RiosGPSY5108-1

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1 Cognitive Load Theory a Tool for Restructuring the U.S. Education System Gina A. Rios Department of Psychology, Northcentral University PSY-5108: Cognitive and Affective Basis of Behavior Dr. Mary Streit January 28, 2024

2 Cognitive Load Theory a Tool for Restructuring the U.S. Education System As a parent, ensuring that my children are well provided for is my main priority. Every waking moment is centered around their needs and wants, and at the very top of the ever- growing list of necessities, immediately following the basic necessities of food, shelter, and clothing, is to provide them with a well-rounded education. From the moment they were placed into my arms, I began fostering a love of learning and taught them to read by the time they were both three years old. While I have no intention of slowing down with my involvement in their educational growth, I have come to realize that there is something quite unsettling and unnatural about the education system here in the United States of America. Even as I look back at when I was in elementary school, I recognized that the structure of many public and charter schools directly challenges the way children instinctively and characteristically absorb and learn new or “novel” information (Sweller, 2017). Children are hard wired with surplus amounts of energy and constant curiosity, much to the detriment of their over stimulated and exhausted parents, yet when they are thrown into a school setting, they are obligated to maintain a level of rigid focus. Thus, limiting the amount of time to expel stored physical energy that many children are unable to adhere to. This rigidity often leads to some incredibly bright children becoming unfairly labeled as having some form of deficit in their ability to learn by their teachers and school administration and will have parents seeking medical advice for possible behavioral issues (“Why your child’s behavior may not mean ADHD,” 2024), but I propose that their inability to maintain focus in class may have more to do with the cognitive overload and abnormal design of the modern day classroom. Children were never meant to sit for extended hours at a time with subject after subject being force fed each minute of their day. The focus of educating children seems to have become increasingly geared toward standardized testing, straying as far away as

3 possible from nurturing their innate curiosity and ultimately hindering their ability to develop strong critical thinking skills. Skills which are necessary for maintaining a functionally thriving society of problem-solving innovators. This paper aims not only to expound on Sweller’s cognitive load theory, but to also analyze the imaginable benefits and limitations of it in conjunction with how I have come to believe that the implementation of the major components of this theory could potentially improve, if not solve, the issues with the structure of the U.S. educational system. Our learning abilities directly correlate to how well we are able to remember experiences or information that is presented to and accumulated throughout our lives (Eagleman & Montague, 2005). To understand what cognitive load theory is, one must first understand how memories function and are broken down. According to the textbook, Human Biology , memory is obtained through “a set of processes used to encode, store, and retrieve information over different periods of time” (Malquist, & Prescott, n.d., para. 1). Additionally, Professor John Wixted expounds on the understanding of how memory processes operate through his definition of the Atkinson-Shiffrin model in his 2016 video. Wixted states that this model is the process by which an individual experiences and mentally registers sensory events (i.e., what is heard, seen, smelled, touched, and tasted) into separate compartments of the brain to either immediately discard or rehearse and record for long-term use (Wixted, 2016). Essentially, every moment of the day is filled with a plethora of experiences and information, however most of that information is immediately discarded and will not be retained as long-term memories due to being irrelevant for future usage (Wixted, 2016). For example, you walk into a grocery store and while your eyes see all the colors of the clothes passing patrons are wearing, it is only temporarily noted and not stored as the moment you pass them by, you have already forgotten

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