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Episode #4 A Solemn Communiqué · When Will They Learn?

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Welcome to When Will They Learn?
0:01
SPEAKER_01: I'm Greg Ashman.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Katie Wade.
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This is a podcast where we explore what's trending in the world
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of education.
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SPEAKER_00: In each episode,
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SPEAKER_00: we discuss podcasts,
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articles and opinion pieces that are shaping education
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discourse at the moment and
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SPEAKER_00: examine these through a science of learning lens.
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SPEAKER_00: We discuss not just what's popular, but what's supported by the evidence.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: In this episode,
0:27
we will be looking back to the ResearchEd Ballarat conference
0:32
that took place at
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SPEAKER_01: the weekend.
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SPEAKER_01: We're going to discuss some of the presentations,
0:36
and we're also going to discuss a communique by the Australian
0:39
Association for
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SPEAKER_01: Research and Education.
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SPEAKER_00: Morning, Greg.
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SPEAKER_00: How are you?
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SPEAKER_01: I'm all good, Katie.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: How are you?
0:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Good, thank you.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Buzzing after the last weekend?
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SPEAKER_01: Yes, it was pretty cool, wasn't it?
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So that was 700 people at Research Ed Ballarat and we met in
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person again after a long while.
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SPEAKER_00: I was going to say met sounds a little bit,
1:10
SPEAKER_00: but yeah,
1:11
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
1:12
SPEAKER_00: we did actually,
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SPEAKER_00: we got to catch up in person,
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SPEAKER_00: which was great.
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SPEAKER_00: So over the weekend,
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SPEAKER_00: I made the trek all the way down to Ballarat,
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SPEAKER_00: which for those of you who aren't based in Australia,
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SPEAKER_00: I'm up in Queensland,
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SPEAKER_00: which is on the north,
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SPEAKER_00: went all the way down to south to go to research ed in Ballarat,
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SPEAKER_00: which is about an hour and a half out of Melbourne.
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SPEAKER_00: I joined, and yeah, it was 700 educators, was it Greg?
1:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there was 700.
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SPEAKER_01: We could have sold more tickets.
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SPEAKER_01: We had, I think, about between 50 and 100 on the wait list.
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But of course,
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some people don't join the wait list once they realize it's
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sold out.
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SPEAKER_01: So I don't know how many we could have had if we'd had the capacity.
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But we ran because we don't have any rooms that can hold 700
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with like fire
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SPEAKER_01: regulations and all that sort of stuff.
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SPEAKER_01: So we ran two parallel.
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SPEAKER_00: So you're not allowed to just cram people in like sardines.
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No,
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in cases of fire,
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Katie,
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we have to follow all those regulations very,
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very seriously.
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And so we had two parallel keynotes and you were either on the
2:18
red team or the black team.
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SPEAKER_01: And if you're on the black team, you saw David Didow first.
2:22
SPEAKER_01: And if you're on the red team, you saw Bron Ryrie Jones.
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SPEAKER_01: And then at the start of the afternoon, we swapped over.
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SPEAKER_01: So those who'd seen Bron saw David and those who saw David...
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SPEAKER_01: who'd seen David Thorbron.
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SPEAKER_01: So that's how we went with it.
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SPEAKER_01: Largest ever research ed in Australia.
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SPEAKER_01: And it blows my mind that it's just crazy.
2:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've held them in Ballarat, obviously.
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SPEAKER_01: We've held them in Melbourne.
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SPEAKER_01: We've held them in Sydney, held them in Brisbane.
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SPEAKER_01: And the idea that Ballarat would be the largest one at Clarendon was
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SPEAKER_01: kind of blows my mind a little bit.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm hoping that it means that the movement is secure and is doing well.
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SPEAKER_01: I'm hearing that other movements are struggling a bit at the moment,
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SPEAKER_01: but Research Ed seems to be going better than ever,
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SPEAKER_01: so that's pretty good.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: For those who don't know, Research Ed was started by Tom Bennett,
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so there was a conversation on twitter in 2013 and basically
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tom was moaning about
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um education research conferences because you know they cost
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hundreds of pounds to
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attend they're in the middle of the week so if you're a teacher
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and you want to go
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to a research conference you'd have to go to your principal and
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say uh excuse me
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SPEAKER_01: i'd like to go to this conference uh it's going to cost hundreds of
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SPEAKER_01: and you're going to have to cover me for the day.
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SPEAKER_01: And, of course, that didn't happen.
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SPEAKER_01: And so the only people that went to these conferences were researchers,
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SPEAKER_01: and the research is actually supposed to have an impact in the classroom.
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SPEAKER_01: So he was moaning about this on Twitter,
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SPEAKER_01: and a few people said,
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SPEAKER_01: well,
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SPEAKER_01: why don't you start something?
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SPEAKER_01: Why don't you create something?
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SPEAKER_01: So he created the first research ed.
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SPEAKER_00: It was just like that he was like, why don't you create something?
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SPEAKER_00: Yep, you know what?
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SPEAKER_00: I will then.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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And it took place in London and it was on a Saturday so that
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there was no asking
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SPEAKER_01: for permission to have your classes covered.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was all done on goodwill.
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SPEAKER_01: So all the speakers spoke for free.
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SPEAKER_01: They still do, which is wonderful.
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SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Katie, for speaking for free at the weekend.
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SPEAKER_01: Thank you for having me.
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SPEAKER_01: The conference wouldn't exist without people prepared to do that.
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SPEAKER_01: And so that means that keeps the ticket price down.
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So now a teacher can just go if they want to because they can
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afford the ticket
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SPEAKER_01: themselves and it's on a Saturday.
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SPEAKER_01: Now, some people say, oh, Saturday.
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SPEAKER_01: Teachers shouldn't be working Saturdays.
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SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, well, fine.
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SPEAKER_01: Don't come to the conference.
4:43
SPEAKER_01: It shouldn't feel like work.
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Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't have to come.
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SPEAKER_01: No one's compelled to go to research ed, but yeah, that's how it started.
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SPEAKER_01: So in 2015, we had the first one in Australia that Tom organized.
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SPEAKER_01: It was in Sydney at the Shaw School.
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SPEAKER_01: And then from sort of 2016 onwards, I had a role in organizing them.
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SPEAKER_01: So I kind of, and it's all very loose.
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SPEAKER_01: Like there's no actual research ed organization that exists in Australia.
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SPEAKER_01: It's an idea rather than an actual idea.
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SPEAKER_01: entity of any kind.
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SPEAKER_01: But I loosely coordinate research ed across Australia.
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SPEAKER_01: Apart from in the West,
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Mandy Nathan coordinates research ed Perth because she sort of
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kept that going
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SPEAKER_01: during the pandemic when we couldn't run any
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um anywhere else so Mandy Nathan does those but all the others
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I kind of coordinate
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and Tom gets involved a bit and we sort of muddle along like
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that so we've got one
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coming up in May New Zealand um in Auckland I'll be speaking at
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that we and we've
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got one hopefully we've got a couple in August um there's plans
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for them in
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SPEAKER_01: Canberra and in Melbourne so we'll see how that goes
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SPEAKER_00: Oh, fingers crossed.
5:58
SPEAKER_00: As a conference,
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SPEAKER_00: Research Ed is very much,
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SPEAKER_00: it's not your glitzy,
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SPEAKER_00: glam,
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SPEAKER_00: really expensive,
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SPEAKER_00: hard to get to,
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SPEAKER_00: which do exist and are great.
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SPEAKER_00: But it's the fact that it's like anyone can just rock up on the weekend.
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SPEAKER_00: You don't need to get permission.
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SPEAKER_00: You don't need to get time off school.
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SPEAKER_00: But it's then also just this,
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SPEAKER_00: the vibe of the conference is different to most conferences I've been to.
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SPEAKER_00: I go to a lot of education conferences and a lot of PDs.
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SPEAKER_00: And the vibe of ResearchEd,
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SPEAKER_00: I just,
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I cannot describe the buzz when you're there and the
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conversations that you have
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SPEAKER_00: and the excitement and the energy and even going away from it.
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SPEAKER_00: You know, I log on every single time I open up LinkedIn.
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SPEAKER_00: I think I've just got,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: tens of notifications of people going,
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SPEAKER_00: this is what happened at ResearchEd and this is what I saw at ResearchEd.
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SPEAKER_00: And this conversation that just doesn't stop.
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SPEAKER_00: Whereas,
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SPEAKER_00: you know,
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SPEAKER_00: a normal PD,
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you go to the conversation ends at the end of the day and
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you're off talking about
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SPEAKER_00: dinner or whatever.
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SPEAKER_00: It doesn't happen for research ed like that,
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which is what I think makes it so different and makes it so
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special compared to
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SPEAKER_00: other conferences.
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's like, it's a worldwide community as well.
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SPEAKER_01: I mean,
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SPEAKER_01: we are later in this podcast,
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SPEAKER_01: we're going to talk about kind of like the opposite of that.
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SPEAKER_01: There's been a blog on the AARE website,
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SPEAKER_01: not complaining about research ed,
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but basically saying that traditional education researchers
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need to be paid more
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SPEAKER_01: attention to.
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And it's a nice kind of counterpoint to what we were doing at
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the weekend.
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SPEAKER_01: And so we will tackle that.
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SPEAKER_01: But the research head itself is a worldwide community.
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SPEAKER_01: So did you see,
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SPEAKER_01: Katie,
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the little banner on the oval that you could have your
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photograph taken in front
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SPEAKER_01: of?
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SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I did.
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SPEAKER_01: Yes.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: So that is an idea that they came up with in Chile.
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So when I went to research at Chile last year,
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there was like a thousand people there.
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SPEAKER_01: Like it was amazing.
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And they had a banner and it was out in their equivalent of the
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oval and people
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SPEAKER_01: having their photo taken in front of it.
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SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, that's a good idea.
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SPEAKER_01: Now it's a trivial thing.
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It's not really very important,
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but the point is we're part of a worldwide.
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SPEAKER_00: That's how we turn it into our social media posts.
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SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01: But it means we're part of this worldwide – it's not just a parochial,
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SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: the Ballarat Education Conference.
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SPEAKER_01: It's part of this global phenomenon of teachers taking control, really.
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SPEAKER_01: And I think this is what organisations like the AARE,
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SPEAKER_01: the Australian Association for Research and Education,
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SPEAKER_01: the peak body for education.
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SPEAKER_01: traditional academic education researchers.
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I think that's what they find a little threatening because
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traditionally they've
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SPEAKER_01: been the gatekeepers.
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SPEAKER_01: They've been the ones that,
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SPEAKER_01: well,
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it's certainly expected to be consulted as experts on what to
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do with education.
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SPEAKER_01: And something like research ed is just ordinary people.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, not ordinary people.
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SPEAKER_01: Like there's loads of researchers involved in it.
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SPEAKER_01: But
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SPEAKER_01: But talking, it's aimed at teachers.
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SPEAKER_01: I think that's the key thing.
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It's not researchers talking to other researchers in a slightly
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weird coded
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SPEAKER_01: language that has developed within that little ecosystem.
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SPEAKER_00: Which is pointless anyway,
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because I don't care if researchers talk to researchers about
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what's happening.
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SPEAKER_00: I care about what happens in your classroom on Mondays.
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yeah exactly exactly so um i started uh i didn't actually
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you're gonna have to talk
9:26
about bron because i i was introducing david so i had to do
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that twice yeah so i
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had to do that twice so unfortunately i was very sad that i
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missed out on bron's
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keynote and i think bron was bron was a bit um miffed because
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she well she wasn't
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SPEAKER_01: miffed i think she was pleased to be a keynote but she came up to
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uh david at lunch and said that you know she'd been reading his
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stuff for years and
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it was such a shame now that she finally meet him and she can't
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actually see him
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talk because both the times he spoke she was because the way we
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structured it she
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was on at the same time this is always the case with research i
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don't know what i
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was doing but i also scheduled us on at the same time so i
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couldn't see i couldn't
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see you talk which i i only realized i think i mean you juggle
10:09
around with the
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SPEAKER_00: program it felt very intentional greg
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You juggle around with the program and you make all these moves
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and it's like chess pieces.
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But everyone always says that the one gripe people have about
10:20
research is,
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SPEAKER_01: oh,
10:21
there are two people or three people on at the same time that I
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couldn't see or
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speakers say there's someone I wanted to see that was on at the
10:27
same time.
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SPEAKER_01: But I started the day...
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SPEAKER_01: with David Didow.
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SPEAKER_01: I did a bit of an acknowledgement of country.
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SPEAKER_01: I talked about Bunjil the Eagle,
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SPEAKER_01: the Wutherwung people,
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SPEAKER_01: which is the country on which Ballarat Clarendon College is situated.
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SPEAKER_01: And I introduced David,
10:46
SPEAKER_01: who I've sort of known of since about 2012 when I first started blogging.
10:51
SPEAKER_01: He was already blogging.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: He'd written books.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: He was quite well known.
10:54
SPEAKER_01: And he's a real thinker,
10:56
SPEAKER_01: started out as an English teacher,
10:59
SPEAKER_01: but he ranges around all sorts of different things.
11:01
So even on the Monday,
11:03
after Research Ed,
11:04
he came and worked with us at Clarendon for the day.
11:06
And one of the things he did in the afternoon is he put on a
11:10
session for leaders.
11:11
SPEAKER_01: So we invited local school leaders along from other schools.
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SPEAKER_00: So you brought in other schools as well?
11:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:18
So part of what we like to do when we have people like this
11:21
across is make them
11:22
SPEAKER_01: available to the community.
11:23
SPEAKER_01: So we didn't sell tickets or anything like that.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: We just invited some people along.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And he talked about leadership.
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SPEAKER_01: He wrote a book called Intelligent Accountability.
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SPEAKER_01: And it was really good, actually.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've got pages of notes.
11:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:39
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I love them.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: So that was really interesting.
11:45
But the point I'm trying to make really is that he ranges
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around so many different
11:49
SPEAKER_01: areas of education.
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SPEAKER_01: He's a real thinker.
11:55
SPEAKER_01: But the presentation he gave,
11:57
SPEAKER_01: the keynote he gave,
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SPEAKER_01: was on two rules for great teaching and how to apply them.
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SPEAKER_01: And you know what, Katie?
12:03
I did not write down and I cannot find anywhere the actual
12:06
wording of the first rule.
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SPEAKER_01: I've got the wording of the second one.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: I have the wording.
12:12
SPEAKER_01: Do you have the wording of the first rule?
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SPEAKER_01: Because it was all about.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Know what your students know is what I've got written.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: Is that word for word right?
12:20
SPEAKER_00: I didn't put quotes.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
12:21
SPEAKER_01: no,
12:21
SPEAKER_01: that sounds about right because he was talking about attention,
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SPEAKER_01: meaning,
12:26
SPEAKER_01: and he made this distinction,
12:28
SPEAKER_01: which I don't think I do enough of,
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SPEAKER_01: and it's made me reflect.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: So he would literally say,
12:32
SPEAKER_01: he would literally say,
12:34
SPEAKER_01: he'd talk and then he'd say to a student,
12:37
SPEAKER_01: what did I just say?
12:39
SPEAKER_01: And the student will go, I don't know, I wasn't listening.
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SPEAKER_01: He'll go, I know.
12:42
SPEAKER_01: And he would be very nice about it.
12:45
SPEAKER_01: But the point is,
12:46
he was saying that it's actually human for our minds to wander
12:51
and for our
12:51
SPEAKER_01: attention to fade.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Particularly,
12:55
SPEAKER_01: he made the point that when one student is talking in class,
12:59
SPEAKER_01: the other students then zone out.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: So you then have to say to a student, what did she just say?
13:04
SPEAKER_01: And they go, I don't know, I wasn't listening.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: They go, I know.
13:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: So you're trying to build this culture of attention.
13:10
And I haven't really thought of it like that because I would
13:12
check attention,
13:13
SPEAKER_01: not by saying,
13:13
SPEAKER_01: what did I just say?
13:14
SPEAKER_01: But by asking a question, like a fairly closed question.
13:19
And I don't know whether he's coming from an English background
13:21
or whether I ought to do that.
13:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
13:23
SPEAKER_01: I'm processing all of that.
13:25
But he drew this distinction between checking attention and
13:28
then checking meaning.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: And he talked about things that...
13:33
I'm familiar with like using mini whiteboards and all that sort
13:37
of stuff.
13:39
I think his exact line was he said the mini whiteboard is one
13:43
of the most important
13:44
SPEAKER_00: tools I have in my armory as a teacher,
13:46
SPEAKER_00: which I wrote down because similar to I think it was Dr.
13:50
Jenny Donovan later who said mini whiteboards are just as
13:52
important as chairs.
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SPEAKER_00: The mini whiteboard is your number one go-to.
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SPEAKER_00: I couldn't teach without them.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
14:01
SPEAKER_01: So at the end of the day,
14:04
we used to when we first did research yet in ballarat uh we'd
14:07
have like 300 people
14:08
and everyone stayed right to the bitter end which i think is
14:11
pretty cool i like
14:12
that but now we've got 700 people and a few people have got
14:16
planes to catch and
14:16
we've got we've got some by expanding to 700 some of those 700
14:21
are a little less
14:22
hardcore so they will they've got planes to catch they got so
14:26
they're not there at
14:27
SPEAKER_01: the bitter end and at the bitter end
14:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's not really very bitter.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: It's actually quite pleasant and friendly and nice.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: We have a Q&A with a couple of the speakers that I always host.
14:36
And one of the questions we got was about the resourcing of
14:41
mini whiteboards.
14:42
SPEAKER_01: Because in my school, we're very fortunate.
14:45
SPEAKER_01: We're an independent school.
14:47
SPEAKER_01: We book list the mini whiteboards.
14:48
SPEAKER_01: All the kids have to bring them.
14:49
SPEAKER_01: There's no giving them out,
14:51
SPEAKER_01: collecting them up,
14:51
SPEAKER_01: having to keep them in your office or any of that sort of stuff.
14:54
But other schools and government schools who were earlier on
14:57
that journey,
14:59
SPEAKER_01: struggling a little bit with that.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: And so there was a question about that.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: And Jenny made the same point again in the Q&A about,
15:06
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:06
SPEAKER_01: that there was kind of critical infrastructure.
15:12
SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, so he talked about that.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: Uh,
15:16
SPEAKER_01: he talked about,
15:18
SPEAKER_01: um,
15:18
SPEAKER_01: meaning,
15:19
SPEAKER_01: um,
15:20
SPEAKER_01: and he said,
15:21
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:21
SPEAKER_01: teaching around assessing is just guessing,
15:23
SPEAKER_01: um,
15:24
SPEAKER_01: know what your students know.
15:25
SPEAKER_01: And then that was really interesting because it was,
15:29
SPEAKER_01: for me,
15:29
SPEAKER_01: that was like looking through a prism at what we do and what I do.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: And it's,
15:36
SPEAKER_01: there was a lot I could recognize and it felt familiar and it felt,
15:40
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
15:40
SPEAKER_01: I know what that looks like.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: But there were other things that challenged me a little bit like that,
15:45
SPEAKER_01: you know,
15:45
SPEAKER_01: what did I just say?
15:47
Sort of questions and things that I hadn't thought of and I
15:50
hadn't done before that
15:51
SPEAKER_01: made me think a little bit about that.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: I think we've had a good discussion about Turn and Talk.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: So David taught a lesson on Monday.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Um,
16:00
SPEAKER_01: and one of the,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: uh,
16:02
SPEAKER_01: our English teachers observed lessons said,
16:03
SPEAKER_01: you didn't use much turn and talk.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: And,
16:05
SPEAKER_01: and we had a,
16:06
we had a big discussion and it seems like our understanding of
16:09
why you would use
16:09
turn and talk and David's understanding of why you would use it
16:12
slightly different,
16:13
SPEAKER_01: which I thought was really interesting.
16:14
SPEAKER_01: And so we're sort of processing.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm curious about it.
16:17
SPEAKER_00: So what, like, can I ask, what was the difference then?
16:20
SPEAKER_00: Um,
16:21
Well,
16:22
David would use turn and talk for essentially priming kids to
16:30
answer hard questions.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: We would think of turn and talk as oral rehearsal,
16:36
SPEAKER_01: just rehearsing the answer before you give it.
16:38
SPEAKER_01: or maybe idea generation.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: Now,
16:41
that's where we had a bit of a debate because that sounds a
16:45
little bit like
16:45
SPEAKER_01: discovery learning,
16:46
SPEAKER_01: but that's not quite what our English teachers mean by that.
16:49
SPEAKER_01: So our English teachers,
16:50
SPEAKER_01: when they talk about idea generation,
16:52
SPEAKER_01: they're talking about,
16:52
SPEAKER_01: we're writing a paragraph,
16:54
SPEAKER_01: what could the first body sentence be?
16:56
SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of structure around that.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: So the kids aren't just let go to do whatever,
17:00
SPEAKER_01: but they might have a turn and talk discussion about what the first body,
17:04
SPEAKER_01: not body paragraph,
17:05
SPEAKER_01: sentence
17:06
SPEAKER_01: sentence, but I don't know.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: I'm not an English teacher.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: The sentence after the topic sentence,
17:12
SPEAKER_01: whatever that sentence is called,
17:14
SPEAKER_01: they would have a discussion about that.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: And David wouldn't do that.
17:17
SPEAKER_01: He would reserve that discussion for questions he's asking that are hard.
17:24
He talks a lot of,
17:25
we'll talk a little bit about his idea that success must
17:30
precede struggle.
17:31
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is part of it.
17:32
SPEAKER_01: I love that phrase.
17:34
You don't want to give kids things that they'll struggle at and
17:36
feel frustrated.
17:37
SPEAKER_01: So you've got to give them success.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: And I think it links to that idea.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: But what it got me thinking of,
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Katie,
17:42
SPEAKER_01: is reflecting on my own practice and our own practice,
17:46
SPEAKER_01: maybe around maths and physics at Clarendon.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: We're very good, I think.
17:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, I say very good.
17:53
SPEAKER_01: We're relatively better at I do, we do.
17:58
But the you do,
17:59
the problem solving,
18:00
I think sometimes we go,
18:01
okay,
18:02
here's a problem,
18:02
solve it.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: And we've tried to do scaffolding.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: So the rule of two,
18:07
SPEAKER_01: Hollingsworth and Ibarra is like,
18:10
SPEAKER_01: we've got two parallel questions and we'd sort of work,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: I'll work through this.
18:14
SPEAKER_01: Because the problem we're trying to solve is that kids eventually have to
18:19
SPEAKER_01: be able to transfer their learning to unfamiliar situations.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: They have to be able to solve unfamiliar problems.
18:25
I don't want to use the term non-routine problem because that's
18:29
become a bit of a
18:29
buzzword in maths education and one associated with essentially
18:33
discovery learning
18:34
SPEAKER_01: and all this sort of nonsense.
18:36
SPEAKER_01: But it's the same idea.
18:37
You've got to solve a problem that isn't,
18:40
it's not obvious what the first step is.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: You've got all the maths and
18:43
SPEAKER_01: But it looks a bit different and the surface features a bit different.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: And I was thinking,
18:47
SPEAKER_01: because I don't use much turn and talk in maths,
18:49
SPEAKER_01: and it's got me thinking,
18:50
SPEAKER_01: well,
18:50
that's the equivalent of the hard problems that David would use
18:54
turn and talk to
18:55
SPEAKER_01: rehearse.
18:56
So maybe that's a strategy in maths that when we're doing a non
19:01
– I'm going to use
19:03
SPEAKER_01: the term non-routine problem even with all its baggage –
19:06
SPEAKER_01: rather than just saying, just do it, or me modelling it.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
19:10
SPEAKER_01: I would model them as well,
19:11
but maybe there's another sort of intermediate phase where the
19:14
kids talk to each
19:15
SPEAKER_01: other and say,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: well,
19:16
SPEAKER_01: what strategy would we use?
19:17
SPEAKER_01: How would we get going on this problem?
19:19
SPEAKER_01: And blah, blah, blah, blah.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: And then harvest that.
19:21
And maybe that's another way in that sort of we do to you do
19:27
phase that it might be.
19:30
SPEAKER_01: So it's got me thinking about that.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:33
SPEAKER_00: I think it'd be worth cautioning there,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: though,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: that like what you're saying in this case isn't,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: you know,
19:39
SPEAKER_00: get hard problems,
19:40
send your group of students off into a corner in a group with a
19:43
whiteboard that's a
19:44
SPEAKER_00: wall or something and just go through and do it.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: Like I would at this point,
19:49
as someone who has a vested interest and is reading the
19:52
literature at the moment on
19:54
SPEAKER_00: mathematical problem solving and really like the area of
19:57
I'm going to say the area I'm currently focusing on is fluency
20:00
as a precursor to
20:01
SPEAKER_00: what I'm going to call mathematical problem solving.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: What's really important there is,
20:07
SPEAKER_00: and if listeners haven't seen it before,
20:10
Brendan Lee speaks beautifully about the instructional
20:12
hierarchy and just the role
20:14
SPEAKER_00: that acquisition,
20:15
SPEAKER_00: but then fluency,
20:16
SPEAKER_00: which is essentially being fast and accurate.
20:19
plays in students being able to even begin to attempt these
20:23
harder problem solving
20:24
SPEAKER_00: or non-routine problems.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: And I think it's just worth us referencing that when you say that,
20:29
SPEAKER_00: you're not saying,
20:30
SPEAKER_00: oh,
20:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to send them off and talk about it with each other.
20:33
You're saying,
20:34
I've done the pre-teaching,
20:36
I've primed my students,
20:37
they're ready to go.
20:38
And it's only at that point that then I'll say to them,
20:41
hey,
20:41
maybe you could use it.
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Like I started
20:44
taking notes about me wanting to do it for my little
20:47
annotations and how do you
20:48
SPEAKER_00: pull the information out of a question structures.
20:51
But I just think it's worth mentioning that that's not what
20:54
you're saying with that,
20:55
right?
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, absolutely.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: It's right towards the end of a long sequence.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: And the other thing is they're not just going to go off and do it.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: They wouldn't just discuss it, then just go.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it would be a short...
21:10
Like,
21:11
I mean,
21:11
a minute would be a long time for this turn and talk
21:14
discussion.
21:14
SPEAKER_01: And it would be, you know, what strategy are you going to use?
21:17
SPEAKER_01: And then I would harvest that from them.
21:19
SPEAKER_01: So they're not just going, but it's like an intermediate stage between.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: So eventually, say if it's at VC, let's go to brass tacks.
21:28
I mean,
21:29
they have to do a VCE exam and they have to do the,
21:32
what's it called in Queensland?
21:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: Q. QCE?
21:35
SPEAKER_00: QCE.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:36
So they have to do an exam and there'll be questions on there
21:41
and the exam is
21:42
designed so there'll be some questions that are not like ones
21:46
they've seen before,
21:47
SPEAKER_01: which is great.
21:47
That's what exams should be like because they're a genuine
21:50
assessment of what
21:52
you've learned mathematically and whether you can apply it to
21:54
different situations.
21:55
I mean,
21:55
I'm not a huge fan of the VCE,
21:57
but that aspect of it I think is...
22:00
SPEAKER_01: and that's what we should do.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: So that's kind of the end goal.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: And they do that on their own in silence in an exam room.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So how do we get them to that point?
22:08
SPEAKER_01: Well,
22:08
SPEAKER_01: if all they ever do is what we tell them to do,
22:12
SPEAKER_01: then when we're not there telling them to do it,
22:14
SPEAKER_01: they won't be able to answer that question in the exam room.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: So you've got to gradually release control.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: And I think ideas about ways to do that,
22:23
I'm particularly interested in because I would say that that's
22:26
something that...
22:27
SPEAKER_01: relatively speaking, I'm not as good at as the initial instruction.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: And so you'll talk about annotation.
22:36
SPEAKER_01: So putting up a question,
22:38
SPEAKER_01: annotating it,
22:39
SPEAKER_01: pulling it apart,
22:40
SPEAKER_01: almost sort of passing it,
22:42
SPEAKER_01: like what's the important stuff here?
22:44
SPEAKER_01: And then thinking aloud as a teacher.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: So I'm thinking at this point,
22:48
SPEAKER_01: that it's got something to do with blah, blah, blah.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: You know, you're modeling the thought processes.
22:52
SPEAKER_01: But how are you bridging that gap?
22:56
SPEAKER_01: So the next step might be, okay, so here's a problem.
23:00
SPEAKER_01: I've put it up in front of you on the screen.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: I haven't annotated it or anything at all.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: Talk to the person next to you.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: Quick turn and talk.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: What would be your first step in tackling this problem?
23:11
SPEAKER_01: So they talk to each other.
23:13
SPEAKER_01: Harvest that back.
23:14
SPEAKER_01: Harvest that back from them.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, not just go off to the corner and solve the problem.
23:21
SPEAKER_01: It's much more structured than that.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: But as I say, I haven't used it.
23:24
It just got me thinking about whether that would be a useful
23:28
strategy to throw into the mix.
23:29
I think it's worth trialling as someone who is heavily involved
23:35
in that area at the
23:36
moment of problem solving and how you prepare students for what
23:40
we'd call problem
23:40
SPEAKER_00: solving.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's...
23:44
SPEAKER_00: It's a worthwhile strategy,
23:45
but it's a worthwhile strategy with a lot of structures in
23:48
place beforehand.
23:49
SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: Well,
23:51
SPEAKER_01: I don't know how worthwhile it is,
23:52
SPEAKER_01: but he just struck me as it was the sort of mathematical – I can't talk –
23:57
mathematical equivalent of what David was talking about using
24:01
turning and talk for
24:02
SPEAKER_01: in English.
24:02
SPEAKER_01: The other thing that David went on to, which I thought was really –
24:06
SPEAKER_01: Really powerful.
24:07
SPEAKER_01: His second rule, I did actually write down this time, which is helpful.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: Teachers, if the curriculum not innate ability determines success.
24:15
SPEAKER_01: And he backed it up with a quote from Graham Nuttall,
24:19
SPEAKER_01: right,
24:20
SPEAKER_01: which very unfortunately in his first presentation,
24:24
SPEAKER_01: he said was Australian.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: And Graham Nuttall is from New Zealand.
24:28
SPEAKER_01: And there were New Zealanders in the audience.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, no.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
24:31
SPEAKER_01: And they don't.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Take kindly to that sort of thing.
24:36
SPEAKER_01: And he actually knew Nuttall was from New Zealand.
24:39
SPEAKER_01: It was just like a sort of misspeak or something.
24:41
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, yeah.
24:42
So the Nuttall quote he used is,
24:45
ability is a consequence of learning,
24:47
not a cause.
24:48
SPEAKER_01: So you don't learn because you're able.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: You're able because you've learned something,
24:52
SPEAKER_01: which in a way,
24:53
SPEAKER_01: it sounds obvious,
24:54
SPEAKER_01: but it's also,
24:55
SPEAKER_01: as he said,
24:55
kind of mind-blowing because a lot of people in education
24:58
operate on the basis that
25:00
ability is like innate and you've got these able kids who are
25:04
going to learn and
25:05
SPEAKER_01: you've got these less able kids who are not.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: And of course, there are variations in...
25:11
SPEAKER_01: natural propensities.
25:13
SPEAKER_01: If you're really tall,
25:14
you probably have a better chance of becoming really good at
25:18
basketball than if
25:19
SPEAKER_01: you're not so tall.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: And we vary.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: But the point is, you can't do anything about those.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: We are teachers.
25:26
SPEAKER_01: What can we control?
25:27
SPEAKER_01: We can't control what kids are born with.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: We can moan about it.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: We can say,
25:32
SPEAKER_01: oh,
25:32
SPEAKER_01: well,
25:32
my kids didn't do very well because I've got kids in my class
25:35
who aren't very smart
25:36
SPEAKER_01: or whatever.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not a useful thing to do.
25:38
SPEAKER_01: A much more positive outlook is to say, well, what can I control?
25:43
And what you can control is the curriculum and you can control
25:46
your teaching,
25:47
SPEAKER_01: both with the aim of trying to make sure you maximise what students know.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: And so it's a much more positive way of looking at learning
25:57
SPEAKER_01: at what we're trying to do.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: And so I thought that was a really good discussion.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: And he talked about gapless teaching.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: Gapless instruction, yeah.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: Gapless instruction.
26:10
SPEAKER_01: He said...
26:12
SPEAKER_01: He said it's not possible, but we should aim for it.
26:16
If you look at some of the programmes like Engelmann's Direct
26:19
Instruction,
26:20
SPEAKER_01: they really do try and make it absolutely gapless,
26:22
SPEAKER_01: but it probably doesn't work for everything,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: although advocates of direct instruction would disagree with me there.
26:30
SPEAKER_01: So he was saying it's an aspiration,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: but,
26:32
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:33
you need to assume student failures stem from faulty curriculum
26:37
or faulty teaching
26:39
SPEAKER_01: and that success must – that's where the success must proceed.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: Struggle comes in.
26:43
I think – because I wrote down a couple of corner – I think
26:46
that was the session –
26:47
the section of his session where I was just scribbling
26:49
relentlessly in agreement –
26:52
SPEAKER_00: If students fail to meet our expectations, it's our fault.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if that was a direct quote,
26:57
SPEAKER_00: but it was something that resonated with me in his presentation because,
27:02
SPEAKER_00: look,
27:03
SPEAKER_00: I think
27:05
I'm always conscious when I use the word fault that people can
27:07
take that very personally.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: But at the end of the day,
27:10
SPEAKER_00: if students do fail to do what it is I would like them to do,
27:15
I'd actually say it's my responsibility to try to work with
27:18
that student and to
27:19
SPEAKER_00: bring that up or to bridge the gap in my instruction.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: If my students struggle,
27:25
SPEAKER_00: that's not a case of,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: oh,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: well,
27:26
SPEAKER_00: the maths is hard because the maths is what the maths is.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: The students themselves, they need you to build them up to that point.
27:34
And constantly when I – I reflected on a lesson from a couple
27:39
of weeks ago that
27:40
SPEAKER_00: I've taught – oh,
27:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: I've taught –
27:45
tens of times more than I taught so many times to methods or
27:50
senior math students.
27:51
SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's a calculus lesson and it involves integrating, um,
27:56
SPEAKER_00: integrating functions with rational powers or with fractions.
28:00
And basically the area that they struggle with is always you
28:03
have to divide by
28:04
SPEAKER_00: fractions and you have to add fractions,
28:05
SPEAKER_00: basically the short of it.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: And this year when I was teaching it,
28:08
SPEAKER_00: I thought for the first time ever,
28:10
SPEAKER_00: despite being involved in this space for a very long time,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: I went,
28:13
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if I approach it differently.
28:15
SPEAKER_00: And if at the beginning of the lesson,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: I do a quick drill for 10 minutes where I just have my students,
28:20
SPEAKER_00: I just say,
28:20
SPEAKER_00: well,
28:20
SPEAKER_00: can you divide by fractions and can you add fractions?
28:23
SPEAKER_00: And
28:24
SPEAKER_00: And then can you do both of those things put together?
28:27
And I did this drill and it allowed me to pick up the pieces
28:29
for students who didn't know it.
28:31
And I taught this calculus lesson the most successfully I ever
28:35
have in my entire
28:36
SPEAKER_00: life by doing this one very simple thing.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: But I say it took 10 minutes.
28:40
I don't – I think it was probably three or four minutes for me
28:43
to pick up the pieces.
28:45
SPEAKER_00: But it just came down to me,
28:47
SPEAKER_00: you know,
28:47
SPEAKER_00: teaching this lesson in the past and I guess having this mindset of,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: oh,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: I'm like,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
28:51
SPEAKER_00: but no,
28:52
SPEAKER_00: just do the fractions.
28:53
Just go off to the side of your page and here's how you do them
28:55
and patching as I
28:56
SPEAKER_00: go instead of seeing it as,
28:59
SPEAKER_00: well,
28:59
SPEAKER_00: actually,
29:00
there's things I can do to ensure their success and I can try
29:03
to fill those things
29:04
SPEAKER_00: in,
29:05
SPEAKER_00: ideally in my planning stage.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: But I've got the ability as the teacher to take those steps.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: And by taking those steps,
29:12
that made what would normally be normally a lesson that I would
29:16
dread teaching,
29:17
SPEAKER_00: one that was brilliant.
29:18
SPEAKER_00: It was one of the best lessons I've taught.
29:20
SPEAKER_00: Great.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Look,
29:22
SPEAKER_01: I think that's the power of taking this stance to say rather than,
29:28
SPEAKER_01: oh,
29:29
SPEAKER_01: it's that lesson again and the kids struggle.
29:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:31
SPEAKER_01: Think, well, what could I do?
29:32
How could I change my teaching or how could I change,
29:35
you know,
29:35
the curricula?
29:36
SPEAKER_01: And in a very micro way to make them more successful.
29:40
And I think that the issue with the word fault there is not the
29:44
word itself,
29:45
SPEAKER_01: but how it interacts with school culture.
29:46
SPEAKER_01: So if you're in a blame culture, you want to avoid fault.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: But if you're in a more of a growth culture,
29:56
then it's actually useful to know what the mistakes are because
30:00
you can correct
30:01
SPEAKER_01: them.
30:01
SPEAKER_01: It's like when someone,
30:04
SPEAKER_01: as I understand it,
30:05
SPEAKER_01: and I don't know much about this,
30:06
SPEAKER_01: but when someone passes away in hospital,
30:08
they have a conference afterwards where they try and figure out
30:11
what happened.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: What caused that?
30:13
And apparently it can be very confronting,
30:15
but the attitude is not one of blame.
30:18
SPEAKER_01: It's not, oh, you didn't prescribe this thing in time.
30:22
SPEAKER_01: It's more one of, how can we avoid that in future?
30:24
SPEAKER_01: What can we learn from this?
30:26
SPEAKER_01: And so the same...
30:28
This mechanism could be very confronting and could be about
30:31
blame and shame and all
30:32
SPEAKER_01: these things.
30:33
SPEAKER_01: But if it interacts with the right culture, it can be a source of growth.
30:38
Now,
30:38
I'm sounding a bit whiffy-woffly-woo there,
30:40
but you know what I mean.
30:41
You've got to have the culture right to be able to put those
30:44
things in place.
30:45
SPEAKER_01: So David Didow is great.
30:50
SPEAKER_01: And you saw Bronn.
30:51
So do you want to fill us in a little bit about what Bronn
30:53
Ryrie-Jones had to say?
31:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
31:04
So Bron's session was OTRs or opportunities to respond,
31:09
pure gold for engagement.
31:11
So it's going to be a really similar theme here where it really
31:15
was about how do
31:16
SPEAKER_00: you engage students?
31:18
SPEAKER_00: And Bron, I guess, tackled this from two ways.
31:21
She spoke both to engagement in the classroom and making sure
31:24
that your students
31:25
SPEAKER_00: are paying attention.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: So a really similar theme.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: But
31:29
SPEAKER_00: also about using that for checks for understanding.
31:32
SPEAKER_00: So her session, it
31:35
SPEAKER_00: Look, I love watching Bron present.
31:39
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to out myself as a huge fan of Bron's work consistently.
31:44
I think she's got – Bron's a practicing classroom teacher who's
31:48
worked across
31:49
several schools and who has a very – I'm going to say a very
31:52
direct way of coming
31:54
SPEAKER_00: in with something that's practical,
31:57
SPEAKER_00: usable,
31:57
SPEAKER_00: and she says it exactly as it is.
32:00
SPEAKER_00: If I were recommending anyone to go into a school and speak to staff,
32:03
Bron would be 100% one of the first people because she knows
32:07
the realities of being
32:08
SPEAKER_00: in a classroom.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: If you've ever had the opportunity to see Bron respond,
32:13
you will know that Bron is probably one of the most engaging
32:15
presenters possible.
32:17
And the strategies that Bron spoke about in her session were
32:22
the same strategies that she used.
32:27
So I'll start off,
32:29
I'll give a really brief summary of what she spoke to within
32:32
this.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: So she spoke about this cycle of teaching.
32:36
And she said the simplest cycle of teaching is basically you
32:38
teach and you do that
32:39
SPEAKER_00: in really small chunks.
32:41
You track,
32:42
which is your checking for understanding,
32:44
and then you respond.
32:46
And you cycle through that over and over frequently throughout
32:50
your lesson.
32:50
SPEAKER_00: It's not just a one, two, three.
32:53
SPEAKER_00: It's you do that over and over.
32:55
SPEAKER_00: And it is this, I'm going to call it this really tight cycle.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: The key point that she's making here though,
33:02
SPEAKER_00: is that you can't actually track anything if you don't have,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
33:08
SPEAKER_00: if you don't have students,
33:10
SPEAKER_00: sorry,
33:10
if you don't give students these opportunities to respond in
33:13
the lessons or these
33:14
SPEAKER_00: OTRs.
33:16
SPEAKER_00: So an OTR,
33:17
SPEAKER_00: an opportunity to respond,
33:19
that's a moment in the lesson where what you do is you
33:21
deliberately get something
33:24
SPEAKER_00: from your students.
33:26
SPEAKER_00: And I went into the session thinking, this is going to be great.
33:31
It's going to be another check for understanding,
33:33
ask them questions,
33:34
cold call.
33:36
But Bron actually said getting something from students,
33:39
yeah,
33:39
it could be answering a question.
33:41
SPEAKER_00: It could be a choral response,
33:43
but it could be gestures and it could be signs that students
33:46
are listening or
33:47
engaging in a really similar way to what David spoke about in
33:52
his session.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: So...
33:55
SPEAKER_00: The distinction that she makes here,
33:57
SPEAKER_00: and I'm going to get into what an OTR is,
34:01
SPEAKER_00: what it looks like,
34:02
SPEAKER_00: but a core distinction that she made here,
34:04
SPEAKER_00: and I'm just trying to find where I've got it written down,
34:06
SPEAKER_00: is she said that all checks for understanding,
34:10
SPEAKER_00: and for those of you listening,
34:11
a check for understanding is where you check if your students
34:13
can do something or
34:15
SPEAKER_00: check if they do know something.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: So all
34:18
I describe that to people as that's almost like an assessment
34:20
or a test question
34:21
SPEAKER_00: that you're giving in even a miniature format.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: It's a test of knowledge maybe is a nice way of putting it.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: But she said all checks for understanding are opportunities to respond,
34:31
but not all opportunities to respond are a check for
34:35
understanding because instead
34:38
you might be using an opportunity to respond for things like
34:40
checking information.
34:41
SPEAKER_00: behavior and checking attention of students.
34:45
SPEAKER_00: Before I go,
34:46
SPEAKER_00: because I want to talk about the architecture of an OTR,
34:50
I want to go into detail about some of the cool ways that she
34:52
presented it.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: But do you have anything you want to chime in there with, Craig?
34:57
SPEAKER_01: Um,
34:58
SPEAKER_01: well,
34:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
34:58
SPEAKER_01: obviously I wasn't in bronze,
35:00
SPEAKER_01: but it sounds like it was,
35:01
SPEAKER_01: uh,
35:01
SPEAKER_01: it was very similar to,
35:03
SPEAKER_01: um,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: what David was trying to do.
35:05
SPEAKER_01: So we're all on the same page here, really.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: Attention is the currency and we need to make sure that,
35:12
SPEAKER_01: uh,
35:12
SPEAKER_01: we've got it because I,
35:14
and I suppose it's making me think of those different
35:17
definitions of explicit
35:18
SPEAKER_01: teaching and,
35:19
SPEAKER_01: um,
35:19
SPEAKER_01: the,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: the,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: some people view it as,
35:22
SPEAKER_01: and the,
35:22
SPEAKER_01: the,
35:23
SPEAKER_01: there's the good paper,
35:24
SPEAKER_01: um,
35:24
SPEAKER_01: by,
35:24
SPEAKER_01: uh,
35:25
SPEAKER_01: Rosenstein,
35:25
SPEAKER_01: five meanings of direct instruction.
35:27
And some people just think explicit teaching is standing at the
35:30
front and lecturing.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: And that's not really what we're talking about,
35:34
SPEAKER_01: because without these opportunities to respond,
35:36
SPEAKER_01: without this constant short cycle formative assessment,
35:41
SPEAKER_01: it's not the same thing at all,
35:42
SPEAKER_01: because attention could wander off and you'd never know.
35:45
SPEAKER_00: The entire thing was fascinating.
35:47
SPEAKER_00: So Bron showed, she showed a short video.
35:50
One of the things that she gets you to do is she gets you to
35:54
record how many
35:55
SPEAKER_00: opportunities to respond you have in a minute or your,
35:58
SPEAKER_00: she calls it your rate of opportunities to respond.
36:02
She showed this video of a grade two teacher named Grace who
36:06
was running a phonics lesson.
36:08
And what she did was had people try to track how many
36:12
opportunities to respond there were.
36:13
SPEAKER_00: And there was a mix of about 12.
36:16
And these were both verbal and nonverbal opportunities where
36:19
every single student
36:20
SPEAKER_00: in that class had to respond.
36:23
SPEAKER_00: 12 in one minute.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
36:26
And Bron then went on to – so she modelled herself a live
36:30
lesson as well where she
36:32
SPEAKER_00: did – she actually did far less opportunities to respond.
36:35
SPEAKER_00: I think we still had – I think it was four to five in a minute.
36:40
But it was really just to show how engaging that is for people
36:44
and how when you
36:45
stand up the front and you get caught in this – when you get
36:49
caught in this cycle
36:49
SPEAKER_00: of just speaking at students –
36:53
SPEAKER_00: How easy it is to,
36:54
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to say lose engagement,
36:56
SPEAKER_00: not through any fault of your own,
36:57
SPEAKER_00: but to lose engagement,
36:59
SPEAKER_00: but not necessarily realize,
37:01
SPEAKER_00: I guess,
37:02
SPEAKER_00: that you've lost engagement.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, you think you've told them it.
37:06
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's about attention.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: And I think this is how people frame it.
37:10
SPEAKER_01: And this is how David framed it.
37:12
SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like how I'm not sure whether she talked about attention.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: But this is how we tend to conceptualize it.
37:17
SPEAKER_01: But I think there's something else going on here.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: So part of opportunity to respond is processing,
37:23
SPEAKER_01: which can help knowledge transfer to long term memory.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: We don't know exactly how that happens.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to pretend I do.
37:29
SPEAKER_01: But you do have to process the information in some way.
37:32
SPEAKER_00: As a magic Ghibli Ghibli happens.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
37:35
You've got to attend to it and throw it around in your working
37:38
memory somehow for
37:40
SPEAKER_01: it to get into long-term memory.
37:40
And we can go down some very curious alleyways talking about
37:44
germane load and all
37:45
SPEAKER_01: this sort of stuff if we want to.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: But you've got to do something with it.
37:49
SPEAKER_01: And the problem with someone talking –
37:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm not one of these people that say, oh, teachers talk too much.
37:54
SPEAKER_01: To teach really well, you've got to talk loads.
37:57
But if you don't keep opportunities to respond and you chunk
38:01
your teaching,
38:02
SPEAKER_01: what you are up against is a transient information effect.
38:04
SPEAKER_01: So if I talk at UK for like two minutes,
38:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
38:10
SPEAKER_01: by the end of that,
38:11
SPEAKER_01: like what I said at the start of the two minutes,
38:13
SPEAKER_01: it's just gone because you didn't process it.
38:16
SPEAKER_01: It didn't go into long-term memory.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think that's your key point, right?
38:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:20
SPEAKER_01: And it's just gone.
38:21
SPEAKER_01: It's just evaporated.
38:22
So unless,
38:22
of course,
38:23
I'm telling you a story because you have evolved to listen to
38:27
stories.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: There's something cognitively privileged about stories.
38:30
So you can listen to a story for hours and probably retell what
38:36
the bones of that story are.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: And this is why we probably should harness story more than we do.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: But that's probably a different rabbit hole to go down.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: And be careful telling stories in your maths class.
38:47
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: Well,
38:50
SPEAKER_01: look,
38:51
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
38:52
SPEAKER_01: for another day,
38:53
but I have some thoughts on that and how you can harness story
38:56
and maybe some of
38:57
SPEAKER_01: the ways that Indigenous peoples around the world who don't have...
39:02
SPEAKER_01: who literally don't have writing necessarily to record information,
39:06
SPEAKER_01: still manage to memorise and store vast amounts of information.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: The way they do that, I think, is something we can learn from.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: But perhaps we might park that for a different day.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: Katie,
39:16
SPEAKER_01: rather diabolically,
39:17
the heating has come on in my office and I'm going to go and
39:20
switch it off just
39:21
SPEAKER_01: briefly because otherwise I'm going to faint.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Sorry about that.
39:24
SPEAKER_00: No, you're so fine.
39:25
The Queensland equivalent of the heating coming on is the air
39:28
conditioning not coming on.
39:35
The final point that I would make is that Bron did say teaching
39:39
responsibly,
39:39
SPEAKER_00: great checks for understanding are necessary,
39:43
SPEAKER_00: but it's actually more than that.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: We also need to provide opportunities to respond.
39:49
SPEAKER_00: And I will just say for the listeners that on Bron's website,
39:53
SPEAKER_00: she does have a really beautiful piece.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: So if you missed a session,
39:56
you can just search it on Bron's website and she explains this
40:00
phenomenally well.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: She's got examples of
40:03
SPEAKER_00: everything that we've spoken about,
40:04
SPEAKER_00: you know,
40:04
SPEAKER_00: if you've got FOMO,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: don't even worry,
40:06
SPEAKER_00: Bron's got you.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Great, great.
40:09
Well,
40:10
that sounds wonderful and maybe I will do that since I missed
40:12
her session.
40:13
SPEAKER_01: What I might do now is I might just briefly mention Ben Jensen.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: So Ben Jensen is from an organisation,
40:22
SPEAKER_01: the name of which I've forgotten,
40:24
SPEAKER_01: as soon as I started to talk about him,
40:26
SPEAKER_01: Learning First,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: is it,
40:27
SPEAKER_01: maybe,
40:28
SPEAKER_01: something like that?
40:28
SPEAKER_02: I don't think so.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: Really good organisation.
40:31
SPEAKER_01: My first experience with Ben Jensen,
40:33
SPEAKER_01: I went to a conference many years ago,
40:35
SPEAKER_01: might have been 2012,
40:37
SPEAKER_01: 2013,
40:37
SPEAKER_01: something like that.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: And I went to see his talk and he wasn't there.
40:40
And someone stood up and said,
40:42
oh,
40:42
he's got a young son who's not well,
40:44
so he hasn't come.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to read his paper out.
40:48
So they read out his conference paper and then a whole bunch of
40:52
academics heavily
40:54
SPEAKER_01: criticised it.
40:56
So that was my first introduction to Ben Jensen,
40:59
which was an interesting one.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: Were they criticising the paper or the fact that it was read out?
41:06
SPEAKER_01: No, no, the paper, the content of the paper.
41:07
SPEAKER_01: He was very unpopular with the education academics.
41:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, not good.
41:11
SPEAKER_01: Well, I thought that was a very good sign.
41:13
SPEAKER_01: So I finally met him for the first time like a year ago or something.
41:17
And so the first time I encountered him in this weird way was
41:21
like 2012,
41:22
I think.
41:22
Maybe at a conference in Queensland,
41:24
perhaps even,
41:25
or Sydney,
41:26
or somewhere,
41:26
anyway.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: So...
41:29
SPEAKER_01: He does a lot of work on curriculum.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: Early in my career, we tended to think that curriculum was unimportant.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: What really mattered was teaching.
41:37
And this kind of aligned with the idea that what we were
41:40
learning in class was a
41:41
SPEAKER_01: whole load of transferable skills.
41:44
SPEAKER_01: So it didn't really matter what context you learnt those skills in.
41:47
If you learnt to evaluate this or you learnt to evaluate that
41:50
or you learnt to analyse this.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: And so it was all about the teaching.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: So teachers were really important.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: Curriculum, not so much.
41:58
SPEAKER_01: Over time,
42:00
SPEAKER_01: we've realised that actually curriculum is really important because,
42:03
SPEAKER_01: as I would say,
42:04
SPEAKER_01: knowledge is what you think with.
42:05
And so these things that we think of as skills are actually
42:08
made up of components
42:09
SPEAKER_01: of knowledge and you've got to have lots of knowledge to do that.
42:12
SPEAKER_01: And Ben Jensen has been doing a lot of work on the curriculum.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: And in his presentation,
42:18
SPEAKER_01: some of which I've seen before in a different context,
42:20
SPEAKER_01: but that's why I was really paying attention this time,
42:23
SPEAKER_01: because I knew the bit that I was interested to see.
42:26
SPEAKER_01: But he talked about the fact that in one study...
42:29
SPEAKER_01: of just giving teachers in America,
42:32
SPEAKER_01: I think it was America,
42:33
SPEAKER_01: just slightly better curriculum materials.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: So in America,
42:36
SPEAKER_01: as I understand it,
42:38
SPEAKER_01: districts sort of,
42:39
SPEAKER_01: rather than everyone's writing lessons from scratch,
42:42
SPEAKER_01: districts buy in curriculums and they're sort of books of things.
42:46
SPEAKER_01: And I don't know, I don't understand it particularly well.
42:49
Well,
42:49
they gave like a district,
42:52
like a better version of this curriculum to work with.
42:56
And that had more of an effect than shifting the teachers from
43:01
the 50th percentile
43:02
SPEAKER_01: of teaching quality to the 75th percentile of teaching quality.
43:05
SPEAKER_01: So that was interesting.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty hard-hitting fact, isn't it?
43:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:09
SPEAKER_01: Now, it's only one study, but he was just sort of making that point.
43:13
SPEAKER_01: And then he talked about the Australian science curriculum.
43:16
So Learning First have done a lot of work analysing the
43:18
Australian science curriculum.
43:20
And they analyzed five countries,
43:22
Australia,
43:23
England,
43:24
USA,
43:24
Quebec,
43:24
Singapore,
43:25
Hong Kong.
43:26
And the Australian science curriculum has 57% less content than
43:31
the average of
43:32
SPEAKER_01: those other countries.
43:34
We are teaching,
43:35
like,
43:36
that's significantly less knowledge that we are teaching.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: If you look at these little graphs.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: But what's.
43:43
If you look at this little graph,
43:44
it goes down like this,
43:45
and then Australia,
43:46
boom.
43:48
SPEAKER_01: It really stands out.
43:50
SPEAKER_00: It's huge.
43:51
SPEAKER_00: But what's the thing?
43:52
I mean,
43:52
what's the comment that we hear the most about the Australian
43:55
curriculum?
43:58
SPEAKER_00: It's crowded.
43:58
SPEAKER_00: There's too much stuff.
44:00
SPEAKER_00: And Ben, and we're teaching less, so objectively that shouldn't be true.
44:05
But Greg,
44:06
what did,
44:07
I don't know if you remember,
44:08
what did Ben say about this?
44:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
44:10
SPEAKER_01: well,
44:10
SPEAKER_01: so the idea,
44:11
so what he did is he showed the progression of a particular
44:17
concept in biology,
44:19
SPEAKER_01: body systems.
44:20
SPEAKER_01: So how body systems work.
44:23
And he looked at the English curriculum and how that gradually
44:26
built from year one
44:28
SPEAKER_01: all the way through to year eight.
44:31
SPEAKER_01: And,
44:31
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
44:32
SPEAKER_01: essentially in Australia,
44:34
SPEAKER_01: for various reasons,
44:35
SPEAKER_01: we don't teach that much science at primary school.
44:38
And what happens when he showed the equivalent with the year
44:41
with the Australian
44:42
SPEAKER_01: science curriculum?
44:44
SPEAKER_01: When you go from year one to year eight,
44:45
SPEAKER_01: it goes nothing,
44:47
SPEAKER_01: nothing,
44:47
SPEAKER_01: nothing,
44:48
SPEAKER_01: nothing,
44:48
SPEAKER_01: nothing,
44:49
SPEAKER_01: nothing,
44:49
SPEAKER_01: nothing.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: And then a whole load of stuff.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: on body systems in year eight, like from nothing to like all this stuff.
44:59
And so this is why teachers feel overwhelmed because there's no
45:02
sequencing.
45:02
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't gradually build.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: It's the lack of progression.
45:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, lack of progression.
45:06
SPEAKER_01: All of a sudden the year eight teacher has to teach all of it.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: And of course they feel overwhelmed.
45:10
SPEAKER_01: So this is how the Australian curriculum can be both
45:14
impoverished,
45:15
have less in it,
45:16
but also feel overwhelming to the teachers teaching it.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: And I thought that was a really important insight.
45:20
SPEAKER_00: Anyone in school leadership,
45:21
SPEAKER_00: it's so important because the Australian curriculum,
45:25
SPEAKER_00: I know it attempts to do the sequencing.
45:27
And look,
45:27
there are places out there,
45:28
depending on what subjects you teach.
45:31
I know the team at Oka have just done mountain loads of work
45:35
with their free
45:36
resources to get it to a point where it's sequenced in such a
45:39
way that it's not as
45:41
SPEAKER_00: full.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: But
45:43
That's your core point is if you're someone working at a school
45:46
and it feels like
45:47
SPEAKER_00: it's full,
45:48
SPEAKER_00: this is a bigger issue.
45:49
SPEAKER_00: It's a massive,
45:51
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
45:51
it's a massive task to go through and re-sequence and remap
45:56
absolutely everything
45:57
that you've done to get it into a place where you can build
46:00
your knowledge,
46:01
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:01
SPEAKER_00: cumulatively and over time so that the curriculum doesn't hit this point,
46:07
SPEAKER_00: you know,
46:07
SPEAKER_00: whether it's year eight or nine or year 12,
46:09
SPEAKER_00: where you go,
46:11
SPEAKER_00: I can't fit this in.
46:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
46:13
SPEAKER_01: but it's an opportunity as well because if you do that,
46:16
SPEAKER_01: if you do spend the time sequencing it,
46:17
you can teach far more than is in the Australian science
46:19
curriculum because it is
46:21
SPEAKER_01: so impoverished,
46:21
SPEAKER_01: right?
46:22
SPEAKER_01: Oh, 100%.
46:22
SPEAKER_01: There's three strands to it.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: Notionally three strands.
46:25
SPEAKER_01: Only one is actual knowledge.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: One is like scientific inquiry,
46:30
SPEAKER_01: which sort of is a thing,
46:32
SPEAKER_01: but it's a very small thing and not the thing that it's made out to be.
46:36
So teaching controlling variables,
46:38
teaching a fair test,
46:39
yeah,
46:39
we have to teach kids that.
46:40
SPEAKER_01: It's knowledge.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: It's knowledge of how to do experiments.
46:42
SPEAKER_01: But it's not a third of the science curriculum.
46:45
SPEAKER_01: It's a small part.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: And then the other third is science as a human endeavour,
46:52
SPEAKER_01: which is just whiffly-waffly-woo,
46:53
SPEAKER_01: humanities-type stuff,
46:55
SPEAKER_01: but not –
46:57
rigorous in the way proper humanities are and it's just it's
47:01
some weird committee's
47:03
idea of what uh with no scientists on it of what a science
47:08
curriculum should look
47:09
SPEAKER_01: like
47:16
Shall we,
47:17
Greg,
47:17
move on to our final chat was,
47:21
it's a bit of a combination.
47:22
SPEAKER_00: So this was the blog by the ARRE community that we mentioned earlier.
47:28
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: But I think we were really looking at.
47:31
SPEAKER_01: It's not a blog, Katie.
47:32
SPEAKER_01: It's a communique.
47:34
SPEAKER_01: And it's been sent to all – a communique.
47:37
And it's been sent to all the Australian – I did Google how to
47:39
pronounce communique.
47:40
Yeah,
47:41
it's been sent to all the Australian education ministers,
47:45
all their bureaucrats.
47:46
SPEAKER_01: Well, it must be important.
47:47
SPEAKER_01: It's very important.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Very important communique, Katie.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: I wrote my own communique in response to this communique.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: which people can read on my Substack if they want to.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: But they're talking about putting strong evidence to good use.
48:04
SPEAKER_01: So it's just – what they're doing,
48:08
SPEAKER_01: I think,
48:09
SPEAKER_01: they're essentially signalling that their nose is out of joint,
48:13
SPEAKER_01: they're a bit put out,
48:15
SPEAKER_01: that policymakers,
48:16
SPEAKER_01: politicians are not listening to them.
48:19
SPEAKER_01: They're listening to think tanks, evil, probably right-wing funded –
48:25
think tanks they're listening to other organizations for which
48:29
i think they mean
48:30
aero which is the um australian education i expected it was
48:33
aero um and uh instead
48:37
of listening to them and they're very qualified and they have
48:39
peer review and all
48:40
SPEAKER_01: this sort of stuff and stop sidelining us the point i made in my um
48:45
SPEAKER_01: my response was,
48:46
SPEAKER_01: well,
48:46
the problem is you don't produce anything that's of any use to
48:51
policymakers and
48:53
SPEAKER_01: teachers.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: And so that's probably why they're looking elsewhere.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Having read quite a few of their posts,
48:59
SPEAKER_00: including this one,
49:00
SPEAKER_00: and there was another one that you'd linked that I've,
49:04
SPEAKER_00: there's something about,
49:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:05
SPEAKER_00: evidence-based instruction being oppressive.
49:07
SPEAKER_00: That was another one of theirs from last year.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: Was it Nicole Bunker, I think?
49:11
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
49:14
Something that I've found in reading their work is it's a lot
49:18
of opinion.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't find it very practical.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: So even if I were a teacher who was following what they're doing,
49:24
SPEAKER_00: which I'm certainly not,
49:26
SPEAKER_00: I don't find it particularly practical.
49:28
SPEAKER_00: But they've come at the research from what,
49:33
SPEAKER_00: and I think you identified this in your post,
49:35
SPEAKER_00: Greg,
49:36
SPEAKER_00: from the new,
49:37
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
49:38
the new defensive mechanism is people who are against
49:41
evidence-informed practice
49:42
SPEAKER_00: now say,
49:44
SPEAKER_00: okay,
49:44
SPEAKER_00: well,
49:46
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:46
we can define the evidence however we want and you guys are
49:49
picking this one line
49:50
SPEAKER_00: of research and it doesn't work in,
49:53
SPEAKER_00: you know,
49:54
a real school or it doesn't work in this or it was just they
49:58
try to pick it apart
50:00
SPEAKER_00: methodologically rather than actually going,
50:03
SPEAKER_00: look,
50:04
SPEAKER_00: here's something that
50:06
I've taken to saying education research is something that is
50:10
what is most likely to
50:11
SPEAKER_00: work for most students most of the time,
50:14
SPEAKER_00: is the way I've taken to phrasing it.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: They're not interested in that.
50:18
So what they're trying to do quite sort of paradoxically is
50:21
redefine strong
50:22
SPEAKER_01: evidence to include weak evidence.
50:24
That's what they want to do because they don't want to do
50:28
randomised control trials.
50:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, hardly anyone does randomised control trials.
50:31
SPEAKER_01: It's the big bogeyman that they always point at.
50:33
SPEAKER_01: But most quantitative research is not that.
50:36
SPEAKER_01: It's correlational or it's quasi experiments or things like that.
50:41
SPEAKER_01: But they don't want to do that.
50:43
SPEAKER_01: They want to do their autoethnography.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: They want to do their surveys.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: They want to say evidence is emerging about the use of,
50:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
50:51
SPEAKER_01: poetry as a way of self-reflection for teachers.
50:55
SPEAKER_01: So let's do some poetry self-reflection for teachers.
50:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just doesn't go anywhere.
51:00
SPEAKER_01: It's not particularly useful.
51:02
SPEAKER_01: But they want to protect that space.
51:06
SPEAKER_01: And they think that these word games are the way to do it.
51:09
SPEAKER_01: And they'll just try another one.
51:11
SPEAKER_01: So they tried calling evidence-based practice.
51:14
SPEAKER_01: And I say they.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: I mean...
51:16
SPEAKER_01: In this sense, this one we're talking about is from the AARE community.
51:21
SPEAKER_01: So it is a they.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: And not everyone in that community presumably agrees on everything.
51:26
SPEAKER_01: But you see these things.
51:26
So Nikki Brunker,
51:29
Nicole Brunker,
51:30
sorry,
51:30
I don't know if she's called Nikki,
51:31
Nicole Brunker.
51:32
SPEAKER_01: said that evidence-based was oppressive.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: Now we're saying,
51:37
SPEAKER_01: OK,
51:37
SPEAKER_01: well,
51:37
SPEAKER_01: we can use the term evidence-based,
51:39
but let's redefine evidence so it includes things that aren't
51:42
really very good
51:42
SPEAKER_01: evidence.
51:44
SPEAKER_01: But they're just constantly trying to shift and twist and move to make...
51:48
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think anyone's really that fussed.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm not convinced that the education ministers will be convinced...
51:56
SPEAKER_01: will be persuaded by this argument because it's not really an argument.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: It's more just a complaint.
52:01
SPEAKER_02: It's all the words.
52:03
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: Stop sidelining us.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really all it is.
52:07
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's an interesting juxtaposition with research.
52:11
So you've got all these teachers going to a conference on a
52:14
Saturday of their own
52:15
SPEAKER_01: volition,
52:16
learning practical things and wondering about turn and talk and
52:19
when to use it and
52:20
SPEAKER_01: how to
52:20
SPEAKER_01: you know, release from teacher to student and all this.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: And then you've got people writing sort of vague statements about,
52:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
52:31
SPEAKER_01: reductive binaries and all this kind of academic language that they use.
52:38
SPEAKER_01: It's just,
52:39
SPEAKER_01: for me,
52:39
SPEAKER_01: it was an interesting juxtaposition of the two extremes,
52:43
SPEAKER_01: I suppose,
52:44
SPEAKER_01: of education in Australia right now.
52:49
I think it was Dr.
52:50
Jenny Donovan at ResearchEd,
52:53
and she's the CEO of Aero.
52:56
SPEAKER_00: She spoke about the six big threats to evidence-informed practice,
53:02
SPEAKER_00: where her first one was actually evidence is oppressive,
53:06
SPEAKER_00: being a threat that is.
53:07
SPEAKER_00: She wasn't saying evidence is oppressive.
53:10
SPEAKER_00: But it's a really interesting contrast that sitting in on her session,
53:14
SPEAKER_00: which was powerful,
53:15
SPEAKER_00: and at one point I got chills going –
53:18
This is something that's terrifying that there are these sort
53:23
of attempts to take
53:24
SPEAKER_00: down things when...
53:27
SPEAKER_00: When realistically,
53:28
SPEAKER_00: the whole reason that we use evidence-informed practice in the classroom,
53:32
SPEAKER_00: it's not because I'm saying to you,
53:33
SPEAKER_00: this is going to work 100% of the time or this is a silver bullet,
53:37
but it's because we genuinely care about the quality of
53:41
instruction that we're
53:42
giving to students and making sure that we do the best thing we
53:46
possibly can as a
53:47
SPEAKER_00: school to support the learning of our students and
53:51
And we use whatever evidence we have available that is most
53:55
likely to work for most
53:57
SPEAKER_00: students most of the time.
53:59
SPEAKER_00: That's our goal.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: But what people do,
54:03
SPEAKER_01: and that's really important,
54:04
SPEAKER_01: I like that phrase of yours,
54:06
SPEAKER_01: most likely to work for most students most of the time,
54:08
SPEAKER_01: because people would characterize your position,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: my position,
54:11
SPEAKER_01: as,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: oh,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: we think these outcomes are certain.
54:14
SPEAKER_01: If we just push this button, then these outcomes will definitely happen.
54:18
And that's,
54:19
of course,
54:19
that's a really easy position to criticize because it's not
54:21
true.
54:22
SPEAKER_01: But that's not what we think.
54:23
SPEAKER_01: Because it's not going to work.
54:24
SPEAKER_00: But laws don't work.
54:26
SPEAKER_00: Like I say this,
54:27
SPEAKER_00: we have laws that tell people you're not allowed to,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: you know,
54:32
SPEAKER_00: run around and hurt other people.
54:34
SPEAKER_00: We've got laws and they work for most people most of the time.
54:38
SPEAKER_00: But there's exceptions to those.
54:41
SPEAKER_00: There's always going to be an exception when it comes to humans.
54:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
54:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, exactly.
54:46
SPEAKER_01: And we recognise that.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: But the criticism that we don't,
54:51
SPEAKER_01: that we think things are certain,
54:52
SPEAKER_01: that we don't see the nuance and the complexity,
54:56
SPEAKER_01: it's a straw man argument.
54:57
SPEAKER_01: It's an easier argument to attack than what we're actually saying.
55:01
SPEAKER_00: That's probably the case with a lot of the conversations,
55:04
SPEAKER_00: the places that are trying to do takedowns of evidence-informed practice.
55:09
SPEAKER_00: And again, I would encourage anyone who can to
55:13
SPEAKER_00: read through some of Aero's work on this,
55:15
but any of the takedowns of evidence-informed practice come
55:20
down to things like,
55:22
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
55:22
SPEAKER_00: well,
55:23
SPEAKER_00: we have things that I know Jenny said,
55:25
SPEAKER_00: you know,
55:25
SPEAKER_00: there are things that are more important than learning.
55:27
SPEAKER_00: We're all doing evidence-based stuff.
55:29
SPEAKER_00: There's things that are more engaging.
55:31
SPEAKER_00: There's no problem.
55:32
SPEAKER_00: There's all these takedowns,
55:33
but none of them get to the heart of if you're following this
55:36
line of education or
55:37
SPEAKER_00: if you're trying to use evidence-based
55:39
SPEAKER_00: So you're trying to do what is most likely to succeed.
55:43
SPEAKER_00: It's not about you solving every single problem in the world.
55:48
SPEAKER_00: It's about you coming in and saying,
55:49
I want to be the best teacher that I can and I'm going to use
55:51
the resources and the
55:52
SPEAKER_00: information at my disposal to do that.
55:55
SPEAKER_00: Knowing that education research, no, it's not perfect.
55:58
SPEAKER_00: And when you apply it,
55:59
SPEAKER_00: it's going to be different in a real classroom to,
56:02
SPEAKER_00: I've been contrasting a lot of the videos showing evidence,
56:05
SPEAKER_00: informed practice and how to use great science of learning techniques.
56:09
SPEAKER_00: They're brilliant,
56:10
but they're almost so perfect that I know it's really removed
56:13
from the real
56:13
SPEAKER_00: classroom experience for teachers,
56:16
SPEAKER_00: but it doesn't invalidate those methods.
56:18
SPEAKER_00: It means that we need to make adjustments.
56:20
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
56:21
SPEAKER_01: And just on that,
56:22
SPEAKER_01: just before we finish on that,
56:24
SPEAKER_01: Jenny Donovan actually in that talk referred to my blog post.
56:28
I had a series of five blog posts,
56:29
five arguments against explicit teaching on my sub stack.
56:33
SPEAKER_01: They'd fallen.
56:34
SPEAKER_01: I have like three months.
56:35
SPEAKER_01: After three months, they go behind a paywall.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: They'd fallen behind the paywall.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: So in response to that, I've unpaywalled all of those.
56:42
So if anyone wants to read five arguments against explicit
56:44
teaching posts,
56:46
they can.
56:46
SPEAKER_01: They're available.
56:47
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
56:48
SPEAKER_00: That's a great starting point.
56:49
SPEAKER_00: We'll link them below.
56:55
SPEAKER_00: We'll finish up there.
56:57
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much to everybody for listening.
56:59
As always,
57:00
any resources we've used or anything we've referred to is down
57:02
in the show notes.
57:03
And if you have ideas for future podcasts or things you want us
57:06
to talk about,
57:08
SPEAKER_00: please make sure you drop those to us on any of our socials.