In my last post, I wrote about making space for deeper learning. I reflected on a principle that has increasingly shaped my thinking about curriculum design: do less, better. Not less ambition or lower expectations, but greater intentionality about what deserves students' time, teachers' attention and the limited cognitive space available for learning. This week, my reading has pushed that thinking one step further. If we are going to remove things from learning, we need to be very clear about what we are removing, because there is an important difference between removing a barrier and removing the thinking. Cognitive load has been something of a red thread woven through my work with teachers and learners since I first stepped into my current role. It has shaped conversations about curriculum breadth, lesson design, assessment, instruction, scaffolding, collaboration and the increasing number of systems students are expected to navigate. Much of our curriculum work over the pas...