Harnessing the Science of Learning

If you haven’t heard of the book Harnessing the Science of Learning: Success Stories to Help Kickstart Your School Improvement … where you been?

I was honored to contribute two chapters to Nathaniel Swain’s latest book—a resource that bridges the gap between cognitive science and real-world classroom practice. My chapters focused on cognitive load theory and explicit teaching: how to make learning stick by keeping things clear, sequenced, and just the right amount of challenge.

Of course, none of this is new.

Long before cognitive load theory was formalized by Sweller, and later popularized by teacher-writers, many teachers had already discovered its truths for themselves. They saw what happened when students were overwhelmed with too much information. They learned that breaking things down, showing how it’s done, and practicing deliberately led to better results.

Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction brought this kind of teaching into sharp focus. Built on the work of researchers like Brophy and Good, Rosenshine articulated what many great teachers already knew: start with review, teach in small steps, model clearly, check for understanding often, and guide practice before release. It wasn’t revolutionary – it was decades of observation of the most effective teachers, distilled into something practical.

Cognitive science added the psychological backbone. It explained why these practices worked. Students have limited working memory. Instruction that overloads it — whether through unclear explanations, too much new information, or discovery learning —interferes with learning. Instruction that supports it helps knowledge stick. That’s where ideas like worked examples, faded guidance, and reduced split attention come from – repeated, tested results.

But even earlier than all this, Siegfried Engelmann was building programs that embedded these ideas by design. Direct Instruction didn’t just follow cognitive science—it engineered it. Every example was chosen deliberately. Every step followed a logical sequence. Skills were systematically practiced, revisited, and taught to mastery. I recently filmed a mini-series called DI Voices to spotlight the teachers and schools using these programs —because once you see them in motion, you have to wonder… why don’t we just do this?

And it’s why schoolwide systems like Steplab, with our emphasis on developing teachers’ capacity to secure student attention, present in manageable chunks, and collect student responses through slick techniques, feel so aligned. The focus is on instructional coaching rather than curricula, but the principles are the same.

If you want to bring this work to life across a school, join Cohort 2 of the Ambassador’s Program. It’s where the research meets real practice—across lessons, systems, and staffrooms. Let me know if you want in.