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Have to say I've been skimming much of Claxton's new book - I find his axe grinding somewhat irritating & detrimental to his argument. There are, however, some valid points, especially in the chapter on memory...
For example, I've made the same argument re. Ebbinghaus (as has Baddeley). Again, I kind of wish he hadn't placed so much emphasis on who said what, it just increases division when I hoped the purpose of the book was to identify some common ground.
However, I think he assumes that some are taking models of memory too literally - I think we all know there are no boxes in the brain & even A level psychology students are taught to critically evaluate these models - I've always assumed teachers do too
Interestingly, I think, not everyone becomes a target of Claxton's ire. @DTWillingham emerges very much as the voice of reason (& quite rightly so imo)
I think it's also worth noting that there is a debate over the very existence of separate LTM & WM components and that nothing is yet 'settled' as some appear to be implying. Indeed, the debate had increased over the past few years. This, taken from Norris (2017)
How this view of Activated Long-term Memory would impact models such as CLT is unknown, so at present CLT remains useful. But there is also an obvious link between WM & attention - this 
from Oberauer
from Oberauer
and this on shared neurological structures from this year
Is WM the same as attention? And, if so, how would this influence teaching & learning?
Is WM the same as attention? And, if so, how would this influence teaching & learning?
The debate over the structure of memory, therefore, isn't over by any means, leaving teachers in a position where they might feel compelled to adopt processes they have been led to believe are written in stone - what may prove useful isn't necessarily correct.
Another question we must ask ourselves, I think, is what we mean by 'what works'? Do all strategies work all of the time with all learners? There are no general laws of memory, no matter how often we try to convince ourselves. Roediger sums this up quite well
