DOI: 10.7910/dvn/4tuajq
title: Enhancing Learning Through Facilitating Techniques and Environments: The Role of the Working Memory and Current Performance
title: An Investigative Analysis

description: As well as evaluating and assessing students, teachers perceptions of humour and playfulness, and the roles of these concepts within the classroom environment: particularly as facilitating tools for easing stress, improving relationships within the school environment: as opposed to obstructing and hindering tools to learning,
This survey will aim to identify challenges to the facilitation of effective teaching techniques and practices within the school environment. 

As highlighted through the literature relating to the topic on adaptive coping strategies, and positive psychology the concepts of humour and play can apply, as well as be interpreted broadly. Hence the differences in interpretation, the boundaries within which they can and should be used, should also be defined. However, given specific and differing relationships – as well as the need to consider individual backgrounds and social, cultural contexts, a general interpretation cannot be applied across all levels. 

The need for equity in applying rules generally to students will require a degree of flexibility depending on the stress levels applicable to individual students: based on the family backgrounds, pressures faced at school – as well as at home. Whilst some students face little or no pressures from home: inclusive of pressures to perform well in their exams, some may face additional financial, social – as well as pressures of adapting to the school environment: for various reasons and based on personal and family backgrounds. It’s important for teachers to be aware of pressures that individual students may be facing and incorporate such vital knowledge in helping and explaining why humour and stress coping strategies need to be encouraged.

According to Bjork and Bjork (2011:57), “Performance is what we can observe and measure during instruction or training. Learning, that is, the more or less permanent change in knowledge or understanding that is the target of instruction, is something we must try to infer, and current performance can be a highly unreliable index of whether learning has occurred.”

How impactful are the learning environments and learning techniques on current performance? How does such performance, that is, current performance, impact long term learning?

Further, how does current performance interact and relate with short term and working memory?

Cowan (2008) concludes that “the distinction between long term memory and short term memory depends on whether it can be demonstrated that there are properties specific to short term memory - main contenders of which are temporal decay and chunk capacity limit.”

How motivated is a learner in desiring to learn - such that he or she is able to retain - as well as utilise such knowledge for longer periods of time than other counterparts? Contrastingly, how much retention capacity do individual learners have irrespective of whether or not they are motivated or inspired to learn a particular topic - independent of hereditary factors which may influence capacities to retain, learn or utilise acquired knowledge?

How impactful are environmental factors such as living or learning conditions on their ability to retain, utilise such knowledge - as well as on their desire to learn a topic?

These constitute some of the questions, as well as literature to be consolidated upon, as a means of contributing to the topic at hand, that this paper will focus on.

Further, pursuant to the National Foundation for Educational Research’s recent report that “ the UK parliament are currently debating the case for the government to use wellbeing as a key indicator of national performance”, this survey will incorporate the concept of well being in the regression analysis of the data to be collected from its investigation.
description: PISA 2018 additional analyses: What does PISA tell us about the wellbeing of 15-year-olds?
National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER)


OECD (2018). PISA 2015 Results in Focus
Steger ,F. Michael and Maeve B. O’Donnell, and Jessica L.
description: According to the report from the National Foundation for Educational Research (2021): 

“The wellbeing of young people in the UK has been deteriorating. The most recent Good Childhood Report stated that happiness continues to decrease in 10 to 15-year-olds in the UK. The aspects that decreased significantly over a 10-year period were happiness with life as a whole, happiness with friends and happiness with school (The Children’s Society, 2020a). Ottová-Jordan et al. (2015) have also confirmed that there is a recent downward trend in overall mental health in England compared to other European countries. 
Research from the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC, 2014) suggests that wellbeing across adolescence presents as a ‘u-shaped’ curve, with 14 to 15-year-olds experiencing the lowest wellbeing. This is an important finding, as 15-year-olds are in a crucial period of transition from childhood to adulthood. A growing bank of evidence suggests that adolescence is a particularly vulnerable period in young people’s lives as, during adolescence, major cognitive, emotional, behavioural and neurochemical changes take place which may be the reason why the first signs of mental disorders often emerge before the age of 14 (Kessler et al., 2005). In line with this, the State of the Nation Report (DfE, 2019a) confirmed that younger children (aged 10 to 12) had higher life-satisfaction than 13 to 15-year-olds – shaping a strong rationale for the need to provide early support for children and young people’s wellbeing. 
The fact that the wellbeing of adolescents in the UK has deteriorated over the last few years, especially when compared to other countries, has been attributed to wide-ranging concerns including the impact of social media, high-stakes assessment and family circumstances (Department of Health & Social Care, and Department for Education, 2018). Most recently, research suggests that young people’s wellbeing has further deteriorated due to the COVID-19 pandemic (The Children’s Society, 2020a) as young people appear to be particularly affected by the lockdown that took place over spring and summer 2020 (NHS Digital, 2020). For this reason, it is important to understand the link between wellbeing and the current lives of school pupils of this age, particularly with regard to its impact on education. This evidence has prompted policy makers to take action to improve and monitor wellbeing in school-aged pupils. 
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a study of educational achievement organised by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that takes place every three years. It assesses knowledge and skills acquired by 15-year-old pupils and how this is reflected in performance of reading, mathematics and science. Further, the survey also places special emphasis on pupils’ wellbeing which can be measured by looking at aspects such as school climate and how satisfied pupils are with their lives. As such, it provides a unique opportunity to explore how life-satisfaction has changed over time, especially in comparison to other countries, and whether there are particular drivers of the change in wellbeing. “