Cognitive architecture and instructional design: 20 years later
John Sweller, Jeroen van Merrienboer and Fred Paas summarise twenty years of developments in cognitive load theory since the major review of 1998. The theory, introduced in the 1980s, is an instructional design theory built on human cognitive architecture: novel information passes through a working memory limited in capacity and duration before being stored in long-term memory, and once stored it is no longer subject to those limits. The paper suggests directions for future research.
John Sweller, Jeroen van Merrienboer and Fred Paas summarise twenty years of developments in cognitive load theory since the major review of 1998. The theory, introduced in the 1980s, is an instructional design theory built on human cognitive architecture: novel information passes through a working memory limited in capacity and duration before being stored in long-term memory, and once stored it is no longer subject to those limits. The paper suggests directions for future research.
Written from the abstract as shown on the Maastricht University record, read 2026-10-29.
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Sweller, J., van Merrienboer, J. J. G., & Paas, F. (2019). Cognitive architecture and instructional design: 20 years later. Educational Psychology Review, 31(2), 261-292. doi:10.1007/s10648-019-09465-5.