What every teacher needs to know about Learning and Memory
For many years, most teacher education programmes included substantial coverage of theories on the psychology of education. However, many pre-service teachers did not find these courses helpful, since they offered little more than bland platitudes, or, at the other extreme, provided findings that worked in laboratories, but were difficult or impossible to implement in real classrooms. As a result, many teacher preparation programmes now contain little in the way of educational psychology, which is unfortunate, because over the last thirty years or so, cognitive science has produced deep insights into how humans learn.
In this interactive workshop, Dylan will introduce participants to the latest findings from cognitive science about how we learn and the kinds of things we can do to help our students remember what they are taught for longer.
Participants will learn why it is that students can be intensively and successfully engaged in worthwhile tasks and yet learn little as a result, and why forgetting is essential to remembering. Participants will leave with a variety of strategies for improving learning in their classrooms that can be immediately, and widely, applied.
Dylan Wiliam is Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at University College London. In a varied career, he has taught in inner-city schools, directed a large-scale testing programme, served a number of roles in university administration, including Dean of a School of Education, and pursued a research programme focused on supporting teachers to develop their use of assessment in support of learning.
After a first degree in mathematics and physics, and one year teaching in a private school, he taught in inner-city schools in London for seven years.
In 1984 he joined Chelsea College, University of London, which later merged with King’s College London. From 1996 to 2001 he was the Dean of the School of Education at King’s, and from 2001 to 2003, Assistant Principal of the College. In 2003 he moved to the USA, as Senior Research Director at the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, NJ. From 2006 to 2010 he was Deputy Director of the Institute of Education, University of London.
Over the last 20 years, his academic work has focused on the use of assessment to support learning (sometimes called formative assessment). He now works with groups of teachers all over the world on developing formative assessment practices.
