2024/12/18 by Minkang Kim, Christopher Duncan, Stanley Yip +1
Computer Science · Neuroscience · Psychology · #Intelligent Tutoring Systems and Adaptive Learning #Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function #Visual and Cognitive Learning Processes
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00131857.2024.2441389
openalex publication_date 2024/12/18 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Cognitive load theory (CLT), a construct of instructional psychologist John Sweller, has long been a mainstay of educational psychology and university educational technology courses, regionally and internationally. Although aspects of this cognitivist theory have been severely criticised, including its insistence on direct instruction in opposition to inquiry-based pedagogies, a comprehensive philosophical, neurobiological, and education critique has been missing. This paper fills the gap, by subjecting the main theoretical and pedagogical claims of CLT to close and searching scrutiny, in part, utilising a newly emerging synthesis of philosophy and cognitive brain science, appropriately known as Cognitive Philosophy. The paper pushes past CLT, with its emphasis on the transient nature of working memory and core notion of cognitive ‘load’, to propose an account of the learning brain that is predictive (not reactive), embodied, neuronally plastic, non-linear, dynamically self-organising, and inherently emotional. This alternative account immediately problematises Sweller’s understanding of working memory and his account of language learning, based on Geary’s questionable epistemological claims, while keeping the practical needs of teachers and teacher educators firmly in view. Armed with this alternative, teachers can move beyond the theoretical and pedagogical constraints of CLT, including trying to mitigate a putative ‘load’ in working memory.