The curse of knowledge
Tom Wilson looks at how cognitive overload puts up a roadblock to learning
Two teachers sit in a staffroom; one holds a mug of coffee protectively in her hands. She turns to the other and says, ‘I do love 8C, they are fantastic; but I just wish they didn’t know so much.’ The other teacher nods absent-mindedly as a unicorn passes by the window and his Kit Kat floats towards the ceiling because clearly this is absurd and not the world we live in.
If I ask you to think of a good teacher, what comes to mind? You’ve probably stepped over the question of knowledge. It’s pretty much a given, isn’t it? You need extensive knowledge of a topic to teach it. But is this an assumption we should question? Well, not directly – but learning chemistry (or indeed anything) is not just about knowing facts. The ability to efficiently pass knowledge to students does not in itself make a good teacher.
In fact, giving students too much knowledge probably creates a bad teacher. This is because of the way our brains are structured – our cognitive architecture.
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