Chew & Cerbin propose a research-based framework of nine interacting cognitive challenges that teachers must address in order to promote “optimal learning” rather than merely acceptable performance. They emphasize that teaching is not just delivering content but creating the conditions in which students learn. Each of the nine challenges represents a characteristic of how students think, learn, or struggle — the idea being that failure to address any one of these can undermine learning. The authors describe each challenge, provide examples, and suggest instructional strategies for mitigation.
The Nine Cognitive Challenges & Our Suggestions
- Cognitive Challenge: Student mental mindset — students’ attitudes, beliefs, expectations about the course, their ability, and value of the content.
Our recommendation: Be intentional about student mindset: From day one, communicate clearly the value of the course, the relevance to students’ goals, and emphasize that ability can grow with effort (growth mindset). Setting this tone helps mitigate fixed-mindset beliefs and promotes belonging and self-efficacy. - Cognitive Challenge: Metacognition and self-regulation — students’ ability to monitor their own learning, judge their understanding, regulate study behaviors.
Our recommendation: Support metacognition and self-regulation: Rather than assume students will monitor their own learning, build-in scaffolds (like study plans, exam-wrappers, reflective prompts) that ask students to reflect on what they know, what they need to do, and how they will adjust. - Cognitive Challenge: Student fear and mistrust — negative emotions, anxiety, and lack of trust in the instructor or course that interfere with learning.
Our recommendation: Foster trust and reduce anxiety: Create an environment of openness and fairness; explicitly explain your course policies, offer supportive feedback, allow revision when possible, and express a genuine belief in student capability. For adult learners especially, acknowledge diverse backgrounds and potential anxieties about re-entry, prior experience, or balancing responsibilities. - Cognitive Challenge: Insufficient prior knowledge — students may lack the necessary background or foundation to learn new content effectively.
Our recommendation: Assess and build prior knowledge: Especially for adult learners who may have varied or interrupted educational backgrounds, assess what they bring and fill the gaps early. Low-stakes pre-quizzes, review tasks, or scaffolded assignments help ensure a more even starting line. - Cognitive Challenge: Misconceptions — students may hold inaccurate or deeply entrenched beliefs that interfere with learning new concepts.
Our recommendation: Expose and correct misconceptions: Don’t assume that prior knowledge is accurate. Use diagnostic tools, ask students to predict, observe, explain (POE) experiments, and explicitly challenge common misconceptions. - Cognitive Challenge: Ineffective learning strategies — students may use study approaches that are inefficient or counter-productive (e.g., highlighting, rereading).
Our recommendation: Teach effective learning strategies explicitly: Rather than assuming students know how to learn, model and embed strategies like retrieval practice, spaced practice, self-explanation, elaboration. This is especially useful for adult learners who may default to habits from earlier schooling. - Cognitive Challenge: Transfer of learning — students often fail to apply what they’ve learned in one context to new or novel contexts (near/far transfer).
Our recommendation: Design for transfer — not just for content mastery: Encourage students to apply concepts in new contexts. Use varied examples, encourage analogy, scaffold tasks that require application, and help students reflect on how what they learned in your class might connect beyond it (e.g., their workplace, future courses, real-world problems). - Cognitive Challenge: Constraints of selective attention — students’ limited capacity to focus, susceptibility to distractions, multitasking issues.
Our recommendation: Manage attention and minimize distractions: In online or in-person settings, pay attention to how easily students can become distracted or multitask. Use frequent re-orientation to topic, build in short breaks, keep one clear focus at a time, and design activities that require active engagement rather than passive listening. - Cognitive Challenge: Constraints of mental effort and working memory — limits on how much new information students can process at once; cognitive overload.
Our recommendation: Reduce cognitive load and structure information clearly: Recognize that students’ working memory is limited. Present material in manageable chunks, use advance organizers (outlines, conceptual roadmaps), use dual-modality (verbal + visual) thoughtfully, avoid “seductive details” that distract, and gradually build complexity as students’ automaticity grows.
This framework reminds us that there is no one “best method” for all students and all contexts. Effective teaching involves diagnosing which challenges are most relevant to your specific learners and adapting practices accordingly.
Read the full article online:
Chew & Cerbin (2020). The cognitive challenges of effective teaching. The Journal of Economic Education, 52(1). DOI: 10.1080/00220485.2020.1845266