Attention, Knowledge, and Memory
3 Research-based Practices from Educational Psychology
This is part of a doctoral assignment. These ideas come from an educational psychology perspective, so many of them are quite different from what you are used to reading on Combat Learning. I am exploring things largely from a constructivist perspective right now to understand cognitive perspectives that overlap with the ecological approach.
Many of you are familiar with Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU). For those who are not, TGfU is a games-based learning approach to physical education and sports training. In many ways it is a sort of spiritual precursor to the constraints-led approach (CLA), and many CLA coaches have borrowed from or built upon games and coaching tactics from TGfU.
Teaching Games for Understanding originally came out of constructivist learning theory: the idea that knowledge is actively constructed through experiences with the subject matter to be learned. It is active participation versus passive consumption. Constructivism is also the theoretical basis of discovery learning, which is a method I have referenced perhaps hundreds of times throughout my writings and podcasts.
Constructivism is technically a member of the cognitivist family of learning theories, but you will notice that its approach to knowledge is strikingly similar to the ecological one. This fact combined with the historical reality that it provided the fertile ground from which to grow both TGfU and the discovery learning method is what interested me to more closely study constructivism as a theory and what I can learn from it as an ecological thinker.
In this article, I’m going to be exploring an important concept in educational psychology through the lens of constructivism—and doing my best to connect it to the ecological approach for my readers.
The Importance of Attention, Knowledge, and Memory
In educational psychology, attention, knowledge, and memory are key elements of the learner. Teachers should design lesson plans and curricula with the intention of garnering and maintaining learner attention, building learner knowledge in the domain, and facilitating memory retention of that knowledge.
Now, I know memory is a hot topic in the ecological dynamics sphere. I have not come to hold a cognitivist account of memory, but cognitivists and ecological thinkers alike can at least agree we remember things; and those things, especially propositional things, persist through some sort of storage mechanism, even if that mechanism doesn’t quite work like the ubiquitous computer analogy.
Some activities are very much memory-based activities in the sense that they chiefly revolve around remembering certain facts or sequences. In martial arts, competitive kata and poomsae (forms) are huge artistic sports that require as table stakes for performers to recall and perform each form’s movement sequences with perfect accuracy. The process of learning forms, therefore, can be accelerated by incorporating evidence-based memory strategies.
Attention Best Practice: Collaborative Learning
Attention is a critical part of ecological learning theory as well as constructivism and educational psychology more broadly. We want to arouse attention, because attentional focus is a prerequisite to learning.
In the ecological approach, we also value attention as a resource in the learner that can be directed and guided to further enhance the learning process, something that perfectly overlaps with the assisted version of the discovery learning method from constructivism (Alfieri et al., 2011).
This time, I want to explore something different than external focus cues or typical one vs one games when it comes to attention. I want to talk about collaborative learning.
Collaborative learning puts students in situations where they have to build explanations together, which naturally pulls and holds their attention (Long, 2024). This can easily be added on as a dimension of inquiry-based and problem-based learning, which are related constructivist approaches. Meta-analytic research on constructivist approaches suggests that this kind of active engagement can boost both achievement and social outcomes across age groups (Kurnaz, 2022).
In sparring-heavy combat sports like Olympic taekwondo and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, you can leverage collaborative learning by turning emerging tactical problems from competition into cooperative problem-solving sessions. When a new meta or strategy is tearing your athletes apart in tournaments, you present that sparring problem—using footage or a live demonstration—and then group students to troubleshoot possible solutions together.
They make hypotheses, experiment together, identifying plausible solutions before testing those ideas in sparring. This locks in student attention because it is both socially engaging and directly connected to performance (Long, 2024).
In an after-tournament sport taekwondo session, I might structure the learning activities something like this to add a collaborative theme throughout:
1. Cold review
Ask students to reconstruct key lessons from the tournament. After the students have had a chance to give their summary of their own performances and the performances of their teammates, they then compare their recollection of events with the coach’s notes on what went well and what did not work. Students are more likely to remember the lessons they learned and how it connects to what they are about to learn (Adesope et al., 2017).
This also works the memory but for a more analytic purpose.
2. Inquiry-based exploration
This is both an attention and knowledge-building exercise. Working off the coach’s tournament notes, the coach summarizes the main theme for why students were losing or giving up points they should not have. Students will then be randomly placed into small groups to work together, so they can generate and share possible explanations for why these things went wrong (Kurnaz, 2022). Teams will share with the coach, but the coach will not weigh in with his own opinion until later.
3. Team-based problem solving
This is both an attention and knowledge-building exercise. The previously established student teams make hypotheses and experiment together, identifying plausible solutions before testing those ideas in sparring. This locks in student attention because it is both socially engaging and directly connected to performance (Long, 2024), but it also builds knowledge through analysis, hypothesizing, and troubleshooting of real-world problems.
The great thing about collaborative learning is that it is also deeply knowledge-building as well as attention-demanding.
Knowledge Best Practice: Inquiry-based Learning
Constructivist theory focuses heavily on how learners actively construct knowledge through experience in a problem or task space rather than simply receiving finished answers.
Inquiry-based and problem-based learning are closely related constructivist approaches where students either generate and clarify problems or work through pre-defined problems (Rahmawati, 2025). Both approaches are backed by meta-analyses that show they can improve achievement when learners deeply engage with problems over time.
Again, I’m going to explore an atypical direction here. Where most of ecological learning content revolves around serving students, I want to talk about how inquiry-based learning can be used to facilitate learning for trainee coaches.
Deep Coach Development through Simulated Fight Camps
For combat sports, you can apply problem-based learning by designing simulated fight camps as training for coaches rather than only for athletes. Coaches typically have to deal with long time-scale, multifaceted problems involving skill development, strength and conditioning, nutrition, sleep, and psychological factors.
In a problem-based camp simulation, coach trainees design and implement an entire camp for athletes, coordinating training loads, and other support factors. You as the coach trainer track outcomes such as fatigue, perceived improvement, injuries, and motivation to see whether the camp design actually works.
(Obviously, even as an ecological coach, you want to intervene before any injuries happen if you foresee it from the design of the program.)
It is a common error for new coaches to forget to account for training accumulated outside the martial arts mat, such as lifting for strength and conditioning. This helps coaches construct richer knowledge about integrating multiple constraints into a coherent plan.
As coaches come into contact with problems in their camp design methodology, they inevitably have to make inquiries into why. Feedback from real performance and senior coaches will help guide the coach trainee to deeper knowledge about coaching and especially the design of fight camps.
Memory Best Practice: Spaced Repetition
Spaced retrieval practice focuses on a robust empirical finding: people remember better when they are required to retrieve information after some forgetting has occurred and when those retrievals are spaced out over time (Murray et al, 2025; Carpenter & Endres, 2025).
This was on of the major premises behind Bruce Hoyer’s flipped classroom model of jiu jitsu instruction.
Spaced retrieval practice is particularly useful in martial arts forms training, because the task for performing a form is heavily based on remembering and reciting exact sequences of movements. You can expose students to one segment of a form, have them work on unrelated but still relevant tasks such as conditioning, flexibility, or a different segment, and only after several minutes bring them back to the original segment.
Within and across sessions, you can weave multiple segments this way so that students must reconstruct sequences after partial forgetting rather than simply repeating them immediately.
References
Adesope, O. O., Trevisan, D. A., & Sundararajan, N. (2017). The testing effect in the psychology classroom: A meta-analytic perspective. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 3(3), 233–247. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000096
Alfieri, L., Brooks, P. J., Aldrich, N. J., & Tenenbaum, H. R. (2011). Does discovery-based instruction enhance learning? A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology, 103(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021017
Carpenter, S. K., & Endres, E. J. (2025). The distributed practice effect on classroom learning: A meta-analytic review of applied research. Journal of Intelligence, 13(6), 771. https://doi.org/10.3390/jintelligence13060771
Kurnaz, M. A. (2022). Analysis of constructivist learning model’s effects on student outcomes: A second order meta-analysis. Afyon Kocatepe University Journal of Social Sciences, 24(3), 953–970.
Long, N. T. (2024). An experimental study on improving first-grade students’ mathematical learning achievement and social awareness through an instructional approach based on constructivist theory and collaborative learning. Higher Education Studies, 14(2), 1–15.
Murray, E., Horner, A. J., & Göbel, S. M. (2025). A meta-analytic review of the effectiveness of spacing and retrieval practice for mathematics learning. Educational Psychology Review. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10035-1
Rahmawati, N. (2025). The effectiveness of the constructivist approach on students’ achievement in mathematics: A meta-analysis. Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 5(6), 1–15.