So, Cognitive Load Theory – its a thing, right. Problem is, now I’m very mindful of how full my mind is.
Having spent a life time using nautical metaphors, I’m now actually living them as I navigate the treacherous waters of learning to sail. This week, I’ve been learning how to dock. Sailing – it takes five minutes to learn, but a lifetime to master. Docking is neither. It seems like a vengeful game of Russian roulette with every departure and return. Docking a full keeled boat in a tiny mooring is like forcing your pet pooch through the veterinarian’s front door when they know what’s in store.
It is like leading a class of learners, and leading a community of learners. Hard and terrifying. It just goes with the territory. The thrill and exhilaration of merely surviving intact (self, boat and others) seems to be a pretty low benchmark for success. But by golly gumdrops it feels good.
Right now our tutor program is going full steam ahead.
This is because the Grattan Institute put together a report, largely informed by the British report. Both of these reports used data from a study on literacy learning loss over the summer holidays published in 1996. An earlier much bigger study in 1976 showed no impact on learning growth over the summer holidays.
Even more interesting, studies of schools using online learning were rejected.
The Grattan caveat reads (in part) as follows:
Our estimates are a rough indication of likely learning losses, and there are a number of limitations of our modelling. One limitation is that our estimates are based on the literature about learning losses during summer holidays, and do not completely take into account the impact of remote learning programs, including the efforts by schools and teachers to make remote learning work well.22 (The studies on summer holidays were mostly of students in the first two years of school.)
So now this is very complex! In getting a cheap old full keel boat to pirouette delicately around multimillion dollar trophies without an insurance claim is tough. A lot is going on. You have to get the motor full pelt in order to get enough movement over the control surfaces so that the captain can effect some influence of the direction of the vessel. The momentum must then be reversed or redirected in order to avoid hitting the thing that required such moving in the first place. What seems like an imminent and unavoidable disaster can instantly vaporise as everything comes together in the last possible moment. At other times, what seems like an imminent and unavoidable disaster can instantly materialise, because ‘if you don’t change direction, you’ll hit where you are headed.’ The effects of wind and currents and transmission lag and boat shape and keel design and communication and skill and confidence and local knowledge all come together to inform the size and shape of the disaster – or stories of a near miss, or a cocky unjustified display of mastery. Either way it is terrifying.
So is teaching. It is complex. There actually are no ‘silver bullets’. There may well be a consistent, cumulative effect from marginal gains though. Each student is unique and worthy of having their learning story treated with respect and dignity. This includes their learning as it is, and as it unfolds. My hope is that we can embrace the complexity of the impact of COVID on our kids learning and learn our learners well enough to cause flourishing, no matter what their sea-state.