Latest / When Will They Learn? / Episode #11 Universal Design for Neurononsense

Transcript

Episode #11 Universal Design for Neurononsense · When Will They Learn?

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to When Will They Learn?
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm Greg Ashman.
0:04
SPEAKER_01: And I'm Caiti Wade.
0:10
SPEAKER_01: This is the podcast where we explore what's trending in the world of education.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: In each episode,
0:15
SPEAKER_01: we discuss podcasts,
0:17
SPEAKER_01: articles and opinion pieces that are shaping education discourse at the moment
0:21
SPEAKER_01: and examine these through a science of learning lens.
0:24
SPEAKER_01: We discuss not just what's popular, but what's supported by the evidence.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: In this episode, we're going to be looking at school suspensions and expulsions.
0:33
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be looking at universal design for learning.
0:35
SPEAKER_00: Is it the new learning styles?
0:38
SPEAKER_00: And we're going to be taking all the laptops and casting them out.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Hey, Greg, how are you?
0:46
SPEAKER_00: How are you this afternoon?
0:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm all right, Caiti.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: I'm all right.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: It is an afternoon, so I'm a little bit more awake than the last time that we met.
0:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes, quite looking forward to our term break now, end of this week for us.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: Is it the same for you?
1:00
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it is.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, we're on staff week at the moment.
1:03
SPEAKER_01: Students finished last week.
1:04
SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:06
SPEAKER_01: So we've got staff week and that's it.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: And then I'm done.
1:11
SPEAKER_01: You can have two weeks of break.
1:12
SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Great.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, we're in week 10,
1:16
SPEAKER_00: and I think everyone's feeling a little bit week 10 of term at the moment,
1:20
SPEAKER_00: so I think that's where we are.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I'm looking forward to a bit of a break.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: Okay, shall we go into the first article?
1:28
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
1:30
SPEAKER_00: So this is Victorian Public Schools to Spend About 150 Students a Day
1:35
SPEAKER_00: by Nicole Pre... Oh, I should practice... Precel?
1:39
SPEAKER_00: Precel or Precol...
1:40
SPEAKER_00: I should practice these names beforehand.
1:41
SPEAKER_00: We've got to start doing the names before.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: I know, yes.
1:44
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, and Bridie Smith.
1:45
SPEAKER_00: So this is a story about an increase in suspensions in 2025 from the previous year,
1:54
SPEAKER_00: rising, this is in Victoria, by 1029...
1:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, it's not that surprising because it turns out
2:14
SPEAKER_00: That the government, the Victorian government, actually changed the rules around suspension.
2:20
SPEAKER_00: So as the others state in June last year,
2:23
SPEAKER_00: the state government announced new principal powers to suspend or expel students
2:27
SPEAKER_00: when their behaviour outside school or online put other students or staff
2:31
SPEAKER_00: at serious risk.
2:34
SPEAKER_00: I have noticed a pattern here and it's a persistent one and a few years ago
2:45
SPEAKER_00: the government in Victoria was making it really hard for schools to suspend students
2:49
SPEAKER_00: then you get stories in the newspaper about this and
2:52
SPEAKER_00: the other horrific incidents happening in schools and then there's a change
2:58
SPEAKER_00: in policy but it tends to be cyclical so
3:02
SPEAKER_00: Later on in the article,
3:03
SPEAKER_00: it says,
3:05
SPEAKER_00: from this year,
3:05
SPEAKER_00: England,
3:06
SPEAKER_00: so England's,
3:07
SPEAKER_00: so it talks about England's suspensions hitting a record level after
3:11
SPEAKER_00: the COVID-19 pandemic.
3:13
SPEAKER_00: But from this year,
3:14
SPEAKER_00: England's education department will reserve suspension for the most serious cases,
3:18
SPEAKER_00: including violence.
3:19
SPEAKER_01: So basically, so they made their rules tighter then.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:22
SPEAKER_00: And what happens is that these rules continually flex.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
3:28
SPEAKER_00: They, you get,
3:30
SPEAKER_00: so a state will tighten up on behaviour and you'll have more suspensions
3:38
SPEAKER_00: and exclusions.
3:39
SPEAKER_00: Then campaigners also, oh, there's too many suspensions and exclusions, it's really bad.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: And people will then say, okay, well, let's loosen them up again.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: And then you'll have stories in the newspaper of horrific incidents in schools and
3:50
SPEAKER_00: then someone will tighten up the
3:52
SPEAKER_00: The behaviour are going to have more suspensions and expulsions.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: And it just goes round and round and round.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: And I was involved a few years ago.
4:00
SPEAKER_00: The previous education minister in New South Wales,
4:05
SPEAKER_00: I think her name was Sarah Mitchell,
4:06
SPEAKER_00: I think,
4:08
SPEAKER_00: she decided that she was going to make it harder for schools to suspend students.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: And I wrote an article at the time, which got published in the Sydney Morning Herald,
4:20
SPEAKER_00: It was a brave decision,
4:21
SPEAKER_00: but it's misguided for some of the reasons that I said,
4:27
SPEAKER_00: that we just keep going backwards and forwards,
4:30
SPEAKER_00: in and out, up and down with these policies.
4:34
SPEAKER_00: And I predicted that eventually they would tighten them up again and
4:39
SPEAKER_00: Then the government changed in New South Wales and Prue Carr came in as
4:42
SPEAKER_00: the Labour Education Minister and again gave schools more powers to suspend
4:49
SPEAKER_00: and exclude.
4:50
SPEAKER_00: And by that,
4:52
SPEAKER_00: I suppose what I really mean,
4:53
SPEAKER_00: suspensions is temporarily being excluded from school and I'm saying or exclude,
5:00
SPEAKER_00: I suppose I should be expelled, which means permanently excluded from school.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: And so it just sort of,
5:07
SPEAKER_00: I was right,
5:07
SPEAKER_00: but I wasn't particularly insightful because I'd just seen this happen
5:12
SPEAKER_00: so many times.
5:13
SPEAKER_00: We make it harder for schools to exclude.
5:15
SPEAKER_00: Terrible things happen.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: We make it easy for schools to exclude.
5:19
SPEAKER_00: I remember numbers go up.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: Numbers go up.
5:22
SPEAKER_00: Campaigners can complain.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we've got Adam Voight is appearing in this article.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's who I wanted to talk to.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
5:31
SPEAKER_00: so he's of this real schools consultancy that works with presumably real schools
5:38
SPEAKER_00: and not pretend ones or something.
5:41
SPEAKER_00: And he works with them on behaviour and...
5:46
SPEAKER_00: He says, and this is, I think, really key to this holdabout.
5:52
SPEAKER_00: He says,
5:52
SPEAKER_00: we know that when you suspend a kid,
5:55
SPEAKER_00: you increase the likelihood that they are suspended again.
5:59
SPEAKER_00: Now, that sounds to me, Caiti, like a...
6:02
SPEAKER_01: That's exactly what I was going to say.
6:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
6:06
SPEAKER_00: It sounds to me like Voight is suggesting,
6:09
SPEAKER_00: and he might not be,
6:10
SPEAKER_00: he might just be talking about an association,
6:13
SPEAKER_00: but it sounds to me like he's saying that by suspending the student, you...
6:19
SPEAKER_00: By doing that, make it more likely that they'll be suspended again.
6:23
SPEAKER_00: I would say that a student who gets suspended is obviously more likely
6:28
SPEAKER_00: to get suspended again because the kind of behaviour that causes them
6:31
SPEAKER_00: to be suspended the first time is likely to happen again,
6:36
SPEAKER_00: which is more likely then that they're going to be suspended later on
6:39
SPEAKER_00: than someone else because of that behaviour.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: And we get these causal claims a lot.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: So people will point to...
6:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, and what you're invited to very
7:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: When they repeat those behaviours outside in the outside world,
7:31
SPEAKER_00: then that leads to negative outcomes and that leads to contact with
7:35
SPEAKER_00: the criminal justice system.
7:37
SPEAKER_00: It's the behaviours that are the cause.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is the key thing about suspensions and expulsions.
7:43
SPEAKER_00: They're a response.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: They're not a lever.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
7:46
SPEAKER_00: Kids get suspended or expelled from school because they've done something bad Well,
7:52
SPEAKER_00: that's the consequence And so the suspension or expulsion is a response to that So
7:59
SPEAKER_00: by bearing down...
8:01
SPEAKER_00: On suspensions and expulsions,
8:03
SPEAKER_00: you don't do anything to address the root cause of the behaviour.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: You're just kind of masking it somehow.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: You're basically saying, well, this kid who we would have suspended...
8:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Why?
8:44
SPEAKER_00: Why?
9:07
SPEAKER_00: Don't we try and do something about the root causes of the behaviour in the first place?
9:12
SPEAKER_00: Why don't we look at what is effective in terms of managing behaviour in school?
9:18
SPEAKER_00: Look what effective interventions are for young people who are at risk
9:23
SPEAKER_00: of these behaviours and focus our energy and our attention there rather than
9:27
SPEAKER_00: on these headline figures.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's because it's this idea that people say that suspensions don't work
9:34
SPEAKER_01: and they're saying they don't work because...
9:37
SPEAKER_01: They don't lead to a change in the behaviour of the students who are being suspended.
9:41
SPEAKER_01: But is that actually what our goal is of a suspension?
9:46
SPEAKER_01: If we're saying that they don't work and we're measuring that of whether or not
9:50
SPEAKER_01: the student engages in that behaviour and or a similar behaviour
9:53
SPEAKER_01: that gets them suspended or expelled again later,
9:56
SPEAKER_01: like, okay, well, maybe they don't work in that sense, but do they work in terms of
10:02
SPEAKER_01: Keeping students safe, the other students around them, or keeping staff safe.
10:09
SPEAKER_01: I think that's actually where I draw a bit of an issue with it.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: This is really important.
10:16
SPEAKER_00: Researchers say, oh, they don't work.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: Suspension and expulsion, they don't work.
10:20
SPEAKER_00: The students will still behave that way.
10:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm not surprised.
10:24
SPEAKER_00: I mean, usually by the time a kid gets to the point of being suspended,
10:29
SPEAKER_00: There's a history of interventions.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: We've tried everything.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: We've thrown the kitchen sink at it.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: So do we now think that suspending the student
10:39
SPEAKER_00: from school will miraculously change their behaviour
10:41
SPEAKER_00: when we've got this huge backlog?
10:43
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it will.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I've had this.
11:02
SPEAKER_00: So there's a whole group of campaigners who would say that they are into inclusion.
11:07
SPEAKER_00: That's what they would say.
11:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's the line, right?
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:30
SPEAKER_00: People kind of sometimes misunderstand that.
11:32
SPEAKER_00: It's not that schools are biased against kids with a disability.
11:38
SPEAKER_00: They're discriminating against them and giving them harsher punishments.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: It's that a lot of disabilities, such as ADHD, ASD,
11:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but they can engage.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: But that's the same as students from lower socioeconomic
12:10
SPEAKER_01: or disadvantaged backgrounds, which I know Adam Voigt references in that article.
12:14
SPEAKER_01: Like, yes, they're more highly represented.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: They're more highly represented because students
12:20
SPEAKER_01: from those backgrounds are likely those who have been exposed to things
12:26
SPEAKER_01: that are going to make those behaviours more likely.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: And those are the behaviours that lead to suspensions.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: It's not from a lack of support.
12:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it might be.
12:34
SPEAKER_00: There is some evidence sometimes
12:36
SPEAKER_00: that different population groups will have harsher sanctions than others.
12:44
SPEAKER_00: There is some of that.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: I'd like to stay open to that possibility.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the major driver for why,
12:52
SPEAKER_00: for instance, kids with disabilities are overrepresented.
12:56
SPEAKER_00: So inclusion campaigners will say they're opposed to school suspensions and expulsions.
13:02
SPEAKER_00: They think that that's exclusionary and they want to be inclusive and that really the school...
13:09
SPEAKER_00: Is failing these kids in some way.
13:11
SPEAKER_00: It's failing to meet their needs.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: All behaviour is communication.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: What the school needs to do is understand what it is these kids are communicating
13:19
SPEAKER_00: by their behaviour, meet their needs, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: And a lot of these people are not working day-to-day in classrooms of 30 kids
13:29
SPEAKER_00: because there's this issue, I think, which with a lot of...
13:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
13:50
SPEAKER_00: Ask them how things are going.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: They'll be able to connect on that one-on-one level.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: This is not what teachers are doing.
13:56
SPEAKER_00: Teachers are talking to 25 kids at a time and they can't just break off from
14:01
SPEAKER_00: that whole class and then sit with this one kid whose behaviour
14:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah,
14:05
SPEAKER_00: there's other kids and so you can't have this perfect therapeutic relationship with
14:16
SPEAKER_00: a student and so for some students it might mean that the logic of that is
14:20
SPEAKER_00: that it's not appropriate for them to be in a classroom with 24 others
14:24
SPEAKER_00: because their needs are so acute but when you say that
14:29
SPEAKER_00: Inclusion campaigners will say, oh, you're being exclusionary.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: You need to adapt your practice.
14:32
SPEAKER_00: You need to use appropriate techniques like,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: for instance,
14:35
SPEAKER_00: Universal Design for Learning to bring students in and all that sort of stuff.
14:41
SPEAKER_00: But going back to your point,
14:43
SPEAKER_00: which is a really important point, there are a number of sleights of hand here.
14:49
SPEAKER_00: There's the causal claims when they're not warranted sleight of hand.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: But the other one is this idea that exclusions and suspensions don't work.
15:01
SPEAKER_00: Well, for the kid who has been bullied, right?
15:05
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, the teacher who's just been...
15:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it works.
15:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I remember a student who – I was an assistant principal in London.
15:17
SPEAKER_00: I sort of line managed the heads of year eight and nine.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: And so any students in those year groups who were going to be suspended,
15:23
SPEAKER_00: it had to come through me.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: And they made it really hard for us at the time to suspend.
15:27
SPEAKER_00: It was one of these periods where, oh, they're too high.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: We've got to get the number of suspension and exclusion down.
15:33
SPEAKER_00: So I basically had to pull an all-night thing where I had to collate all these –
15:37
SPEAKER_00: Documents and all these incidents and write up this report and all this sort of stuff.
15:40
SPEAKER_00: Or if I didn't do that, the exclusion wouldn't stand up.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And the reason that this lad was excluded from the school was he had,
15:52
SPEAKER_00: you know, a set of compasses for drawing a circle with.
15:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
15:55
SPEAKER_01: For those listening, they're pointy.
15:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, he stabbed someone in the leg with that and he'd asked a younger kid,
16:01
SPEAKER_00: he'd got this younger kid down on his knees in front of him,
16:06
SPEAKER_00: terrified him and told the kid and got the kid to beg for his life, right?
16:10
SPEAKER_00: Oh my God.
16:11
SPEAKER_00: So, do I think that excluding this kid from our school community will have fixed it?
16:16
SPEAKER_00: No, it was a really sad story,
16:20
SPEAKER_00: came from a very challenging background and I do not think that
16:23
SPEAKER_00: that would have miraculously fixed that kid.
16:26
SPEAKER_00: But for the kid who'd been bullied in that way, who'd had that experience...
16:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you're not.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: You're using extreme cases.
16:49
SPEAKER_00: Loads of kids get suspended and excluded for trivial reasons.
16:54
SPEAKER_00: I think that's quite insulting of the school community, really.
16:57
SPEAKER_00: I think there's a lot more we could do earlier on,
16:59
SPEAKER_00: and I think there's a lot we could learn as schoolers.
17:02
SPEAKER_00: We could use much better routines and structures and things like that
17:05
SPEAKER_00: that would be protective and would actually stop some of these behaviours getting to
17:09
SPEAKER_00: the point where suspensions and expulsions are necessary.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: But the idea that principals are frivolously suspending kids or excluding kids
17:19
SPEAKER_00: for no good reason and that when I give examples they're extreme cases and actually
17:25
SPEAKER_00: the vast majority of these things are nothing like that.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: I think that's kind of
17:29
SPEAKER_00: Well, sometimes it's a consequence and you go, yeah, right, cool.
17:35
SPEAKER_00: You know what?
17:35
SPEAKER_00: I've seen it.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: Kids go, yeah, you know what?
17:37
SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't have done that.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: I broke the rule.
17:40
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to do that again.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it can,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: you know,
17:59
SPEAKER_00: be the point that some people make the decision to change,
18:03
SPEAKER_00: but it's not necessarily going to be the case and it certainly won't be the case for
18:07
SPEAKER_00: the vast majority.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: That's not the case with things like prison.
18:11
SPEAKER_01: Like, I'd go back to that example.
18:13
SPEAKER_01: Like,
18:13
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't mean we shouldn't have it just because it's not going to prevent people
18:16
SPEAKER_01: from re-offending.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
18:19
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: But the key thing which I've come to learn and realise more in recent years,
18:25
SPEAKER_00: the argument that he doesn't fix the kid, okay, that's a flawed argument.
18:28
SPEAKER_00: It was never meant to.
18:29
SPEAKER_00: The argument that it's protective of other students and of teachers,
18:33
SPEAKER_00: I think that's strong and that's the one that I've always made.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: But I would now lay it in.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: School culture.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: School cultures are really hard to build.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: And can be damaged very quickly.
18:46
SPEAKER_00: If you've got three or four students behaving in a particular way,
18:51
SPEAKER_00: all of a sudden it affects the whole community.
18:54
SPEAKER_00: It means the kids who normally would be cooperating.
18:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, because that's the social norm of the place.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: If that's the done thing there, then you do that so that you fit in socially.
19:19
SPEAKER_00: That your school culture will deteriorate.
19:21
SPEAKER_00: It will be a less pleasant place for kids.
19:24
SPEAKER_00: It will be a less pleasant place for teachers.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: So I do think that suspensions and expulsions do also play a role
19:31
SPEAKER_00: in being protective of school culture.
19:34
SPEAKER_00: Do I want to reduce them?
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
19:36
SPEAKER_00: But I don't want to reduce them by saying to schools,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: we're going to make your paperwork harder to suspend and exclude students
19:45
SPEAKER_00: because that's not changing the behaviours.
19:48
SPEAKER_00: That's what I want to.
19:49
SPEAKER_00: I want to reduce the behaviours that lead to suspensions and expulsions.
19:54
SPEAKER_00: I don't want to just cover them up or just make teachers' lives harder.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: But that's like, I mean, we've addressed it a few times before on the podcast.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: That goes back to that like nearly romantic view that children are,
20:08
SPEAKER_01: they're just out here,
20:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
20:10
SPEAKER_01: totally innocent and that the things that they do in the classroom,
20:13
SPEAKER_01: if they misbehave,
20:15
SPEAKER_01: that's them, you know, communicating an unmet need is your normal one.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: It's them communicating something.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: Maybe it is, maybe it's not.
20:23
SPEAKER_01: But I think the issue is that this conversation goes back to, well,
20:26
SPEAKER_01: then it's on the individual teacher to figure out what that need is and address it.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: And I flat out don't agree with that.
20:36
SPEAKER_01: And I'm going to add in the caveat and say that I'm not saying
20:39
SPEAKER_01: that you shouldn't try to have some form of conversation or some understanding.
20:43
SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, I don't think that a teacher or any child's right
20:50
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that should be contingent on whether or not
20:53
SPEAKER_01: a lesson is deemed sufficiently engaging for an individual student.
20:57
SPEAKER_01: That's not okay.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: And that as a viewpoint should be completely uncontroversial.
21:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it should be, but that's quite a controversial point of view.
21:09
SPEAKER_00: Again, we're up against this, as you say, romantic establishment.
21:14
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: They write papers about these things.
21:17
SPEAKER_00: It sounds great if you're writing an article to say, oh, I'm in favour of inclusion.
21:21
SPEAKER_00: I'm in favour of including kids.
21:23
SPEAKER_00: Look at these disadvantaged kids.
21:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm their supporter.
21:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm on their side.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: It sounds very virtuous,
21:29
SPEAKER_00: but they don't have to deal with the practical consequences of what that means.
21:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
21:34
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if we're talking, though, about, like,
21:36
SPEAKER_01: suspensions and whether or not they should exist,
21:39
SPEAKER_01: that in itself, like, I mean,
21:40
SPEAKER_01: that goes back to the idea of, okay, I mean,
21:43
SPEAKER_01: this article spoke about what you should do and about,
21:46
SPEAKER_01: you know, the idea of, like, oh, yeah, I mean, there were
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Where is it?
21:51
SPEAKER_01: Let me just find the part that I want actually before I start talking to it.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, I mean, well, yeah,
21:57
SPEAKER_01: it speaks about, yeah,
21:58
SPEAKER_01: when you suspend a kid,
21:59
SPEAKER_01: you increase the likelihood that they'll be suspended again,
22:02
SPEAKER_01: flipping like suspensions and, yeah, and changing those around.
22:08
SPEAKER_01: But I think the problem is all of those don't actually address the behaviour at the root cause.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: So if we address the behaviour at the cause of it and we went back to the start, instead of,
22:18
SPEAKER_01: Instead of this idea that what we should do is wait till a student does something
22:22
SPEAKER_01: that,
22:22
SPEAKER_01: you know,
22:23
SPEAKER_01: that breaks our behaviour rules,
22:25
SPEAKER_01: wait till they do something and then go,
22:26
SPEAKER_01: oh goodness,
22:27
SPEAKER_01: now we've got this decision about whether we suspend them or whether we have
22:30
SPEAKER_01: a conversation with them or try to understand, like, that's a reactive response.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: We shouldn't be focusing on purely reacting and I'm not saying that we get rid of
22:39
SPEAKER_01: that part because we need it and you need a consequence and I don't think,
22:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I'm not against the idea of attempting to
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Work with a student on that with a consequence.
22:50
SPEAKER_01: But, I mean, everything needs to come from, you know, I mean, it needs to start from the ground.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: It needs to be, here's our behaviour policy.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: Here's what we can do to support students with that.
23:01
SPEAKER_01: You can look into your success stories of some of the schools in the UK
23:04
SPEAKER_01: who have completely shifted their behaviour.
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And that in itself is enough to go, look, you...
23:12
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
23:13
SPEAKER_01: the way you decrease the number of suspensions isn't making it harder for schools
23:16
SPEAKER_01: to suspend.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: That makes the numbers look really good on paper.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: But what it doesn't do is it doesn't make classrooms a safer place
23:23
SPEAKER_01: and it doesn't support school culture.
23:24
SPEAKER_01: If we want to do that,
23:26
SPEAKER_01: it needs to be a whole school behaviour approach and it does need to,
23:30
SPEAKER_01: I think it needs to be a combination of, I mean, yeah,
23:32
SPEAKER_01: hard consequences and a clear behaviour policy,
23:36
SPEAKER_01: but it also needs to be a way of teaching that to students and to staff so that
23:41
SPEAKER_01: So that when you've got a teacher in a school,
23:43
SPEAKER_01: it doesn't fall onto them as an individual to come up with a way
23:46
SPEAKER_01: of managing teaching, responding to behaviours.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
23:51
SPEAKER_00: I think the problem with individualising it with teachers is they just don't have the resources.
23:57
SPEAKER_00: An individual teacher cannot interact individually and provide therapy to individual kids.
24:04
SPEAKER_00: It's just not how schools are set up.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: And unless we want to massively increase funding,
24:08
SPEAKER_00: massively increase the number of teachers,
24:10
SPEAKER_00: we're just not going to be able to do that.
24:12
SPEAKER_00: But if you are a researcher who says all behaviour is communication, again...
24:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, it sounds good.
24:19
SPEAKER_00: And it also sounds like you have a very good opinion of young people because
24:23
SPEAKER_00: when they do misbehave, it's not because of them.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: They're trying to communicate a need and I understand this because I'm on the side
24:30
SPEAKER_00: of kids and all that sort of stuff.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: But all behaviour is communicational.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: All behaviour is because of an unmet need.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's transparently false.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: And like,
24:39
SPEAKER_00: if I steal something from the supermarket,
24:44
SPEAKER_00: I'm really trying not to communicate anything.
24:47
SPEAKER_00: Because if I was communicating,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: So the idea at the surface level that all behaviour is some kind
24:55
SPEAKER_00: of intentional communication of something is false.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: I mean, a lot of behaviour is for all sorts of different reasons.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: But when you put that to people,
25:03
SPEAKER_00: they draw up the drawbridge and they say, oh no, I don't mean...
25:07
SPEAKER_00: That it's intentional communication.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, all behaviour potentially gives you some idea of what might be going on.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: But that's it.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: Any human behaviour does that.
25:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: It's now meaningless.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: It's now meaningless.
25:20
SPEAKER_00: We've rendered it meaningless.
25:22
SPEAKER_01: But it also...
25:23
SPEAKER_01: I think it actually shifts it.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: Like, I think that shifts the, I'm going to say the blame.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: I think that actually shifts, no, I'm going to use burden.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: I think that shifts the burden then onto the people around that young person or
25:35
SPEAKER_01: the people around whoever's engaged in a behavior because it's then,
25:39
SPEAKER_01: well, you didn't do what you needed to to meet their need.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: That's completely unreasonable.
25:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's, it also, it is, again, it's romantic.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we know that there are a subsection of the population with personality disorders.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: And some of those personality disorders are very challenging and antisocial and untrue.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: They must be present in the student population too.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: So the idea that you can just talk kids out of these behaviours or you can create...
26:11
SPEAKER_00: After the fact.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm a big believer in creating the conditions for good behaviour,
26:16
SPEAKER_00: seating plans, thinking about how you manipulate your antecedents.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: But the idea that by having engaging lessons and just thinking about all those sorts
26:25
SPEAKER_00: of things and meeting their needs, you will never have any antisocial...
26:30
SPEAKER_00: It's just fundamentally wrong.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just not aligned with the facts in any way.
26:39
SPEAKER_01: Well, I actually think that's going to feed really nicely into our second article.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: So, Greg, do we want to move on to that or have you got anything else on this one?
26:47
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, go for it.
26:51
SPEAKER_01: Let me just open it up because I've got them in the wrong order.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Look, so our second,
26:57
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say our second article,
26:59
SPEAKER_01: our second topic would probably be a better way of putting it.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, because the article's quite old.
27:03
SPEAKER_00: It's a guy, what's his name, contacted us.
27:08
SPEAKER_00: No, Matt Brigham.
27:09
SPEAKER_00: Matt Brigham.
27:11
SPEAKER_00: So he contacted us about this topic and the paper that we're going to talk
27:16
SPEAKER_00: about is quite old, but the topic is quite current.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about UDL or Universal Design for Learning.
27:26
SPEAKER_01: The initial thing I'll start off with is just what UDL is really basically.
27:30
SPEAKER_01: So,
27:31
SPEAKER_01: universal design for learning is this idea that when it comes to designing lessons,
27:35
SPEAKER_01: you need to design them in such a way that they are accessible by all students in
27:42
SPEAKER_01: the classroom.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: I mean, logically, that makes sense.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: Where it begins to fall apart is when you get into the structures.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: So initially it sort of,
27:52
SPEAKER_01: it originated from looking for accommodations for students
27:55
SPEAKER_01: with learning difficulties,
27:57
SPEAKER_01: but it's been spread now to being something that a lot
28:01
SPEAKER_01: of different systems are recommending that you use across the board.
28:04
SPEAKER_01: And basically what it speaks to is that these structures for accessibility are
28:11
SPEAKER_01: I mean, they've got three core sort of structures that they use.
28:14
SPEAKER_01: They say there should be multiple modes of representation,
28:16
SPEAKER_01: which is multiple different ways that you're representing information to students
28:20
SPEAKER_01: or displaying it to students.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: So that can be obviously spoken, that can be written, that could be a video, whatever.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: You've got multiple modes of action or expression,
28:30
SPEAKER_01: which are the ways that students would show their learning or the way
28:34
SPEAKER_01: that you'd assess them.
28:36
SPEAKER_01: So if a student didn't want to write an essay,
28:38
SPEAKER_01: they could instead talk about a topic, for instance.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: And then the other one is Multiple Modes of Engagement,
28:43
SPEAKER_01: which is around giving students different activities that they can choose from
28:48
SPEAKER_01: in order to motivate their learning.
28:50
SPEAKER_01: And if you're listening to this,
28:52
SPEAKER_01: you will probably have realised that,
28:55
SPEAKER_01: one, all of those things are really just student preference.
28:59
SPEAKER_01: They're not really anything to do with how students do or should learn, but number one.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Number two, you've probably realised that planning this in a classroom setting is
29:10
SPEAKER_01: It's a logistical nightmare.
29:12
SPEAKER_01: If we talk minimum, I've got three different core principles that I need to do.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: Within each of those, we've got multiple different ways that students could do or access those.
29:24
SPEAKER_01: So you're already talking about nine plus learning activities.
29:28
SPEAKER_01: But then when you get into the numbers of different combinations available,
29:32
SPEAKER_01: or it's like you could have a student who wants to do activity one and
29:34
SPEAKER_01: then activity, it just turns into a disaster in terms of practicality.
29:39
SPEAKER_01: But your third one is,
29:42
SPEAKER_01: and this is what this article that we've looked at speaks to,
29:46
SPEAKER_01: is it has a couple of similarities to our good old friend learning styles.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: Katie, you- Did I do a wrong article?
29:54
SPEAKER_00: No, look, look at this book.
29:56
SPEAKER_00: What's this book?
29:57
SPEAKER_00: Learning to Learn.
29:58
SPEAKER_00: Learning to Learn,
29:59
SPEAKER_00: Strategies for Accelerating Learning and Boosting Performance by Christine Ward
30:03
SPEAKER_00: and Jan Daly.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: And I picked this up in a secondhand bookshop.
30:07
SPEAKER_00: And it has, it was published in, oh, it doesn't say, where is it?
30:14
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't say when it was published.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: Gosh, I think it's a 90s publication by the look of it.
30:19
SPEAKER_00: And look what we've got here.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: On this page that I'm showing you now, we have got VAK, Visual Audition Aesthetic Learning.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: We also have... My favourite thing to talk about.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: It's all kinds of wrong, this book is.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: We've got Left Brains and Right Brains.
30:37
SPEAKER_01: I like that picture, actually.
30:38
SPEAKER_00: That's a little bit funky.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: Greg, are you a left-brained person or a right-brained person?
30:43
SPEAKER_00: Well, Caiti, it's neuro-nonsense.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: It's neuro-nonsense.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: It's not true.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: To follow on from neuroscience, the episode, today we've got neuro-nonsense, the episode.
30:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we've got plenty of that.
30:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so, yeah, I was just thinking of that, yeah.
30:59
SPEAKER_00: So, Matt Brigham, just to pick up that thread,
31:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: And Universal Design for Learning from Guy Boyson.
31:23
SPEAKER_00: And he's been in email contact with Guy Boyson.
31:26
SPEAKER_00: And Guy and Matt have given us permission to read this quote out from Guy Boyson
31:34
SPEAKER_00: in their discussion.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: So the evidence in my review articles came directly from the UDL evidence website.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: So it reflects CAST's own claims.
31:42
SPEAKER_00: CAST is what they call the Centre for Applied Specialty Technology,
31:46
SPEAKER_00: and they are the people behind Universal Design for Learning.
31:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:51
SPEAKER_00: So it reflects CAST's own claims about the support for their approach.
31:54
SPEAKER_00: One of the important points about the evidence provided by CAST is it came
31:58
SPEAKER_00: after they had already proposed their model.
32:01
SPEAKER_00: The model did not emerge from evidence as they assert, but
32:06
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately,
32:07
SPEAKER_00: some of the practices in Cass' model of UDL are supported by evidence
32:11
SPEAKER_00: and some are not.
32:12
SPEAKER_00: My main concern with their approach is that they inaccurately portray UDL
32:15
SPEAKER_00: as fully validated and based in neuroscience.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: Neuroscience again.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: And it reminded me, so there's a guy in Belgium called...
32:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh, why am I saying people's names when I don't know how to say it?
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Pedro de Broicera, I think is how you say it.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: Pedro de Broicera.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And in 2014, he wrote about universal design for learning.
32:43
SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting because at the time,
32:46
SPEAKER_00: the website,
32:47
SPEAKER_00: the CAST website,
32:49
SPEAKER_00: that is a source for all this information,
32:52
SPEAKER_00: was actually asking people to send in research to support...
32:59
SPEAKER_00: Oh, this is my favourite.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: Because you know that something works if you have to ask people to send you
33:07
SPEAKER_01: the evidence about the thing that you're claiming works.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's like- If you find anything.
33:12
SPEAKER_00: It is the reverse of science.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: And so I went on,
33:15
SPEAKER_00: it caused me,
33:16
SPEAKER_00: preparing for this episode, caused me, and now I've got all my papers all mixed up.
33:20
SPEAKER_00: I don't know what's going on.
33:21
SPEAKER_00: Oh, me too.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: To the CAST website and I got a document there which basically lists,
33:28
SPEAKER_00: so they've got all these things like evidence
33:30
SPEAKER_00: that it improves student literacy outcomes and it just lists loads of papers
33:35
SPEAKER_00: and it lists them without a full reference so I then had to click through to get
33:40
SPEAKER_00: the full reference and I looked at the first two papers
33:42
SPEAKER_00: in Improved Student Literacy Outcomes and neither of them had a control group.
33:46
SPEAKER_00: So they said, so they did some universal design for learning with some kids.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: The kids learned something.
33:51
SPEAKER_00: They concluded universal design for learning worked.
33:54
SPEAKER_00: Didn't even have a control group not doing universal design for learning
33:57
SPEAKER_00: or doing something else.
33:58
SPEAKER_00: So at that point, I gave up on them.
34:00
SPEAKER_00: So I am sympathetic to Boyson's claims of a similarity between universal design
34:10
SPEAKER_00: for learning and learning styles.
34:11
SPEAKER_00: And it really is compelling, the more you read his article, the parallels that he draws.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's really just the fact that it's like,
34:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, both of them are founded on what is a largely questionable evidence base.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
34:28
SPEAKER_01: one of the sort of things when I was getting into researching UDL is a lot of
34:32
SPEAKER_01: the evidence.
34:33
SPEAKER_01: It focuses on students self-reporting,
34:36
SPEAKER_01: you know,
34:36
SPEAKER_01: whether they felt engaged or they enjoyed their learning or whether they felt
34:40
SPEAKER_01: that they learned more.
34:41
SPEAKER_01: And we, of course,
34:42
SPEAKER_01: know that students thinking that they learned, well, people,
34:45
SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't say students,
34:46
SPEAKER_01: anyone thinking that they learned something isn't necessarily a good prediction of
34:49
SPEAKER_01: whether or not you are actually learning it.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
34:53
SPEAKER_00: There's a great quote from the paper on that.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: And I was aware of this.
34:55
SPEAKER_00: I think there is one in this.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
34:57
SPEAKER_00: So there's some Richard- I'm not going to highlight it.
35:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, some Richard Clarke work from the 1980s,
35:04
SPEAKER_00: from 1982, Antagonism Between Achievement and Enjoyment in ATI Studies.
35:08
SPEAKER_00: And basically, he shows that what kids enjoy more is often not the most...
35:15
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well,
35:39
SPEAKER_01: that's exactly – but it's also when we're basing anything on student preference
35:43
SPEAKER_01: or student engagement or what they think they're learning,
35:47
SPEAKER_01: that's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
35:49
SPEAKER_01: Of course students are going to come out and say –
35:52
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I really wanted to learn by watching a short-form reel on maths.
35:58
SPEAKER_01: So they're going to say that they learnt more,
36:00
SPEAKER_01: that they enjoyed it more, so they get more of that.
36:02
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't actually relate to learning.
36:04
SPEAKER_01: I mean, like, as even an attempt at evidence, that's poor.
36:10
SPEAKER_01: What?
36:11
SPEAKER_01: I've got to find this part.
36:13
SPEAKER_01: There's one part in it where they actually speak about their own evidence base.
36:18
SPEAKER_01: Here we go.
36:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so...
36:23
SPEAKER_01: Let me just get the quote.
36:24
SPEAKER_01: It says,
36:26
SPEAKER_01: now this is from the UDL guidebook,
36:30
SPEAKER_01: to be clear,
36:30
SPEAKER_01: and they say, quote,
36:32
SPEAKER_01: Through the process of investigation,
36:35
SPEAKER_01: researchers risk weakening the application of the UDL framework and subsequently
36:40
SPEAKER_01: the learning experiences of students.
36:41
SPEAKER_01: End quote.
36:43
SPEAKER_01: So essentially what they're saying is that if we were to do any kind of studies
36:48
SPEAKER_01: or we were to try to find evidence on this, well, then we're not doing UDL properly.
36:52
SPEAKER_01: And if we do that, well, then of course it's not going to work.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: Like they have completely discounted the entire scientific process in that sentence
37:02
SPEAKER_01: by being like, well,
37:02
SPEAKER_01: of course we're not going to find evidence that won't work
37:04
SPEAKER_01: because you'll do it wrong if we have to try.
37:07
SPEAKER_01: That is an absurd claim.
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Please don't test this.
37:13
SPEAKER_00: There's loads of reasons.
37:16
SPEAKER_00: You can't provide evidences.
37:17
SPEAKER_00: Essentially, UDL is a form of differentiation.
37:19
SPEAKER_00: It's a way of driving teachers mad by making their planning impossible and by giving kids...
37:27
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
37:42
SPEAKER_00: And learning styles,
37:43
SPEAKER_00: what learning styles and UDL share is this premise
37:47
SPEAKER_00: that students are fundamentally different,
37:49
SPEAKER_00: that they're really different to each other.
37:51
SPEAKER_00: But there was another bit that drew my attention to it as well.
37:55
SPEAKER_00: I hope that's what I'm thinking.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: Well, no,
37:57
SPEAKER_00: it's when he was talking about the UDL framework,
37:59
SPEAKER_00: when Boyston talks about the UDL framework, and he's sort of explaining it.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: And he says...
38:03
SPEAKER_00: To illustrate,
38:03
SPEAKER_00: requiring a written essay may not accurately show how much a student has learned
38:08
SPEAKER_00: if they best express themselves verbally.
38:11
SPEAKER_00: UGL attempts to separate the expression of learning
38:13
SPEAKER_00: from specific format requirements by providing multiple modes of action
38:17
SPEAKER_00: and expression.
38:17
SPEAKER_00: Well, two things I'd say about that.
38:19
SPEAKER_00: One, what if your objective is for them to write essays?
38:22
SPEAKER_00: If what you want them to be able to do is learn how to write essays?
38:26
SPEAKER_00: Well...
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Okay, no, we're separating the learning, whatever that is.
38:30
SPEAKER_00: Like writing an essay and the learning that goes into
38:34
SPEAKER_00: that are not completely separable from each other.
38:37
SPEAKER_00: And writing is an important thing to be able to do.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: I mean, again,
38:42
SPEAKER_00: we could go back to our argument about,
38:43
SPEAKER_00: well, computers can do it for you now, but we've rehearsed that one already.
38:47
SPEAKER_00: And the other thing is,
38:49
SPEAKER_00: Just think about it logically.
38:50
SPEAKER_00: Who are the ones who are going to opt out of writing the essays?
38:53
SPEAKER_00: The ones who find writing essays hard and challenging.
38:57
SPEAKER_00: And so it will have a differential effect.
39:00
SPEAKER_00: The kids who like writing essays will write essays and they'll get better at writing essays.
39:04
SPEAKER_00: The kids who don't like writing essays will not write essays
39:07
SPEAKER_00: and they will not improve at writing essays.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: And so what you've got is this centrifuge that's flinging...
39:13
SPEAKER_00: Kids To The Four Winds And Generating Difference
39:17
SPEAKER_00: And Generating Differential Outcomes And Maybe For Some Students
39:23
SPEAKER_00: With Fairly Profound Disabilities Who The UDV Framework Is Originally Designed
39:30
SPEAKER_00: For Maybe For Them It Is Not Appropriate To
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Ask Them To Write An Essay Maybe We've It Is A Reasonable Judgment
39:38
SPEAKER_00: That This Is Absolutely For Their Cognitive Level
39:42
SPEAKER_00: Of Development It'S Not Appropriate And We Want Them To Do Something Else That'S
39:45
SPEAKER_01: About Providing Access Which Is Fair But
39:49
SPEAKER_00: Applying UDL to classrooms generally,
39:53
SPEAKER_00: as cats seem to want us to do,
39:56
SPEAKER_00: or already seems to be happening in some university settings,
40:00
SPEAKER_00: that is really troubling.
40:02
SPEAKER_00: I learned it in uni.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: I had to write an entire essay on how I was going to employ the principles of UDL and
40:10
SPEAKER_01: Can I guess that you didn't actually do it?
40:35
SPEAKER_01: Oh, goodness, no, no, of course I did not.
40:37
SPEAKER_01: I wrote an essay on it.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: I wrote an essay on it.
40:39
SPEAKER_01: I got a good score.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: I met the criteria of applying UDL and I've never touched it since.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: But these cast, they attempted to create a framework for implementing UDL.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: And it had nine guidelines and 31 implementation checkpoints, which is unmanageable.
40:57
SPEAKER_01: We have a teacher workload issue.
41:01
SPEAKER_01: And honestly,
41:01
SPEAKER_01: even if we didn't, I mean,
41:03
SPEAKER_01: that's great if you're like,
41:05
SPEAKER_01: if I'm working one-on-one with a student,
41:06
SPEAKER_01: I can respond really well to their individual questions.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: It's not a reasonable expectation.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: In saying it's not reasonable, it's also not something that works.
41:31
SPEAKER_01: So there's no point.
41:32
SPEAKER_01: You're wasting your time doing something that is pointless.
41:36
SPEAKER_00: It hasn't been properly tested, so I suppose we can't rule out
41:40
SPEAKER_00: Maybe they should have just gone for the approach of just asking people
41:43
SPEAKER_00: on their website if they could provide the evidence for them.
41:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, fair.
42:11
SPEAKER_00: But they – oh, I've lost my train of thought.
42:19
SPEAKER_00: So providing evidence – okay,
42:21
SPEAKER_00: so we haven't got evidence that UDL doesn't work is the point I suppose to say
42:25
SPEAKER_00: because it hasn't been tested either way.
42:27
SPEAKER_00: But we can be fairly certain by just losing kind of like logic and reason and
42:32
SPEAKER_00: the argument about writing and the argument about the fact that –
42:38
SPEAKER_00: Humans are actually kind of similar in many ways in how they learn.
42:42
SPEAKER_00: And also the argument about giving them choices and that they won't necessarily...
42:47
SPEAKER_00: We've got evidence to suggest that they won't make the optimal choices.
42:50
SPEAKER_00: So we can be fairly certain that UDL doesn't work.
42:54
SPEAKER_00: Because it's based on some fairly fundamental problems and it's suggesting doing
43:01
SPEAKER_00: the opposite of things that we know should be more effective.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: So not only does it have that problem.
43:08
SPEAKER_00: That it's highly likely to not work and to be actually quite detrimental.
43:13
SPEAKER_00: But it also is a workload generator.
43:17
SPEAKER_00: So it's got these two properties.
43:19
SPEAKER_00: So the only reason it can possibly survive is because people who don't actually have
43:25
SPEAKER_00: to implement it,
43:26
SPEAKER_00: such as the person that taught you about it when you were at university,
43:30
SPEAKER_00: get to feel good about themselves.
43:33
SPEAKER_00: That can be the only thing about this problem.
43:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
43:56
SPEAKER_00: They Can't Resist Them Teacher Reveals Extent of Digital Device Distraction by,
44:01
SPEAKER_00: I think we should now say, friend of the show, Sarah Duggan.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: Sarah Duggan, yeah.
44:05
SPEAKER_00: Because we've talked enough about her articles on this show,
44:09
SPEAKER_00: so I think she deserves the moniker friend of the show.
44:12
SPEAKER_00: So, Sarah, if you're listening, reach out and tell us if you object to being our friend.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: The first official friend of the show.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
44:21
SPEAKER_00: And it's about devices in classrooms.
44:24
SPEAKER_00: So what's the context?
44:26
SPEAKER_00: The context is that in Australia,
44:28
SPEAKER_00: most school systems now have moved or are moving towards bans on phones.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: But phones are not the only distracting digital devices in schools, Caiti.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: There are lots of laptops and iPads and all kinds of things like that.
44:43
SPEAKER_00: And would you believe, according to one teacher,
44:49
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that Sarah Duggan spoke to.
44:51
SPEAKER_00: Students have been sitting in class appearing to be working,
44:54
SPEAKER_00: but in reality, they are shopping online.
45:00
SPEAKER_00: Or Messaging to other students and arranging to meet up in the toilets.
45:05
SPEAKER_00: The little scamps.
45:06
SPEAKER_00: Who would have imagined?
45:08
SPEAKER_01: I'd have never guessed.
45:09
SPEAKER_00: Who would imagine they would do that?
45:11
SPEAKER_00: How would they come up with this idea?
45:14
SPEAKER_00: Who would get on Twitter and start messaging their friends in class, Caiti?
45:19
SPEAKER_01: I don't know anyone on this podcast who would have done that in school.
45:24
SPEAKER_01: The worst part about this is, Greg, you taught me in school.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: Behaviorally, how was I?
45:30
SPEAKER_00: I thought you were very well behaved, Caiti.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: Until you told us about the Twitter thing.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'll keep that to myself.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: This is exactly like, this is probably the part that I am
45:46
SPEAKER_01: I am frustrated with and it's not the idea of devices and students doing the wrong thing.
45:53
SPEAKER_01: That's obvious.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: We know that.
45:56
SPEAKER_01: But it's this idea that they keep coming back into classrooms.
46:00
SPEAKER_01: Part of the article,
46:00
SPEAKER_01: they referenced the fact that in Victoria now,
46:03
SPEAKER_01: like schools are having to in Victoria.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Is it a mandate, Greg, where you have to plan for device free time?
46:09
SPEAKER_00: Well, in the government system,
46:12
SPEAKER_00: they are going to introduce a limit on the amount of time kids can be on devices.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think Ben Carroll came out and said, it's going to be two hours.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: And then a few moments later he came out and said, no, we haven't decided yet.
46:23
SPEAKER_00: So we don't know.
46:24
SPEAKER_00: We don't know how much.
46:27
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember if it's two hours without them or two hours with them.
46:30
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Right.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, an arbitrary limit on the use of devices.
46:36
SPEAKER_00: And when they are used,
46:38
SPEAKER_00: they should be intentional or something like that,
46:40
SPEAKER_00: which I'm sure teachers think that that's what they're doing already.
46:42
SPEAKER_00: But I have to say, I've seen maths lessons with kids on computers, on PowerPoint, right?
46:51
SPEAKER_00: Making a PowerPoint about triangles and it's all about the font and all
46:55
SPEAKER_00: about how you work PowerPoint and all this sort of stuff.
46:58
SPEAKER_00: And I've seen that.
47:00
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes people do use these devices and maybe it's not as intentional
47:07
SPEAKER_00: or maybe their intention is not one that I would share.
47:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, maybe that's it.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: Great.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: I think that part of it is that,
47:14
SPEAKER_01: and like the conversations that I have when I work with different schools on this,
47:18
SPEAKER_01: is that they say, well,
47:19
SPEAKER_01: like times have changed now and students have these short attention spans
47:22
SPEAKER_01: and we need to cater to that.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: And I would actually, I push back on that.
47:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't fully agree.
47:29
SPEAKER_01: I'm someone who,
47:30
SPEAKER_01: like I very notoriously,
47:31
SPEAKER_01: unless I absolutely have to,
47:33
SPEAKER_01: and I say have to because we have certain tasks as part of our QCA,
47:39
SPEAKER_01: our senior program in Queensland that
47:42
SPEAKER_01: Cast them out.
47:43
SPEAKER_01: Cast out the phones.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: Cast out the laptops.
47:45
SPEAKER_01: Cast out the calculators.
47:47
SPEAKER_01: Get rid of them all out.
48:09
SPEAKER_00: And the ever sensible,
48:10
SPEAKER_00: she's very sensible,
48:11
SPEAKER_00: the ever sensible Rebecca Birch appears in this article to be quoted.
48:15
SPEAKER_00: Wonderful, yep.
48:16
SPEAKER_00: Very sensible.
48:17
SPEAKER_00: And she just summarises some of the research.
48:20
SPEAKER_00: So they've got Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath talks, he's written a book called The Digital Illusion.
48:24
SPEAKER_00: He's back again.
48:25
SPEAKER_00: He's back again.
48:26
SPEAKER_00: And then Rebecca Birch says, it's tempting to draw on the balance fallacy.
48:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is the idea, oh, we should just have a balance.
48:35
SPEAKER_00: Balance between doing harmful things and useful things.
48:38
SPEAKER_00: Let's just balance them.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: It's got to be a balance.
48:41
SPEAKER_00: It's tempting to draw on the balance fallacy, but the research is fairly damning.
48:44
SPEAKER_00: Hours per day online is correlated with loneliness at school.
48:48
SPEAKER_00: Total daily time on screens is correlated with suicide-related outcomes,
48:52
SPEAKER_00: according to Jean Twang's research, which you should really check out.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: And there are physical effects, including on vision, posture and lifestyle.
49:01
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sitting down here now.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
49:18
SPEAKER_00: Having less of a bad back.
49:20
SPEAKER_00: And so having kids,
49:21
SPEAKER_00: particularly working at laptops in classrooms where they're not even sort
49:26
SPEAKER_00: of ergonomically designed,
49:28
SPEAKER_00: they don't have proper, like I've got a proper keyboard I can plug into my laptop.
49:32
SPEAKER_00: The kids don't have that.
49:33
SPEAKER_00: They're sitting there.
49:34
SPEAKER_00: It's not a good thing.
49:36
SPEAKER_00: Cast them out.
49:37
SPEAKER_00: Cast them all out.
49:38
SPEAKER_00: That's what I say.
49:40
SPEAKER_01: I think it comes back to the theme of today's episode,
49:42
SPEAKER_01: which is very much around we've confused student preference with what's best.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: Like we're doing the same thing we always do where we try to appeal to,
49:51
SPEAKER_01: and we've spoken to it before, we try to appeal to what we think students like.
49:57
SPEAKER_01: And because we do that, we go,
49:59
SPEAKER_01: well, we've got to, yeah, we've got to teach our lessons using some form of like
50:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, silly short form video because student attention spans have changed.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: The way that students learn hasn't changed.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: The environment has.
50:13
SPEAKER_01: So based on that,
50:15
SPEAKER_01: should we not be setting them up for success in terms of paying attention in
50:18
SPEAKER_01: the classroom?
50:19
SPEAKER_01: Like rather than saying students can't focus for,
50:22
SPEAKER_01: the argument I get is students can't focus for more than,
50:24
SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
50:25
SPEAKER_01: whatever it is, the 30 seconds, two minutes of a short video at a time.
50:28
SPEAKER_01: So you need to be changing activities.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: Well,
50:31
SPEAKER_01: Why don't we instead just completely shift the script on that and go,
50:35
SPEAKER_01: well, at work, I'm not allowed to just sit here and scroll through Instagram Reels.
50:38
SPEAKER_01: So why don't we change the culture around attention so that they are,
50:44
SPEAKER_01: I mean, let's use your phrase, cast them out.
50:47
SPEAKER_00: Well, I agree, Caiti.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's something interesting going on here with the curse of knowledge.
50:53
SPEAKER_00: So
50:55
SPEAKER_00: People, I would say I'm an advocate for a knowledge-rich curriculum.
51:00
SPEAKER_00: And people will counter that and say all curriculums are full of knowledge.
51:04
SPEAKER_00: We've always taught knowledge.
51:05
SPEAKER_00: What are you going on about?
51:06
SPEAKER_00: Stop talking about knowledge.
51:07
SPEAKER_00: It's redundant.
51:08
SPEAKER_00: We all teach knowledge.
51:10
SPEAKER_00: But I don't think people do and I don't think they appreciate it in the same way.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: So you've got the curse of knowledge,
51:16
SPEAKER_00: which I think, have we talked about the curse of knowledge on the show?
51:18
SPEAKER_00: I can't remember if we have.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: I think we have.
51:20
SPEAKER_00: This is this idea that once you've got something in long-term memory,
51:24
SPEAKER_00: it's so easy to retrieve that it's really hard to empathise with kids
51:28
SPEAKER_00: that don't have that knowledge.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: And it means that we tend to underestimate the knowledge that we have
51:33
SPEAKER_00: and how difficult it was to acquire.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, when you do that, you start looking at classrooms and you start thinking...
51:39
SPEAKER_00: Why are they learning these rote, disconnected facts about blah, blah, blah?
51:44
SPEAKER_00: What they should be doing is what people in the real world do,
51:48
SPEAKER_00: like making presentations on PowerPoint or making whatever.
51:53
SPEAKER_01: Coming up with your own science experiment, investigating something.
51:57
SPEAKER_00: Let's get the computers out because that's very modern, isn't it?
52:01
SPEAKER_00: And we want to be thought of as quite modern and we can make little movies
52:08
SPEAKER_00: and these are the sorts of skills and they'll need to collaborate and they'll need
52:11
SPEAKER_00: to learn how to collaborate and think critically and critically on us,
52:14
SPEAKER_00: do some research and all this sort of stuff.
52:18
SPEAKER_00: But people move into that space.
52:21
SPEAKER_00: Because they fundamentally undervalue the knowledge and the process by
52:27
SPEAKER_00: which it's acquired,
52:28
SPEAKER_00: the difficult process by which biologically secondary knowledge is acquired.
52:32
SPEAKER_00: So they flip into this other space.
52:35
SPEAKER_00: And of course,
52:37
SPEAKER_00: if you like learning how to work PowerPoint or learning how to work any bit
52:42
SPEAKER_00: of software is trivial in comparison to learning the things that you need
52:48
SPEAKER_00: to actually learn.
52:50
SPEAKER_00: To produce a useful presentation on Topic X. Yeah.
52:56
SPEAKER_00: And people don't appreciate that.
52:57
SPEAKER_00: It's like when you have these calls to teach digital literacy and all this sort of stuff.
53:01
SPEAKER_00: Okay,
53:02
SPEAKER_00: we could teach them about credit cards and all that sort of stuff as we were talking
53:06
SPEAKER_00: about last week, I think.
53:08
SPEAKER_00: But
53:09
SPEAKER_00: Are they really going to understand that if they don't have an appreciation
53:11
SPEAKER_00: of quite deep concepts like inflation and all that sort of stuff?
53:16
SPEAKER_00: Schools should be in the business of teaching the deeper concepts.
53:20
SPEAKER_00: When you later end up in an industry where you have to use a particular tool,
53:26
SPEAKER_00: then you can learn how to use that tool.
53:28
SPEAKER_00: I'd never used the CAS calculator until I came to Australia.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
53:34
SPEAKER_01: And for people who are listening, a CAS calculator is a programmable calculator.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's a complicated thing to use.
53:42
SPEAKER_00: Basically, it's a computer, but computers are banned, so it can't have a QWERTY keyboard.
53:47
SPEAKER_00: It has to have a different arrangement.
53:49
SPEAKER_00: It has an AVCD keyboard.
53:51
SPEAKER_00: And it's got all these little functions.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: It reminds me a lot of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum where you had to press about three buttons.
53:57
SPEAKER_00: This is an early home computer, way before your time, Caiti.
54:01
SPEAKER_00: You had to press about three buttons and it would...
54:03
SPEAKER_00: Well, that's your CAS calculator.
54:08
SPEAKER_00: You've got to press shift control this and all that sort of stuff.
54:12
SPEAKER_00: Really complicated, horrible things.
54:13
SPEAKER_00: As you know, I want to cast them out.
54:16
SPEAKER_00: But I was able to figure that out fairly quickly.
54:20
SPEAKER_00: It was really trivial to learn how to use... Well, not trivial.
54:24
SPEAKER_00: It was more than trivial.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't a difficult job to learn how to use the CAS calculator.
54:30
SPEAKER_00: Learning calculus, though,
54:31
SPEAKER_00: or learning mathematics or algebra,
54:33
SPEAKER_00: linear algebra, that was a process that took me years.
54:36
SPEAKER_00: Schools should focus on that bit,
54:38
SPEAKER_00: not on the sort of specific tools that were used in particular...
54:46
SPEAKER_01: Like, they're not going to be the same.
54:47
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've just said that you learned to use some computery thingamabobby
54:52
SPEAKER_01: that I've never heard of and can't remember the name of it.
54:55
SPEAKER_00: Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Katie.
54:56
SPEAKER_00: Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
54:57
SPEAKER_00: You can get T-shirts on it.
54:59
SPEAKER_00: Very popular with people as old as me.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: I will wear one next time.
55:06
SPEAKER_01: But that's the thing, like that technology is completely shifted now.
55:10
SPEAKER_01: So whatever we're teaching them tech,
55:12
SPEAKER_01: and it's not to say that we shouldn't teach them any tech skills,
55:15
SPEAKER_01: teach them to use a computer,
55:17
SPEAKER_01: but it just doesn't have to be everything, not everything they do.
55:21
SPEAKER_01: Not everything they do needs to mimic the workforce.
55:24
SPEAKER_01: I know this is a conversation that we go back to a few times,
55:27
SPEAKER_01: but schooling doesn't purely exist to prepare students for the workforce,
55:32
SPEAKER_01: so we're not getting them to do mini work tasks.
55:34
SPEAKER_01: It's about building up knowledge so that we have knowledgeable citizens
55:39
SPEAKER_01: and we're passing on knowledge about the world and things that we've learned so
55:43
SPEAKER_01: that people don't have to
55:44
SPEAKER_01: Rediscover calculus every, you know, couple of – how many thousands of years did it take?
55:49
SPEAKER_01: Like, people don't have to keep going back and reinventing that.
55:52
SPEAKER_01: It's like we can continue to pass on knowledge.
55:55
SPEAKER_01: So it's just – it's a nonsensical view when you get into a why of laptops in the classroom.
56:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think you're right.
56:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you want,
56:05
SPEAKER_00: if your objective is to,
56:07
SPEAKER_00: it's a computer classroom and you're teaching coding or you're teaching how to use
56:10
SPEAKER_00: an Excel spreadsheet.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's a logic to that.
56:14
SPEAKER_00: But if you're like, right, we're in maths.
56:15
SPEAKER_00: Okay, guys, make a PowerPoint about triangles.
56:19
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's just wrong.
56:22
SPEAKER_00: It's just wrong, Caiti.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: All kinds of wrong things.
56:29
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much to everyone for listening today.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: As always,
56:32
SPEAKER_01: any of the materials that we've referenced in today's episode can be found in
56:36
SPEAKER_01: the show notes as well as our socials.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: So if you've got a podcast,
56:40
SPEAKER_01: article,
56:40
SPEAKER_01: opinion piece or something else that you would like Greg and I to discuss,
56:44
SPEAKER_01: please feel free to send it to either of us on any of our socials
56:47
SPEAKER_01: or you can comment it on the link below.