The Learner’s Memory

Abstract

The notions of remembering and forgetting are familiar components of the mental register, the way we commonly talk about subjective mental experience. Yet the everyday ‘folk psychology’ notion of memory does not well match what research tells us about human memory. This chapter considers what is currently understood about how memory works, and how this has consequences for the way we think about remembering (and forgetting) in science education research. In particular, research suggests that there is no strong distinction between the part of the cognitive system that ‘stores’ memories, and the part that interprets current experience. Rather, it seems we have an apparatus for representing and interpreting experience which has evolved to be quite fluid: our ‘memories’ colour our experiences and our experiences modify our ‘memories’. That is, human memory does not seem suitable to act as a high fidelity record of past experiences, perhaps because it has evolved primarily as a means to inform current decision-making and actions: a function which is better served by a memory which looks to offer a constantly updated best-fit model of the world rather than an accurate record of the past. This may in part explain why memories of critical demonstrations to challenge learners’ alternative conceptions may in time become modified and then recruited to support their initial conceptions. Given the centrality of memory to learning, and so to teaching, it is argued that it is unfortunate that research in science education has not sought to make it a key focus of research.