What’s going on when your students retrieve ideas in their minds? Are they simply accessing some stored knowledge or is there more to it?
Let’s explore one way of understanding memory – that memory is highly dynamic and creative (Edelman, 2001). There are two particularly important things we need to understand. According to this theory –
Memories are the brain’s ability to recreate a sufficiently similar idea in a new context using somewhat different brain activity.
Memories are created dynamically at the point of need.
Let’s go into more detail about these statements.
If we think our brains have a dedicated circuit for each and every idea, then we are thinking of ideas as being represented by specific localised connections. If we think this is the case, then to recall an idea (like the concept ‘cat’ or ‘love’) is to ‘access’ the specific set of connections in the brain. Accessing memories is like locating a book on a shelf or a file on a computer. We can double click on the memory and the words or images come to mind. Let’s call this the static view of memory, where brains represent fully formed ideas that are reproduced in the same way they were first stored.
Now let’s look at the dynamic view.
When we remember, we aren’t accessing a stored static representation of an idea.* Our brain is responding to the various contextual cues (internal/external) it is presented with, and these cues activate brain activity from distributed areas of the brain. This activity integrates to form our memory. Every new context will cue the idea at least slightly differently. Take the concept of ‘hammer’ for example. If I need to build something, when I think of ‘hammer’ I think of it as a useful tool. If I read about a hammer being used as a weapon, I think of it as dangerous. Different brain activity is cued and my idea of hammer is recalled differently. I’m still recalling a similar** idea but in a new context. I never recall ‘hammer’ in the exact same way as contexts are always different. Memories are the brain’s ability to recreate a sufficiently similar idea in a new context using somewhat different brain activity (Edelman, 2001).
Our brains respond to the context cues they are presented with (internal and external); they aren’t simply retrieving a static idea. This means they are recreating the idea dynamically at the point of need. This helps us to respond flexibly to each situation we are in.
In short: our brains are probably not retrieving a particular memory from a particular part of the brain like a book from a shelf or a file on a computer (static view). It’s more likely our brains are creatively constructing our response at the point of recall in the context in which we are recalling it (dynamic view) (Edelman, 2001; Bryce & Blown, 2023). This means our memories change each time we recall them.
Even shorter: memory is creative, not strictly replicative (Edelman, 2001, p.56 (emphasis added)).
So what might this mean for teaching?
The dynamic view of memory leads us to an important conclusion:
Students’ ideas are flexible: they recreate them each time they recall them (Edelman, 2001; Kiefer & Pulvermüller, 2011) because recalling memories changes them (see Bridge & Paller, 2012). This means students are essentially mentally redrafting ideas each time they recall them.
Mental redrafting
Recalling ideas in different contexts has the potential to develop them as the brain dynamically recreates the idea to suit the needs of that particular context. Therefore providing students with multiple contexts in which to recreate ideas may develop their understanding by cueing different connections.
By context we mean time, place, in our heads, aloud etc. This is why it’s a great idea to use techniques like ‘think, pair, share’ (Lyman et al., 1981) because students need to recall ideas in potentially three contexts:
THINK: students come up with their response in their heads.
PAIR: students discuss with a partner.
SHARE: some or all pairs share with the class.
Lemov’s (2021) ‘everybody writes’ is another good strategy. This strategy gives students time to think of an answer and write down their thoughts. This allows students to produce two versions and potentially a development in their understanding.
In essence, thinking of things in different contexts is like mental redrafting. Like redrafting, students are creating better ‘versions’ of their understanding.
Better understanding of what students ‘know’
Students’ responses may not betray what they fully understand because the context may constrain their answers. Giving them opportunities to explain/demonstrate what they know in different ways can lead teachers to a deeper understanding of what their students know (Bryce & Blown, 2020).
Of course, we don’t have time to assess multiple responses from students for all the things they learn. But when it comes to important ideas in our subjects, giving them the opportunity to reproduce ideas in different contexts and perhaps in different formats (suitable to the content) may help you understand what they know.
For example, if it’s important for students to understand the development of a character over time across the novel, they may discuss it, plot it on a graph and write about it. The discussion may suggest a general understanding but the graph may show they’ve mixed up the order of certain events.
Create context
What students are thinking about when they encounter new ideas you are trying to teach them is important. In other words, the mental context in which they learn the new information dictates how they understand it.
Essentially, we need to ask ourselves, what do we want in students’ minds when they are learning the new idea? Psychologist David Ausubel’s ‘advance organisers’ (Ausubel, 1968) are one way we can cognitively prepare students to learn new ideas. An advance organiser is any verbal, written or graphical material that creates a meaningful*** overarching context to support students to learn the new ideas. Advance organisers help students create a ‘proto schema’ i.e. a preliminary mental scaffold to understand the detail you are about to teach them (Gurlitt et al., 2012). For example, if I am teaching Macbeth, I will want my students to understand medieval beliefs about nature and the unnatural. This will support them to see the significance of Macbeth disturbing the natural order of things when he kills King Duncan. I can create an advance organiser that introduces this idea before they encounter this part of the play.
Creating advance organisers means thinking about the structure of knowledge in the subject(s) you teach and considering which concepts create the context for the detailed ideas you want students to learn.
I wrote a similar blog on context here. Since then I’ve been reading a lot more hence this second blog!
* This makes sense as neurons die and yet we can still recall memories we encoded using those neurons.
**I say similar because according to the dynamic view, we don’t recall the memory as we first encoded it; we recreate the memory in the new context and it is altered.
***Ausubel is clear that this should be done in a way that bridges from what students already know. This means any explanation of ‘nature and the unnatural’ must be explained at a level that can be understood by those particular students. This makes it meaningful.
References
Ausubel, D.P. (1968). Educational psychology: a cognitive view. Holt, Rinehart and Winston: New York.
Bridge, D. J., & Paller, K. A. (2012). Neural correlates of reactivation and retrieval-induced distortion. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(35), 12144-12151.
Bryce, T. G. K., & Blown, E. J. (2023). Ausubel’s meaningful learning re-visited. Current Psychology, 1-20.
Bryce, T. G., & Blown, E. J. (2021). Imagery and explanation in the dynamics of recall of intuitive and scientific knowledge: insights from research on children’s cosmologies. Research in Science Education, 51(6), 1593-1627.
Edelman, G. M. (2001). Building a Picture of the Brain. In Edelman, G. M., & Changeux, J. P (Eds). (2001). The Brain. Transaction Publishers.
Gurlitt, J., Dummel, S., Schuster, S., & Nückles, M. (2012). Differently structured advance organizers lead to different initial schemata and learning outcomes. Instructional Science, 40, 351-369.
Kiefer, M., & Pulvermüller, F. (2011). Conceptual representations in mind and brain: theoretical developments, current evidence and future directions. Cortex, 04/2011.
Lemov, D. (2021). Teach like a champion 3.0: 63 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College. John Wiley & Sons.
Lyman, F. (1981). “The responsive classroom discussion.” In Anderson, A. S. (Ed.), Mainstreaming Digest. College Park, MD: University of Maryland College of Education. In IQ-MS Research Project Disciplinary Literacy Strategies – Think-Pair-Share and Variations. https://www.s2temsc.org/uploads/1/8/8/7/18873120/think_pair_share_strategy_and_variations.pdf
Evidence for Educators 
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