The Cognitive Athlete
As we look ahead to exam season, our Director of Teaching reflects on the value of exam preparation in helping pupils to become effective, strong learners – not only for external exams, but for life.
Most of us understand that if you want to lift heavier weights and build muscle, you have to show up at the gym. In those initial stages, the landscape may be intimidating; you might feel a surge of anxiety or require a coach to guide you, ensuring your form is correct and doesn’t lead to injury. But as the movements become common practice, you begin to track your progress and monitor your output, eventually reaching a point of self-sufficiency where the routine is second nature. However, the physical fitness you may gain from this is fragile. If you train intensely for a week but then vanish for the next, your capacity to move that weight begins to wither. It is only after months or years of consistent training that you develop the resilience to take a break without losing your hard-earned form. One could almost say it becomes “muscle memory”.
So why should training our brains to learn and master material or skills be any different? I think this often comes down to the fact that, unlike building muscle and form, you can’t always see or feel the tangible outcomes throughout the process. At the end of the day, the brain is biological tissue composed of living cells. Just like a bicep or a quadriceps, the mind requires consistent tension, recovery, and repetition to grow. To become lifelong learners, we should start seeing studying and revision as the ultimate form of strength training.
To become lifelong learners, we should start seeing studying and revision as the ultimate form of strength training.
I often get asked why we set exams for pupils in younger year groups. Our rationale very much builds into this mentality: early exam seasons are not just about reviewing content and skills from the year, but are part of a wider, longer term training programme for students to become effective and strong learners – not only for their external exams, but for their lives and careers beyond. If we want to master skills or content, we need to develop a deep, functional understanding of subject matter, moving beyond rote memorisation to effective retention and application with context.
In cognitive science, Dr Efrat Furst proposes a clear, stepped process associated with mastery: know – understand – use – master. To know something, attention must be given to the information, and it must be processed. To understand then requires explanation, modelling and illustration – this happens in lessons through carefully designed curricula activities. To use the information requires retrieval and generative practice, strengthening its place in long-term memory – this takes place both inside and outside the classroom. Finally comes mastery: doing these things often, spacing practice, and integrating the knowledge so thoroughly that it becomes second nature, or more of a reflex.
Practising exams under low-stakes environments can act as stress inoculation. Repeated exposure to these conditions shifts the stress response toward a less prominent, less inhibiting state. It allows students to understand how they can, in their own way, manage this and identify who is in their support networks to guide them. It is unrealistic to expect all stress to dissipate during exam season. In some ways, stress can be beneficial, as demonstrated by the Yerkes-Dodson law, but it’s learning where that optimum level is, which can be practised safely in a school setting.
We know that engaging collectively in activities such as working out, reading, or participating in group craft-based hobbies can strengthen social bonds and mutual support. I know I cycle harder and push further in a spin class when the room is full, and everyone is in it together; there is such a great sense of achievement at the end. I think that sense of belonging is also important in understanding why internal school examinations hold value. If girls are going through this process alongside those sitting external exams, the shared experience and seeing role models can enhance motivation, engagement, and emotional well-being.
Muscle memory is cumulative; if you stop training, the muscles atrophy. Equally, you need rest for different muscle groups to recover. This links with the ideas of the spacing effect and interleaving in cognitive psychology. The spacing effect is a learning strategy that involves breaking up study into shorter, more frequent sessions over a longer period – this reduces forgetting (the famous Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve) and encourages mastery. Psychological evidence is almost unanimously in favour of this technique over cramming for both short-term examination performance and long-term learning. Interleaving involves mixing up topics within the same course (both during learning and revision). This is the opposite of blocking, which is fully covering one topic before moving on. Again, the evidence suggests this is almost twice as effective for learning and mastery as blocked practice (although it can be harder to plan).
Whilst we might mistake “muscle memory” for residing in our muscles and linked to training, it is actually in the cerebellum and basal ganglia of the brain that we see the deep-rooted unconscious control associated with driving a car, playing sports or a musical instrument, reducing the cognitive load on our brains by performing these now commonplace tasks after consistent, continuous and dedicated practice. When a student practises revision in a similar way, they stop seeing it as a means to an end and begin to see it as a continuous process and part of their lives, extending beyond the exams they have to sit. It’s about mastery of subjects and skills that are driven by independent desire, and this can apply to any new environment in which they find themselves in the future. This self-efficacy and development into a cognitive athlete is arguably the most valuable tool they can carry into adulthood.
This self-efficacy and development into a cognitive athlete is arguably the most valuable tool they can carry into adulthood.
So whether we use the analogy of muscle training, learning to drive, or mastering a new language, the same principles can apply to working our brains to become gold medalists at whatever we put them to, with school as the training ground and exam season part of the schedule.
Guest blog post written by Mr Merk, Director of Teaching & Staff Development