18: Navigating Cognitive Load for Better Learning

In this episode of Educate to Self-Regulate, Nidean Dickson flies solo (Shy, we miss you!) for a candid conversation with Mia Hodgens — a former student now studying biomedical science at UQ on her way to medical school. Mia was part of the very first pilot group where self-regulated learning strategies were introduced in the classroom, and she's spent years turning those strategies into second nature. She walks through exactly how she learns in practice — annotating lecture notes instead of...

In this episode of Educate to Self-Regulate, Dr Shyam Barr and co-host Nidean Dickson tackle a question straight from the workshop floor: with such a range of prior knowledge across a classroom, wouldn't it be more effective to skip straight to explicit teaching rather than "waste time" activating what students already know? Drawing on real classroom practice, Shy and Nidean unpack what activating prior knowledge actually means, lighting up existing schema to reduce cognitive load, and why "...

In this episode of Educate to Self-Regulate, Dr Shyam Barr sits down with Paula Hall, a teaching principal who spent 18 months building self-regulation and resilience into a small, multi-age rural school at Coowonga State School, cutting major behaviour incidents by 85%, and is now adapting that same approach as acting principal of the larger Depot Hill State School. Drawing on Paula's hands-on experience, we unpack how she turned the Australian Curriculum's Personal and Social Capability co...

In this episode of Educate to Self-Regulate, Nidean Dickson and Dr Shyam Barr explore how task value—understanding the why behind learning—drives both motivation and self-regulation. Drawing on recent research and classroom experience, we unpack why "poor motivation equals poor self-regulation" and offer practical strategies educators can use immediately. In this episode, you'll learn: ✔️ Three actionable task value strategies—"What's My Why," "For Future Me," and cost-benefit analysis—that...

In this episode of Educate to Self-Regulate, Nidean Dickson and I (Dr Shyam Barr) celebrate the podcast's milestone 45th episode and dive into Carl Hendrick's UNESCO paper on Responsive Teaching. We share self-regulation stories from busy terms—my reflections from the Thought Leader Series Queensland workshops with Dr Amy Berry, and Nidean's classroom refinements to self-regulated learning (SRL) strategies—and link responsive tactics to real teacher practice amid explicit instruction debates...