With the continuing interest in the application of cognitive science to teaching, it was only a matter of time before teachers began to think about an area that has been a mainstay of psychology for almost a century: schema theory. 

The idea of schemas arose as part of the cognitive-developmental theories of Jean Piaget in the early 1920s, while a decade or so later the social psychologist Frederic Bartlett further developed the idea. It would later become incorporated into what became cognitive psychology.

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But what are schemas and what role do they play in learning?

Generally speaking, a schema is a framework or concept that helps us to organise and interpret information.

They can act as cognitive shortcuts, in that information stored in long-term memory can help us to understand events and assist in learning new information.  

Cultural schemas

Schemas are also cultural. In one of the most influential studies in psychology, Bartlett had English participants read a Native American folktale called The War of the Ghosts.

He then tested the participants’ ability to recall the story over time, finding that they retained the gist of it but lost much of the detail. 

More importantly, they omitted information that didn’t fit their own cultural blueprints and replaced other sections with their English equivalent.

In other words, they were assimilating the story into their own cultural schema and using these schemas to make sense of the story and alter aspects of it they found difficult to incorporate.

It’s easy to see how schemas assist in reading comprehension and other types of learning. To understand what we are reading, we need to have some kind of context for it and we do this by triggering stored knowledge in the form of schemas.

In maths, having a schema for fractions allows us to manipulate numbers automatically without having to use up precious mental resources each time we encounter a calculation. We can then use the schema to solve a variety of related problems.

This would imply that the more we know, the easier it is to know more, because we rely on stored knowledge to help in the understanding of new information. 

Cognitive load theory

More recently, schema theory has been incorporated into models of instructional design, most notably cognitive load theory, because it’s thought they help to reduce the pressure (or load) on working memory. 

If, for example, I give a talk at an education event attended by teachers, I know that there are certain contexts I can describe in less detail because I understand that my audience has the prerequisite schemas available to access. I need not explain what a classroom is or a curriculum; I can use anecdotes and assume that these stories will be understood. 

At the same time, I can convey new information from cognitive psychology on how to structure lessons more effectively and my audience can then assimilate this information into their relevant schema.

Flexible schemas

Schemas are, therefore, flexible. We all store a restaurant schema, for example, but while we might ask for the wine list at a swanky eatery, we’d look pretty daft doing this while queuing for a burger in McDonald’s. 

As we visit different restaurants, we assimilate this new information into our restaurant schema where it can be activated later - we don’t have to re-learn what to do each time we go out for dinner.

Downside of schemas

But can schemas actively hamper learning?

We know that schemas can account for stereotyping and prejudice, but there isn’t any research directly applicable to the classroom to answer this question (actually, there isn’t much research looking at schemas in the classroom at all). 

However, an intriguing new study provides some insight into how previously stored information can give rise to inaccurate beliefs (and potentially leave people vulnerable to manipulation and coercion).

Jason Coronel and his co-researchers from Ohio State University set out to test how schemas can lead people to misremember factual information. They were interested in how people recalled numerical information if the data ran counter to their own internal schemas.

The researchers presented participants with short written descriptions of four societal issues involving numerical information. 

On two of the issues, they ran a pre-test to discover the relationship between the issue and the participants’ understanding of it. For example, they were presented with information that more Americans supported same-sex marriage than opposed it and participants agreed that this was, indeed, the case - the data was schema-consistent.

They also presented volunteers with data that were schema-inconsistent. For example, most people in the US (according to polls) believe that Mexican immigration into the country increased between 2007 and 2014 when, in fact, it declined from 12.8 million to 11.7million.

After being presented with the statements, participants were given a surprise recall test (they were not told in advance to remember the information).

Generally, participants were pretty accurate in their recall of the specific data. However, on the schema-inconsistent information, there was a tendency to reverse the numbers. Rather than remembering that Mexican immigration fell from 12.8 million to 11.7 million, they recalled that it had risen from 11.7 million to 12.8 million.

Maybe they simply weren’t paying attention when they read the information. Information that violates people’s schemas should attract greater attention than information that is schema consistent, so we should be more accurate with schema-inconsistent information. 

Reinforcing previously held beliefs

To investigate this, the researchers used eye-tracking technology to see if participants were focusing more on the information that ran counter to their schema. 

Sure enough, the volunteers spent more time reading the schema-inconsistent information, their eyes continually flicking from one section to another, presumably in an attempt to reconcile the contradictory data. However, despite greater attention, their ability to remember the information correctly was still compromised.

This would indicate that the errors were less to do with attention and more to do with misremembering. 

Participants were recalling the gist of the information but, to maintain consistency with their own mental models (their schemas), they misremembered the position of the data - their desire for consistency was more powerful than the desire to be accurate.

The implications of this study for classroom learning are currently unknown but would suggest that errors and misconceptions can arise in part because of the worldview pupils might adopt. 

As such, ensuring that errors and misconceptions are corrected early should lead to more accurate retention, ensuring that schema-inconsistency doesn’t lead to pupils misremembering the details of newly acquired information.