THE HEADTEACHER'S BLOG - THE BURFORDIAN, ISSUE 3 2024-2025

This is the Headteacher's Blog which was first featured in issue 3 of The Burfordian, published on Friday 18th October 2024

In my blog this week I hope to provide a summary of the challenge of mobile phones to cognitive development and learning. Whilst dry, I believe this is important and urge all to take the time to read through.

Cognitive load refers to the amount of short-term memory resources used by someone’s brain at any given time. Cognitive capacity refers to the maximum amount of information that anyone can cope with at any one time. When capacity is exceeded by load the brain’s ability to function efficiently is compromised. Simply put there is a point when someone will become overwhelmed by more information and their ability to function effectively will be compromised; in school there is a point when a student will stop learning effectively.

As teachers we are very aware that it is possible to overload students with too much information at one time and so we typically break down tasks into chunks. Nothing particularly revolutionary in that thought. However, more broadly education is about nurturing effectiveness of cognitive capacity and increasing over time the size of chunks used. This is done by trying to fix the skills and knowledge into the long-term memory that enable students to prioritise information – separate out what matters from what does not. When in the long-term memory knowledge is less likely to contribute to short term load and this frees up capacity. There is much debate about how much cognitive capacity grows and changes but certainly in the adolescent phase there are many transformations going on that will decide how capacity is used and how much load can be accommodated. If our educational offering is working well, students of Sixth Form age will be better equipped than those in junior years to use their capacity more effectively - even if capacity is not necessarily larger.

Now here is the key point to this blog. Whilst teachers will do their best in the classroom to nurture capacity and manage load of students in the adolescent phase, there are many external factors beyond teachers control that can affect cognitive development. These factors can range from trauma to environmental conditions at home, to physical health or psychological safety. The impact of each factor can never truly be understood. As I mentioned in my previous blog, research into the impact of mobile phones on young people is in its infancy, however, our understanding is evolving fast, particularly when thinking about cognitive load.

Mobile phones give people access to an extraordinary range of information. They are quite incredible and provide so many opportunities. However, young adolescents with unmanaged access to an internet enabled mobile phone, without the skills of self-filtering, are on a daily basis exposed to a cognitive load that will exceed capacity. This can mean that, if usage is uncontrolled, before students even arrive in school their capacity to learn effectively may have been compromised. Their capacity could have been completely used up. Used up, arguably, on information that will be of no value to them in any way in the future or, worse still, that will be potentially harmful.

This capacity effect is amplified in a feedback loop as the skills required to cope with the information available on the phone are not being developed. By not being able to access learning, students are not able to engage in the development of the very filtering skills required to manage load. The gap between load and capacity effectively becomes wider. The research is becoming more convincing in this area of understanding. In brief mobile phones have so much potential to unlock the world but if young people are allowed unfettered access, they will quite possibly have their education compromised by being overwhelmed on a daily basis.

It is quite possible for a reader of this to say I have overegged this blog and as I stated last week, I do have a bias. Nonetheless I wanted to be very deliberate here in explaining in more detail the instinct most people have that mobile phones leave young people unable to think clearly. I have dwelt here in a quite academic way on the learning process, but I could have equally touched upon good decision making. They are intertwined. I will stress again that our understanding is evolving and that what I have written here is open to debate in different circles.

In my next blog by way of balance I will draw attention to the incredible opportunities available on mobile phones before the final blog in this series of four exploring the impact of social media.