Latest / When Will They Learn? / Episode #19 What even is restorative practice?

Transcript

Episode #19 What even is restorative practice? · When Will They Learn?

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to When Will They Learn?
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Greg Ashman.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm Katie Wade.
• 0:04
  [music]
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: This is a podcast where we explore what's trending in the world of education.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: In each episode,
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: we discuss podcasts,
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: articles and opinion pieces that are shaping education discourse at the moment
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: and examine these through a science of learning lens.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: We discuss not just what's popular, but what's supported by the evidence.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: This week,
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: Caiti and I will be trying to figure out what restorative practices even is and
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: whether it has to be done well and what that means.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: We are going to be talking about a bad, bad, bad, bad headline.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we're going to be talking about whales, the country, not the mammal.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Hey, Caiti, how are you going?
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm good.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm alright, I'm alright.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: As I was just chatting to you in the pre-recording catch-up that we had,
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: we've got our Year 12s leaving next week, including my eldest daughter.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: So it's quite an emotional time in many ways.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_01: She's been to the same school since kinder.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, it's significant and poignant, let's put it that way.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, look, I'm good.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, our 12s also finish up sort of towards the end of next week as well.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: So like my life is just me,
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: balancing my, you know, sitting at the swimming pool because it's warm here.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's already warm up in Queensland.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's sort of balancing my like sitting at the swimming pool and yeah,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: doing all of my last minute revision and prepping for that and making sure
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: that my students are good to go for their exams.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds idyllic, Katie, but you do have a bunged laptop by the looks of it.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: I do.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Greg's looking at me through what looks like a mysterious fog cover
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: because my camera,
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: which I sort of knew was going earlier in the week,
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: but I've just logged onto the call and my camera is like,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: it's like eerie, it's ghostly.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Spectral.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: You are a spectral presence in this podcast, Caiti.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, shall we start?
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: Kick us off with number one.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So we've been looking for an opportunity to talk about restorative practices
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: for some time and the Herald Sun have provided that opportunity
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: as they've provided two of today's opportunities, Caiti.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's unusual.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a big reader of the Herald Sun?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Do you get it delivered specially to your place in Queensland?
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Would you be surprised to hear that I don't?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'm not a huge,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: huge fan of the prestigious news organ,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: but they are behind two of the articles that we're going to talk about this week.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: First is,
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: schools say restorative justice deals with bullying,
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: but parents and experts say they're doing it wrong by Mary Papadakis.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So she talks about the idea that,
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: well, she calls it soft in information, Converted Commons, a soft strategy.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And essentially what seems to be happening is that schools, it's primarily about bullying.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: The story is primarily about bullying.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: And restorative practices, I'm aware, are not just about dealing with bullying.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: But what they've got,
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: what she's got in this article,
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: she's spoken to some parents who have given stories about how their child is
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: a victim of bullying.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: And to address this,
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: their child has had a meeting with the bully where everyone's apologised
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: to each other and to try and restore the relationship that this is soft.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know,
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: one mum describes her son being thrown to the ground,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: dragged, tackled, kicked, punched in the head, had chairs thrown at him.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And all this sort of stuff.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then this was dealt with by... Well,
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: she said she trusted the process until she saw her son accepting repeated apologies
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: and thinking he had to be friends with the bully,
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: who after the sixth incident was suspended for one day.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: So...
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: How whiffic
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: is that?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Now, we do have to, though, put a bit of a disclaimer on this.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Thankfully,
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: the Herald Sun journalist has decided not to name the And I think that that's good
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: because what we can't know is the school side of this story.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it might not be exactly as the parent sees it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes parents will say that their child is being bullied and that
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: the other person is the bully.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: But actually the schools say, well, it's not quite as straightforward as that.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: There's a bit on both sides going on here.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: So we don't know exactly what was going on.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: But taken at face value, clearly, I've been around the traps and I have heard these stories.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I have heard of kids.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like bordering on victim blaming, if it is true.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: It is.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: It is bordering on victim blaming.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it is obviously terrible if this is happening.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: And you can see that there's a wider picture around this.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is various efforts over time by bureaucracies
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: and state governments around
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: the world to bear down on what they would call exclusionary discipline.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: So Typically,
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: if a student,
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: and as has happened in this example eventually,
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: typically if a student engages in these sorts of behaviours,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: they would be suspended and maybe eventually they would be permanently expelled.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: I remember working at a school in London where there was a boy who I worked
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: with very closely because at the time I was an assistant principal
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: and I had responsibility for Year 8 and Year 9.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a head of Year 8 and a head of Year 9 and I line managed them.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so when anything got to the pointy end,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: I became personally involved and there was this young man at 14 years old
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: and I liked him and I wanted him to do well,
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: but he just kept going and he kept going.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: In the end,
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: he terrorised a younger child,
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: made them kneel in front of him and beg him not to hurt him.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: And he, you know, a compass for drawing a circle, set of compasses for drawing a circle.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's got a needle.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: A whole bunch of kids lined up and he stabbed them with this needle.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was involved in the process of...
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: It got to the point where this boy had to be excluded for the health and safety of
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: the other students around him.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to compile the paperwork.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: They never made it easy.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: I had to pull an all-nighter compiling all these numerous reports into one document.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because what we always feared is we would do this and then it would be overturned
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: because there was a kind of appeals panel that the boy's family could appeal to.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was a lot of work that went into making sure this went through.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's because the system,
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: the bureaucracy,
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_01: often ministers,
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: think that exclusions and suspensions are a cause rather than an effect.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: You and I know that schools will do anything to try and avoid using those measures.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_01: And Look, some schools are more effective than others in their earlier interventions.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: I would suggest that if you want to be effective at intervening early on when
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: a student is developing some worrying behaviours,
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: that you would look at the work of someone like Tom Bennett or you would look
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: at intervening,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: whole routine structures,
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: building a culture, giving kids multiple off-ramps before it gets to that point.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't have all those things in place and you have a slightly...
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: Disorienting school environment for students then they might get to this point
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: of suspension earlier as a result and so the goal of bringing suspensions
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: and expulsions down is not a bad one I don't think anyone wants to see Yeah.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Suspensions and expulsions are things that schools do to students that
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: then have negative impacts down the line.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: And therefore,
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: just as I was in London,
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: the schools should be under pressure not to do that thing because
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: of what it might cause.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so a few years ago,
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: New South Wales,
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: the minister there,
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_01: Sarah Mitchell, She introduced restrictions on schools, suspensions and expulsions.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite complicated.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't like a ban.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: She was just reducing the flexibility that principals had.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote a piece at the time that got...
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: It got published in the Sydney Morning Herald saying,
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: you know, this is not the right thing to do, Minister.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: This keeps happening.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's happened in Victoria.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's still happening in Scotland.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_01: It happens all over the world that school systems try and bear down from the top.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: On suspensions and expulsions.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't work out.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: You just end up with violent incidents that make it into the papers.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then the minister down the line basically reverses course.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what happened in New South Wales when the Labour government took
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: over from the Liberals.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Prukar reversed those restrictions that Sarah Mitchell had put on suspensions and expulsions.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: But Why am I telling you all this?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm desperate to go into – well, I'll just do a very quick aside.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_01: What campaigners,
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: inclusion campaigners,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: have tried to convince politicians of is that suspensions and expulsions
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: from school cause kids to enter the criminal justice system
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: because what they do is they look at the – Yeah.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: So why am I talking all about suspensions and expulsions?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when you've got a system that is saying these things are wrong, they're bad...
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: We need to bear down on them.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_01: Restorative practice looks like an alternative.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: So instead of suspending a kid, there's this other sort of magic thing that you can do
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: instead.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so schools that are looking to reduce these figures because they're
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: under this external pressure to do so, they might reach for restorative practice.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Insofar as it does maybe what a Tom Bennett-style culture-building,
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: routines-building program might do and see kids off at the pass,
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: that could be a good thing.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: If it enables early intervention that stops kids developing those behaviors to
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: the point where they're so problematic...
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: Then that could be a good thing.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_01: The question is, do restorative practices, programs do that?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: Or are he,
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: in the words of Mary Papadakis,
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: a soft strategy that is just a kind of displacement activity
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: that leaves kids poorly served, parents annoyed, and things like that.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Now,
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: this is where I think the The story gets a little bit interesting because there's
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: a guy, Adam Voigt, very big on LinkedIn is Adam Voigt.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think we've mentioned him before.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: He does the LinkedIn kind of essays things, way of posting.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we have mentioned him before.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: We talked about, what did you talk about?
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: Something about Pisa or something.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was the Pisa.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was the response to your post about Pisa, England.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Something like that.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, he read this article and he's appalled by it because he's a consultant who,
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: he goes out to schools and he's got a program and he talks
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: about restorative practice as part of his program, right?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so his take essentially is he highlights the headline from this article and
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: then he's really Yeah.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: So he's accepting the point that restorative practices can be done badly.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And if they are done badly, it can cause harm.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So his take is,
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: would be,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose,
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: these stories that we're reading about in The Herald Sun,
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: the stories I've heard around the traps from teachers about restorative practices
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: in schools, they're all examples of it being done badly.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: And presumably, Adam Voigt's program that he goes into schools and runs and He's done well.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Matt gives me sort of two sets of thoughts.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: And one I wrote about on my Curios post, which,
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: by the way,
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: the listeners to this podcast,
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: if they like this podcast,
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: they will like Curios, just like they'll like your Substack.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: So they should get on there and they should subscribe.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: By the way, great Substack post this week, Katie.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: I really enjoyed that.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: But wait a bit.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going off topic.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've got about 20 things.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: So it
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: reminded me of two things.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was a teenager, my dad had a partner who was a communist.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: And she would say that she believes in communism,
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: that Great Britain should become a communist country.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: This would have been the early 90s.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I was very sort of left-wing at the time.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: I remember being very disappointed when Labour lost the 1992 general election in the UK.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: But I wasn't buying this communism, Caiti.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Because the Berlin Wall had fallen like a couple of years earlier.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: The Soviet Union had collapsed.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, but communism doesn't work.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: Look at all these countries where, you know, they were desperate to...
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Poland couldn't wait for it to end.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: It had to be imposed by this totalitarian system on unwilling citizens.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: So how can you possibly think that communism is the way to go?
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I kind of give way,
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: like the Gen Z people who are on TikTok and think that We should have rent controls
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: and state-owned supermarkets and stuff.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're young enough to have no memory of the Soviet system and communism in Eastern Europe.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I just remember people desperate.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: They'd risk their lives to get out of East Germany.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_01: And her response,
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: my father's partner's response to me at the time was,
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_01: the problem is it's never been done properly.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: So communism works.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's just never been done properly.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And if you just did it properly, in an industrial society like Britain, she would make excuses.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: She would say the Soviet Union, Russia was a peasant society.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was an agricultural society.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's never what Marx intended to do.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: If it was done in an industrial,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: and I didn't know,
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the wit at the time to say, yeah,
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: but it has been done in industrial societies like East Germany and Poland
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: and Czechoslovakia.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, so restorative practices reminds me a bit like that.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bit like communism in that all the stories I hear of it are shockers,
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: like the ones I read in The Herald Sun.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: So, um...
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So Adam Voigt writes this post where he basically argues
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: that it's not been done properly and he gives examples of where it is.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I just pick up on one point, which Adam Voigt does answer to his great credit.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I do appreciate that.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I doubt very much whether he's listening to this podcast.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I suspect we're not his cup of tea.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: But if you are listening, Adam, I do respect you for answering this.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_01: Because one of the ideas...
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: That comes up over and over again in restorative practices is this kind
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: of opposition between being restorative and being punitive.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so restorative is seen as the opposite of punitive.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: But in his post, Adam...
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: He says, restorative practice is not an alternative to consequences.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: A good restorative school still applies consequences, still keeps kids safe.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: Repair sits alongside consequence.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll pop our real schools template in the comments.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that's not relevant.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: So restorative practice is not an alternative to consequences.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: A good restorative school still applies consequences, still keeps kids safe.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_01: Repair sits alongside any consequence.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the bit that baffles me, Katie, is...
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_01: How is a consequence not punitive?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: When does a consequence become punitive?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference between being punitive and applying a consequence?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's essentially what I asked him.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then he says, well,
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: first I can see to a bigger point,
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: the language is so befuddling and the literature is consistent
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: about consequence versus punishment.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: My working distinction is that consequences occur.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: Are you catching
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: what I've picked up on in that sentence?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because I read that.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: In conjunction with his above statement and I
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_01: got confused.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: Punishments are applied but he said that you're applying a consequence, wasn't it?
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I could be wrong.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: He said a good restorative school still applies consequences.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: But then he says the deference is consequences occur while punishments are applied.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I got confused by that.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: I am.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I'm not.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have to say, as I say, props to him for responding.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: I understand there's some blokes trying to have a pop at me on LinkedIn right now,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: and I just haven't got the energy to respond.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: So I do appreciate Adam responding, but I'm none the wiser, if I'm honest, because...
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: You're right.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: I can't quite figure it out and I'm a bit confused.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: So my working distinction is the consequences occur while punishments are applied.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: A consequence is the impact itself, often harm to another that follows an action.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: A punishment is something an authority figure typically imposes.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't seem to be the kind of consequence that he's talking about earlier.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, yeah, if I punch...
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: If I went in the principal's office now and punched her in the face,
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: a consequence of that is that she might have a bruise or something.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not what we usually mean when we...
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: When we talk about consequences,
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: normally we'd mean that the consequence for me would be I would be summarily sacked
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: for and probably criminally prosecuted.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the consequences as we usually understand them.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah,
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: in a strict sort of behaviourism framework,
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose, the consequence is anything that happens as a result of the behaviour.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, I don't know.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm confused by it, Katie.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I agree.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think, look,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: because I know I had a conversation recently and I know Sean's written a Substack
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: of, you know, a similar title where it's a conversation itself isn't a consequence.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we've mentioned that before on the pod as well,
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: that And I'm not against the idea of trying to restore relationships
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: after something's occurred.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Depending on what that something is, is a really important note.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't ever think that should sit.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: That conversation where you're asking someone to reflect on something
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: and you're trying to do the learning and you're trying to teach
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: that person something.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is what's happened.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is why it's incorrect.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the impacts of what you've done on yourself, on the other person.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think that should ever take the place of some kind of consequence.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: But a consequence,
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: you mean like something that's applied by the school to signal its disapproval,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: something that the student probably isn't going to enjoy and therefore...
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Will feel to them like a punishment and therefore could be described as punitive,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: but that's just a very pejorative way of saying there's a negative consequence.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is the bit about, I just can't think my way out of this sort of thicket of ideas.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not someone who's completely on the page of the real world and what happens
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: in school need to be completely aligned.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: From the social standpoint,
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: it makes sense for us to teach students that, hey,
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: if you do the wrong thing,
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_00: there is going to be some kind of consequence that we're applying
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: that will probably be punitive and you're probably not going to enjoy.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because at the end of the day, if you, I mean, look,
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: if a five-year-old kid does punch another five-year-old kid,
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: often that is a, hey, here's your I don't even know.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: What do you do with five-year-olds at detention?
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is it?
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what it is.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like you have your consequence that's punitive.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: You have your conversations.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a big difference between that five-year-old doing it and then
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: an adult who's 25 going out and doing that.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: And there are much more serious consequences.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: So part of this idea is also about putting in place that deterrent to stop them
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: from doing that behavior and Yeah.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: Look, to
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: answer the question about the five-year-old, I mean,
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think this is really interesting because one of the things you could do,
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: for instance, is you could keep them in at recess to reflect.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if I suggest that,
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: there'll be loads of people enraged by that, saying,
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: yes, but a child has a human right to play and it's just going to make them worse.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: But you're right, you have to do something.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You can't say the culture of this school is that we tolerate violence.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: You have to draw lines.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have to say these are things that we...
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: And of course,
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: you know, there are children with specific needs that we need to take account of.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: We don't treat everyone exactly the same.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: And schools give...
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a speeding fine.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_01: No one will ask me why I did it or how I was feeling.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: It won't be an educative process.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: It will be a purely, maybe the word is punitive one.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: But that's the real world.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when they exit our schools, and I know that it's a process and we're here to educate them.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_01: We're here to educate them for the real world.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so when they exit our schools,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: eventually,
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: they have to be people who drive around lakes and going to Restaurants
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Without Punching People and all that sort of stuff.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I get that when it's a five-year-old or when it's an 11-year-old,
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: what you do when they do something in school is not exactly what happens.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I often joke that I'm like,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I crack the joke all the time that I'm like,
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: oh, I forget that there are consequences for my actions.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I joke about that in the context of me who forgets everything all the time
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: and will forget to turn on the dishwasher and then will wake up the next morning
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: and go, oh, now I need to wash a keep cup so I can have my coffee or whatever.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And it's always stupid things where you make that comment.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a recognition that in the real world there are consequences,
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: some of which naturally occur.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: But there are others that are applied because you've done something that's wrong.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And we have,
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: as a society,
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: in some way deemed that that behavior is so inappropriate
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: that someone else should be imposing or applying something to you.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the debates that happens frequently is,
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: so there'll be someone trying to bear down on suspensions and expulsions.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: Usually there's a whole, and there's a kind of luxury belief bit behind this as well.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're in a university and you're campaigning against,
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: you call it, you're campaigning for inclusion.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: You'll talk about the Salamanca Declaration.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: You'll talk about the UN Constitution.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: You'll heavily imply that they lead to negative life outcomes for people,
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_01: that including people and inclusion is better,
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: it's nicer, it's warmer, it's better, it's what good people will want.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: But because you're in a university...
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: Is that appropriate?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that's extreme,
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: but I asked that extreme question because I want to know where the line is.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: If they say, well, no,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: of course,
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: in that situation,
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: then we can say, well,
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: we agree there are some circumstances in which suspensions
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: and expulsions are appropriate and proportionate.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: So let's now have a reasonable discussion about where that line is and where it should be.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe we can include in that internal units within schools instead of having...
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: They could suspend it.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: They could maybe have this other provision or whatever.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's have a discussion about that.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: But we never get to that point because whenever I pose that question,
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_01: I just get dismissed for raising extreme examples.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: So they won't even accept the premise of the question about the person who's been assaulted.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really hard to make progress on that discussion.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so we end up with this really polarized debate where People have taken trench positions.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the things I do like about Adam Voigt and his approach is
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: that he doesn't seem to be in one of these polarised camps, like completely outside.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Where did I
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: read that he was okay with,
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: like he said somewhere in this post that he was okay with exclusions
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: and suspensions somewhere.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he does think that there is a role for them and he has said that repeatedly.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's been consistent on the point.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: What I just can't figure out is what his approach is and the stuff about
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: the consequences I just find confusing.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, we've probably rabbited on a bit too much about that one.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to do your one?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: I do.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: So the one that I'm talking about probably won't surprise anybody who's been
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: on EduMedia over the course of the last week.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: This one is, and again, I'm going to start with the Herald Sun article.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: This one's by Niamh Walton.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because this article had a title,
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: had a title that pictures of this title were plastered over social media.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: This seemed to be the original title of the article, but it seems to have changed titles.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't understand how or why, but I'll give you both.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: The headline.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the important thing that people,
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure you know this, Caiti,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: and I think we might have even mentioned this before,
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: but it's very important that people understand that the journalist doesn't write
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: the headline.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Headline is written by some editor,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: and I suspect what's happened here, the original headline was really bad.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: It was exposed.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Almost nine in ten teachers, quotes, do not know how to teach.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I don't know who they're quoting because that's not...
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a quote,
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: but... Yeah.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: But that's also not,
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's not a quote in the article,
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_00: but it's not,
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: it's certainly not a quote in the report that they're drawing on that we'll come to.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: They've now changed it to most Australian teachers are, quote,
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: getting it wrong and, quote,
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: amid federal push for major classroom overhaul,
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: which, by the way, still doesn't seem to be a quote in there.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: I did do a quick control F to be like, well,
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: and I did a control F.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know what, let me give the context first and then I'll chime into that.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: This particular post has been splashed up all over social media because,
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: largely because of the headline,
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: partly because,
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: for those of you who don't know, the Herald Sun in Australia, it is paywalled.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in order to access that,
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: you'd need to have a Herald Sun subscription or be it a workplace or a library
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: or whatever where you can access it, or maybe buy a physical newspaper.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Are they a thing anymore, Greg?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't seen one in the wild for a couple of years, Caiti, but I believe they still exist.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard of them somewhere.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess I don't know.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: But you have to pay to access it.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so what's happened is people have read that title,
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: and rightfully so,
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: because that headline that,
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_00: as we said,
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: was probably not written by Niamh Walton, that headline sounds horrendous.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: But when you get into the article, I mean,
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: the article is Speaking of And we're these like awful nine
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: in 10 teachers do not know how to teach students.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: Headline seems to have stemmed from is in that study,
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: one of the key findings was that 88% of teachers believed in the learning styles,
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: neuromyth.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's back again this week.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is believing in that neuromyth.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's not good in terms of science of learning.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: It is a neuromyth.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: But there is absolutely nowhere in this paper
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: where Trisha says teachers don't know how to teach,
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: teachers who believe in learning myths don't know how to teach.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I actually, in preparing for today's podcast, I did a couple of things.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: So one of them was I actually spoke to Trisha about her article and about some of the backlash.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you've read it, Greg.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: Trisha posted a Substack where she sort of gives a little bit more of a foundation
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: towards it.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I haven't seen that.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_01: I've read the report, but I haven't read her Substack.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't realize Trish had a Substack, which is very poor of me.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Can you put a link in the show notes, please, Caiti?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: So this is people keep arguing what teachers then can do around explicit teaching.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we ask them.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: And what I really wanted to emphasize is where the report came from.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: So the report was done.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: Poor old Trish.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's a photo of her with this important headline on the photo of Trish.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's actually what made me because I was scrolling social media and I knew
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: about Trish's article was already follow her work, follow her stuff.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: I saw when I was scrolling, I was like doom scrolling Facebook of all places.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I hate that I'm admitting this,
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: but I scroll it and I see the headline that nine in 10 teachers do not know how
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: to teach in quotes with Trish's face.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I went there because normally I'd have scrolled past her Herald Sun clickbaity heading.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, there is absolutely no way she's said that.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so I opened up her paper first.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even open up the Herald Sun one.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: I opened up her paper,
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: did a control F. At this point, I read it, but I hadn't done a detailed read.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, oh, look, surprise, surprise, not mentioned.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: Not even a point that she implies in her paper, which we'll come to.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like it's just splashed up there as if, sorry, as if this is a quote from her.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: I then jumped in and read the article in the Herald Sun,
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: which honestly,
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't find I didn't find that necessarily problematic for
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: the most part anyway either.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, I think there were some really great quotes in there.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's just that media representation that I think is just blown up and rightfully so
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_00: because if someone said to me most teachers don't know how to teach, I,
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: in all of my science of learning advocacy, would defend them and say I don't agree.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think a blanket do not or an absolute do not know how to teach is a fair judgment.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're being – look, I wasn't a fan of the article itself.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: Look, compared to that terrible headline, it's nowhere near the line, the terrible headline.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it says things like,
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: teachers are also avoiding lecture-style classes over an incorrect belief
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: that doing was more effective than traditional listening or reading.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's not –
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's a real misunderstanding.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like lecturing is not hugely effective.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: What's effective is interactive,
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: explicit teaching, which does involve the kids doing lots of things.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that they're not doing an investigation for themselves,
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: being guided by the teacher.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that they might be responding to the teacher on many whiteboards or in other ways.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so, yeah, I didn't...
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: That one, I think they've drawn a bit from the article.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I know Tricia makes comment to this one.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_00: So this was figure six in the original report, which I'll also link below by CIS.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: And it was students learn very little from lecturing or reading,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: but learn a great deal from doing activities and teaching others.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And when I read that,
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: so what they did just for context for the listeners who've not read it,
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: they had respondent's I mean,
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: they had to mark on a scale from strongly disagree up to strongly agree on
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: that statement.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I read that and went,
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: well, I mean, I do think students learn very little from lecturing or reading.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you mean by doing activities,
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: but if our doing activities are what my students would do in a lesson where Yeah.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I would say.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think that there's a disconnect between the report and the way that it's presented
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: in the Herald Sun.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's reasonable.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think you do learn from lectures.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: I just think that interactive lectures are more effective.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you certainly learn a lot from reading because otherwise, you know...
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I learn most of what I learn.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: But you've got to have a bit of motivation behind that.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think what that question in the report is getting to is,
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: have you ever seen Dale's Cone of Experience?
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's another myth.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's...
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: Can I read you part of Trisha's Substack on that?
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: She said,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: this item was newly constructed for the purpose of this study to try and capture
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: the learning pyramid or cone of experience.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've absolutely nailed it.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think that's where that comes – well, obviously that's where that comes from.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: But he doesn't – what that question is about is not about avoiding lecture-style classes.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was a question about whether you learn – So, again,
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: you know, I think the reporter has attempted to translate this and certainly...
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Done a better job than the editor who wrote the headline.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_01: But it is clickbaity, slightly tabloid.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: And some reporters, education reporters, are better at translating this stuff than others.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Some have a really deep understanding of it.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: When they come along, that's really great because you get, you know, like Rebecca Urban was a...
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: A great reporter for The Australian.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: She really understood what she's talking about.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Lucy Carroll is another one who's now with The Australian, who was with The New Morning Herald.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're really good.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: They understand their beat quite well.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: But most education reporters will struggle a little bit more translating it because,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: they're not teachers themselves
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: and they don't necessarily know exactly what this looks like.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think like we're so aware of the fact that the wording here is so important
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: of every, I mean, in that one in itself, and where is it?
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Because I've just moved away from it again.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_00: Where did I put it?
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've got 400 things open here.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the learn very little from lecturing or reading.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like in my head,
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: I immediately went,
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: lecturing just means I'm talking at the students and I know that talking
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: at them is going to be Well,
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: it's going to be less effective than me getting them to do things.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: But all of that's based on- But are they learning
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: very little?
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because they're learning something.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is it very little?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's the bit.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_01: One thing I want to point out.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that people have attacked is the survey.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: So more sober characters rather than just reacting to the headline.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because the problem is,
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: you see, lots of people don't understand what's happening with headlines.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: And they assume that the headline reflects the story,
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_01: which reflects the research that it's based on.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: But the research it's based on is not necessarily faithfully...
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but headlines get clicks, of course.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: The more thoughtful people have actually read Trish's report.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the criticisms of Trish's report are, oh,
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: it's a survey,
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: it's self-report,
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: it's blah,
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: blah, it's the CIS, the CIS evil centre-right think tank, blah, blah.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, something like that.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_01: And but I think that doesn't appreciate this is done by a polling firm.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: So polling firms are quite sophisticated.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: These are the people that tell us,
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: how people say they're going to vote in the upcoming Victorian election or whatever.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they did their sampling.
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: They tried to get a good representative sample of teachers from across Australia.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they've got mechanisms to do that.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: They are the experts in this area.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, it's not the same as a university going out and doing research.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it's necessarily a weak research design because of that.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Would it get
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's probably pretty solid.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: I did a survey...
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: Myself a year ago, a couple of years ago for my blog.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked people about their training.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't ask them what they believed.
• 43:35
  SPEAKER_01: I asked them about their training.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: I thought it would be pretty pointless me asking people in
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: a survey what they believed about learning styles or something like that.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because if they've heard of my survey,
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: they're probably in the orbit of the science of learning type people.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would say there's a sampling bias.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if any of us in this field would ask our connections, we're going to see that, right?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I asked them about their training because that should be more of a random sample.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: So the people who make it to my Substack or have a friend who's sent them a survey
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_01: from my Substack,
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: They're a biased sample,
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_01: but the institutions that they went to is probably more of a representative sample.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: And funnily enough, I think Trish got like 378 participants in her survey.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think I got this figure right.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: And in my survey, I got 377 Australian teachers reporting on their university experience.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly, 83% of those reported that...
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: Well, wait a bit.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Was that within the last 10 years or was that all time?
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: I can't remember exactly.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: But essentially,
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: 83% of sliced somewhere or other,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_01: which I can't quite remember,
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: reported that the university experience had essentially talked positively about
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: the learning styles of neuromyth.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: So if 83%...
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: In a survey that I did said the universities were kind of endorsing it and then 88%
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: of current teachers are kind of endorsing it, then I do think we've got a problem.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: Those figures might not be that sound.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: They might represent a little bit of bias, but there's something going on.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: But Trish in her last Knowledge is Power paper also referenced the fact
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: that neuromyths and specifically learning styles,
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: they don't just exist within education.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I, like,
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think it was a few weeks ago,
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: my, you know this, Greg, my partner's a, like, he's in medicine.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing a training module as part of something he has to do.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_00: But he was doing a training module.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: Syringes or something.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, probably.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Or stethoscopes.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, something like that.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Blood is what I hear.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: He was doing that and had...
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: He had a question about teaching where it said something about make sure that
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: when you're teaching this to other doctors,
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_00: you teach it using their preferred learning style.
• 46:02
  SPEAKER_00: And then went through the classic visual auditory kinesthet and he sent it to me
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: and was like, you're going to hate this butt.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, thank God he knows.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_00: But also, oh, I do hate it.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's not just something that exists in teaching.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think this goes back to the purpose of this paper.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is by no means Trish blaming teachers.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: No, no.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: How prepared they felt like they were to implement science of learning practices.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: And with that,
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: they were like, well, look,
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: we think that there needs to actually be some kind
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: of like system wide level recognition that we need better professional knowledge
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_00: as teachers.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously part of that's coming through initial teacher ed.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: But she's done that.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_00: And this paper sort of hinges off that where the whole goal is to really put forward.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's to put forward different recommendations.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just flicking back to conclusions and recommendations.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's put forward recommendations,
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: including one of my favorites,
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: which is recommendation three,
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_00: move away from portfolio-based and towards knowledge-based processes
• 47:22
  SPEAKER_00: to certify teachers at different career stages.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: But has actually gone through and given recommendations at a system-wide level.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: That's what this is acting to do.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not there to say, well,
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: you believe in learning styles,
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: therefore you're bad or you can't teach or you don't know how to teach
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: and whatever other articles say.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like this entire thing is her coming out saying...
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Here are the knowledge gaps that exist in our profession that are widespread based
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_00: on this sample that we've got.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: And here's our recommendations for how we can fix it.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's a very sensible paper and it's unfortunate the way that both,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose,
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: supporters of the research,
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: which I think the Herald Sun was sort of trying to support it,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: but in a very unfortunate way, clickbaity way, and critics have gone at it.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: But people could really do paying attention to that research.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's worth looking at.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is a video produced by ITV News, which is an independent television news in the UK.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_01: So if you live in the UK and you switch on your normal terrestrial television
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: and you switch on one of the channels,
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: one of the channels is ITV and this is their news program.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this video, which Caiti hopefully will put a link to in the show notes, is on YouTube.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly will.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it is an ITV story on education in Wales.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's just over 20 minutes long.
• 49:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really fascinating.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: The reporter, and it is notable.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: You really notice when reporters have immersed themselves in education
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: and they really get it as opposed to.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was an education,
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: like, what do I call an education person when I first started watching.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was like, he's like, it's a snappy video, but he was switched on to it.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: He was all over it.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: And he tells the story well about what happened in Wales.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_01: So Wales essentially did what the experts recommended.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_01: So up until the late 90s,
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_01: early 2000s, Wales and England essentially had the same education system.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_01: There were a few nuances,
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: but it was all run From London,
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Scotland already by then had a separate education system.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_01: When Wales got its parliament and the Tony Blair government,
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: it's not called a parliament and it isn't a parliament,
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: a senedd, seneth, seneth is called, seneth.
• 50:02
  SPEAKER_01: They took charge of education and they...
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Wales has still got GCSEs,
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: but it's gone its own way with them and it's reduced a lot of national testing.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of going with a knowledge-rich national curriculum, it's lightened that.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's gone a bit more skills-based.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's left a lot of decisions at the level of the school.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_00: That was a weird one for me to read about.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was just trying to get my head around how you even do that.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a good question.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: Welsh teachers have been trying to do that too.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: Reduced a lot of the testing.
• 50:59
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's this idea that you don't fatten a pig by weighing it.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: But if you don't weigh it, you don't know if it's getting any fatter.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: The second bit's the bit I add.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know,
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: so they listen to the experts and the experts in education usually tell you
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: the opposite of what you need to do.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so they did the opposite of what they needed to do.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: They reduced accountability and They made the curriculum more confusing.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: They deregulated responsibility for the curriculum and all this.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: So although they're technically committed to phonics and have been,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think,
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: for a few years,
• 51:32
  SPEAKER_01: there's no way of ensuring that phonics is being taught in classrooms.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_01: So they've got a body that inspects schools in Wales, just like there is one in England.
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm not sure how hard they're going on ensuring that phonics is being taught.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so this video,
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_01: the reporter,
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_01: whose name I should know,
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: because it's like the name of the journalist,
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't know it, which is really bad.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is actually, let me find that while you do this.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you'll be able to do that.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: He talks to Lucy Crehan,
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: who I didn't realise she lives in Wales, and she is quite a formidable researcher.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: She did a thing where she visited top-performing countries based
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_01: on their PISA results a decade or so ago.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_01: And she wrote a book.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_01: That doesn't sound very promising because that sounds like she was going
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: to come back and go on about Finland and how marvellous that was.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, the result of that work was much more measured.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_01: She took a lot from the Far East countries.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think she's done some work with Northern Ireland.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, she's a very sensible voice.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so she spends some time talking about what all the problems are with the way
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_01: that Wales has gone about reforming its curriculum and all this.
• 52:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is the interesting part of the video.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, and he comes right out and he says,
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: look, in England, essentially they're doing really well and Wales is not.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: Should we be doing what England does?
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: And you can tell she doesn't like that question because she She's from the SNP,
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: which is the, no, it's from the SNP.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's not from the Scottish Nationalist Party.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: What's she from?
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_01: She's from Plaid Cymru, which is the Welsh equivalent.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: So Plaid Cymru is,
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_01: and I can't say it because I can't speak Welsh,
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: is the Welsh Nationalist Party,
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_01: which rather eccentrically,
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: I suppose is the best way I can put it,
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: would like Wales to become an independent nation.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: And they're in power in Wales at the moment.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: Labour have been in power for many, many years, but they're in power now.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea that...
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: That an applied Cymru person would want to learn anything from England or
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_01: the English is quite amusing because they kind of define themselves against that.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's almost how they define themselves as not being English.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: So she startles at that a little bit.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: But essentially...
• 54:33
  SPEAKER_01: Her diagnosis is that the reforms they wanted to introduce
• 54:40
  SPEAKER_01: in Wales were great reforms that are on the right track.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_01: They just tried to do too much too quickly, Caiti.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: They just tried to bite off more than they could chew, and that's caused some problems for them.
• 54:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, they need to do some work in phonics and early literacy and numeracy,
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_01: but apart from that, things are basically okay.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's basically a sound idea.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_01: They just tried to do too much too soon.
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_01: Which is a fundamental and deeply worrying misdiagnosis of what the problem is.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_01: So are they going to learn?
• 55:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're very different contexts.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, they're not.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think, I mean,
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: but I was trying to find the exact quote because the person,
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: the reporter,
• 55:23
  SPEAKER_00: whose name,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: by the way,
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: is not mentioned anywhere in this,
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: which is why we've not been able to figure it out, but I will...
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: Pop his name into the show notes.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like the reporter comes back and sort of questions that and I couldn't see it in
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_00: the transcript so I'm just sort of going by my notes where he kind of questions that
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: and he's like, but what do you mean they're different content?
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: How do they learn differently?
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: And she sort of just keeps talking and explaining that,
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: nope, this is, you know, Yeah,
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: so this is the bit.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: I've got the transcript up.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_01: This is a reporter.
• 56:01
  SPEAKER_01: Do you acknowledge that we were wrong to deviate from that kind of approach over
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: the last 25 years?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about England.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_01: There it is.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I'm happy to learn valuable lessons for us from England, particularly around phonics.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_01: These are two very different contexts and science and maths and different contexts,
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: different jurisdictions.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure you are aware.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, what's so different about a child learning in Newport and Bristol?
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_01: Discussions in England are also very contested territory around particularly.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Newport's in Wales and Bristol is just over the River Severn in England.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_01: Particularly curriculum, I would say that the main message is it's maintaining that focus.
• 56:41
  SPEAKER_01: There's a huge amount to be had more broadly,
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: but that's a matter for the Education Minister in England.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: This is the minister in Wales again.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm focused on here and focused on literacy.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_01: She keeps saying literacy.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: She's focused on literacy.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, and numeracy in Wales.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: And numeracy.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_01: And Determinists Show.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: So he's saying knowledge-rich curriculum, science, history, all this sort of stuff.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: That seems to a science block.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like, I'm going to focus on literacy and literacy.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a different context.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I had a guy that used to write to me from Wales.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_01: And he would say the big problem in Wales, and this is hugely controversial...
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_01: And his view was that you're basically hobbling kids by making them have
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_01: to learn two languages and this is a problem.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about any of that,
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_01: but the only reason I mention that is that's about the only thing I can say.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a big difference contextually between England and Wales.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_01: That point about what's different about a child in Newport in Wales and a child
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_01: in Bristol just over the Severn Bridge, they're not radically different.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_01: These are not hugely different contexts.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: Wales does have...
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it is...
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a missed opportunity and the good bits about what have been reformed
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_01: in England are certainly something that the Welsh minister should be looking at.
• 58:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think you said Lucy Crean who spoke,
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: like my note beside her section was she spoke a lot of sense,
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_00: but But she made the point that of the – so she analysed a bunch of curricula
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_00: for different countries and of the 14 that she analysed,
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_00: Wales had the least specific.
• 59:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just in the fact that we know that knowledge builds on knowledge,
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: it's like by not having a clear set of this is what you need to teach – Here's when.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean,
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: she actually,
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_00: to be clear,
• 59:27
  SPEAKER_00: what I should say is she's asked the question,
• 59:30
  SPEAKER_00: if there was one thing that you could change about the education system in Wales,
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: what would you change?
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she said three things.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: But she said three really great things.
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, you know, like...
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_00: Specific expectations about what students should know at what ages,
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_00: with that obviously being because if you've got a student who's leaving
• 59:49
  SPEAKER_00: a primary school and they're missing knowledge or if children are coming in
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: from different primary schools to secondary schools
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_00: and they've got different knowledge,
• 59:56
  SPEAKER_00: it's going to be really hard to try to teach all of those students and to – well,
• 1:00:01
  SPEAKER_00: being that knowledge builds on knowledge – to actually build on what they've got
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: because you're building on heaps of different foundations,
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_00: if they've even got a foundation – She actually did point out the development
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_00: of resources to actually support teachers with their workload with that.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_01: And then mentioned- No, not one size fits all PowerPoint slides, Caiti.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I know.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_00: We're not going to do that.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's terrible.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, monstrosity.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_00: Deprofessionizing teachers.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_00: I just, I heard it and I was like, oh man, I was like, ask them.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ask us how that's going over here.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're like my favorite lifesaver when it comes to teaching.
• 1:00:40
  SPEAKER_00: They are brilliant.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, yeah, they are grossly unpopular.
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 1:00:47
  SPEAKER_00: and then our other one was initial teacher ed and like specifically spoke
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: about courses for primary and how like needing time on subject specific pedagogy,
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_00: blah, blah, blah.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: So realistically,
• 1:00:58
  SPEAKER_00: and I mean,
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: I would say like at least two of those three things,
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: the things that we're also actively doing in Australia,
• 1:01:04
  SPEAKER_00: like we've got the core content as part of the initial teacher ed reforms and
• 1:01:09
  SPEAKER_00: the TEAP report that we've briefly mentioned.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: We've got that.
• 1:01:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we're actually working on that stuff here with our initial teacher ed,
• 1:01:16
  SPEAKER_00: the development of resources.
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_00: We have bodies that are doing that.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know VTLM 2.0 in Victoria have resources.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, we've got impact curriculum now.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_00: Impact, Have Curriculum Resources Available, Previously, Ochre.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: But I've completely blanked on what I was going to say on it.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: You've just reminded me of something, Caiti.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: Terrific.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_01: Because,
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't know why and what it is you said that did it,
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: but I've got, in ChatGPT, I've got a scheduled task.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've got several scheduled tasks.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why isn't it loading my ChatGPT?
• 1:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's very slow.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: And one of those scheduled tasks is, and I haven't looked into this yet, ACPU Ownership Watch.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it reports back to me on any developments on ACPU and who runs it.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I got this alert today.
• 1:02:12
  SPEAKER_01: A third academic has now been publicly linked to ACPU's research.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew Duker.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew Duker, D-U-C-H-A-R.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: AGPU has announced a new preprint entitled, Do the Sources Support the Claims?
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: Claim Source Correspondence in an Australian Evidence Intermediary Report.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: I think this must be like a, I don't know.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't looked at it.
• 1:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just got this today.
• 1:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like I woke up this morning.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, because I mentioned tape.
• 1:02:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes, because they're going to go after Teep.
• 1:02:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's on their hit list.
• 1:02:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's their next hit list.
• 1:02:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's what reminded me.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_01: We got there in the end.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_01: There was a link.
• 1:02:49
  SPEAKER_01: And so the announcement names three researchers,
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_01: David Clements, Natasa Ciabatti, who we already knew about, and Andrew Duker.
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_01: Is this on LinkedIn?
• 1:03:01
  SPEAKER_01: No, this is – I'm reading for you AI-generated slop from my scheduled tasks.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, no, the – So it's a preprint.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: So are you familiar with preprints?
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, our audience might not be.
• 1:03:16
  SPEAKER_01: So preprint is you've written an academic paper.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's not been published yet, but you can put it on a preprint server.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've got one sitting on a preprint server that no one will publish.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've mentioned it before.
• 1:03:25
  SPEAKER_01: So they've announced it on LinkedIn.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:03:30
  SPEAKER_01: The announcement names three researchers...
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then the preprint is shared.
• 1:03:35
  SPEAKER_01: You asked me if it was on LinkedIn and it is.
• 1:03:37
  SPEAKER_01: And sorry, I didn't say.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry.
• 1:03:39
  SPEAKER_01: I just figured they would have posted it there.
• 1:03:40
  SPEAKER_01: I started wittering about preprint servers.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: It's, oh, old mate Tom Mahoney has posted it maybe.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's just linked me to Tom Mahoney.
• 1:03:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know why he did that.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, here we go.
• 1:03:54
  SPEAKER_00: I found it on their LinkedIn.
• 1:03:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's for those interested in the academic side of things.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've made a preprint of a paper available while it undergoes peer review.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: It examines the claim source correspondence in the Aero 2023 report.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: And they have tagged Andrew.
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: How are we pronouncing his surname?
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
• 1:04:12
  SPEAKER_01: Duker.
• 1:04:13
  SPEAKER_01: He's one of the authors, apparently.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: He has been tagged recently.
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because he's one of the authors of the paper on the preprint server.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Vic Uni was where the other two were based, was it?
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got the preprint up now and it says authors David Clements,
• 1:04:33
  SPEAKER_01: Natasha Ciabatti and Andrew Duker.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it's...
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do the sources support the claims.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think it's like a report version of what they posted on their site
• 1:04:48
  SPEAKER_01: because it looks like they're going after the same thingamy, the same error report.
• 1:04:53
  SPEAKER_00: It looks like it.
• 1:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I am.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, sorry to open that can of worms right at the end of the recording
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_01: and know very little about it because it only just occurred to me.
• 1:05:04
  SPEAKER_01: But there you go.
• 1:05:05
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe our listeners can do a bit of inquiry learning and dig up some more interesting details.
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe it's not very interesting.
• 1:05:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know because I haven't read it yet.
• 1:05:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I look forward to it.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, look, I think that will probably take us about to the end.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, everybody, for listening to today's episode.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: If there is anything that you want to access that we spoke about today,
• 1:05:34
  SPEAKER_00: it will almost definitely be in the show notes
• 1:05:36
  SPEAKER_00: unless I miss anything this time around.
• 1:05:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you do have a future article, video,
• 1:05:42
  SPEAKER_00: podcast,
• 1:05:43
  SPEAKER_00: opinion piece,
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: or any of the likes that you want us to discuss in an upcoming episode,
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: drop it to either Greg or myself on any of our socials,
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: which you can also find down in the show notes.
• 1:05:55
  [music]