class may be less effective in your 2:00 section. In this model, effective teaching is a matter of managing the challenges in the classroom to bring about student learning.

Teachers can use the framework to anticipate, recognize and respond to the cognitive challenges in their classroom. Below are examples of ways to adapt teaching to address several challenges.

• To establish trust among struggling students, teachers can use wise feedback to communicate the belief that students are capable of succeeding in the course and that critical feedback is intended to help them improve, not to weed them out. 
• To help students develop essential prior knowledge in the class, teachers can use practice quizzes with homework assignments to ensure they have an initial grasp of key concepts before each class. Practice quizzes can also reveal students’ knowledge gaps and misconceptions about the subject matter which teachers can then address in class.
• To support students’ attention, teachers can explain the detrimental effects of multitasking in class and when studying.
• In class, teachers can adjust the organization and pace of their class presentations to manage the difficulty students will experience in trying to learn large amounts of new information.  

Table 2 gives an example of a teaching strategy for each cognitive challenge.  

Table 2: Teaching Strategies for Each Challenge

Overall, the cognitive challenges framework can help teachers understand the reasons for students’ learning difficulties and adapt their teaching with the goal of bringing about optimal student learning.

For more information about the cognitive challenges framework, including many examples of teaching applications, see the Cognitive Challenges of Effective Teaching Video Series (https://tinyurl.com/yfgg8au3), short videos about each cognitive challenge and Barriers to Learning.   

William Cerbin is professor emeritus of psychology and founding director of the Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. He has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in cognitive, educational, and developmental psychology, and presented hundreds of faculty workshops on teaching and learning. He specializes in translating research in the learning sciences to help teachers improve their practice. He maintains Taking Learning Seriously, a resource for teachers which focuses on how research in the learning sciences can be used to improve teaching and learning. He also directs the Lesson Study Project which trains and supports teachers to engage in lesson study practices to improve teaching and student learning.