When a learner has less bandwidth than the task demands

In ‘Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much’, Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir explore what happens when something important is in short supply. Their work looks largely at money and time, but the principle is useful much more widely. When something is taking up a large amount of our attention, there is less mental capacity available for planning, remembering, regulating and thinking ahead.

That gives us a useful way of thinking about some of the differences we see between learners in school.

Children use a considerable amount of cognitive capacity simply getting through an ordinary school day. Before they even begin thinking about the curriculum, they are managing time, remembering equipment, moving between spaces, following instructions, filtering distraction, reading social situations, tolerating frustration, and shifting their attention repeatedly from one thing to another. They also need to recover from mistakes, manage disappointment and think far enough ahead for future consequences to influence what they do now.

Those processes are more available to some learners than others. Poor sleep, anxiety, hunger, family pressure, additional needs, social difficulty, shame and fear of failure can all occupy attention. A child may understand an expectation and still have less capacity available to meet it consistently.

Mullainathan and Shafir describe the way that scarcity can narrow attention towards the most immediate demand. Planning and longer-term thinking can become harder. People are more likely to miss information, forget things they intended to do, and favour immediate relief or reward over something that may benefit them later.

There are clear parallels with behaviour in school. A learner who repeatedly forgets equipment may understand perfectly well that they need it. A child who struggles to begin a task may be dealing with the demands of working memory, organisation and confidence before they have even reached the content. A teenager may know that making their friends laugh will lead to a consequence later and still give greater weight to the immediate social reward in front of them.

Understanding that does not require us to lower expectations. Children need boundaries, supported practice, and increasing responsibility for their own behaviour. It does encourage us to think carefully about the route we give them towards those expectations.

Good routines reduce the number of decisions a learner has to make. Visual prompts reduce reliance on working memory. Pre-correction places information close to the point at which it will be needed. Accessible lesson starts help children to engage before uncertainty or failure has had time to grow. Clear, calm correction helps them understand what needs to change without adding unnecessary social or emotional pressure.

Consequences can work in the same way. They are most useful when they help a learner understand the boundary, repair what needs repairing, and practise what will help next time. If a consequence depends heavily on shame, lengthy reflection or abstract thinking immediately after something has gone wrong, we may be asking for the skills that are least available in that moment.

Repeated difficulty should also tell us something about the environment around the learner. If a child continues to get the same thing wrong despite repeated correction, there is value in looking at whether the expectation is clear enough, whether it is available at the point of need, and whether the child has had enough supported practice to make the desired behaviour easier to retrieve.

High expectations remain important. So does making them accessible.

At Navigate, much of our work with schools and colleges begins with looking at those points of access: where expectations are difficult to reach, where routines or environments are adding unnecessary demand, and where small changes in adult practice can make success more likely. If that is a conversation you are having in your setting, our resources are available at letusnavigate.com, and you are always welcome to get in touch if a fresh pair of eyes would be useful.