The Science of Learning with Adam Boxer

This week’s guest is Adam Boxer. Adam is an old friend, and I’ve been privileged to see his rocket-like career trajectory from humble London chemistry teacher to entrepreneurial multimodel powerhouse.

Adam is a science teacher, EdTech start-up founder and educational consultant. He is an internationally recognised expert in practical pedagogy and has written several books about teaching. Adam is a co-host of the They Behave For Me podcast, and the Education Director of Carousel Learning, an innovative online learning platform that harnesses evidence from the cognitive sciences to boost student outcomes. 

Learning is a concept that comes up all the time in our agile product teams, so I wanted to have this conversation with Adam about learning from a point of view informed by education and cognitive science research. I found our exchange fascinating as always and this conversation introduced a bunch of interesting topics for further exploration.

In particular I enjoyed the section towards the end of the episode about cognitive load and cognitive overload, so please do stick around for that.

In our conversation we explored some of these questions:

* What is learning?

* Is there a difference between learning facts and skills?

* Can you teach creativity?

* Do transferable skills exists?

* What are some common myths about learning?

* What is the replication crisis in Psychology?

* How do humans choose which information to base their opinions on?

* What is a paradigm shift?

* What is cognitive load and how can you reduce cognitive overload?

* Why is multitasking impossible?

* How does learning in groups work?

Here’s the excellent list of variables Adam mentioned you could use to help you modulate cognitive load:

* expertise and knowledge (including the expertise reversal effect)

* number of things you ask someone to do

* distractions such as jokes and redundancy

* presenting things in multiple vs one modality (eg verbally and visually)

* lowering the abstraction (giving concrete examples and analogies)

* giving external tools and supports

Links and references

Why don’t students like school

Cognitive Load Theory

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