Robbie in Year 4 is reserved and quiet. He tends not to volunteer responses. He rarely answers direct questions, particularly in a whole-class situation. He sometimes becomes more vocal when working in small groups, although he doesn’t always discuss the task at hand.
We can all immediately picture children like Robbie in our lessons. He is just one example of a struggling pupil with a behaviour profile commonly found to be associated with working memory disability - an example cited by cognitive scientist Professor Sue Gathercole, programme leader for the memory and perception group in the University of Cambridge’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.
A pupil like Robbie won’t necessarily be on the special educational needs and disability (SEND) register, and the longer we struggle to notice him, the wider the gap between his attainment and his potential will become.
Working memory is often described as your mental jotter - a metaphorical notepad for holding new information. A child with weaker working memory finds it very difficult to take in new information and hold on to it long enough to apply it to further thinking, such as calculating a sum. Over time, such pupils may slide further behind their peers, becoming less likely to ask questions because they are concerned about being labelled “lazy” or told that they weren’t listening.
As one of the most accurate predictors of academic outcomes, this deserves our serious attention. In fact, according to Gathercole (2008), more than 80 per cent of children with a poor working memory fail to achieve expected levels of attainment in either reading or maths, typically both.
I highly recommend looking at Gathercole’s research for guidance to directly inform quality first teaching. The warning signs in children identified by this research include: failing to follow instructions; incomplete recall; losing track of place; and abandoning a task. In addition to identifying the challenges, Gathercole encourages use of memory aids such as working walls, mnemonics, number lines, multiplication grids, calculators, memory cards, audio recorders and digital software.
When listening to Gathercole give a neuroscience keynote last year, I was struck by her clarity. She suggested educationalists might want to consider dimensions of strengths and weakness as the dominant construct in building teaching strategies for children like Robbie. Boldly, she went on to add that we might do this “either in addition to diagnosis or maybe to replace” conventional diagnosis.
It certainly made me think. First, teachers need to support pupils with poor memory through noticing challenges and adjusting their teaching accordingly. Second, and more importantly, we should reconsider our strategies beyond a child’s diagnosis and plan our support based on their actual relative strengths and challenges. How brave is that?
Margaret Mulholland is director of development and research at Swiss Cottage School in London
