The Cognitive Tunnelling Phenomenon in CST

NaveedHussain,AssistantHeadteacherCCS

Cognitive tunnelling is an occurrence in which a pilot will not adequately perceive all pertinent information because of filtering based on preexisting expectations, initial impressions or other undefined factors.

You might have never heard about cognitive tunnelling. However, chances are, you have sometimes been a victim of it without knowing it.

It is also called Cognitive Capture and Inattentional Blindness: the mental state in which your brain focuses on one thing. As a result, your brain does not see other relevant data.

This perceptual blindness causes our attention to miss even the most obvious clues to the problem that can be right in front of us. So, how does this aviation phenomenon resonate with us as teachers in the

Floodlight Vs. Spotlight Focus

Metaphorically, a mind’s focus can be either like a floodlight dimly illuminating a large area, or it can be like a spotlight providing intense clarity on a single subject. Cognitive Tunnelling is when your mind’s focus remains in spotlight mode. Let’s imagine we have a 6 period day on a Monday across three separate classrooms. Now thinking about our EDI framework, at which point is it most likely Cognitive Tunnelling will occur? Phase 1 and 5, where the end of one lesson will determine how well you start your next lesson in your other classroom? Or would it be in your Phase 4 (SLOP) where you are going around live marking and updating the DPR using the 3:30:30 rule whilst trying to pick up on common misconceptions?

As practitioners and leaders, we often rely on various forms of automation to make our jobs easier and reduce the possibilities of cognitive tunnelling kicking in. For instance, intellectually preparing for our lessons and carefully selecting our SAF students to ensure any misconceptions are being picked up and addressed during the SLOP phase. Or setting the best possible conditions for every single lesson for a calm and orderly end to the lesson which in turn will help you get to your lesson in a timely and calm manner.

Mental Focus Area

The area of intense mental focus after the switch from floodlight to spotlight is most often the first suspected area of concern we encounter. However, rather than consider other relevant aspects, our mind is like a dog with a bone and gets locked into overly scrutinising a specific area. As a result, we are all too often blinded from seeing more obvious contributing factors. This is likely to occur with a challenging class where you may need to sanction students for low level disruption using our behaviour policy. This can have an impact on each and every phase of our lesson, causing anxiety to the teacher as they are trying to get through the lesson they have intellectually prepared for. What is the antecedent for this? You may ask. The answer is simple: use the CST EDI playbook consistently and effectively as a staff body where students have that consistency across every single class, irrespective of teacher or subject.

As teachers, we often encounter stressful situations that cause our brain’s focus to switch from floodlight mode to spotlight mode. While we often can’t prevent cognitive tunnelling from occurring simply by acknowledging that it is a biological adaptation, we can mentally force our brains to override this predisposition.

By recognizing cognitive tunnelling, we can force our minds to step above the problem by applying the CST EDI framework so we can see alternative solutions and answers.