Dylan Wiliam on How the Brain Learns | Literacy and the Science of Learning

Jun 24, 2025

In this enlightening discussion, John Sweller, an esteemed Australian psychologist and pioneer of cognitive load theory, shares invaluable insights into how the brain learns. He explains the limitations of working memory and the critical role background knowledge plays in enhancing learning capacity. Sweller emphasizes the necessity of explicit instruction and how building a knowledge base can alleviate cognitive burdens. The conversation also touches on the parallels between academic learning and physical training, illustrating how deliberate practice fosters expertise.

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ANECDOTE

Chess Expertise Depends on Knowledge

Expert chess players remember board positions because of specific patterns stored in their long-term memory.
They perform poorly when pieces are randomly placed, showing the importance of knowledge over raw memory capacity.

ADVICE

Deliberate Practice Builds Expertise

Improve skills through deliberate practice, focusing on foundational drills, not just end goals.
Enhancing vocabulary, for example, can improve writing even without direct essay practice.

INSIGHT

Background Knowledge Enables Expert Thinking

Novices lack background knowledge, making general advice for experts ineffective.
Effective teaching requires building knowledge before expecting expert-like performance.

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How can schools and teachers maximize student learning? To answer this question, we need to understand how the human mind works. What needs to be explicitly taught, how many new things can we remember at a time, and what is the role of background knowledge in easing students’ cognitive loads?

Host Dylan Wiliam begins the six-part “Literacy and the Science of Learning” podcast with an accessible overview of cognitive and educational psychology, in conversation with experts Daisy Christodoulou, David Geary, and John Sweller.

With Christodoulou, Wiliam talks about the role of schema–the background knowledge and framework that helps us organize and remember new information. They also discuss the importance of “deliberate practice” rather than repetition. For example, the best musicians practice scales, not just sonatas.

Geary focuses on the different ways humans learn: while much of our development is instinctual, the sorts of knowledge and skills we learn in school must be explicitly taught. Babies can learn to read faces and speak, but students need to be taught how to decode, for example. Then, Sweller explains the limitations of working memory, which can hold up to seven items at a time for 18 seconds, maximum.

How can we balance the need for explicit instruction with the limitations of working memory? By helping students build and access knowledge. This can free them from the “bottleneck” of working memory by transferring brain work to our long-term memory, which sets the stage for new information to be learned:

“We can’t really increase the capacity or duration of short-term memory, increasing the capabilities of our students involves increasing the content of long-term memory. This is why knowledge matters. The way to make our students smarter is not to give them practice in thinking, but to give them more to think with.”

This podcast is produced by the Knowledge Matters Campaign and StandardsWork. Follow the Knowledge Matters Campaign on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Search #knowledgematters to join the conversation.

Production by Tressa Versteeg. Original music and sound engineering by Aidan Shea.