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Episode #15 Obviously · When Will They Learn?

0:00
SPEAKER_02: Welcome to When Will They Learn?
0:02
SPEAKER_02: I'm Greg Ashman.
0:03
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Caiti Wade.
0:04
[music]
0:09
SPEAKER_01: This is a podcast where we explore what's trending in the world of education.
0:13
SPEAKER_01: In each episode,
0:14
SPEAKER_01: we discuss podcasts,
0:16
SPEAKER_01: articles and opinion pieces that are shaping education discourse at the moment
0:20
SPEAKER_01: and examine these through a science of learning lens.
0:22
SPEAKER_01: We discuss not just what's popular, but what's supported by the evidence.
0:26
SPEAKER_02: This week we'll be reflecting on ResearchEd Melbourne,
0:29
SPEAKER_02: we will be talking about a cognitive load theory paper that tackles the issue
0:34
SPEAKER_02: of additional needs, and we will be talking about NAPLAN.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so Katie, how have things been with you?
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good, good.
0:46
SPEAKER_01: Look, we're coming off a four-day weekend up here and I was just saying to you,
0:51
SPEAKER_01: I'm a little bit unwell,
0:52
SPEAKER_01: but I did get to spend the bulk of that four-day weekend down in Cabarita Beach,
0:57
SPEAKER_01: which is like northern New South Wales.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: Have you heard of it?
1:01
SPEAKER_02: No, I haven't.
1:02
SPEAKER_02: Is it near Byron?
1:03
SPEAKER_01: It's like north of Byron.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: All right, okay.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, gorgeous little beach town.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: Spent a couple of days there, really just hanging out on the beach.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Went to the spa in Mullumbimby.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: It was awesome.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: It was a nice couple of days.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: How are you?
1:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, good.
1:19
SPEAKER_02: So I went to, the weekend went to Melbourne University Open Day.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: That's exciting, with the girls?
1:27
SPEAKER_02: Yes, and a couple of their friends.
1:29
SPEAKER_02: And so they had a good look around and it was quite a good day.
1:33
SPEAKER_02: And at the time of recording, I'm about to go to Sydney.
1:35
SPEAKER_02: I'll have been there.
1:36
SPEAKER_02: By the time this comes out,
1:38
SPEAKER_02: to speak at a conference,
1:40
SPEAKER_02: sharing a stage with John Sweller and learning first conference.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: So that should be pretty good.
1:47
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, look, Greg, on that note, let's jump into today's one.
1:52
SPEAKER_01: And I think you're starting us off.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: So last week,
1:57
SPEAKER_02: not last week,
1:57
SPEAKER_02: last episode,
1:59
SPEAKER_02: we talked about the The Jason Arday affair in the UK at Cambridge University,
2:07
SPEAKER_02: the professor who had come, his appointment had come into question.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: There were questions about plagiarism and things like that.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: Very sadly, Jason Arday has passed away.
2:19
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, my thoughts...
2:24
SPEAKER_02: Our thoughts will be with the family, the loved ones of Jason Arday.
2:31
SPEAKER_02: Nothing is important enough to cause someone to suffer such pain.
2:42
SPEAKER_02: I don't know exactly what the reason is for him passing away,
2:47
SPEAKER_02: but obviously it comes at a very Difficult time for Jason Arde.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: There is a lot of commentary now.
2:57
SPEAKER_02: Some people are saying that basically the newspapers who wrote about him,
3:01
SPEAKER_02: the newspaper report,
3:01
SPEAKER_02: for instance,
3:02
SPEAKER_02: that we talked about last time,
3:03
SPEAKER_02: shouldn't have done so because the This is the result.
3:08
SPEAKER_02: I think there was certainly,
3:09
SPEAKER_02: I think I mentioned it before,
3:12
SPEAKER_02: when I composed the tweet,
3:17
SPEAKER_02: sharing an article by Stephen Vanker about There was quite a lot
3:26
SPEAKER_02: of nastiness online,
3:28
SPEAKER_02: and I do believe that some of that was motivated at racism towards Jason Arday.
3:34
SPEAKER_02: I do think that was a motivator.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: I don't think that that's what newspapers like the Guardian were doing or
3:40
SPEAKER_02: the New York Times in writing about this issue.
3:42
SPEAKER_02: I do think this was a public interest issue.
3:45
SPEAKER_02: I do think that the appointment of Cambridge professors I don't think that writing
3:52
SPEAKER_02: about it and Cambridge's role in it particularly and the role
3:55
SPEAKER_02: of other universities was illegitimate and I think it was a reasonable thing
3:58
SPEAKER_02: for journalists to do.
4:14
SPEAKER_01: Definitely.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: I think at this point too,
4:16
SPEAKER_01: it's also just the fact that, I mean,
4:18
SPEAKER_01: this has happened and we spoke last time about the fact that
4:22
SPEAKER_01: the universities definitely played a role in this even getting to the point
4:26
SPEAKER_01: that it got to in the first place.
4:28
SPEAKER_01: I think we're now at a place where something really tragic has happened
4:33
SPEAKER_01: and we have lost a person because of this really tragic set of circumstances.
4:38
SPEAKER_01: And I just think any commentary that takes place Particularly from here onward,
4:43
SPEAKER_01: just needs to bear that in mind and show that level of respect and empathy for all
4:50
SPEAKER_01: of the people who were in his life who have been touched by him and who are going
4:56
SPEAKER_01: through a really awful grieving process.
5:00
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
5:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think we also need to bear in mind that, I mean, we don't know the cause of Ade's death.
5:07
SPEAKER_02: I think people are speculating that it might have been as a result of his own actions.
5:15
SPEAKER_02: But that's speculation.
5:16
SPEAKER_02: We don't know.
5:17
SPEAKER_02: But if it was a result of his own actions,
5:19
SPEAKER_02: there are guidelines around reporting that, that are there for very good reason.
5:24
SPEAKER_02: And they will emphasize, for instance, not attributing such actions to one single cause.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: And we need to be very careful about that.
5:36
SPEAKER_02: And so tragic, this is very sad.
5:42
SPEAKER_02: And as you rightly note, Caiti, it'll be a very difficult time for his friends and family.
5:47
SPEAKER_02: I believe he was a father.
5:49
SPEAKER_02: So I can't imagine what that must be like.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: It must be just a dreadful situation for them.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: But yes, I think probably we need to...
6:00
SPEAKER_02: We need to reflect on it.
6:02
SPEAKER_02: We need to reflect on our roles in reporting on it, but avoid any further speculation.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so the other thing that has happened recently, well, so we've got a few things coming up.
6:17
SPEAKER_02: We've got ResearchEd Canberra coming up and we've got this Learning First conference
6:22
SPEAKER_02: and this and that, but we had ResearchEd Canberra
6:27
SPEAKER_02: Melbourne, which happened the day, I think it was the day after our last podcast was released.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: And we managed to catch up there and have a bit of a chat in person for once
6:39
SPEAKER_02: and have a good time.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: What did you think of the day, Caiti?
6:45
SPEAKER_01: I enjoy research ed.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: It's by far one of my favorite education conferences.
6:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's just for, I mean,
6:51
SPEAKER_01: like it's for so many reasons,
6:52
SPEAKER_01: but the main one is the fact that there is a real buzz and energy
6:57
SPEAKER_01: at any research ed.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: When you get there, it's like everybody's excited and people want to be there.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
7:04
SPEAKER_01: I think,
7:05
SPEAKER_01: you know,
7:05
SPEAKER_01: part of that is the structure of holding it on a Saturday so that teachers can go
7:09
SPEAKER_01: and it's not just another work day.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: Like you're getting people who Genuinely want to be there and want to be involved.
7:16
SPEAKER_01: But there are also just the level of care that everybody in the room has
7:21
SPEAKER_01: for their students and wanting to be the best educator that they can.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: It's just something that you don't necessarily find at other types of PD.
7:32
SPEAKER_01: And then you obviously add to that the fact that, I mean,
7:36
SPEAKER_01: I've got the program in front of me with the With,
7:42
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, the schedule of different sessions.
7:45
SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
7:45
SPEAKER_01: just going through that,
7:47
SPEAKER_01: my notes,
7:48
SPEAKER_01: and I've already started this research at Canberra,
7:51
SPEAKER_01: I just have like highlight everywhere.
7:53
SPEAKER_01: Here's someone I want to see.
7:54
SPEAKER_01: Oh, no, but how do I pick between this person?
7:57
SPEAKER_01: And it's just this level of like, you just want to be there and you want to be involved.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: And everybody who's, yeah,
8:04
SPEAKER_01: whether it's the people who are sort of going and just generally involved in
8:08
SPEAKER_01: the conversations, you know, through lunch in the morning.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: Or whether it's the people who are getting up and actually sharing their expertise.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: Like, you just have this amazing,
8:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it's really just, it's a lot of knowledge all in one area at one time.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: It's just, like, it's, it is an awesome event.
8:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look, I'm, obviously I have a role in, well, it's not obvious.
8:33
SPEAKER_02: I've developed this new tip,
8:35
SPEAKER_02: Katie, of saying obviously before I say something that isn't obvious.
8:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
8:40
SPEAKER_02: People might know or might not know that I have a kind of coordinating role
8:44
SPEAKER_02: for Research Ed Australia.
8:45
SPEAKER_02: So I didn't organise this particular event.
8:48
SPEAKER_02: That was the team at Halebury.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: But I was involved in the sense that I looked at the speakers and made sure
8:55
SPEAKER_02: that it was sort of meeting what our Research Ed aims are.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: And that obviously, again, I've said it obviously.
9:04
SPEAKER_02: Again, I've done it.
9:05
SPEAKER_02: It's a tick.
9:06
SPEAKER_02: You need to have an obviously count in this.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:10
SPEAKER_01: How many times does Greg say obviously?
9:13
SPEAKER_02: So Tom Bennett holds this, like he's the keeper of research, Ed.
9:18
SPEAKER_02: He's the one that originated it.
9:19
SPEAKER_02: He's got a company in the UK.
9:22
SPEAKER_02: He oversees all of it, but he outsources some of that to my oversight in Australia.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: So I'm sort of in loco Tom Bennett.
9:33
SPEAKER_02: And so I have to make sure that the The sessions meet the aims.
9:39
SPEAKER_02: So essentially research ed for anyone who's never been.
9:42
SPEAKER_02: It's teachers talking about how they've tried to apply research in the classroom
9:47
SPEAKER_02: and it's researchers talking about their research.
9:49
SPEAKER_02: And it can be a little bit loose, but it's usually something empirical.
9:53
SPEAKER_02: It's not auto-ethnography or things like that usually that we go in for.
9:59
SPEAKER_02: I thought it was a good day.
10:01
SPEAKER_02: It was an interesting venue.
10:03
SPEAKER_02: It's Hayleybury City Campus, which is
10:07
SPEAKER_02: You did a presentation on the ninth floor,
10:09
SPEAKER_02: which I was there for, which I thought was really good.
10:11
SPEAKER_02: Caiti, by the way,
10:12
SPEAKER_02: I didn't see that when you presented that at Research Ed Ballarat
10:15
SPEAKER_02: because I had hosting duties and had to flit around all over the place.
10:19
SPEAKER_02: So it was really nice to just sit back and listen to your talk.
10:22
SPEAKER_02: And I realized that quite a lot of what you say in your talk,
10:26
SPEAKER_02: because your talk is essentially about school improvement.
10:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that would be unfortunate.
10:51
SPEAKER_02: So I quite like the fact that Brad Rosewell was there.
10:54
SPEAKER_02: So Brad Rosewell,
10:56
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if I'm saying that right,
10:57
SPEAKER_02: he's Victoria's state opposition education spokesman.
11:01
SPEAKER_02: And I think we would have had the state education spokesman,
11:06
SPEAKER_02: the government spokesman there,
11:07
SPEAKER_02: only for the fact that until very recently that was Ben Carroll.
11:11
SPEAKER_02: Ben Carroll is now the state premier, like the prime minister of the state.
11:15
SPEAKER_02: And there's a brand new education spokesman.
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Minister, Gabrielle something.
11:26
SPEAKER_02: I can't remember what the surname is.
11:28
SPEAKER_02: So she's brand new in post.
11:29
SPEAKER_02: So you couldn't really have expected her to represent at Research Ed.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: But I think both of them would have been there.
11:35
SPEAKER_02: And Brad Rosewell was really strong.
11:37
SPEAKER_02: He knows about explicit teaching.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: He knows about phonics.
11:40
SPEAKER_02: He knows about quite a lot of things
11:42
SPEAKER_02: that you wouldn't necessarily expect journeymen politicians to know about
11:46
SPEAKER_02: if they're just passing through I had some of my favourite quotes from the day,
11:50
SPEAKER_02: like I've got here,
11:51
SPEAKER_02: him saying, my issue with explicit teaching is that we didn't implement it earlier.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Like he said that and I was immediately scribbling it down because what
12:17
SPEAKER_01: an awesome thing to just even be aware of.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the fact that he's aware of that is really handy.
12:26
SPEAKER_02: And Ben Carroll,
12:28
SPEAKER_02: who is now the premier, he was,
12:31
SPEAKER_02: as education minister,
12:32
SPEAKER_02: one of the most knowledgeable education ministers I think we've had.
12:36
SPEAKER_02: So maybe things are looking up for education in Victoria, whichever way the voters go.
12:42
SPEAKER_02: Well, I suppose they could vote in One Nation, couldn't they?
12:45
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea what they think about education.
12:48
SPEAKER_02: But anyway,
12:49
SPEAKER_02: if it's one of the main parties,
12:51
SPEAKER_02: the person in charge of the education portfolio will be a knowledgeable person.
12:56
SPEAKER_02: So that's good.
12:59
SPEAKER_02: A highlight for me as well was a guy called Matt Hood.
13:05
SPEAKER_02: I think I was WhatsAppping you at one point and said, oh, you'd really be interested in this.
13:10
SPEAKER_02: But you were in a different talk.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: I was in seeing Rebecca Birch and Ben Petty,
13:15
SPEAKER_01: who were also awesome, but I want to hear about this one.
13:19
SPEAKER_02: Oh, so Matt Hood, he's this guy.
13:23
SPEAKER_02: So his husband is the children's minister in the Labour British government or something.
13:30
SPEAKER_02: But he is, he's done like everything.
13:33
SPEAKER_02: He's run,
13:35
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, well,
13:35
SPEAKER_02: he doesn't run a multi-academy trust at the moment,
13:38
SPEAKER_02: but he's been very involved in a multi-academy trust.
13:40
SPEAKER_02: So this is This mechanism in England where government schools,
13:45
SPEAKER_02: they're no longer run directly by the government, a lot of them.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: They form these things called free schools and academies
13:51
SPEAKER_02: and they run their own affairs, but then they band together in trusts.
13:55
SPEAKER_02: So most of these academies and free schools, they are part of a chain of schools.
14:02
SPEAKER_02: And Hood's point is that we've tried for a very long time to get schools
14:07
SPEAKER_02: to collaborate, but there was no accountability structure around that.
14:12
SPEAKER_02: So you'd bring the local school.
14:13
SPEAKER_02: So traditionally in the UK,
14:16
SPEAKER_02: schools were run by the local council, something called the local authority.
14:20
SPEAKER_02: And you could bring these schools together and you could train them
14:22
SPEAKER_02: and you could ask them to do stuff.
14:23
SPEAKER_02: But essentially, you just ask them to do stuff.
14:25
SPEAKER_02: And off they'd go and do whatever.
14:27
SPEAKER_02: They'd do bits of it that they agreed with.
14:29
SPEAKER_02: They wouldn't do bits they didn't agree with.
14:30
SPEAKER_02: And it didn't really work.
14:32
SPEAKER_02: What you've now got is these chains of schools,
14:35
SPEAKER_02: these multi-academy trusts, with a CEO running the whole show.
14:40
SPEAKER_02: And if one of the principals says, well,
14:41
SPEAKER_02: actually,
14:42
SPEAKER_02: I'm not going to teach phonics,
14:43
SPEAKER_02: they're held accountable by the The CEO that's running the whole thing.
14:48
SPEAKER_02: And so Hood's point is that this makes a much better structure
14:52
SPEAKER_02: for administering government-funded education.
14:57
SPEAKER_02: And it's a little bit unique to the English system.
15:03
SPEAKER_02: But what's happened is,
15:05
SPEAKER_02: through the advocacy of people like Jordana Hunt,
15:07
SPEAKER_02: who used to be at the Grattan Institute,
15:09
SPEAKER_02: but is now at the McKinnon,
15:12
SPEAKER_02: I think they're called,
15:14
SPEAKER_02: They've got what they're calling a multi-school organization going in Tasmania,
15:19
SPEAKER_02: which is basically modeled on this plan.
15:21
SPEAKER_02: So a lot of what they were talking about was that.
15:23
SPEAKER_02: But this is not all Matt Hood is.
15:25
SPEAKER_02: He's not just a guy who has been involved in a chain of schools.
15:30
SPEAKER_02: He set up the Ambition Institute.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: So he was running Teach First, which is the UK equivalent of Teach Australia.
15:39
SPEAKER_02: And he couldn't get the universities to deliver the training to his participants.
15:46
SPEAKER_02: So Teach First, for those that don't know, it trains teachers, essentially.
15:54
SPEAKER_02: But it tries to attract teachers who come from quite prestigious degree courses
16:01
SPEAKER_02: and things like that.
16:02
SPEAKER_02: And then it tries to put them in disadvantaged schools.
16:06
SPEAKER_02: So that's what it's trying to do.
16:09
SPEAKER_02: Quite privileged kids who've got really good degrees behind them and train them up
16:14
SPEAKER_02: and put them in disadvantaged schools.
16:16
SPEAKER_02: And he was running Teach First,
16:18
SPEAKER_02: or maybe he wasn't running it,
16:19
SPEAKER_02: but he had some role in Teach First that essentially meant that he had to contract
16:26
SPEAKER_02: the training of these trainee teachers to universities.
16:30
SPEAKER_02: But none of the universities would do what he wanted.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: So what does he do?
16:33
SPEAKER_02: He sets up his own.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: He creates the Ambition Institute.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: And the Ambition Institute becomes registered to deliver this training.
16:39
SPEAKER_02: And the Ambition Institute does all sorts of things now.
16:42
SPEAKER_02: It doesn't just train...
16:44
SPEAKER_02: Trainee teachers,
16:45
SPEAKER_02: you know,
16:45
SPEAKER_02: initial teacher training,
16:47
SPEAKER_02: it has all these accreditations that you can get whatever point
16:52
SPEAKER_02: in your career you are in.
16:53
SPEAKER_02: So if you're an early career teacher, you can do a course with the Ambition Institute.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: If you're a middle leader, you can do a course with the Ambition Institute.
17:01
SPEAKER_02: And he was quite funny because he said,
17:03
SPEAKER_02: essentially,
17:04
SPEAKER_02: at all these levels, what they did was they just taught them all the same things.
17:08
SPEAKER_02: They taught them about cognitive science,
17:10
SPEAKER_02: cognitive load theory, retrieval practice, all that sort of stuff.
17:13
SPEAKER_02: And now he's getting to the point where people that did like
17:15
SPEAKER_02: the early careers one are doing the middle leaders one and they're going,
17:19
SPEAKER_02: oh, but this is just the same as what we.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: So they're now having to think about how they can structure things a little bit more.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: But basically it was a way of getting these ideas out into
17:29
SPEAKER_02: the whole system really quickly because you can reform teacher education,
17:34
SPEAKER_02: but that's a slow burner.
17:35
SPEAKER_02: That'll take a while.
17:37
SPEAKER_02: To get its way through to every teacher in every school.
17:41
SPEAKER_02: So they created these courses,
17:43
SPEAKER_02: teachers did these courses,
17:44
SPEAKER_02: and quickly,
17:45
SPEAKER_02: they've got loads of people in every school that know about cognitive science.
17:48
SPEAKER_02: But he didn't just do that.
17:51
SPEAKER_02: He also started Oak National Academy in the pandemic,
17:56
SPEAKER_02: which for Australian teachers, it's basically ochre, but it's the origins of ochre.
18:01
SPEAKER_02: So as I understand it, Reid and...
18:06
SPEAKER_02: Someone else, old mate, who set up... Carolyn.
18:10
SPEAKER_02: Carolyn.
18:11
SPEAKER_02: So who set up OCA, based it on the Oak National Academy to some extent.
18:17
SPEAKER_02: But the Oak National Academy now, although Matt Hood set it up, it's been nationalised.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: It's now owned by the government in the UK.
18:25
SPEAKER_02: So Hood is this really interesting character who's been a driving force behind much
18:31
SPEAKER_02: of the education reform in the UK over the past 15 years or so.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: And all from a social justice point of view,
18:39
SPEAKER_02: all from trying to give better opportunities to disadvantaged kids.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: So it's fascinating to listen to him.
18:44
SPEAKER_02: So the first talk was about these multi-school organisations, and it was with Jordana Hunt.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: And then he was giving another talk later on with one of the principals
18:54
SPEAKER_02: from his academy chain that he'd brought over from the UK.
18:58
SPEAKER_02: So after seeing the first one, I thought, well, I'll go and see the second one.
19:02
SPEAKER_02: So I had a double dose of Of Matthew Hood.
19:05
SPEAKER_02: And of course, as I always do, I ask questions at the end because it'd be rude not to.
19:10
SPEAKER_02: So I ask questions at the end of both those talks.
19:12
SPEAKER_02: So I rambled on a bit about Matt Hood,
19:14
SPEAKER_02: but I was very, very impressed by Hoodie, we're going to call him.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: Hoodie.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
19:20
SPEAKER_02: Has he approached his nickname?
19:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: This is his new Aussie one.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Got it.
19:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
19:28
SPEAKER_02: So what was your highlight?
19:29
SPEAKER_02: If Hoodie was my highlight, what was your highlight?
19:33
SPEAKER_01: So I went between two.
19:35
SPEAKER_01: So I, I mean, I shouldn't say that actually, because I liked everyone I saw.
19:39
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Anna Stocke.
19:41
SPEAKER_02: Goes without saying, Katie, goes without saying.
19:43
SPEAKER_02: They were all marvellous.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: Goes without saying.
19:46
SPEAKER_02: But the two most marvellous were.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Oh, goodness.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:50
SPEAKER_01: So Anna Stocke doing the keynote and I wanted to, I want to retell like a bit of what she said.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: So Anna Stocke.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: She's already got an Australian nickname.
20:02
SPEAKER_01: What's her Australian nickname?
20:04
SPEAKER_01: Stockinator.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: Just Stocky.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: I've created a terrible one.
20:10
SPEAKER_01: Um, so Anna Stocky,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: she runs the absolutely incredible, um,
20:16
SPEAKER_01: Chalk and Talk podcast, um, Anna,
20:20
SPEAKER_01: she started her keynote by telling this story of it was 1800s,
20:25
SPEAKER_01: it's your sailors on a ship and they keep dying of scurvy.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course,
20:29
SPEAKER_01: we know now that our treatment for scurvy is you just need citrus,
20:34
SPEAKER_01: you need vitamin C. That's right, isn't it?
20:36
SPEAKER_01: Vitamin C?
20:36
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: I say we know that.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that, clearly.
20:40
SPEAKER_02: It's obvious, Caiti.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: It's so obvious.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: So she tells this story about these sailors and some of them,
20:49
SPEAKER_01: they ate citrus and obviously they ended up feeling better as a result.
20:53
SPEAKER_01: And this wasn't like a proper like randomized control trial experiment.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: This was just...
20:58
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we've noticed that if we eat this, we feel better.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: And there's a bit of a correlation there.
21:04
SPEAKER_01: And that in itself should have been enough for people to go, cool, great.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: So clearly there's something in there,
21:10
SPEAKER_01: even if we don't know what it is, that says citrus is good for scurvy.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: But what happened instead is our...
21:19
SPEAKER_01: Our celebrity, Captain James Cook, came in and he was like, hey, but I've got this wild idea.
21:25
SPEAKER_01: You should drink and it was maltwort.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't know what maltwort is, Greg.
21:30
SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
21:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's like beer without the alcohol.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: That sounds terrible.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: You've taken all of the worst parts of beer and gotten rid of the best parts.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: This is awful.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: So he was like, look, he's like, I think you should drink malt water.
21:46
SPEAKER_01: And it basically was, I mean,
21:47
SPEAKER_01: it was essentially some big,
21:48
SPEAKER_01: like a celebrity style endorsement of something that didn't work.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: And just like what happens with research and education,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: what happened is we had a couple of popular voices,
22:00
SPEAKER_01: in this case Captain James Cook,
22:02
SPEAKER_01: coming in going, here's a method that's really great.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And even though it might not align with the evidence, it's kind of like dodgy or as...
22:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't even know what I want to call it as incidental as that research might have been.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: The research that actually had shown a really clear correlation here,
22:19
SPEAKER_01: what happened is,
22:20
SPEAKER_01: of course,
22:20
SPEAKER_01: we were like, yeah, cool,
22:22
SPEAKER_01: let's follow the influencer and use the thing that doesn't work and just hope that,
22:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:28
SPEAKER_01: I guess you've hoped that you're having enough citrus as a side dish
22:32
SPEAKER_01: to your non-alcoholic beer that you can cure yourself.
22:38
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because it was like,
22:40
SPEAKER_02: As I remember it,
22:41
SPEAKER_02: there was like some sailor dude or like a surgeon or something on a boat
22:47
SPEAKER_02: and tried different things out, like different pairs of sailors.
22:51
SPEAKER_02: Like one pair got the citrus, another pair got like something else.
22:55
SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: Anchovies or whatever.
22:58
SPEAKER_02: They just tried out different things.
23:00
SPEAKER_02: And the ones with the citrus.
23:01
SPEAKER_02: Am I remembering that right?
23:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
23:04
SPEAKER_02: It's like a proper controlled trial.
23:06
SPEAKER_02: Not a really good one, but then people just rejected that because Cook said, no, malt water.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, which was really just this case for saying that,
23:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:16
SPEAKER_01: in education we have the innovation cycle where we constantly, like,
23:20
SPEAKER_01: we have someone who gets out there and they mention this new initiative
23:23
SPEAKER_01: and they give it this beautiful, shiny name and they promote it.
23:27
SPEAKER_01: And then we sort of start to follow that.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: But what ends up happening from that,
23:31
SPEAKER_01: and I think she made a really great point,
23:33
SPEAKER_01: is that – What happens is we sort of don't stick with something long enough anyway
23:38
SPEAKER_01: for it to really make a difference.
23:40
SPEAKER_01: And so regardless of whether or not,
23:42
SPEAKER_01: you know,
23:42
SPEAKER_01: this new innovation that's come out or our equivalent of the malt war,
23:46
SPEAKER_01: whether or not that's good,
23:49
SPEAKER_01: you kind of get this problem where you don't really give it time
23:50
SPEAKER_01: or they're constantly just moving between new things and having
23:53
SPEAKER_01: to learn new systems.
23:55
SPEAKER_01: Which, of course,
23:56
SPEAKER_01: is then going to build into that idea of resistance when it comes
24:00
SPEAKER_01: to teachers being told that they need to implement new things.
24:05
SPEAKER_01: It's going to erode trust that you've got with leadership.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: And it was just a really great point here that it's like, I mean,
24:15
SPEAKER_01: the research that we've got in education is Not all research can be generalised.
24:22
SPEAKER_01: I think it's a really huge one.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of – sort of I went back to a comment that I see all the time
24:29
SPEAKER_01: where people go,
24:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
24:31
SPEAKER_01: when doctors come to treating people,
24:33
SPEAKER_01: they will – Happily just go with,
24:35
SPEAKER_01: there's this one case where I know that this worked and it was this weird edge case
24:39
SPEAKER_01: and we're going to try this.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: And it's like, whilst that might be true, that's actually not the bulk of the evidence.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: And something that works for an individual won't necessarily work for a population.
24:49
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, generally the point was around this.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: It's about looking into research,
24:54
SPEAKER_01: making sure that research is something that can be generalized,
24:57
SPEAKER_01: that it's not purely...
24:59
SPEAKER_01: It's anecdotal.
25:01
SPEAKER_01: It's not a sales pitch.
25:03
SPEAKER_02: I don't want to use the phrase snake oil.
25:05
SPEAKER_02: The point Anna I think made was that so Cook goes,
25:10
SPEAKER_02: he sails around the world famously And they all drink malt water,
25:15
SPEAKER_02: the beer without the alcohol, and none of them get scurvy.
25:19
SPEAKER_02: But they probably had a pretty good supply of fruit because of the root
25:23
SPEAKER_02: that they took and where they stopped and things like that.
25:25
SPEAKER_02: So it was just a correlation that they were drinking the malt water and not getting the scurvy.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: Whereas the other guy, the dude, had actually done a trial to check out which was which.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: So no, that was a huge one.
25:37
SPEAKER_01: And then, I mean, I've got to do my classic shout out.
25:40
SPEAKER_01: Rebecca Birch and Ben Petty were great as always.
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Nathaniel Swain was great as always.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: But I wanted to briefly mention,
25:46
SPEAKER_01: I saw Dr. Hailey Hughes speak about, were you in that session as well?
25:51
SPEAKER_02: I was, I was.
25:53
SPEAKER_02: Nature called, so I didn't make it right to the end, but I was in most of it.
25:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so look,
25:58
SPEAKER_01: so I wanted to do just, I mean,
26:00
SPEAKER_01: really just a brief shout out to that one as well,
26:03
SPEAKER_01: which was on, that was lethal mutations of cognitive science and how to avoid them.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: And again,
26:09
SPEAKER_01: that just got into the, I mean,
26:11
SPEAKER_01: I think, look,
26:11
SPEAKER_01: my biggest takeaway from that,
26:13
SPEAKER_01: keeping in mind,
26:13
SPEAKER_01: I don't have my notes because they're on my desk that I've not got access
26:17
SPEAKER_01: to right now.
26:18
SPEAKER_01: But my biggest takeaway was this idea of,
26:20
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:21
SPEAKER_01: principle versus practice and that A lot of the time,
26:24
SPEAKER_01: you know,
26:24
SPEAKER_01: lethal mutations,
26:25
SPEAKER_01: they happen because we have really great research that people read and then we go
26:30
SPEAKER_01: and we take that research and we try to summarize it in a way
26:33
SPEAKER_01: that people can digest.
26:35
SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes,
26:36
SPEAKER_01: and I think I was reflecting on this going,
26:38
SPEAKER_01: I feel that I must be so guilty of causing so many terrible lethal mutations
26:42
SPEAKER_01: because particularly when I started doing presentations,
26:46
SPEAKER_01: my focus was on the practice and What techniques or what strategies can you use?
26:51
SPEAKER_01: But without having an understanding of the research behind them,
26:54
SPEAKER_01: I think, I mean,
26:55
SPEAKER_01: what I've started to say is it makes it hard if you do then pair that
26:58
SPEAKER_01: with your professional expertise and your professional judgments in the moment.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: And it makes it harder to know when to use a technique.
27:05
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
27:06
SPEAKER_01: if you don't know when,
27:07
SPEAKER_01: what happens is we're sort of just throwing out things saying,
27:09
SPEAKER_01: well, mini whiteboards are good.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: Mini whiteboards are good if you use them properly.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: They're absolutely terrible if you don't.
27:17
SPEAKER_01: And I think That was just my main takeaway.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: It was just this idea of separating out your principle and the underlying research
27:24
SPEAKER_01: with the practice that it informs.
27:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we don't want to cargo cult things.
27:30
SPEAKER_02: You're familiar with the concept of the cargo cult, the Feynman idea, Caiti?
27:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, as weird as it is, I am.
27:38
SPEAKER_02: So this is,
27:41
SPEAKER_02: these are these guys in the South Pacific who,
27:45
SPEAKER_02: during the Second World War,
27:46
SPEAKER_02: the Americans needed their islands as bases and they came and they gave
27:52
SPEAKER_02: the locals lots of goodies, lots of food and things like that.
27:56
SPEAKER_02: And then after the war,
27:56
SPEAKER_02: the Americans had no need of these bases on these islands and they went away.
28:01
SPEAKER_02: And the locals built like runways and Control towers out of bamboo
28:07
SPEAKER_02: and things like this,
28:08
SPEAKER_02: because they thought if they built those,
28:10
SPEAKER_02: the planes would come back, and they were called cargo cults.
28:15
SPEAKER_02: And the idea is that sometimes we cargo cult things,
28:18
SPEAKER_02: so we use mini whiteboards and whatever we do,
28:22
SPEAKER_02: and it sort of looks like the effective practice, but the...
28:28
SPEAKER_02: The understandings that underpin it are not there.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: And so it's just a show and it's not the real, it's not going to deliver the real effects.
28:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's really, it's that classic.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: You'll just, I mean,
28:40
SPEAKER_01: you're really just copying what you're seeing someone do in hopes that you're going
28:44
SPEAKER_01: to get the same outcome.
28:45
SPEAKER_01: When there's often,
28:47
SPEAKER_01: I think there's, I mean, there's a lot more decision making that goes into it.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: And I've just,
28:52
SPEAKER_01: I've just started to sort of map out even some of the things
28:55
SPEAKER_01: that I think they were both saying it wrong.
29:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because it's spelled H-A-I-L-I.
29:28
SPEAKER_02: I assume that was Hayley, but it's Hailey, which, yeah, I've not come across that one before.
29:35
SPEAKER_02: But, yes, worth seeing, Hailey Hughes.
29:38
SPEAKER_02: Even for the bit that I saw, it was – and Hailey is now – And
29:41
SPEAKER_01: a great presenter.
29:43
SPEAKER_02: Yes, and she's at La Trobe University.
29:46
SPEAKER_02: Which is really exciting.
29:47
SPEAKER_02: And a stock's at La Trobe University as well, like as a visiting thing.
29:52
SPEAKER_02: And I am – What am I again?
29:54
SPEAKER_02: Can't remember.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: Adjunct something or other at La Trobe University.
29:59
SPEAKER_02: So it is, yeah, adjunct.
30:01
SPEAKER_02: So the gang's all converging on La Trobe University.
30:06
SPEAKER_02: So let's hope that all works out.
30:12
SPEAKER_01: I'm excited about this paper.
30:14
SPEAKER_01: This was a good read.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
30:16
SPEAKER_02: So this is Applying Cognitive Load Theory to Special Education,
30:20
SPEAKER_02: a Reconceptualization Through Evolutionary Psychology by Keane Poon
30:25
SPEAKER_02: and John Sweller, the big boss.
30:28
SPEAKER_02: So this was an interesting paper.
30:30
SPEAKER_02: Yes, it's certainly something that has kind of occurred to me a little bit before,
30:38
SPEAKER_02: the theme of this paper.
30:39
SPEAKER_02: But to see or work through was quite...
30:43
SPEAKER_02: Interesting, quite fascinating even.
30:45
SPEAKER_02: So just to back up a little bit,
30:48
SPEAKER_02: when I talk about cognitive load theory,
30:50
SPEAKER_02: I always start by saying what it applies to.
30:54
SPEAKER_02: So one of the key things is if you haven't got a learning objective,
30:57
SPEAKER_02: there's no point making use of cognitive load theory because you have
31:00
SPEAKER_02: to know what it is you want the students to learn.
31:02
SPEAKER_02: Now that might sound obvious,
31:05
SPEAKER_02: but there is a lot of activity-based planning that goes on in schools that Assumes
31:10
SPEAKER_02: that if kids are doing something with maths, they will somehow get better at maths.
31:14
SPEAKER_02: And it's not really clear exactly what we're trying to do
31:17
SPEAKER_02: and exactly what objectives are trying to meet.
31:20
SPEAKER_02: So that's the first prerequisite for applying cognitive load theory.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: You have to know what you want the students to learn.
31:25
SPEAKER_02: But the second is that there's these two kinds of knowledge, essentially.
31:30
SPEAKER_02: David C. Geary, 1995 paper, quite a famous one.
31:34
SPEAKER_02: John Swellers adopted it and brought it in.
31:37
SPEAKER_02: It's foundational to cognitive load theory.
31:39
SPEAKER_02: And in this paper,
31:40
SPEAKER_02: Geary draws a distinction between biologically primary knowledge,
31:44
SPEAKER_02: a bit of a ton of twist to that, biologically secondary knowledge.
31:48
SPEAKER_02: Biologically primary knowledge is stuff we've evolved to learn.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: So that's to learn the faces of people we know,
31:55
SPEAKER_02: to recognise faces,
31:57
SPEAKER_02: to learn your local language, to be able to sort of map your local area.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: Say no one.
32:05
SPEAKER_02: That's wrong.
32:06
SPEAKER_02: We will park that.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: But people don't generally need to be taught those things explicitly.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: It's because we've been doing these things over such a long time.
32:14
SPEAKER_02: So hundreds of thousands, possibly even millions of years.
32:17
SPEAKER_02: We believe that Neanderthals,
32:19
SPEAKER_02: there's some evidence that Neanderthals had some form of oral language.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: So that means that the common ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals probably did.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: And so that pushes that back.
32:30
SPEAKER_02: Hundreds of thousands, millions of years.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: These are timescales along which evolution can have acted.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: For most people,
32:36
SPEAKER_02: we don't need to be sat down in a classroom and told how to position our tongue
32:42
SPEAKER_02: to make the sound.
32:44
SPEAKER_02: We sort of pick it up because evolution has primed us to do that and
32:49
SPEAKER_02: with all these other biologically priming knowledge.
32:52
SPEAKER_02: And it's knowledge because we're learning new things.
32:56
SPEAKER_02: Not every local area has the same map.
32:58
SPEAKER_02: Not every face looks the same.
33:00
SPEAKER_02: Not every local language sounds the same.
33:01
SPEAKER_02: So we're primed to learn something.
33:04
SPEAKER_02: We're not just born speaking our local language.
33:07
SPEAKER_02: We're primed to learn something, but that learning happens in a very different way.
33:11
SPEAKER_02: Biologically, secondary knowledge is very different to that.
33:16
SPEAKER_02: It sits atop it, so it sits on top of it.
33:19
SPEAKER_02: It's not a completely different category,
33:23
SPEAKER_02: but it depends on cultural inventions that are quite recent.
33:28
SPEAKER_02: So writing is only about 5,000 years old.
33:32
SPEAKER_02: Even if the ability to read and write made you a more attractive Partner,
33:37
SPEAKER_02: mate, or made your children more likely to survive.
33:40
SPEAKER_02: And it's not obvious why any of those things would be true.
33:42
SPEAKER_02: Even if that was the case,
33:43
SPEAKER_02: 5,000 years is just not long enough to evolve ways to just sort of pick up reading
33:51
SPEAKER_02: and writing,
33:51
SPEAKER_02: which is why the whole language idea of just sort of surrounding kids with books
33:55
SPEAKER_02: and reading to them and they'll learn to read and write is flawed
33:58
SPEAKER_02: because you actually do, in contrast to...
34:03
SPEAKER_02: Making this sound,
34:04
SPEAKER_02: you do need to actually sit kids down,
34:07
SPEAKER_02: not necessarily sit them down,
34:09
SPEAKER_02: but you need to show them explicitly how to write the letter S.
34:14
SPEAKER_02: Now, cognitive load theory applies to that second category.
34:20
SPEAKER_02: So when I will talk about cognitive load theory, I say you need an objective.
34:23
SPEAKER_02: But it's only relevant when you're teaching biologically secondary knowledge.
34:29
SPEAKER_02: Biologically primary knowledge, it doesn't matter.
34:31
SPEAKER_02: Limits of working memory somehow don't seem to apply.
34:35
SPEAKER_02: We just sort of pick it up.
34:37
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of where we are before this paper.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: This paper says, yes,
34:43
SPEAKER_02: but there are some individuals
34:46
SPEAKER_02: who don't necessarily pick up biologically primary knowledge.
34:52
SPEAKER_02: And there are some individuals who have conditions that make it really hard for them
34:56
SPEAKER_02: to pick up biologically secondary knowledge.
34:59
SPEAKER_02: And we think that cognitive load theory has something to offer in these situations.
35:05
SPEAKER_02: So the examples are given.
35:06
SPEAKER_02: So autism and social cues and social behavior.
35:11
SPEAKER_02: That's one of the examples that's given.
35:15
SPEAKER_02: So just flip into that bit.
35:17
SPEAKER_02: Autistic spectrum disorder.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Interpretation of social cues, reciprocal social interaction and things like that.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: People with Autistic Spectrum Disorder don't seem
35:27
SPEAKER_02: to always naturally pick those things up in the way that neurotypical people do.
35:32
SPEAKER_02: Now, if you want to therefore teach those things,
35:36
SPEAKER_02: and there's a question here because a lot of people see autism as human variation
35:41
SPEAKER_02: and would talk about what I'm about to say as a deficit model.
35:46
SPEAKER_02: But perhaps some people with autistic spectrum disorder do want to learn about
35:50
SPEAKER_02: the social cues and learn how to use social cues.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: Well, for them, that operates like biologically secondary knowledge.
35:59
SPEAKER_02: So you need to then use the principles of cognitive load theory to help you teach it.
36:02
SPEAKER_02: Worked examples.
36:04
SPEAKER_02: This is what this looks like.
36:05
SPEAKER_02: Providing tags for things, describing things.
36:11
SPEAKER_02: There was better terminology than tags for things.
36:14
SPEAKER_02: Visual schedules and queuing systems, that's better than tags for things.
36:19
SPEAKER_02: They talk about attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and how
36:24
SPEAKER_02: that actually consumes working memory resources, distraction, trying to...
36:31
SPEAKER_02: Self-regulate, trying to keep your attention.
36:34
SPEAKER_02: That is actually consuming cognitive working memory resources.
36:38
SPEAKER_02: So therefore,
36:39
SPEAKER_02: using principles of cognitive load theory to maybe reduce the load
36:43
SPEAKER_02: of what we're trying to teach even more so that students can still learn it
36:47
SPEAKER_02: with those more limited resources at their disposal,
36:51
SPEAKER_02: but also providing external schedules, routines,
36:57
SPEAKER_02: Organizing structures so that that isn't imposed on the individual with ADHD
37:04
SPEAKER_02: to monitor all that themselves so they can devote more working memory resources
37:09
SPEAKER_02: to learning and talks about There's loads of these things.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: It goes on.
37:15
SPEAKER_02: It's worth reading the paper.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: I could go on at length.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: It talks about learning disabilities,
37:19
SPEAKER_02: talks about intellectual disability and how if someone's got
37:22
SPEAKER_02: an intellectual disability, you might need to keep the load lower for longer.
37:26
SPEAKER_02: So when you would gradually be fading out the guidance, you might keep it in place a bit longer.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: But the one that was really fascinating.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: So, Caiti, I will stop this long monologue shortly, but I'll just finish this little bit.
37:39
SPEAKER_02: There's a...
37:40
SPEAKER_02: There's a thing called phonological awareness that is often taught explicitly in schools.
37:49
SPEAKER_02: So there are various programs for doing it.
37:51
SPEAKER_02: Part of it was a recommendation of the 2000 National Reading Panel in the US.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: And there are these programs where you teach phonological awareness and you teach it discreetly.
37:59
SPEAKER_02: So there's no letters there.
38:01
SPEAKER_02: We're just going to recognize the sounds in words.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: We're going to repeat them.
38:05
SPEAKER_02: We're going to break them down into different sounds.
38:07
SPEAKER_02: We're
38:10
SPEAKER_02: It is thought by many to be a prerequisite for then teaching phonics,
38:14
SPEAKER_02: so the relationships between sounds and the letters that represent them.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: So the thinking is,
38:20
SPEAKER_02: to teach the relationship between letters and sounds,
38:23
SPEAKER_02: first of all,
38:24
SPEAKER_02: students need to be fluent at being able to sort of break apart
38:27
SPEAKER_02: and analyse these sounds.
38:29
SPEAKER_02: What this paper argues is that that is biologically primary for most people.
38:34
SPEAKER_02: So most people probably don't need to be taught phonological awareness
38:38
SPEAKER_02: because they just kind of pick it up because it's a component
38:41
SPEAKER_02: of normal oral language.
38:43
SPEAKER_02: But there are some people who may be people with dyslexia who struggle
38:50
SPEAKER_02: with phonological awareness.
38:53
SPEAKER_02: And so for whom these explicit programs are necessary.
38:57
SPEAKER_02: And that makes a lot of sense because why have we started teaching
39:02
SPEAKER_02: at scale phonological processing?
39:05
SPEAKER_02: Phonological awareness to large numbers of students who possibly don't need it.
39:10
SPEAKER_02: Because looking to the research on dyslexia,
39:13
SPEAKER_02: that is really strong and shows us that we need to teach phonics.
39:17
SPEAKER_02: And phonics is really important.
39:19
SPEAKER_02: It's really useful for everyone.
39:21
SPEAKER_02: It's particularly important for kids with dyslexia, but it's really important for everyone.
39:25
SPEAKER_02: And so it's quite understandable how people would have taken that lesson about
39:29
SPEAKER_02: the necessity to teach phonics and thought, well,
39:33
SPEAKER_02: For students with dyslexia,
39:34
SPEAKER_02: it's really important to teach them phonological awareness.
39:37
SPEAKER_02: And then they've extrapolated and said,
39:38
SPEAKER_02: well, let's teach everyone phonological awareness, but perhaps we don't need to.
39:42
SPEAKER_02: And so this debate that's been going on in schools for decades
39:48
SPEAKER_02: about should we be teaching phonological processing to everyone,
39:52
SPEAKER_02: I thought that was a really interesting aspect of this paper.
39:55
SPEAKER_02: Monologue over from me.
39:57
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
39:58
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've summarised, I mean, you've really summarised the entire paper.
40:03
SPEAKER_01: I think, look,
40:04
SPEAKER_01: the key point that I wanted to emphasize that they made in this is that this wasn't,
40:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
40:09
SPEAKER_01: this paper didn't exist to say, hey,
40:11
SPEAKER_01: here's a thing that's biologically primary to some people,
40:14
SPEAKER_01: but to other people it's biologically secondary.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: It's not about that redefining,
40:19
SPEAKER_01: but instead it's about the fact that it's,
40:22
SPEAKER_01: it actually, I mean,
40:23
SPEAKER_01: to me it was about a solution or, sorry, a solution or an assistance pathway.
40:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's about saying we have these,
40:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
40:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
40:32
SPEAKER_01: we have these ideas around instruction that have come from cognitive load theory.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: This is how we can then potentially use those in these other scenarios,
40:43
SPEAKER_01: which I just think in itself is really interesting.
40:46
SPEAKER_01: But as you were sort of going through naming some of the techniques
40:51
SPEAKER_01: that have come out,
40:52
SPEAKER_01: so even things like just having sort of like visual schedules or chunking tasks
40:57
SPEAKER_01: into smaller components, Yeah.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: These are all the things that are listed in those.
41:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think I've said it before on the podcast that these are the things that
41:16
SPEAKER_01: when people say we have to apply these adjustments to your students, I go, well,
41:19
SPEAKER_01: I actually just apply those adjustments in my normal teaching where I do go,
41:23
SPEAKER_01: well, let's chunk things really slowly.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Let's make sure that I'm really,
41:27
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:28
SPEAKER_01: being intentional about that gradual release of responsibility and that
41:31
SPEAKER_01: that gradual release is based on the,
41:33
SPEAKER_01: you know, the information I'm getting from my students at the time.
41:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not just a I do, we do, you do.
41:39
SPEAKER_01: It really is very much based on the information I'm getting from my students
41:42
SPEAKER_01: and how long they need to stay in that phase.
41:45
SPEAKER_01: But a lot of what you've said,
41:48
SPEAKER_01: or a lot of what's said in this paper,
41:49
SPEAKER_01: it kind of just like it really sits hand in hand with those things.
41:53
SPEAKER_01: And why it is,
41:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
41:57
SPEAKER_01: we've seen that students with additional learning needs do typically continue.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Respond better in your classic, I mean,
42:06
SPEAKER_01: evidence-informed explicit instruction environment where it's consistent,
42:11
SPEAKER_01: but where those kind of mechanisms are sort of just built in anyway for everybody.
42:15
SPEAKER_01: And it's kind of,
42:18
SPEAKER_01: I think this paper just did a really nice job of actually just making that really,
42:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't want to use the word explicit again, but I can't come up with another one.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: But it made that really explicit.
42:31
SPEAKER_02: Yes, I think a lot of nonsense is often talked about students with additional needs
42:36
SPEAKER_02: and often from a kind of campaigning human rights angle.
42:42
SPEAKER_02: But good instruction is good instruction.
42:45
SPEAKER_02: And usually the kids that need it the most are the most disadvantaged kids.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Some people,
42:52
SPEAKER_02: I suspect,
42:53
SPEAKER_02: will be a bit alarmed and they'll kind of see this as cognitive load theory,
42:58
SPEAKER_02: parking its tanks on the lawn of an area that is their purview and that they are
43:04
SPEAKER_02: the keepers of.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: But really, you're right.
43:08
SPEAKER_02: If you want to learn how to teach and you're walking into the educational faculty,
43:15
SPEAKER_02: turn left and go to the special education department
43:18
SPEAKER_02: because these guys have figured this all out a long time ago.
43:21
SPEAKER_02: And the strategies that people are working on in
43:25
SPEAKER_02: the special education department are good strategies for everyone, basically.
43:30
SPEAKER_02: They're just good, effective teaching strategies.
43:33
SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, Caiti,
43:34
SPEAKER_02: you're right to emphasise the fact that you don't just stand at the front
43:37
SPEAKER_02: and just plough ahead.
43:39
SPEAKER_02: You need to check in with the kids all the time.
43:40
SPEAKER_02: And so if you're teaching a group of kids who...
43:44
SPEAKER_02: They're not different strategies.
43:45
SPEAKER_02: The strategies are the same.
44:13
SPEAKER_02: And so people get,
44:15
SPEAKER_02: you know,
44:16
SPEAKER_02: people think often that these strategies are just for the kids
44:20
SPEAKER_02: with special educational needs.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: And the worst offenders for this are often some education professors and people like
44:25
SPEAKER_02: that who think that actually we need to do something else somewhere else.
44:29
SPEAKER_02: It's not the case.
44:30
SPEAKER_02: These strategies are good strategies.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: Let's move into the next one.
44:39
SPEAKER_02: You've got an article on Naplan, Caiti?
44:41
SPEAKER_01: I do,
44:42
SPEAKER_01: which I actually think is going to tie really nicely into what we were just talking
44:45
SPEAKER_01: about anyway.
44:47
SPEAKER_01: So this is actually, it's a blog post by the incredible Pamela Snow, who is also at La Trobe.
44:53
SPEAKER_01: And Pam Snow, she's written something, it's called Naplan Safety Net or Tangled Net.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: And really what, I mean, look,
45:03
SPEAKER_01: essentially this piece that she's written is in response to the fact that
45:07
SPEAKER_01: the National NAPLAN,
45:08
SPEAKER_01: which is the National Assessment Program for Literacy and Numeracy,
45:13
SPEAKER_01: I got it, in Australia.
45:15
SPEAKER_01: But I mean, really,
45:16
SPEAKER_01: for those of you who are listening,
45:17
SPEAKER_01: it's a standardized or it's a set of standardized tests.
45:21
SPEAKER_01: There's a couple in literacy.
45:22
SPEAKER_01: There's one in numeracy.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: Students set these tests in years three, five, seven and nine in Australia.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
45:29
SPEAKER_01: And what Pam Snow has pointed out is that there is this just persistent pattern
45:39
SPEAKER_01: that has come up again in this year's results that have been released
45:43
SPEAKER_01: in national level that shows that there is significant underachievement
45:47
SPEAKER_01: in both literacy and numeracy by around about a third of Australian students,
45:53
SPEAKER_01: which is just huge too,
45:55
SPEAKER_01: keeping in mind that I often say that the measures that we use in that plan,
45:59
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they're based on the Australian curriculum.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: So this is also underachieving with respect to what we've set as being our own standard.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: And if we then expand that to sort of an international level,
46:11
SPEAKER_01: I think that that becomes a little bit more concerning.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm just sort of reflecting on some...
46:16
SPEAKER_01: Some of the comments from Ben Jensen at Research at Ballarat at the start of
46:21
SPEAKER_01: the year where he spoke about the curriculum here really not containing
46:24
SPEAKER_01: as much content as the curriculum in other places around the world.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: And so that in itself is already concerning.
46:33
SPEAKER_01: But what Pam does is she points out our major concerns with this.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: And I mean,
46:38
SPEAKER_01: the first one is that students from already disadvantaged backgrounds in some way,
46:44
SPEAKER_01: they are...
46:46
SPEAKER_01: They are more disproportionately...
46:49
SPEAKER_01: Represented in that one third that's underachieving.
46:53
SPEAKER_01: And we know that,
46:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:54
SPEAKER_01: the impacts of,
46:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
46:57
SPEAKER_01: whether it's instructional deficits,
46:59
SPEAKER_01: whether it is just,
47:01
SPEAKER_01: you know, I mean,
47:03
SPEAKER_01: whether it is like external factors to school,
47:05
SPEAKER_01: but we know that the impacts of that on education are carried far more heavily
47:09
SPEAKER_01: by students from disadvantaged backgrounds, just purely from what the data tells us.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: But of course,
47:15
SPEAKER_01: the next part is also the fact that And again,
47:18
SPEAKER_01: she makes a really good point to say that this has a significant impact on
47:24
SPEAKER_01: the psychosocial wellbeing of students.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: And I like the fact that she's brought it back to that
47:29
SPEAKER_01: because I do think there's often a lot of discourse that says that
47:33
SPEAKER_01: when we're talking about NAPLAN or NAPLAN results,
47:36
SPEAKER_01: that's a focus on us trying to We're trying to push people into becoming
47:42
SPEAKER_01: an academic country or just to do well and the focus is on league tables or being
47:46
SPEAKER_01: the best school.
47:48
SPEAKER_01: But I think she does a great job of saying, well,
47:49
SPEAKER_01: actually,
47:50
SPEAKER_01: the issue with this is that struggling academically does have I mean,
47:57
SPEAKER_01: the way that I summarize it is I usually say that education,
48:00
SPEAKER_01: you know, it can do two very powerful things.
48:02
SPEAKER_01: It can open up doors and set up opportunities for students and
48:22
SPEAKER_01: But it can also get students out of a situation that they don't really want to be in
48:25
SPEAKER_01: and it can break cycles.
48:27
SPEAKER_01: And the problem is when we've got a system that is really leaving
48:32
SPEAKER_01: behind massive groups of students, again,
48:36
SPEAKER_01: she points out that less than 20% of students who are behind
48:40
SPEAKER_01: in year three actually end up catching up down the line,
48:43
SPEAKER_01: which in itself is just, I mean,
48:46
SPEAKER_01: those are devastating numbers,
48:47
SPEAKER_01: but I think it's when we know that this exists,
48:53
SPEAKER_01: it's really about us not hiding from this data and instead using that.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's using that to inform what we do next.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: And that's all, again, come from this...
49:08
SPEAKER_01: It's come from commentary that,
49:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
49:11
SPEAKER_01: we should stop NAPLAN and the results aren't good,
49:13
SPEAKER_01: so we should just scrap the system because clearly it's not working.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: I hate to be the one to say it,
49:19
SPEAKER_01: but NAPLAN doesn't exist to fix issues in our educational system.
49:24
SPEAKER_01: NAPLAN exists to highlight what those issues are so that we can then take steps to fix them.
49:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, people say you don't fatten a pig by weighing it,
49:34
SPEAKER_02: but true,
49:36
SPEAKER_02: you have to feed the pig,
49:36
SPEAKER_02: but you don't know if it's getting fatter unless you weigh it.
49:39
SPEAKER_02: I suppose you could have a look, but that's where the analogy perhaps breaks down.
49:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, look,
49:48
SPEAKER_02: NAPLAN is not a perfect set of assessments by any means,
49:52
SPEAKER_02: and if I had my way, I would change it substantially.
49:56
SPEAKER_02: But it is an indicator and it's an indicator that all Australian students sit.
50:01
SPEAKER_02: Of course,
50:02
SPEAKER_02: people who want
50:04
SPEAKER_02: to promote ineffective teaching methods would rather NAPLAN didn't exist
50:09
SPEAKER_02: because it shows up the ineffectiveness of those methods quite often and
50:15
SPEAKER_02: that people don't like accountability.
50:18
SPEAKER_02: But it's the only real form of accountability we have.
50:21
SPEAKER_02: We don't have school inspections in this country like they do in the UK.
50:24
SPEAKER_02: We have to get accredited with the local regulator, but that's usually a paper-based exercise.
50:31
SPEAKER_02: So NAPLAN really is...
50:33
SPEAKER_02: NAPLAN and things like Year 12 results are
50:36
SPEAKER_02: the only accountability measures we really have.
50:38
SPEAKER_02: To me, it sounds absurd that you'd want to do away with them.
50:43
SPEAKER_02: Maybe make them better, but do away with them.
50:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, what...
50:48
SPEAKER_02: We are providing a service to the general public,
50:52
SPEAKER_02: a service that they are paying for,
50:54
SPEAKER_02: either wholly through their taxes or partly through their taxes and partly through
50:58
SPEAKER_02: the fees that they're contributing.
51:01
SPEAKER_02: We are accountable to them.
51:02
SPEAKER_02: We are accountable to parents.
51:04
SPEAKER_02: Parents shouldn't be able for their child to go through the system from K to year 12
51:10
SPEAKER_02: and only find out at the end of year 12 that there was something significantly wrong
51:14
SPEAKER_02: with their child's literacy level.
51:18
SPEAKER_02: They need that information.
51:19
SPEAKER_02: And it does need to be an independent check.
51:24
SPEAKER_02: It can't just be schools reporting grades because schools have a vested interest
51:29
SPEAKER_02: In reporting the grades that parents want to hear.
51:31
SPEAKER_02: So you have to have this independent check.
51:34
SPEAKER_02: Look, the other thing that we have to bear in mind,
51:38
SPEAKER_02: and it is just a correlation,
51:40
SPEAKER_02: but I think that there's a good reason to think
51:43
SPEAKER_02: that there might be some cause there.
51:44
SPEAKER_02: If you look at the prison population,
51:46
SPEAKER_02: Pam Snow has done a lot of work on this,
51:47
SPEAKER_02: but if you look at the prison population and illiteracy rates, they're very high.
51:53
SPEAKER_02: So the If it is causal,
51:57
SPEAKER_02: if it is not that some other factor causes people not to learn to read,
52:02
SPEAKER_02: that also causes them to engage with the criminal justice system,
52:06
SPEAKER_02: maybe, I don't know, maybe there are some factors like that.
52:09
SPEAKER_02: But it's also quite possible,
52:10
SPEAKER_02: and plausible in fact,
52:12
SPEAKER_02: highly plausible,
52:13
SPEAKER_02: that students who don't learn to read and write start to define themselves
52:17
SPEAKER_02: in other terms,
52:18
SPEAKER_02: and some of those terms might be about Rebellion might be about making money
52:24
SPEAKER_02: through other means.
52:25
SPEAKER_02: And they're going to struggle to get a job or hold down a job, a regular job.
52:30
SPEAKER_02: There's very few jobs these days,
52:32
SPEAKER_02: which are even most physical jobs require some level of literacy.
52:39
SPEAKER_02: So they will look for alternatives.
52:40
SPEAKER_02: So I think it's highly plausible that Reading failure, I mean,
52:45
SPEAKER_02: it certainly is associated with externalising and internalising behaviours
52:50
SPEAKER_02: in schools and you can understand why kids who can't read and have been asked to do
52:54
SPEAKER_02: so every day would act out.
52:56
SPEAKER_01: But it's just such a devastating feeling,
52:59
SPEAKER_01: I think,
53:00
SPEAKER_01: to be sat in a classroom all day every day and you can't do
53:05
SPEAKER_01: the basic stuff that's required of you and things like that.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: That feeds into everything.
53:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and so you define yourself some other way.
53:13
SPEAKER_02: You define yourself as through rebellion or through making kids laugh.
53:17
SPEAKER_02: And so I suppose what I'm going on a really long route to get to is to say
53:25
SPEAKER_02: that these are costs to society as well.
53:29
SPEAKER_02: The fact that people are engaging in the criminal justice system rather than
53:33
SPEAKER_02: in gainful employment, that's a cost that is borne by society.
53:37
SPEAKER_02: And so in a democracy...
53:40
SPEAKER_02: Even voters who don't have children have an interest in knowing about literacy
53:46
SPEAKER_02: and numeracy rates.
53:47
SPEAKER_02: And so the fact that certain people think that this is all too much pressure for
53:53
SPEAKER_02: the kids or it's all just about league tables.
53:56
SPEAKER_02: No, this is about us being accountable to the people who pay for the service that we deliver.
54:03
SPEAKER_01: I know it's an interesting topic at the moment because there's been It's been a lot
54:09
SPEAKER_01: of conversation about it online.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: And it's interesting because I think,
54:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:16
SPEAKER_01: what I've sort of noticed with it is that it really is just being used to,
54:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, for the most part, just to push whatever agenda somebody has right now.
54:26
SPEAKER_01: Which is frustrating when if we just go back to it,
54:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is like these are actual children's lives that we're talking about.
54:36
SPEAKER_01: And just to have access to basic literacy and basic numeracy is not a huge ask.
54:41
SPEAKER_01: And when we have out there,
54:43
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:43
SPEAKER_01: and I know there's a lot of back and forth on the evidence,
54:47
SPEAKER_01: but it's like when we have really clear evidence around strategies that do work
54:52
SPEAKER_01: to support students, then it just...
54:56
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
54:56
SPEAKER_01: it feels very neglectful to then go and ignore that and try to pass the blame
55:02
SPEAKER_01: onto something else,
55:03
SPEAKER_01: whether that be the NAPLAN system itself,
55:06
SPEAKER_01: which I agree is flawed, but it is all we've got.
55:11
SPEAKER_01: Sorry, what were you saying?
55:14
SPEAKER_02: No, well, the objections you hear are things like that people just do practice tests.
55:20
SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, That's bad teaching practice.
55:23
SPEAKER_02: That's not the fault of the assessment that people try and prepare kids for
55:27
SPEAKER_02: the assessment by just giving them lots of examples of the assessment.
55:30
SPEAKER_02: They say it puts too much pressure on kids.
55:32
SPEAKER_02: Does it?
55:33
SPEAKER_02: Like an assessment doesn't put pressure on kids.
55:36
SPEAKER_02: What the adults are saying to the kids about the assessment may well put pressure on the kids.
55:40
SPEAKER_02: But if kids are my place, it's just another assessment.
55:45
SPEAKER_02: It's not a big deal.
55:46
SPEAKER_02: And it's how the adults frame it that matters.
55:48
SPEAKER_02: People talk about it being standardised as if that's That's a boo word, standardized.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we don't like that good.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, imagine it's like making kids conform to some kind of blueprint or something.
56:03
SPEAKER_02: That's not what standardised means at all.
56:05
SPEAKER_02: Standardised is the best bit about these assessments
56:08
SPEAKER_02: because it tells us how these kids compare against all the other kids in the state.
56:13
SPEAKER_02: So it's not just some idiosyncratic little assessment
56:16
SPEAKER_02: that one school has put together and we don't know whether 30% on that is good
56:20
SPEAKER_02: or not or bad or whatever because we just don't really know how hard it is.
56:24
SPEAKER_02: We know how these kids compare to all the other kids.
56:27
SPEAKER_02: And so that's really useful information to have.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: That also goes into the thing, though, where...
56:36
SPEAKER_01: If you're looking into a school,
56:38
SPEAKER_01: it is something that you can look at a school's nap time results.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: I know people don't like this, but you can view them.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: And the reason that I like it is because what it does is it separates out.
56:50
SPEAKER_01: I was helping one of my sisters pick a school for her kids and she was going
56:54
SPEAKER_01: between two schools.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
57:23
SPEAKER_02: Now, you will have enraged some people there who will have all sorts
57:26
SPEAKER_02: of technical objections to the way that the NAPLAN results are reported on
57:32
SPEAKER_02: the MySchool site and whether things are significant and
57:34
SPEAKER_02: whether what you're really measuring is noise and all this sort of stuff.
57:38
SPEAKER_02: That's not an argument against them.
57:40
SPEAKER_02: If you've got those technical questions and those objections,
57:44
SPEAKER_02: then you argue a case for a better system that reports findings
57:49
SPEAKER_02: that you find are more valid.
57:51
SPEAKER_02: It's not an argument against having a check on the system.
57:56
SPEAKER_02: And if it stays flawed, that's better than no check at all.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
58:01
SPEAKER_01: Look, I think my comments on NAPLAN have enraged a lot of people in the last week,
58:05
SPEAKER_01: judging by my inbox anyway.
58:07
SPEAKER_01: So I'm kind of at the point where I'm like, we're just going all in.
58:12
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, look, I do, I mean, yeah,
58:14
SPEAKER_01: flawed system, but it's also the only external accountability system that we've got.
58:19
SPEAKER_01: And otherwise,
58:20
SPEAKER_01: everything,
58:20
SPEAKER_01: any judgments we make on the quality of instruction of schools providing,
58:24
SPEAKER_01: they are based on the school's marketing.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: And for a parent,
58:28
SPEAKER_01: if I talk about my sister who doesn't work in education and knows nothing about it,
58:32
SPEAKER_01: for her, I mean, she's basing this off what a school tells her is good.
58:36
SPEAKER_01: She has no judgment of Yeah, this is what effective instruction looks like and this isn't.
58:43
SPEAKER_01: And so for her,
58:44
SPEAKER_01: it really is just a sales pitch,
58:46
SPEAKER_01: which is why having some kind of external measure is necessary.
58:52
SPEAKER_01: And it's not the only factor that you consider when you choose a school,
58:55
SPEAKER_01: but it is a necessary factor.
59:02
SPEAKER_01: Thank you everyone for listening to this week's episode of When Will They Learn?
59:06
SPEAKER_01: Any of the articles that we've mentioned today can be found down in the show notes.
59:11
SPEAKER_01: And as always,
59:11
SPEAKER_01: if there is a podcast article or opinion piece that you would like Greg and I
59:15
SPEAKER_01: to discuss in a future episode,
59:17
SPEAKER_01: please feel free to drop it to either of us on our socials that can also be found in
59:20
SPEAKER_01: the show notes.