This explainer examines how students direct their attention in a schooling environment and how the actions of the teacher can support focus, minimise the impact of distractions on learning and foster conditions for learning success. Understanding these processes is important because sustained attention lays the foundation for effective learning and deeper engagement with learning content.
This explainer is one in a series of 4 that describe the cognitive science of how students learn. Each explainer summarises an element of the student learning process outlined in the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)’s Teaching for How Students Learn model of learning and teaching.
Teachers and school leaders can use these explainers to deepen their understanding of the cognitive science of how students learn and consider implications for practice:
The role of attention in learning
There are 2 types of memory that manage information during learning:
- working memory, which processes information
- long-term memory, which stores information for later use (Baddeley, 1997).
Working memory – also called ‘short-term memory’ – acts as a mental workspace where students actively engage with facts, concepts and procedures. Long-term memory stores some of this knowledge, which students may need for future use (Cowan, 2008). For learning to occur, students must actively focus their attention on new information so it can be processed in working memory and potentially stored in long-term memory (Cowan, 1998). Sustained attention and effective processing help students transfer information from working memory and store it in long-term memory.