Memory is the Residue of Thought – but how do we get students to think?

Arguably the most important claim in the whole of the cognitive science discourse is the claim that memory is the residue of thought. Put simply, students will remember what they thought about during a lesson. Willingham gives the hilarious yet instructive example of a teacher, who was teaching the Underground Railroad, who got his students to bake biscuits as this was a staple food for enslaved people. Clearly this would not get students to think about the necessary material, and they would instead remember the process of preparing and cooking the food, rather than the historical knowledge that they needed to know.

This principle led me to think about planning in a completely different way. I now take a ‘thinking view’ of my lesson, and try focus on this viewpoint throughout the lesson. My focus, whether I am questioning, explaining, or making sure students are demonstrating good behaviors for learning, is on what the students are thinking about. 

The implications of having this view of the lesson are vast. For example, when I first started teaching, I was more than happy for students to be chatting whilst working, as long as the work was getting done, and whilst there are some points in lessons where you want students to be communicating with each other, I am now acutely aware that if two students were discussing their weekend plans or a video they’ve seen on TikTok, they will remember that, rather than the content of the lesson. Therefore ‘golden silence’, has become the norm in my classroom. Silence allows students to think the right things, and if they are thinking the right things, they will remember the right things.

Willingham’s insight is revolutionary, but like many ideas in teaching, it is far from a silver bullet. Once you accept that memory is the residue of thought, you face a new question – how do I actually get students to think? There are surely a multitude of answers to this question, but I will provide a few examples of my attempts at this:

 

Making Judgements

Firstly, one of the best tasks to ensure thinking is to get students to make judgements on the content. Of course this will only work in certain subjects, but rarely do you see the students thinking harder when they have to make a clear judgement, and elaborate on why they have made this judgement. Not only are they manipulating and organizing the information, but they are also elaborating and connecting to their own knowledge when searching for reasons to back up their judgements. The structure of these questions can be fairly open questions such as:

To what extend to you agree with the Radical Feminist view of the family?

More closed and quantitative:

On a scale of 1-10 how useful to you think the Radical Feminist view of the family is? Explain your reasoning in no more than 30 words.

For classes who struggle to come to judgements, you can even scaffold a selection of opinions for them, and they have to select and explain their selection: 

Which of the following best describes your view of Radical Feminism?

1.        Radical Feminists are correct in their analysis, but their solutions are unrealistic 

2.        I agree with the Radical Feminists that patriarchy is entrenched and separatist societies are required

3.        Radical Feminists have taken feminism too far, and they exaggerate the extend to which patriarchy exists. 

This last example is very useful when using mini-whiteboards, as the whole class can share their opinion and can create debate, for example you may cold call a student to explain their choice, or explain why they have not chosen a certain option.

 

Making Comparisons and Connections

The second way to ensure students are thinking hard is to get students to identify the similarities and differences between a new concept and older concepts they have previously learnt. To do this effectively you have to almost ‘plan backwards’ – plan with previous learning at the forefront of your mind. 

As Sarah Cottingham’s excellent book on Meaningful Learning tells us – we have to remember we are teaching bodies of knowledge, with connections and comparison, not isolated islands of knowledge. For example, I recently taught a lesson on Milgram’s Obedience Experiment, which involved as large bulk of the lesson doing comparison with a previous experiment we had learned (Asch’s Study of Conformity). I asked the students to create a Venn diagram, whereby they identified that both studies were lab experiments, so therefore had similar issues, but crucially there were some key differences between the studies (they were studying different phenomena, Asch used a control group, whilst Milgram did not). 

This type of comparison allows for a natural interleaving to happen within your curriculum, as students revisit previous content in light of new learning. It also allows them to see the bigger picture, the whole as well as the parts. Here are some examples of questions I have used to try and facilitate this connected thinking:

Which two methods are most likely to create the Hawthorne effect?

Why might a sociologist use documents rather than official statistics?

What are the similarities between lab experiments and field experiments?

How is Radical Feminism different to other forms of feminism?

Why might Marxists and Functionalists agree on some ideas about the family? Why might they disagree?

 

What these questions do, is compel students to think hard, as they compare and disquinguish between a variety of concepts. This requires lots of thinking, as they have to recall previous concepts and see them in a slightly different light. It is worth considering that this recall could cause overload some students, so sometimes I spend some time explicitly retrieving or reviewing the previously learnt concept before we try and compare to the new idea. 

 

Non-Examples

Examples are crucial when teaching abstract concepts, as they often give us that bridge to the students prior knowledge to help them understand the abstraction. 

In addition to this, if we want our students to think really hard, we can present them with something that is not an example of the concept, and get them to examine it and tell us why it is not an example. It can be tricky to design these with a good level of difficulty, but if done well, students are again compelled to think hard. Here are a couple of examples:

A feminist thinker believes that patriarchy should be challenged by changing stereotypes and putting pressure on governments – why is she not a radical feminist?

The government in the UK recently introduced a new childcare plan to help new parents – why would a New Right thinker not like this?

Another way to do this it to use potential misconceptions and get students to write why they are wrong. For example, I recently presented these statements to students:

A student learns about Asch’s study and believes they are studying a field experiment. Why is this wrong? Provide three reasons.

A student believes that the only reason working class students fail is due to material deprivation. Why is this wrong? Provide three reasons.

 

 

These three ideas are far from exhaustive, and depending on how well they are done, their effectiveness will vary. All I can say is that using judgements, comparisons and non-examples when designing tasks and questions will surely make students think, which is surely a crucial part of any lesson.