Investigating working memory in educational research

Abstract

The twenty-first century higher education students are expected to possess requisite generic skills and competencies and proffer solutions to everyday challenges within the shortest time frame. These generic skills such as problem–solving skills, communication skills, and interpersonal skills are required in the workforce in order to be relevant in global decision making. Students, in turn, must develop their cognitive processing skills in order manifest these generic skills. Additionally, the recent introduction of neuroscience in the psychology parlance has application transcending across clinical, social, developmental, and educational psychology. Within educational psychology, centrally sits a cognitive information processing system termed working memory which is still evolving and better explaining human behaviour and learning. Working memory can be broadly defined as a multi-component system responsible for active maintenance of information in the face of ongoing processing and/or distraction. The main objective of this conceptual paper is therefore to elucidate the importance of this essential construct in educational research.