David Didau

David Didau has written famous education books, including *Making Kids Cleverer* and *What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Psychology*.

David Didau has written famous education books, including *Making Kids Cleverer* and *What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Psychology*.

Complete the interactive activities in the Seneca app to work towards your CPD certificate.

David Didau has written famous education books, including Making Kids Cleverer and What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Psychology.

Fluid intelligence: one's ability to solve problems and to reason. -Highly correlated with working memory.
- Varies between people.
- Current research indicates that it is not possible to increase it.

Crystallised intelligence: one's ability to use the information they have stored in long-term memory.
- No limit to long-term memory storage.
- The ability to not forget information can be improved.
By improving our crystallised intelligence, we can compensate for any deficits in our fluid intelligence.

One way to do that is to strengthen our schemas (this is covered in more details in the Level 1 course).
Schemas are the network of information we store in long-term memory.
When we retrieve one piece of the network, we also retrieve the pieces of information that are linked to it.
- Importantly, schemas occupy the same space in working memory as individual facts. Thus, by having strong schemas, we can "cheat" our working memory.

David Didau has written famous education books, including Making Kids Cleverer and What Every Teacher Needs to Know about Psychology.

Didau believes that, although the educational system is not perfect, we should not be looking for a "bold and bloody revolution".
He disagrees that the educational system is outdated and does not prepare children to develop 21st-century skills.

One important point of Didau's work is that the Internet is not making kids less clever.
The fact that we can look things up online does not decrease the need for problem-solving, collaboration and creativity.
- In fact, in order to do these things and think critically about something, you need to have a vast knowledge about that something.
Thus, replacing traditional and explicit teaching for pure skill training harms pupils, especially the disadvantaged ones.

Didau says that teachers should not focus or put effort into improving fluid intelligence by teaching pupils skills.
Because skills like creativity and problem-solving are fluid intelligence, when we spend time training these skills, we are benefiting the students that already have higher working memory capacity without helping the other pupils.

If, however, we focus on the quality and the quantity of the knowledge we teach, we can ensure that all students increase their crystallised intelligence, which will then help them compensate for any issues with working memory capacity.