Latest / When Will They Learn? / Episode #2 Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking

Transcript

Episode #2 Thinking Critically about Critical Thinking · When Will They Learn?

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Katie Wade.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: And I'm Greg Ashman.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: And welcome to When Will They Learn?
0:05
This is the podcast where we explore what's trending in the
0:15
world of education.
0:16
SPEAKER_01: In each episode,
0:17
we discuss podcast articles and opinion pieces that are shaping
0:21
education discourse
0:22
SPEAKER_01: at the moment and examine these through a science of learning lens.
0:26
SPEAKER_01: We discuss not just what's popular, but what's supported by the evidence.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: In this week's episode, we will be looking at critical thinking.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: What is it?
0:37
SPEAKER_00: Can it be taught?
0:38
SPEAKER_00: Is it what we should be pursuing in our schools?
0:41
And we will be looking at some common criticisms of
0:44
evidence-based practice.
0:48
SPEAKER_01: Today,
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Greg,
0:49
I wanted to get us started off by chatting about an article
0:52
here from Education HQ
0:54
SPEAKER_01: that focuses on critical thinking.
0:56
The article that we're looking at is Teaching Kids Critical
0:59
Thinking Skills Early
1:00
SPEAKER_01: May Help Ensure Our Future,
1:03
SPEAKER_01: It's a strong title from these guys,
1:06
SPEAKER_01: but basically it speaks about different scientists,
1:08
SPEAKER_01: including this one who's a microbiologist,
1:10
SPEAKER_01: Dr.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: Jake Robinson,
1:12
that say that our education systems need to prioritise whatever
1:16
critical thinking
1:17
SPEAKER_01: skills are.
1:19
SPEAKER_01: So as part of this,
1:20
what they do is they basically speak about the fact that our
1:22
traditional schooling
1:23
SPEAKER_01: model places a lot of emphasis on memorization,
1:26
SPEAKER_01: but not enough on actually equipping students to,
1:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
1:29
SPEAKER_01: evaluate evidence,
1:30
SPEAKER_01: question information.
1:31
And they sort of go on and they keep referencing this idea of
1:34
critical thinking.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: Greg, when I was reading it,
1:38
I wanted to start off by saying I don't disagree with the idea
1:43
that as part of a
1:43
SPEAKER_01: school,
1:44
we want to create students who can go away and they can
1:46
question what they're
1:47
SPEAKER_01: seeing in the media.
1:48
SPEAKER_01: I think that's great.
1:49
SPEAKER_01: And I think that is a huge priority of us.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: But I think that where it began to fall apart a little bit for me,
1:54
because there was a huge focus throughout this paper on schools
1:58
teaching students
1:59
SPEAKER_01: critical thinking.
2:01
And I don't fully agree with this,
2:03
but I also know that you have some opinions on this.
2:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: Plenty, Katie.
2:08
SPEAKER_00: Look, as you have done, let's start with the good.
2:13
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's a microbiologist who's being interviewed for Education HQ.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: Not a learning scientist.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: Let's just point that out.
2:21
SPEAKER_00: And people have all sorts of
2:23
SPEAKER_00: ideas about education.
2:25
SPEAKER_00: I think the cliche is to say everyone went to school,
2:28
SPEAKER_00: so everyone's got an opinion about education,
2:30
SPEAKER_00: but no one seems to feel that they need to test it against evidence.
2:34
It just seems self-evident to this Jake Robinson guy that you
2:37
can teach critical thinking.
2:38
SPEAKER_00: And that's the bit that I would challenge.
2:42
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it kind of depends on what you mean.
2:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I like the bit where he says, where have I got this...
2:48
SPEAKER_00: He talks about, well, teaching them microbiology stuff.
2:51
Like he says we should teach them,
2:54
you know,
2:54
about some really key ideas for microbiology.
2:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, I would agree with that.
2:59
SPEAKER_00: And I suppose he would say that, wouldn't he?
3:00
SPEAKER_00: Because he's a microbiologist and I've got a physics training,
3:04
SPEAKER_00: so I'd want to teach kids key ideas about physics.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I think that's fine.
3:08
SPEAKER_00: But then to go into this idea that there are generic...
3:13
skills that we can teach that enable kids to think outside the
3:18
box,
3:19
that sort of thing.
3:20
SPEAKER_00: I think he's going a bit far there.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: He talks about one of the quotes in the article,
3:26
SPEAKER_00: scientists from around the world,
3:28
SPEAKER_00: Cletus Flanders University microbiologist,
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Dr.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: Jake Robinson,
3:32
have called for a radical refocus on school curricula from
3:34
early years to high
3:35
school to include more critical thinking and learning skills to
3:39
empower students to
3:40
SPEAKER_00: think outside the box.
3:42
SPEAKER_00: And you read the article,
3:43
SPEAKER_00: and the idea is that sort of transmitting information,
3:46
SPEAKER_00: he doesn't quite rule that out as something we should do,
3:49
SPEAKER_00: but it definitely comes across as bad,
3:52
SPEAKER_00: like as limited,
3:53
SPEAKER_00: very,
3:54
SPEAKER_00: very limited.
3:55
What we should be doing instead is teaching these more generic
4:01
skills that you can
4:02
SPEAKER_00: apply across lots of different domains.
4:06
SPEAKER_00: An example he gives is imagination.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think...
4:09
If you look at it,
4:10
like the idea that imagination is some sort of general thing.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: And we do say in everyday language, we say this all the time.
4:17
You might say,
4:18
oh,
4:18
this person is quite imaginative or they've got a good
4:20
imagination.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And so we think it's this one thing.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: It's known as the jingle fallacy.
4:27
SPEAKER_00: So if we give different things the same name,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: we get confused and we think they are the same thing.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: But I'll give you an example.
4:35
I can imagine a practical to find the specific heat capacity of
4:39
aluminium.
4:39
SPEAKER_00: I can imagine that in my head.
4:41
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine the C++ code to produce an animated figure on a screen.
4:46
SPEAKER_00: I've never programmed in C++.
4:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what that looks like.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: I can't imagine it.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: So even things that we think are so...
4:56
SPEAKER_00: intrinsic properties of humans,
4:59
SPEAKER_00: like imagination,
5:01
really are highly dependent on knowledge and really not a huge
5:05
amount else.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: There are a few other things,
5:07
SPEAKER_00: like when we talk about critical thinking,
5:09
SPEAKER_00: he talks a lot about asking why,
5:11
SPEAKER_00: why,
5:11
SPEAKER_00: why all the time.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: Well,
5:13
SPEAKER_00: if you went around asking why all the time,
5:15
SPEAKER_00: it could be quite annoying,
5:16
SPEAKER_00: so you might not do that.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: All of the two-year-olds in the entire world are out now.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: But also, I mean, there are cultural aspects to that.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: So in some cultures, you don't question the boss at all.
5:29
SPEAKER_00: In other cultures, you might do so.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: So there are cultural aspects that we might call critical thinking.
5:36
SPEAKER_00: But apart from that, a lot of it really does depend on what you know.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: Well,
5:42
it's interesting because one of the quotes in here was he
5:45
believes students must
5:46
SPEAKER_01: develop adaptive capacities that enable them to question,
5:49
SPEAKER_01: critically analyse,
5:50
SPEAKER_01: imagine,
5:51
SPEAKER_01: act and empathise.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: And again, I 100% agree with this statement.
5:56
I think that's sort of the issue that I'm finding in the paper
5:59
is that we're nearly
5:59
conflating these two ideas of you being a citizen who's going
6:03
to critique what's
6:04
out there in the media and what you're hearing and going out
6:07
and looking for
6:07
SPEAKER_01: information.
6:08
SPEAKER_01: We're conflating that idea with this idea of
6:11
SPEAKER_01: something called,
6:12
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:12
SPEAKER_01: teaching critical thinking or thinking skills,
6:15
SPEAKER_01: whatever he calls them.
6:17
SPEAKER_01: So it sounds good.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: When you read the article, you go, yeah, I agree with that statement.
6:22
I want the students that I teach to leave and be able to
6:25
question the world around
6:26
SPEAKER_01: them and go into the media and know how to find information and,
6:29
SPEAKER_01: you know,
6:30
SPEAKER_01: and again,
6:30
SPEAKER_01: like act against bias or empathize with people.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: That is 100% what I want for my students.
6:37
SPEAKER_01: But
6:39
SPEAKER_01: Do I think that I can do that by,
6:40
SPEAKER_01: in the middle of my maths class,
6:42
SPEAKER_01: teaching them whatever a thinking skill is?
6:45
I'm not really sure because he doesn't define what a thinking
6:47
skill is,
6:48
but I suspect not.
6:50
SPEAKER_00: No.
6:51
SPEAKER_00: And that's the point.
6:53
SPEAKER_00: And this is why there are so many articles like this.
6:57
And this is why for years we had to toil under this kind of
7:02
burden of the 21st
7:03
SPEAKER_00: century skills,
7:04
SPEAKER_00: because all of a sudden these things became called 21st century skills.
7:08
SPEAKER_00: The ability to empathise was never important before the 21st century.
7:12
SPEAKER_00: And now it's a 21st century skill because...
7:15
And I'm surprised it hasn't come back with AI because what
7:18
people used to say is
7:20
SPEAKER_00: all the routine thinking will be done by computers.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: And so we've got to learn these 21st century skills,
7:26
SPEAKER_00: this ability to think critically,
7:28
SPEAKER_00: to empathize the human properties.
7:30
That's what we need to develop in school so that humans have
7:33
got something to offer
7:34
SPEAKER_00: above machines.
7:35
SPEAKER_00: And now we've got AI, um, come along, which is freaking everybody out.
7:40
And we probably ought to address that at some point,
7:42
um,
7:43
on,
7:43
on this podcast,
7:44
but,
7:44
um,
7:45
So I'm surprised it hasn't made a comeback,
7:47
this idea that we need to teach these skills again.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: And it sort of is, because it is intuitively very appealing.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: As you say,
7:55
no one can disagree that they want students educated to such a
8:00
point that they can
8:01
SPEAKER_00: become critical consumers of information,
8:04
that they can be sceptical when presented with things that
8:07
don't make sense,
8:08
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:09
SPEAKER_00: theories about Wi-Fi causing,
8:11
SPEAKER_00: you know,
8:12
SPEAKER_00: I don't know,
8:12
SPEAKER_00: whatever it is it's supposed to cause...
8:14
SPEAKER_00: They can critically evaluate that.
8:17
But the route to that is largely through knowing a lot of stuff
8:22
about the world,
8:22
SPEAKER_00: not necessarily very deeply.
8:24
SPEAKER_00: I made up a paragraph in my notes.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: So here we go.
8:28
SPEAKER_00: Let's say,
8:29
say if I told you that General de Gaulle started the Second
8:32
World War by invading
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Spain,
8:33
SPEAKER_00: yes?
8:33
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: You could say, why?
8:38
SPEAKER_00: Why?
8:39
SPEAKER_00: Over and over again and use one of these routines.
8:41
Or you could,
8:41
I don't know what these other critical thinking routines are.
8:44
But to anyone who knows anything about the Second World War,
8:46
you just know that's nonsense.
8:48
And it's similar if people start talking about 5G towers
8:52
causing brain cancer or
8:54
SPEAKER_00: something,
8:54
SPEAKER_00: which is like one of the
8:56
kind of online conspiracy theories anyone that knows anything
8:59
about how those
9:01
towers work and how the mind works and the amount of energy
9:04
that would actually
9:05
reach into a brain from a 5g tower and all that sort of stuff
9:11
knows that that's
9:11
nonsense just like the person listening to that paragraph about
9:15
general de Gaulle
9:15
or sentence actually about general de Gaulle knows it's
9:17
nonsense you don't need a
9:20
a routine or a skill or a predisposition to ask why or whatever
9:26
these other routines are.
9:29
John Sweller,
9:30
who obviously I worked with quite closely when I was doing my
9:32
PhD,
9:34
He said,
9:35
when people say these things,
9:36
we need to teach what it is to think critically.
9:40
SPEAKER_00: Ask them exactly what they would teach.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: Ask them to describe exactly the thing that they would teach kids to do.
9:47
SPEAKER_00: And you'll find that they either can't
9:50
SPEAKER_00: Or it's something really quite trivial.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's a way to look at it.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: So the idea of having critical consumers of education,
10:00
SPEAKER_00: I think,
10:00
SPEAKER_00: of information out there in the world is really important.
10:05
SPEAKER_00: But the way you do that is you give them lots of knowledge of the world.
10:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: that I've got written here is I wrote, they need knowledge.
10:13
In order to be able to critically question things,
10:16
you need to have your background knowledge.
10:17
And if you don't,
10:18
you need to understand how to find that knowledge,
10:21
where to go to do it.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: But you also, you need a basis in this.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: You can't,
10:28
I think the example I always go back to about how you require
10:30
knowledge is,
10:31
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:32
it was an example from somebody at Clarendon who said that
10:35
they'd searched up,
10:36
SPEAKER_01: it was a WikiHow article on,
10:39
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
10:39
SPEAKER_01: it was maybe like changing an oil filter in a car or something in a car.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: And they said,
10:44
SPEAKER_01: you know,
10:44
I went through it and I read it and I just followed the WikiHow
10:46
and I was able to
10:47
SPEAKER_01: do it.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: But they showed it to someone else being like,
10:49
SPEAKER_01: see,
10:49
SPEAKER_01: so you can just find stuff and you can just do it.
10:52
But there were all these words that had I read that,
10:54
I'd be going,
10:55
I don't know what this is.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's sending me down rabbit holes.
10:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that I can't find that information,
11:01
SPEAKER_01: but it's that by having that base level of knowledge,
11:03
it allows you to be a critical consumer and it gives you what
11:06
you need to know what
11:08
SPEAKER_01: to question,
11:09
SPEAKER_01: where to look,
11:10
SPEAKER_01: and to be able to understand and interpret what it is you're reading.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: Knowledge is your foundation for this.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Yes, as I'm inclined to say, knowledge is what you think with.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: The E.D.
11:21
SPEAKER_00: Hirsch argument is... So E.D.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: Hirsch is a much maligned thinker from the US.
11:29
SPEAKER_00: He wrote a book in the 1980s called Cultural Literacy,
11:33
SPEAKER_00: and basically he had realised that kids that grew up impoverished,
11:36
SPEAKER_00: and in the US there's a racialised lens to that as well,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Kids that grow up impoverished tend to be taught different things.
11:48
And he noticed students from disadvantaged backgrounds really
11:53
struggling when they
11:54
SPEAKER_00: got to college,
11:56
SPEAKER_00: which is where he was a,
11:57
SPEAKER_00: I think he was a linguistics professor.
12:00
And he noticed that they struggled because they just didn't
12:02
have the touchstones
12:03
SPEAKER_00: that other kids had.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: So they just didn't, they had, they couldn't understand things.
12:07
SPEAKER_00: It's what...
12:10
SPEAKER_00: What I think Daniel Willingham has called a situation model.
12:13
So when you read a passage,
12:15
you can build an image of what's going on in your mind.
12:19
The classic example is the baseball studies where you give a
12:22
passage about baseball
12:24
SPEAKER_00: to students and students.
12:26
SPEAKER_00: Those who have got high knowledge of baseball but low supposedly reading
12:31
SPEAKER_00: comprehension skills,
12:32
they understand the passage better than those who have got low
12:36
knowledge of
12:36
SPEAKER_00: baseball but supposedly good reading comprehension skills.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Why?
12:39
SPEAKER_00: Well, they can actually picture the baseball fit.
12:41
SPEAKER_00: Well, it might not.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: Some people picture things,
12:43
SPEAKER_00: some people don't,
12:44
SPEAKER_00: but essentially they picture the field and they can see what's going on.
12:49
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's a fairly trivial example.
12:52
It doesn't really matter a great deal whether you know much
12:54
about baseball or not.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: But consider,
12:56
SPEAKER_00: and this is the Hirsch argument,
12:58
SPEAKER_00: consider someone sitting down to read the New York Times,
13:01
SPEAKER_00: which in America has been,
13:04
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
13:05
there's a lot of debate about the status of the New York Times
13:08
these days.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: But when he was writing, it was a paper of record in the United States.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: So it was where you went to understand what was going on in the country,
13:15
SPEAKER_00: to understand what was going on in the world.
13:17
SPEAKER_00: And
13:19
SPEAKER_00: People who write articles for the New York Times,
13:22
SPEAKER_00: they don't spell everything out in great detail.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: They have to make assumptions of what their audience already knows.
13:29
Otherwise,
13:29
the writing would be very clunky,
13:31
very dense,
13:33
very boring to read.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: And this is the same for any writer writing about anything.
13:39
SPEAKER_00: But the key thing is if you're writing in the New York Times,
13:41
SPEAKER_00: those assumptions about what your audience know –
13:45
are really assumptions about what the average American citizen
13:49
should know.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: Because in order to access the New York Times,
13:54
know what's going on and represent yourself democratically and
13:57
be part of civil
13:59
SPEAKER_00: society,
14:00
SPEAKER_00: you need to know those things.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, you won't be able to understand what people are talking about.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: And so he compiled a list of things that Americans needed to know.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: And immediately that got twisted into...
14:14
You want to drill all American kids with knowledge of dead
14:19
white European men
14:22
SPEAKER_00: because for historical reasons,
14:24
that kind of knowledge that the writers of the New York Times
14:28
assume their audience
14:28
knows does bias towards dead white European men for historical
14:34
reasons and for
14:36
SPEAKER_00: history of colonization and things like that.
14:38
SPEAKER_00: And so he got painted as this arch conservative reactionary,
14:44
whereas what he was actually trying to do was help
14:46
disadvantaged kids by giving
14:48
SPEAKER_00: them the knowledge they needed to interact with society.
14:51
And therefore,
14:51
if they wanted to change society,
14:52
give them the tools to do that.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: So it's quite a fraught area, this.
14:57
SPEAKER_00: And...
15:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
15:01
and it quickly devolves into this political backwards and
15:06
forwards about whose
15:07
SPEAKER_00: knowledge and misses the point.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: I suppose you could summarise it this way.
15:14
SPEAKER_00: There are people who think we should change kids,
15:18
SPEAKER_00: give them the knowledge so that they can understand the world as it is.
15:22
And then there are romantic revolutionary types who think we
15:25
should change the world
15:27
SPEAKER_00: So it fits to the kids as they are.
15:31
SPEAKER_00: Now, I think the first prospect is much more doable than the second one.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: Look, I have a couple of things that...
15:41
SPEAKER_01: The couple of things that I think frustrated me about this article is,
15:47
SPEAKER_01: look,
15:48
SPEAKER_01: it comes down to it.
15:49
SPEAKER_01: It's one of the points you touched on earlier.
15:51
It's the fact that at no point does this article actually go in
15:55
to explain what a
15:56
SPEAKER_01: thinking skill is,
15:57
SPEAKER_01: what a critical thinking skill is.
16:00
SPEAKER_01: It says we need to teach them.
16:01
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't tell me what they are or how.
16:04
It does reference that idea of thinking critically about
16:07
something or critically
16:08
SPEAKER_01: evaluating something,
16:09
SPEAKER_01: and that's great.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: But that also has a meaning,
16:12
and that's something that I would argue in a school context you
16:15
can also teach
16:16
SPEAKER_01: students how to do if they've got the knowledge.
16:19
SPEAKER_01: Look,
16:19
SPEAKER_01: the other point that I've made here is I just – in this article,
16:23
there were a couple of comments here that I'd highlighted
16:25
saying use some very
16:28
SPEAKER_01: negative language.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: We had education is often reduced to the transmission of knowledge.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: More than rote learning, education is key to realising the potential.
16:38
I think the other part here that I think is worth touching on
16:43
is just the fact that
16:44
it really does position education or the idea of acquiring
16:47
knowledge or I hate the
16:50
SPEAKER_01: phrase rote learning.
16:51
It positions it under this really negative light and it does
16:55
that really intentionally.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: So it speaks about all this beautiful stuff about potential,
17:00
SPEAKER_01: cultivating the capacities that learners need.
17:03
It speaks about all these really great things about shields
17:07
against bias,
17:08
misinformation.
17:09
SPEAKER_01: Like it's got all these really beautiful,
17:11
SPEAKER_01: nice things where you go,
17:12
SPEAKER_01: man,
17:12
SPEAKER_01: that sounds really good.
17:14
SPEAKER_01: And then it sort of contrasts that with this idea that,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: well,
17:17
SPEAKER_01: education at the moment is just rote learning.
17:19
SPEAKER_01: All we do is we throw knowledge into kids.
17:21
And I think that was the other thing that frustrated me reading
17:24
it was that it sort
17:25
of pitted these two things very much against each other without
17:29
actually offering
17:29
SPEAKER_01: at any point an explanation of what it means by critical thinking,
17:33
SPEAKER_01: what it means by thinking skills,
17:36
SPEAKER_01: and how exactly they propose we teach whatever these skills are,
17:40
SPEAKER_01: like real or not real.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: There's no information in this paper on...
17:45
SPEAKER_01: In your classroom, this is what you need to do.
17:48
And that makes sense because our main contributor in this is
17:52
not an educational psychologist.
17:54
SPEAKER_01: It's someone who's working in microbiology.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Look, yeah, it's a classic of its type.
18:03
SPEAKER_00: He would probably suggest that,
18:05
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:06
SPEAKER_00: he can't tell us exactly how to teach critical thinking skills because,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: you know,
18:09
SPEAKER_00: he's not in the classroom or I don't know,
18:11
SPEAKER_00: maybe he is as a lecturer.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes university lecturers consider themselves teachers.
18:16
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they don't.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
18:18
SPEAKER_00: But...
18:20
The thing – what would happen if we – if you had a debate about
18:26
this article
18:26
SPEAKER_00: online,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: and I've spent quite a lot of time debating online,
18:29
SPEAKER_00: probably more than I should have done,
18:31
SPEAKER_00: what you would find is this.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: You would make that point,
18:33
SPEAKER_00: oh,
18:34
SPEAKER_00: he's really critical of knowledge,
18:35
SPEAKER_00: and you'd use the way that he talks about rote knowledge.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: learning, you know, more than just transmission.
18:42
It really looks like,
18:44
you know,
18:45
teaching kids knowledge is a lesser thing.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not as good a thing as these more highfalutin goals of education.
18:54
But if you started a debate about this online,
18:55
people would say,
18:56
well,
18:56
wait a bit.
18:57
SPEAKER_00: He never said it wasn't important to teach knowledge.
18:59
He always said that he even mentioned some microbiology stuff
19:03
that you should teach kids.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: And so although you and I recognise that this is an anti-knowledge tract,
19:09
SPEAKER_00: yes,
19:10
SPEAKER_00: if you tried to make that point,
19:12
SPEAKER_00: people would counter and say,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: oh,
19:13
SPEAKER_00: no,
19:14
SPEAKER_00: he recognises the importance of teaching knowledge.
19:16
And you get a lot of these rhetorical dodges in the education
19:20
debate where people
19:22
kind of armour themselves against quite reasonable critique by
19:28
using these
19:28
SPEAKER_00: strategies where they will just sort of nod to something and
19:31
SPEAKER_00: And you're supposed to know,
19:32
SPEAKER_00: like the classic is balanced literacy,
19:35
SPEAKER_00: where people would nod to phonics and they'd say,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: yes,
19:38
SPEAKER_00: there's a role for that.
19:39
But we don't want kids just barking at print and blah,
19:42
blah,
19:42
blah,
19:42
blah,
19:42
blah.
19:43
SPEAKER_00: And off they'd go on a big tirade.
19:44
SPEAKER_00: And you say, oh, so you're antiphonics.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: No, I said we do need that.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: And so it's a way of kind of... You just need a little bit of that.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
19:51
SPEAKER_00: It's a way of arming yourself against the obvious critique.
19:54
The other thing that struck out to me from the perspective of
19:57
2026 is this idea of
19:59
SPEAKER_00: misinformation.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: Now,
20:01
SPEAKER_00: yes,
20:02
SPEAKER_00: I do want kids to be able to identify misinformation,
20:05
but I'm not sure it's always what people tell me is
20:09
misinformation because the...
20:13
There seems to now be a kind of political element to
20:16
misinformation and politicians
20:18
SPEAKER_00: throw the label around.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: And often it just means what the other person thinks.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to call that misinformation.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: And I worry about the teaching of misinformation.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: I'll give you some examples.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: So in the pandemic,
20:29
SPEAKER_00: and this is a classic example,
20:31
SPEAKER_00: at the start of the pandemic,
20:32
SPEAKER_00: right,
20:34
SPEAKER_00: wearing a mask.
20:35
SPEAKER_00: was not going to help you at all.
20:36
SPEAKER_00: There were news articles about it.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: There was things in the paper.
20:40
SPEAKER_00: Don't buy masks.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: It's not going to help prevent the transmission of COVID.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: It is weird that hospitals had used them for so long before that.
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
20:50
SPEAKER_00: and then a few months down the track,
20:52
SPEAKER_00: right,
20:53
SPEAKER_00: in Victoria,
20:54
SPEAKER_00: if I'm walking out on the Skipton Rail Trail on my own with my dog,
20:58
SPEAKER_00: no one to be seen,
21:00
SPEAKER_00: it's illegal for me not to wear a mask.
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's the misinformation there?
21:04
Was it misinformation when we were told that it didn't help
21:07
against the virus or
21:10
was it misinformation when we were told we needed to wear one
21:12
when we were outside
21:13
SPEAKER_00: alone?
21:14
SPEAKER_00: And, of course, neither of those things happened.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: Neither of those propositions were exactly right.
21:19
But people invoke science and people invoke science all through
21:22
the pandemic to
21:25
SPEAKER_00: mean opposite things.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: And anyone that disagreed with them was guilty of misinformation.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: So at the start, if you said you need to wear a mask, misinformation.
21:32
At the end,
21:32
if you said you don't need to wear a mask when you're outside,
21:34
misinformation.
21:35
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to serve a political...
21:38
SPEAKER_00: purpose often.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: And it's more about, it's the opposite of critical thinking.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: It's now you need to stop thinking critically now,
21:45
SPEAKER_00: otherwise we're going to shut down that argument.
21:48
SPEAKER_00: Science has decided.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Another example was the whole idea that COVID came from
21:54
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
21:55
some very eminent scientists wrote a paper at the time saying
21:59
this was a terrible
22:00
SPEAKER_00: conspiracy theory.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: It got banned.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: You couldn't mention it.
22:04
You got thrown off Facebook and things like that if you said
22:07
that COVID came from a lab.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: And now people think, well, it's probably...
22:11
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it definitely came from a lab,
22:12
but now the science is that it's a possibility and it's a
22:16
reasonable possibility.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: So there's lots.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: And I remember as well.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: So the final one on this,
22:24
because I remember this very distinctly in 2020 and the lead up
22:28
to the American
22:31
SPEAKER_00: election where Joe Biden beat Donald Trump.
22:35
SPEAKER_00: And Joe Biden's son,
22:37
SPEAKER_00: Hunter Biden,
22:38
SPEAKER_00: there was this story,
22:39
SPEAKER_00: it was in the New York Post,
22:41
SPEAKER_00: that he'd taken his laptop in to be repaired at this laptop repair shop.
22:45
And somehow it got in the hands of Rudy Giuliani,
22:49
who's one of Trump supporters.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: And it was full of this information, not exactly...
22:56
smoking gun or anything like it didn't really prove any real
23:00
wrongdoing on the part
23:01
of of joe biden himself but it was a bit embarrassing and it
23:05
wasn't um it wasn't a
23:06
good look right and the new york new york post had this story
23:10
well the it got
23:11
banned from twitter the story got taken down off twitter and it
23:14
got taken down off
23:15
SPEAKER_00: these other um outlets for being misinformation um
23:20
SPEAKER_00: And people said openly, this is Russian propaganda.
23:24
The Russians have made this story up to discredit Joe Biden so
23:27
that Donald Trump
23:28
SPEAKER_00: wins the election.
23:30
SPEAKER_00: And it turns out that it was probably true.
23:33
SPEAKER_00: All the newspapers that were originally reporting it as misinformation...
23:38
SPEAKER_00: have now essentially quietly,
23:40
SPEAKER_00: years later,
23:40
conceded that this actually was Hunter Biden's laptop and what
23:43
was found on it was
23:45
SPEAKER_00: actually what was found.
23:46
SPEAKER_00: And I remember at the time people arguing with me,
23:49
SPEAKER_00: they were saying,
23:50
SPEAKER_00: yeah,
23:51
SPEAKER_00: but even if it's true,
23:52
the story should be banned because it could affect the outcome
23:55
of the election and
23:55
SPEAKER_00: we can't possibly have Donald Trump elected again.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: which is an interesting take on things.
24:01
But the problem with misinformation for me is who gets to
24:03
decide what's misinformation?
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Who gets to label it?
24:06
SPEAKER_00: What we're doing,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: instead of equipping students with the ability to make that decision for
24:11
SPEAKER_00: themselves,
24:12
SPEAKER_00: yes,
24:13
SPEAKER_00: to rule out that 5G causes brain cancer or whatever,
24:16
SPEAKER_00: but think,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: well,
24:17
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about this lab leak hypothesis.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: I'll have a bit of a think.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: I'll read around.
24:21
SPEAKER_00: Instead of doing that,
24:22
what we seem to be doing as a society is wanting to make those
24:25
decisions for
24:25
SPEAKER_00: people.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like the opposite of
24:28
SPEAKER_00: of what Robinson claimed to want to be doing in this article.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: I think it comes back to,
24:35
SPEAKER_01: it's what you said earlier,
24:36
SPEAKER_01: where for students to,
24:38
SPEAKER_01: or for any person to be able to make those decisions for themselves,
24:43
SPEAKER_01: to be able to sit back and question others,
24:46
what's going on in the world around them and what they're going
24:48
to choose to
24:49
SPEAKER_01: believe,
24:49
SPEAKER_01: what they're going to choose to look into more.
24:51
For them to be able to do that,
24:52
they need a really strong knowledge basis.
24:55
And that's something that at a school,
24:56
we have mechanisms to give them that basis.
25:00
What's happened is that because the authorities have proved to
25:05
be unreliable,
25:06
essentially,
25:07
the
25:08
SPEAKER_00: People are now,
25:09
SPEAKER_00: rather than thinking critically,
25:10
SPEAKER_00: they're just being contrarian and they just won't believe anything.
25:13
SPEAKER_00: Or they will believe any crazy conspiracy theory going.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's the opposite effect, though.
25:20
SPEAKER_01: Then we're just arguing.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: It's a backfire.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's a complete backfire.
25:24
SPEAKER_00: And what I want to do and what you want to do,
25:28
SPEAKER_00: I think,
25:29
SPEAKER_00: is what Robinson wants to do,
25:31
SPEAKER_00: but we're all going at it in different ways,
25:34
which is a quick kids to think for themselves and not have to
25:38
outsource their brain
25:39
SPEAKER_00: to some authority or some crackpot on the internet.
25:45
SPEAKER_00: Should we look at the second article?
25:46
SPEAKER_01: I think we should.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Music
25:53
SPEAKER_00: OK,
25:54
SPEAKER_00: so this is so this was sent to us by by someone we will not name,
26:00
SPEAKER_00: but because we are asking for people to send us things to talk about.
26:04
And I'm not quite sure whether the person who sent us this
26:07
article wanted to be
26:07
SPEAKER_00: associated with this.
26:08
But it's a good opportunity to remind anyone listening to send
26:11
us things that you
26:12
SPEAKER_00: think that we should talk about.
26:14
SPEAKER_00: And the article is it's called Hearing Educators Perspectives.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: And it's from October last year.
26:24
SPEAKER_00: And it is by Dr.
26:27
SPEAKER_00: Nikki Brunker,
26:28
SPEAKER_00: who is a lecturer at the Sydney School of Education and Social Work.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Michelle Hostrop,
26:34
who is an experienced teacher who I think is now working in
26:39
initial teacher
26:40
SPEAKER_00: education.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Dr. Virginia Muller.
26:44
SPEAKER_00: Muller, who is an academic CEO of Steiner Education Australia.
26:53
SPEAKER_00: Alison Boyd-Bowland is an experienced teacher completing a PhD career.
27:00
SPEAKER_00: and Grant Skiberas is working, I think, in initial teacher education.
27:05
SPEAKER_00: Why did I list all of the authors and their backgrounds?
27:08
SPEAKER_00: Because I think it's quite relevant to what we're going to get here.
27:12
SPEAKER_00: So what this article is,
27:14
SPEAKER_00: is it's a strange beast,
27:17
and I think we're only going to talk about essentially like the
27:20
intro literature
27:21
SPEAKER_00: review bit,
27:22
SPEAKER_00: really.
27:23
SPEAKER_00: It's a funny piece of research where the authors went off
27:27
SPEAKER_00: and talk to people who,
27:29
SPEAKER_00: well,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
27:30
SPEAKER_00: uncharitably,
27:31
SPEAKER_00: I could say,
27:33
SPEAKER_00: people who agree with them,
27:35
and then write up everything that's wrong with this idea of
27:41
evidence-based
27:41
SPEAKER_00: education.
27:43
SPEAKER_00: And it's similar to something we talked about in the last episode,
27:49
SPEAKER_00: the similar sort of critique.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: But they actually list two main critiques of evidence-based education,
27:57
which are quite interesting because they illustrate some things
28:01
that I would want
28:02
SPEAKER_00: to highlight.
28:03
So I might just talk first about critique one and see what your
28:07
reaction is to that,
28:08
Katie.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: So critique number one is...
28:12
SPEAKER_00: The idea of the research.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: So just to be absolutely explicit here,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: the paper is criticising so-called evidence-based education.
28:21
SPEAKER_00: Now,
28:22
my position is that you can't have evidence-based education
28:25
because most of what we
28:26
SPEAKER_00: do most of the time in schools,
28:28
SPEAKER_00: there's no evidence base to base it on.
28:30
And it's based on instead intuition and experience and craft
28:34
knowledge and things like that.
28:35
There are a few things that you can do that I have a very solid
28:38
basis in doing.
28:40
in research and evidence,
28:42
but then you often have to apply them in different contexts.
28:45
And so the actual thing you're doing has probably rarely been
28:48
tested in research,
28:50
SPEAKER_00: even if it's been informed by it.
28:52
SPEAKER_00: So I would tend to talk about evidence-informed education rather than
28:56
SPEAKER_00: evidence-based,
28:57
although I know that some people have also tried to hijack that
29:01
term for nefarious
29:02
SPEAKER_00: purposes in recent years.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: But anyway,
29:05
SPEAKER_00: Their critique is against evidence-based practice,
29:09
SPEAKER_00: evidence-based education,
29:11
SPEAKER_00: that sort of thing.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: And the first one, the first critique is about the research.
29:16
SPEAKER_00: They go out,
29:18
SPEAKER_00: they label evidence-based education positivist,
29:21
SPEAKER_00: right,
29:22
SPEAKER_00: which is a boo word,
29:23
SPEAKER_00: which is meant to make you think,
29:25
SPEAKER_00: oh,
29:26
SPEAKER_00: that's bad then.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: That's obviously not very sophisticated people are positivists.
29:31
SPEAKER_00: So I don't want to be associated with that.
29:34
SPEAKER_01: We've gone back to the language thing again, yeah.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
29:36
SPEAKER_00: so simply labelling people who like empirical evidence a positivist,
29:40
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's really an argument.
29:43
There's this group of philosophers from the 19th century called
29:45
the logical
29:46
SPEAKER_00: positivists who this apparently alludes to,
29:49
SPEAKER_00: but I certainly don't think...
29:52
that most people would self-identify as logical,
29:55
positivist philosophers.
29:58
And it's really just a derogatory term for the people who are
30:07
sceptics of empirical evidence,
30:09
SPEAKER_00: which is an extraordinary thing to say, isn't it?
30:11
SPEAKER_00: How can you be a sceptic of empirical evidence?
30:12
SPEAKER_00: Empirical evidence just exists.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: It just is.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: It's just how the world is.
30:16
But people who are sceptics of empirical evidence like to label
30:21
people who want to
30:21
SPEAKER_00: listen to empirical evidence as positivists.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:26
SPEAKER_00: But the thing is that this critique of the research is wrong.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: It's just flat out wrong.
30:33
So at one point,
30:35
the authors say near-exclusive priority is given to randomised
30:39
control trials.
30:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
30:41
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: It's just not true.
30:44
SPEAKER_00: So if you look at the evidence-based practice movement,
30:50
you can look at things that I agree with and you can look at
30:53
things that I disagree
30:53
SPEAKER_00: with,
30:54
SPEAKER_00: which all would fall broadly under the evidence-based practice movement.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: So...
30:58
SPEAKER_00: For instance, Rosenstein's Principles.
31:00
Rosenstein's Principles of Instruction,
31:02
a hugely popular article from American Educator.
31:06
SPEAKER_00: It was actually originally written for the UN, I think.
31:09
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it got published in American Educator.
31:12
And a lot of teachers use it as their playbook to try and
31:15
figure out how to...
31:17
SPEAKER_00: sequence instruction in the classroom and all that sort of stuff.
31:19
SPEAKER_00: And it's not very technical.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: It's not really an academic paper.
31:24
SPEAKER_00: Some people argue about how well referenced it is and things like that.
31:28
SPEAKER_00: But it's a very, very popular paper.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: That refers to...
31:32
SPEAKER_00: Several sources of evidence,
31:34
and one of the main ones is something called teacher
31:36
effectiveness research.
31:37
Now,
31:38
that took place in the 1960s,
31:40
largely,
31:41
some in the 50s,
31:42
some in the 70s.
31:43
And that essentially involves researchers going into classrooms
31:46
with clipboards,
31:48
SPEAKER_00: recording what the teachers did,
31:50
and then looking for correlations between those behaviours and
31:53
learning gains from
31:55
SPEAKER_00: the students.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: Those are not randomised control trials.
31:57
SPEAKER_00: They're just not.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And yet they form quite a significant part of the education,
32:04
SPEAKER_00: the evidence-based education evidence base.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I've just... The evidence-based education evidence base.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
32:11
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot in that.
32:13
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
32:13
And then you've got experiments as well that aren't necessarily
32:16
randomised
32:17
SPEAKER_00: controlled trials,
32:18
SPEAKER_00: quasi-controlled studies.
32:20
You've got things like project follow-through,
32:22
which is not a randomised controlled trial.
32:24
SPEAKER_00: Then if you look at things... So I'm not a big fan of...
32:28
SPEAKER_00: meta-analysis,
32:30
SPEAKER_00: which is this idea that you take studies,
32:32
SPEAKER_00: you compute an effect size,
32:34
SPEAKER_00: you mistakenly think that that's like a standardized measure,
32:37
SPEAKER_00: and then you look at loads and loads of studies,
32:40
SPEAKER_00: you average the effect sizes,
32:41
SPEAKER_00: and then you say things like,
32:43
SPEAKER_00: well,
32:43
this particular kind of intervention has an effect size of 0.4
32:47
or delivers three
32:48
SPEAKER_00: months additional progress or whatever.
32:50
I think it's a flawed idea because I don't think effect size is
32:54
as standardized as
32:55
SPEAKER_00: people think it is.
32:56
SPEAKER_00: It varies depending on
32:58
SPEAKER_00: The age of the students,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: what you're teaching them,
32:59
SPEAKER_00: whether it's an experiment,
33:01
SPEAKER_00: an experiment,
33:02
SPEAKER_00: a designed assessment or a standardized assessment.
33:06
SPEAKER_01: It's just appealing, though, because effect sizes are easy to work with.
33:11
Someone says to me,
33:12
if you do this,
33:13
then it's going to have this big effect size.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: I go, oh, yeah, cool.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: You've just told me what to do.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: That's easy for me to interpret.
33:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, except that you look at the EEF toolkit.
33:23
So there's two big sources of these meta-meta-analyses where
33:26
people mush all these
33:27
SPEAKER_00: effect sizes together and try and say the effect of doing this is this.
33:31
One is John Hattie's work and the other is the Education
33:35
Endowment Foundation's
33:36
SPEAKER_00: toolkit,
33:36
SPEAKER_00: which is in the UK.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Right.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: And they have things like metacognition and self-regulation.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: And this gives you an extra eight months of progress, Pierre.
33:44
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's nonsense, isn't it?
33:45
SPEAKER_00: Like,
33:46
SPEAKER_00: what even is...
33:47
SPEAKER_00: Like,
33:47
SPEAKER_00: if you look at what the studies are in metacognition and self-regulation,
33:50
SPEAKER_00: they range from,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: like,
33:51
SPEAKER_00: explicit writing programs to philosophy for children.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: And they have a huge range of effects within them.
34:00
So the idea that you just do metacognition and self-regulation
34:04
and you get an
34:04
SPEAKER_00: additional eight months is just nonsense.
34:08
SPEAKER_00: However,
34:09
SPEAKER_00: circling back very,
34:10
SPEAKER_00: very slowly to the original point,
34:12
these would all be considered part of the evidence-based
34:15
practice movement.
34:17
SPEAKER_00: That's not about randomised control trials.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: That's not.
34:19
SPEAKER_00: It's a different thing.
34:21
SPEAKER_00: Again, these effect sizes can come from all sorts of different studies.
34:24
SPEAKER_00: Some could be randomised control trials.
34:26
SPEAKER_00: And again, this is a problem with the effect sizes.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: The quality of this study,
34:31
SPEAKER_00: the better quality of your study,
34:33
SPEAKER_00: probably the lower the effect size you will get.
34:35
SPEAKER_00: So
34:36
So for a group of researchers to fundamentally misunderstand
34:41
the thing they're
34:41
SPEAKER_00: criticising and saying it's all about randomised control trials,
34:45
SPEAKER_00: I think that's quite breathtaking and it makes me wonder,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: you know,
34:48
SPEAKER_00: about the rest of the critique.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
34:50
I think the part that I'd focus in on on that critique was
34:53
actually just the fact
34:53
SPEAKER_01: they spoke about interventions and they said,
34:56
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:56
there's a focus on interventions that are used to sort of look
35:00
into what is having
35:02
SPEAKER_01: each effect and
35:04
SPEAKER_01: And,
35:04
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:05
they make what's a great point and they say that in education
35:07
it's not about
35:08
SPEAKER_01: interventions.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: Our classroom isn't just a series of interventions.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: They word it interestingly.
35:14
SPEAKER_01: What's their wording?
35:15
They say it's a careful provision of opportunities for students
35:19
to respond,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: which,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: again,
35:20
SPEAKER_01: like really beautiful language there.
35:22
SPEAKER_01: It sounds lovely.
35:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't fully know what that means, but it sounds great.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: It's just the fact that rather than –
35:30
SPEAKER_01: Rather than actually looking to,
35:31
SPEAKER_01: hey,
35:31
SPEAKER_01: there are things that could be effective,
35:33
SPEAKER_01: they've sort of taken that and gone,
35:35
SPEAKER_01: well,
35:35
SPEAKER_01: let's isolate this as,
35:37
SPEAKER_01: you know,
35:37
SPEAKER_01: if you're working,
35:38
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
35:38
if you're working in a lab and you're doing a little
35:41
intervention and you're doing
35:42
SPEAKER_01: it totally scientifically,
35:44
SPEAKER_01: then look,
35:44
SPEAKER_01: this happens,
35:45
SPEAKER_01: but that's not the way a classroom runs.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: And that's easy to argue.
35:48
SPEAKER_01: But we agree, like education research, it is messy.
35:52
What we're doing here is we're trying to figure out what are
35:57
the techniques,
35:57
SPEAKER_01: what are the things that are most likely to lead to gains.
36:00
SPEAKER_01: And we know that there's nuance involved in that.
36:03
SPEAKER_01: And you know that when you step into a classroom,
36:05
it's not going to look the way that it would in some beautiful
36:08
theoretical,
36:10
SPEAKER_01: whether it's a lab environment,
36:12
SPEAKER_01: randomized control,
36:14
SPEAKER_01: whatever.
36:14
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're absolutely spot on.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: And it links to a point that I've written down to say about critique too,
36:22
SPEAKER_00: which maybe we'll come back to,
36:23
SPEAKER_00: but you're absolutely spot on there.
36:24
SPEAKER_00: Let's hold that thought.
36:26
SPEAKER_00: But just on the whole intervention thing,
36:30
imagine I'm teaching my class and you come in and you intervene
36:33
and you teach some
36:34
SPEAKER_00: worked examples,
36:34
SPEAKER_00: right?
36:35
SPEAKER_00: That's an intervention, right?
36:36
SPEAKER_00: And the kids learn loads.
36:38
SPEAKER_00: then I'm going to go, oh, well, maybe I should use more worked examples.
36:42
SPEAKER_00: The reason interventions are useful is that if they work,
36:46
SPEAKER_00: they tell us something about what we could just be doing anyway.
36:51
SPEAKER_00: But when you do an experiment, you would label it as an intervention.
36:58
SPEAKER_00: They're called in educational psychology literature intervention studies.
37:03
And some papers will accept intervention studies and some will
37:05
want review studies
37:06
SPEAKER_00: and things like that.
37:07
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that...
37:08
that what we're talking about is only things that can be used
37:11
as an intervention.
37:13
If you come and intervene with these worked examples,
37:16
I can use them in my regular practice.
37:18
And I'm probably a good idea to do so because you've
37:21
demonstrated the effectiveness of them.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's a kind of wordplay, again, and a thing that we see a lot.
37:29
SPEAKER_00: The other thing that really got my goat in the critique bit
37:33
was uh they're saying that it's mainly a belief in behaviorist
37:37
learning theory now
37:39
um behaviorist learning theory is associated with bf skinner
37:45
and at its most uh
37:47
radical um level it's well not just radical level i mean this
37:51
is you don't worry
37:53
SPEAKER_00: about what's going on in the brain at the mind it's
37:56
The internal structures of the mind are not what we're focused
37:59
on in behaviorist learning.
38:00
SPEAKER_00: Now, there's some nuance to that.
38:03
SPEAKER_00: And people will criticize me for just saying it as simply as that.
38:09
There's some complexity around that and how we deal with
38:11
emotions and things like that.
38:13
SPEAKER_00: It does exist in behaviorist learning.
38:15
But essentially,
38:16
we don't worry about the internal structures of the mind.
38:18
SPEAKER_00: What we think about is the environment,
38:20
SPEAKER_00: we think about the stimuluses,
38:21
SPEAKER_00: and then we think about the behaviors.
38:23
SPEAKER_00: So stimulus and environment behaviors.
38:25
SPEAKER_00: And it's a really fruitful research paradigm.
38:29
SPEAKER_00: It's not
38:31
SPEAKER_00: This is the interesting thing.
38:32
SPEAKER_00: Like all science, it's a model.
38:34
So it doesn't mean that maybe some behaviourists believe there
38:37
really is no
38:38
SPEAKER_00: structure to the mind.
38:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's the case.
38:41
SPEAKER_00: I think that would be unreasonable, mostly.
38:43
I think they're just using it as a useful model for
38:46
understanding behaviours in
38:49
SPEAKER_00: classrooms and things like that.
38:51
SPEAKER_00: And quite a lot of fruitful research has come out of it.
38:53
SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, research on classroom seating arrangements.
38:58
SPEAKER_00: Kevin Weldall and his collaborators in the 1980s,
39:00
SPEAKER_00: very useful stuff,
39:02
SPEAKER_00: comes out of a behaviourist tradition.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: But to say that evidence-based practice is all behaviourist,
39:09
SPEAKER_00: it's all behaviourism,
39:10
SPEAKER_00: is just false.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: Probably the theory that is most closely associated at the moment with
39:17
SPEAKER_00: evidence-based practice is cognitive load theory.
39:19
SPEAKER_00: And what is cognitive load theory?
39:21
SPEAKER_00: It proposes structures in the mind.
39:23
SPEAKER_00: It talks about working memory.
39:25
SPEAKER_00: It talks about long-term memory.
39:27
SPEAKER_00: So it's not a behaviourist theory.
39:30
SPEAKER_00: It just isn't.
39:31
SPEAKER_00: It literally isn't by that definition.
39:33
SPEAKER_00: So again, the authors have kind of exposed themselves.
39:35
SPEAKER_00: They've overreached.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: They've picked on one aspect and said that that's what everything is.
39:42
SPEAKER_00: And it's just not true.
39:46
SPEAKER_00: Shall we go on to critique two?
39:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
39:48
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I think we should.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: So this is the... Well, I've got a quote just to set the flavour.
39:54
So critique one,
39:56
at least I kind of know what critique one is,
39:59
even if it's a bit flawed.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: It's a critique of the research base behind evidence-based practice.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: Critique two, it's called education and schooling.
40:10
SPEAKER_00: And...
40:11
SPEAKER_00: I've got a quote here to give you a flavour of what it is,
40:13
SPEAKER_00: and you see if you think you know what the critique is.
40:15
Rather than value the full experience of children and young
40:19
people and how each
40:20
SPEAKER_00: factor impacts the others,
40:22
SPEAKER_00: evidence-based practice focuses on,
40:25
SPEAKER_00: in scare quotes,
40:26
learning with further narrowing to intense emphasis on literacy
40:31
and numeracy.
40:33
SPEAKER_00: What do you make of that, Katie?
40:34
It's funny because it's very similar to there's a quote that
40:37
I've got highlighted
40:38
SPEAKER_01: here that I'll bring up later.
40:42
It's interesting that our concern with education is that
40:49
there's a focus on learning.
40:54
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot to unpack with that.
40:57
SPEAKER_00: Takes your breath away, Katie.
40:59
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:00
SPEAKER_01: You know,
41:00
it's funny because I feel like if I were to walk down the
41:03
street and speak to any
41:05
SPEAKER_01: stranger and say to them,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: hey,
41:06
what do you think should happen during the day when a student's
41:09
at school?
41:10
SPEAKER_01: I feel like...
41:11
For most people,
41:12
the word learning or learn is probably going to come up pretty
41:15
early on.
41:15
I think it's a fairly universal thing that we agree that
41:19
schools are there for some
41:21
SPEAKER_01: kind of learning.
41:23
SPEAKER_01: And I do,
41:24
SPEAKER_01: I'm willing to recognise,
41:26
SPEAKER_01: and this critique kind of gets into this anyway,
41:29
I'm willing to recognise that there are people who don't think
41:32
that that learning
41:33
SPEAKER_01: should be our academic or our literacy,
41:34
SPEAKER_01: our numeracy,
41:36
SPEAKER_01: and I want to come to that part.
41:38
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I think...
41:40
I think you would be hard pressed to find anybody that has an
41:44
issue with the fact
41:45
SPEAKER_01: that school focuses on
41:48
SPEAKER_01: learning.
41:49
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
41:50
SPEAKER_00: Well, you're right.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: And he does say an intense emphasis on literacy and numeracy.
41:55
SPEAKER_00: Now, you can overemphasize literacy and numeracy.
41:59
SPEAKER_00: Many elementary schools in the US under No Child Left Behind,
42:03
SPEAKER_00: well,
42:04
SPEAKER_00: this is one critique,
42:05
SPEAKER_00: and I'm not close enough to it to necessarily endorse this,
42:09
SPEAKER_00: but the argument,
42:10
SPEAKER_00: certainly from E.D.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: Hirsch, who I was talking about earlier,
42:15
SPEAKER_00: is that they spent too much time focusing just on literacy and numeracy,
42:18
SPEAKER_00: not enough time on history,
42:21
SPEAKER_00: geography,
42:21
SPEAKER_00: science and things like that.
42:22
And that meant that kids didn't build this knowledge of the
42:24
world that they needed,
42:26
SPEAKER_00: ironically,
42:27
SPEAKER_00: for reading comprehension.
42:28
SPEAKER_00: So we were teaching them all this literacy,
42:30
wasn't improving their reading comprehension because they
42:32
actually need some
42:32
SPEAKER_00: knowledge of the world.
42:33
SPEAKER_00: Now, that's contentious.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: That's an argument that's worth having.
42:37
But it is a valid argument to say you can have too much of an
42:41
emphasis on literacy and numeracy.
42:43
SPEAKER_00: You can...
42:44
SPEAKER_00: certainly drill kids too much in reading comprehension strategies,
42:48
SPEAKER_00: even though some reading comprehension strategy training is worthwhile.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't just say that.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: It says evidence-based practice focuses on, scare quotes, learning.
42:58
SPEAKER_00: Now,
42:59
SPEAKER_00: learning is like in the ELC,
43:01
SPEAKER_00: in the early learning center,
43:02
SPEAKER_00: where kids play most of the day,
43:04
SPEAKER_00: they are learning how to take turns.
43:06
SPEAKER_00: These are biologically primary things that they're learning.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: They don't need...
43:12
explicit teaching to learn them because they're things that
43:15
they've evolved to
43:16
learn that all humans learn but they are learning to single
43:23
that out and make an
43:24
SPEAKER_00: issue of it I just thought that was extraordinary
43:28
Look,
43:28
it could be a me problem,
43:30
but it doesn't make sense to me to make our target here.
43:34
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, it's a real problem, those schools.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: Would you believe they're teaching kids learning?
43:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would hope as much.
43:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:43
SPEAKER_00: There's another point they make,
43:44
SPEAKER_00: which goes back to the point you were making earlier,
43:47
SPEAKER_00: which I think is more subtle,
43:49
SPEAKER_00: but I think is really important.
43:51
So you were talking about how the classrooms are not like labs
43:57
where we might do
43:59
SPEAKER_00: research,
44:00
SPEAKER_00: randomised control trials.
44:02
And often people think that they're a little bit more different
44:06
than they actually are.
44:06
SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, the classic cognitive load theory studies that John...
44:12
SPEAKER_00: Sweller did with Cooper on the worked example effect.
44:16
SPEAKER_00: That was with Year 9 students.
44:18
SPEAKER_00: It was in a school.
44:19
SPEAKER_00: It was one-to-one.
44:20
It was in an office rather than a classroom,
44:22
so it was a little bit artificial.
44:23
But people,
44:24
I think,
44:24
sometimes think these studies are more artificial than they
44:27
actually are.
44:28
But that gap between – the beauty of studies being artificial
44:34
is that they actually
44:34
SPEAKER_00: control the variables,
44:37
SPEAKER_00: whereas if you try and run big,
44:39
SPEAKER_00: messy experiments in classrooms,
44:40
SPEAKER_00: it's very hard to control the variables.
44:42
So actually the thing that people often point to as a weakness
44:45
in this study is their strength.
44:47
But there's this quote from Critique 2 that goes back to what
44:50
you were saying.
44:51
So to maintain a narrow view of learning,
44:53
evidence-based practice focuses on populations –
44:56
SPEAKER_00: not individuals.
44:58
Children and young people are standardised as requiring the
45:00
same instruction and
45:01
SPEAKER_00: interventions for everyone else to achieve the same outcomes.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: Now, this gets to a very popular...
45:11
SPEAKER_00: misreading of education research,
45:14
and particularly the kind of empirical research that Sweller
45:18
and people like that
45:19
SPEAKER_00: might do.
45:20
There's a guy called Gert Biesta who wrote The Beautiful Risk
45:23
of Education,
45:24
SPEAKER_00: and his critique is similar to this critique in this paper.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: And he basically says, look, educational outcomes are not certain.
45:34
You can't guarantee that by teaching kids a particular way that
45:38
you will guarantee
45:39
SPEAKER_00: these outcomes.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: All those suggestions that come from evidence-based practice,
45:43
SPEAKER_00: all they come from is looking at averages of populations.
45:46
So you know that if you teach a particular way,
45:49
on average,
45:49
kids will make so much progress.
45:51
But you don't know what it means for this specific kid or that
45:55
specific kid.
45:56
And this is meant to be a critique of the whole idea of
46:00
evidence-based practice.
46:02
SPEAKER_00: And it seems to be what they're getting at here.
46:03
SPEAKER_00: Right.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: But you said earlier, I think, did you say like best bets?
46:07
I mean,
46:07
why wouldn't you start with something that you know,
46:10
on average,
46:11
has a positive effect?
46:12
SPEAKER_00: It might not work for everyone,
46:13
SPEAKER_00: but then the kids it doesn't work for,
46:16
SPEAKER_00: there'll be fewer of them,
46:17
SPEAKER_00: presumably,
46:17
SPEAKER_00: because you started with the best bet.
46:19
SPEAKER_00: And then you can try something else,
46:20
SPEAKER_00: maybe using response to intervention and that sort of thing.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't think anyone claims that...
46:29
a particular strategy will guarantee that every student makes
46:34
exactly the same progress.
46:35
SPEAKER_00: I don't think that's a claim that anyone makes,
46:37
SPEAKER_00: but it is a critique of that idea that is often thrown back at people.
46:43
SPEAKER_00: And it's based on this, I think, this overemphasis of
46:48
on individualism,
46:50
which is a very strange thing that we have in education.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: These ideas often come from quite a sort of leftish perspective.
47:02
So university lecturers,
47:04
people in IT will often identify with the political left
47:09
SPEAKER_00: And yet their arguments always come back to this real individualism,
47:14
SPEAKER_00: like every child is so different,
47:16
SPEAKER_00: they've got such unique needs,
47:17
SPEAKER_00: they're so different from every other child,
47:19
there's no possible way that one size fits all that you could
47:23
use one method that
47:23
SPEAKER_00: worked for everyone,
47:24
SPEAKER_00: which is kind of at odds with...
47:29
SPEAKER_00: the idea of collectivism and working together and all that sort of stuff,
47:33
SPEAKER_00: which people on the left of politics are supposed to be in favour of.
47:38
But I think I would trace that back to where a lot of this
47:41
stuff comes from and
47:44
SPEAKER_00: the ideology from the Romantic movement and things like that.
47:46
SPEAKER_00: But I could go on about that for ages.
47:48
SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
47:51
SPEAKER_01: I would chime in there and ask the question anyway.
47:54
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's saying they're requiring the same instruction.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: In what classroom are you with, you know, 25, 30 students?
48:01
In what classroom are you individually teaching every single
48:03
one of them differently?
48:06
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
48:06
it would be great for me to sit there and privately tutor every
48:08
single kid,
48:09
SPEAKER_01: but I don't think that's a thing anyone's doing regardless.
48:12
So you can argue that it's great and that we're standardizing
48:15
and that we're not
48:17
SPEAKER_01: treating young people as individuals,
48:19
SPEAKER_01: which I disagree with anyway.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
48:21
SPEAKER_01: But what does the alternative to that actually look like?
48:25
Is that a thing that people are doing where they have got this
48:27
like one-on-one,
48:28
SPEAKER_01: I'm responding to your,
48:30
SPEAKER_01: you know,
48:30
SPEAKER_01: entire human needs?
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Is that a thing?
48:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, so, yeah, that's a really good point you've raised there, Katie.
48:39
I think a lot of people who don't actually have to teach
48:42
classrooms full of 25
48:43
SPEAKER_00: kids,
48:44
SPEAKER_00: imagine that you can teach them somehow all individually and
48:49
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an easy belief to have if you don't have to do it.
48:55
SPEAKER_00: When you're a teacher,
48:56
you crash into reality fairly quickly and you realise that
49:00
you've got 25 kids in
49:01
SPEAKER_00: front of you.
49:02
You can't break off to have a one-on-one in-depth discussion
49:05
with a kid about the
49:06
SPEAKER_00: particular reasons that led to them throwing the pen.
49:09
SPEAKER_00: You just can't because the other 24 kids...
49:14
need to be taught and looked after and kept going and so a lot
49:18
of the prescriptions
49:19
you get from outside of teaching and this is why teachers need
49:23
to really take
49:23
control of the profession because a lot of the prescriptions
49:26
you get from outside
49:26
teaching are from people who kind of imagine you know if you
49:30
watch a movie right
49:31
and you watch a teacher in a movie right there'll be there'll
49:34
be a class in front
49:35
of them and the teacher will be talking and having quite a
49:38
conversation with one
49:39
SPEAKER_00: kid and all the other kids will just be sat there like this right and
49:42
And I think that's how a lot of people...
49:43
Which is a real theme that definitely happens.
49:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:46
SPEAKER_00: And I think a lot of people outside teaching,
49:48
imagine that's what classrooms are like and that you can deal
49:51
with each kid
49:51
SPEAKER_00: individual.
49:52
SPEAKER_00: And they come up with these schemes.
49:53
SPEAKER_00: They come up with universal design for learning,
49:55
SPEAKER_00: differentiated instruction,
49:57
SPEAKER_00: all these things that sound good and...
50:01
sound like they will help you to teach all the individual kids
50:05
individually,
50:06
SPEAKER_00: but there's no real evidence base for them.
50:08
SPEAKER_00: No one's ever really got them to work.
50:09
SPEAKER_00: But that's what they go back to when you say,
50:11
SPEAKER_00: well,
50:11
SPEAKER_00: how am I supposed to do this with 25 kids in front of me?
50:13
SPEAKER_00: They say,
50:14
SPEAKER_00: oh,
50:14
SPEAKER_00: universal design for learning,
50:15
SPEAKER_00: differentiated instruction,
50:16
SPEAKER_00: blah,
50:16
SPEAKER_00: blah,
50:17
SPEAKER_00: blah,
50:17
SPEAKER_00: blah,
50:17
SPEAKER_00: blah.
50:17
SPEAKER_00: But they don't actually tell you exactly what that looks like.
50:19
SPEAKER_00: And when people try to do that in the classroom,
50:22
it basically looks like putting kids in groups and giving them
50:24
different things to
50:25
SPEAKER_00: do and then managing a teacher,
50:27
SPEAKER_00: managing the issues that arise from the...
50:31
When you're with one group and another group gets distracted
50:34
and stuff like that.
50:35
I think the problem with that is that,
50:36
again,
50:36
that means your attention is very much split.
50:39
SPEAKER_01: If I've got students who are working off in lots of different areas,
50:41
SPEAKER_01: then you are,
50:42
SPEAKER_01: as a teacher,
50:42
SPEAKER_01: you'll run off your feet running around dealing with individual things.
50:45
And there are significant portions of the lesson where there
50:50
are students who are not supported.
50:51
So if you're moving students to a model where they're working
50:53
in independent groups
50:55
SPEAKER_01: or working by themselves on things and you're trying to,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: you know,
50:57
SPEAKER_01: tailor the learning for all of them and let them choose which,
51:00
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:01
which mechanism they want to use to learn or how they want to
51:03
approach a task.
51:05
SPEAKER_01: If you've got them all doing this,
51:06
SPEAKER_01: you are then floating around,
51:08
SPEAKER_01: not giving them the support that,
51:10
SPEAKER_01: you know,
51:11
SPEAKER_01: as a teacher,
51:11
SPEAKER_01: it's your job to do.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
51:13
SPEAKER_01: Again,
51:14
it's not to say it doesn't have a place in the classroom having
51:16
them do individual
51:18
SPEAKER_01: stuff and walking around and supporting,
51:20
but it's this idea that it's not going to be what it looks like
51:23
in your head where
51:24
SPEAKER_01: it's,
51:25
SPEAKER_01: oh,
51:25
I've got this student working and they're doing all this
51:26
awesome stuff and then
51:27
SPEAKER_01: every now and again they need me.
51:29
SPEAKER_01: It's like,
51:29
SPEAKER_01: no,
51:29
SPEAKER_01: no,
51:29
that only happens if I've gotten them to that point where
51:32
they've got the knowledge
51:32
and the skills so that they can do that and they only need me
51:37
at certain intervals
51:39
SPEAKER_01: or at certain points in that.
51:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's absolutely right.
51:43
SPEAKER_00: You would spend most of your time,
51:45
SPEAKER_00: if you group kids,
51:47
SPEAKER_00: most of the teacher talk will be about management now.
51:50
SPEAKER_00: It'll be about managing the groups.
51:51
SPEAKER_00: It'll be about classroom management.
51:53
SPEAKER_00: And far less of it will be about actual instruction.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: And then that instruction has to be divided up four or five,
52:00
SPEAKER_00: however many groups you've got ways.
52:01
SPEAKER_00: Which is just inefficient.
52:03
it is inefficient it's not very practical but the other thing
52:06
is of course that
52:07
this uh the kind of educational progressivist ideology that
52:11
sits behind some of
52:12
this is skeptical about teacher input anyway they think that it
52:16
that kids should
52:17
figure things out for themselves so the fact that you're now no
52:21
longer instructing
52:22
the kids as much isn't a problem if you're in that mindset
52:25
because that that's
52:27
that's a bad thing anyway that's telling kids things that's so
52:30
instead we'll get
52:31
SPEAKER_00: them working in groups and stuff like that but
52:34
SPEAKER_00: Just going back to the original point,
52:35
SPEAKER_00: yes,
52:36
SPEAKER_00: this idea that you can treat kids all individually,
52:38
SPEAKER_00: it's very,
52:39
SPEAKER_00: very popular.
52:41
Apparently,
52:42
it's how we're going to make sure that all kids are included in
52:45
all lessons.
52:46
SPEAKER_00: But there's just very little practical strategy.
52:51
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's been a theme of the podcast, Katie.
52:54
The guy that wanted us to do critical thinking didn't really
52:56
describe how.
52:58
And the people that want to treat all kids individually,
53:00
they never really describe how either.
53:02
SPEAKER_01: Look, I actually, I wrote down a really interesting quote from this.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: And it comes, it's a full page quote in this particular article.
53:09
SPEAKER_01: So it's a few pages down that says,
53:12
evidence-based practice excludes school situated knowledge and
53:16
separates education
53:18
SPEAKER_01: from schooling.
53:20
And I wrote it down because it was the separates education from
53:25
schooling was the
53:25
SPEAKER_01: part that frustrated me because what does that even mean?
53:31
SPEAKER_01: When we're talking about recognising kids as individualism,
53:35
SPEAKER_01: We recognize,
53:35
SPEAKER_01: and again,
53:36
I think you would be very hard-pressed to find a teacher who's
53:38
not going to go,
53:39
SPEAKER_01: I see every single young person in my room as being an individual.
53:43
SPEAKER_01: And every individual has their own complex set of needs and wants.
53:47
SPEAKER_01: And they're all different people.
53:48
SPEAKER_01: And we know that.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: And a teacher who's in the classroom knows that...
53:52
There are times when you are responding to things that might be
53:55
more important than
53:56
SPEAKER_01: your maths lesson at the time or whatever it is,
54:00
SPEAKER_01: and you know that.
54:01
And I think you would be hard-pressed to find teachers who
54:05
aren't along that opinion.
54:07
SPEAKER_01: The difference here is it's this,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: dear,
54:10
SPEAKER_01: that it sounds really great to say,
54:12
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
54:12
let's give everybody their own individual experience and let's
54:15
send people off on
54:16
SPEAKER_01: their,
54:18
SPEAKER_01: yeah,
54:18
SPEAKER_01: on,
54:18
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:19
SPEAKER_01: whatever education is going to suit them the best.
54:21
SPEAKER_01: But at the end of the day,
54:22
SPEAKER_01: like our,
54:23
SPEAKER_01: you know,
54:23
the research would show that these are things that are probably
54:25
going to work for
54:26
SPEAKER_01: the majority.
54:27
SPEAKER_01: So that makes sense.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Let's do that.
54:30
SPEAKER_01: And then for the other kids, it's what you said.
54:31
That's where we can bring in,
54:32
you know,
54:32
your increased,
54:33
like,
54:33
you know,
54:34
your
54:34
increased tier,
54:35
your tier two,
54:35
your tier three,
54:36
whatever it is,
54:37
interventions.
54:38
SPEAKER_01: So you can actually start to bring those things in.
54:43
SPEAKER_01: It's just not a realistic view to go into a classroom and run 25,
54:50
30 different lessons with different students and then come back
54:54
to that and go,
54:54
SPEAKER_01: oh yeah,
54:54
I think they all learned really effectively because you're
54:58
disadvantaging way more
54:59
by doing that than by taking an approach that's probably going
55:02
to work for most
55:03
SPEAKER_01: kids.
55:04
SPEAKER_01: teaching that and going, cool, then we can pick up the pieces.
55:08
SPEAKER_01: It's way more efficient.
55:10
SPEAKER_00: But that's a teacher's insight.
55:11
SPEAKER_00: That's someone who's actually stood in a classroom and done it.
55:14
SPEAKER_00: And that's why teaching really needs to be run by teachers.
55:33
SPEAKER_01: That was When Will They Learn?
55:36
SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to share it.
55:39
SPEAKER_01: And if there's an article,
55:40
SPEAKER_01: podcast,
55:41
SPEAKER_01: opinion piece,
55:41
or anything else that you find that you want us to discuss in
55:44
the next one,
55:45
SPEAKER_01: please check the show notes for our socials and send it through.