Dear Parents,
The winds of change are blowing in education-land, and you should know about it. If you are a parent who has been told your child is "not meeting the standards," you’ll be interested in these changes because they get right to the heart of what actually happens in the classroom.
Any employer tired of employing graduates high on sense-of-entitlement, but low on the basics of literacy and numeracy, should be demanding answers. Decisions taken by education academics regarding what to tell new teachers about how children learn, will directly impact American children's future life chances, and the success of institutions and businesses.
Well firstly, there’s been an innovation free-for-all. This has meant "traditional" teaching methods such as textbooks, detailed teacher explanations, homework, and high expectations for behaviour have become deeply unpopular and unwelcome - almost dangerous. The last decade in education has been one where technology, seen as the key to unlocking the doors of American potential, has been presented as the solution to all the *old* problems.
3) Memory is way more critical to our thinking and problem-solving than an, “engage through challenges" approach supposes. Information, general cultural knowledge, vocabulary, phonics and automaticity of many functional elements of math are essential for the competence to solve difficult or complex problems. Information in memory isnt some added extra, its the very substance with which we think.
4) You learn what you think about. Many modern pedagogical techniques focus on the *how* of learning, they create fun learning experiences so that children *want* to do the work or are inspired. Because thinking about the material is less fun than playing a game or moving around the classroom, pedagogy has emphasized the latter. This bells and whistles pedagogy of fun, means less thinking about the content and less learning happens. Oh and it also kills teachers workload.
5) Because pedagogy has emphasized choice, and children wanting to do fun things, more traditional discipline practices such as rules and consequences, have been deemphasized. If we want kids to think about things they might not naturally be interested in, routines and consistent systems are needed to counter natural proclivities to mess about.
When I found all this out, I was astounded. How can it be that we got things so wrong? But my outrage isn't really what's at stake. What matters is the future of America's children, and without upping the research knowledge of teachers, there are unlikely to be any significant changes in this regard. Check Ego at the door, and come together to take a long hard look at what has been going wrong. If we don't teach kids using what we know about how they learn, things aren't going to get better.
The winds of change are blowing in education-land, and you should know about it. If you are a parent who has been told your child is "not meeting the standards," you’ll be interested in these changes because they get right to the heart of what actually happens in the classroom.
Any employer tired of employing graduates high on sense-of-entitlement, but low on the basics of literacy and numeracy, should be demanding answers. Decisions taken by education academics regarding what to tell new teachers about how children learn, will directly impact American children's future life chances, and the success of institutions and businesses.
The ideas with power in education matter.
So what is all the hoo-ha about?
Despite increased education spending over the last decade, America's education outcomes, as measured by PISA, are flatlining. Morale is low, and it’s getting harder to recruit and retain good teachers. Too many children, often from the most underpriveledged circumstances, are leaving school without the basics of literacy and numeracy.
The problem isn't money, it's how the money is being spent. Education departments are perpetuating outdated ideas - zombie ideas - about how children learn. The Educational establishment, as is to be expected, are fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo and keep the zombies alive. To change would mean admitting things have been going wrong, money has been wasted, and some tenured professors would need to eat humble pie. A lot of people have sunk too much into the educational status quo to publically accept their ideas haven’t had the impact they desired.
In some areas of public policy, the fundamentals of how to do the service well are well established, education hasnt been one of those areas... until recently.
So what is all the hoo-ha about?
Despite increased education spending over the last decade, America's education outcomes, as measured by PISA, are flatlining. Morale is low, and it’s getting harder to recruit and retain good teachers. Too many children, often from the most underpriveledged circumstances, are leaving school without the basics of literacy and numeracy.
The problem isn't money, it's how the money is being spent. Education departments are perpetuating outdated ideas - zombie ideas - about how children learn. The Educational establishment, as is to be expected, are fighting tooth and nail to maintain the status quo and keep the zombies alive. To change would mean admitting things have been going wrong, money has been wasted, and some tenured professors would need to eat humble pie. A lot of people have sunk too much into the educational status quo to publically accept their ideas haven’t had the impact they desired.
In some areas of public policy, the fundamentals of how to do the service well are well established, education hasnt been one of those areas... until recently.
Education is different from other areas, because it’s a more complex and nuanced issue, involving psychology, craft and emotion as much as science. However, and despite the complexity, cognitive scientists have managed to make some remarkable breakthroughs. Cognitive science applied to education is, in many cases, clashing with education departments who have been operating as an extension of the humanities. What are some of the ideas being challenged?
Well firstly, there’s been an innovation free-for-all. This has meant "traditional" teaching methods such as textbooks, detailed teacher explanations, homework, and high expectations for behaviour have become deeply unpopular and unwelcome - almost dangerous. The last decade in education has been one where technology, seen as the key to unlocking the doors of American potential, has been presented as the solution to all the *old* problems.
Engagement, collaboration, and creativity have been foregrounded over the adquisition of knowledge. Why would you need knowledge when you can google everything?
Against this backdrop, a consortium of self-appointed consultants and successful ex-teachers promote ideas that sound exciting, but are unsustainable and require superhuman passion and commitment to make work. Because of this drive to make new and exciting learning experiences, the concept of teacher-as-hero-martyr has arisen, and we are now in the unenviable position where teachers feel that if kids aren't inspired in every class, it's because their planning or delivery is wrong. Twitter gleefully promotes passion, excitement, 3D printers and AI glasses, as if schools were inadequate for not operating in a similar way to a particularly fat fetched episode of star trek, just with more group work.
Against this backdrop, a consortium of self-appointed consultants and successful ex-teachers promote ideas that sound exciting, but are unsustainable and require superhuman passion and commitment to make work. Because of this drive to make new and exciting learning experiences, the concept of teacher-as-hero-martyr has arisen, and we are now in the unenviable position where teachers feel that if kids aren't inspired in every class, it's because their planning or delivery is wrong. Twitter gleefully promotes passion, excitement, 3D printers and AI glasses, as if schools were inadequate for not operating in a similar way to a particularly fat fetched episode of star trek, just with more group work.
There has been a thoroughgoing rejection of direct instruction, with engaging problem-solving and the exploration of authentic and relevant issues in a self-directed manner, facilitated by technology, being preferred. Teacher explanations are "boring" lectures, leading to unengaged students. If kids misbehave, principals around the country point the finger at teachers for not being relevant enough.
This is now the status quo. It's the reason why, if you go into most American classrooms, you aren't going to see many teachers explaining or questioning the whole group very much. It's far more likely you will see children in groups doing projects and the teacher “facilitating”. This is supposedly “student-centred” learning.
It has been claimed that, because "information" is now ubiquitous and freely available - like water - we don't need to store it in our brains. If only we could liberate children from the restrictive constraints of previous thinking, their minds could reason, create, and problem-solve their way to a brighter future for everyone.
Here's the great hulking elephant, farting and harrumphing in the corner, Direct Instruction works and careful sequencing of knowledge is fundamental to critical thinking and creativity. There are good reasons for this, here are a few.
1) There is very flimsy evidence that we can improve general cognitive functioning just by getting kids to solve problems. Transfer or generalization of problem solving to other dissimilar problems is not guaranteed, evidence is lacking. To put this another way, you cannot creatively solve problems you know nothing about.
This is now the status quo. It's the reason why, if you go into most American classrooms, you aren't going to see many teachers explaining or questioning the whole group very much. It's far more likely you will see children in groups doing projects and the teacher “facilitating”. This is supposedly “student-centred” learning.
It has been claimed that, because "information" is now ubiquitous and freely available - like water - we don't need to store it in our brains. If only we could liberate children from the restrictive constraints of previous thinking, their minds could reason, create, and problem-solve their way to a brighter future for everyone.
Here's the great hulking elephant, farting and harrumphing in the corner, Direct Instruction works and careful sequencing of knowledge is fundamental to critical thinking and creativity. There are good reasons for this, here are a few.
1) There is very flimsy evidence that we can improve general cognitive functioning just by getting kids to solve problems. Transfer or generalization of problem solving to other dissimilar problems is not guaranteed, evidence is lacking. To put this another way, you cannot creatively solve problems you know nothing about.
2) ...working memory constraints play a REALLY important role in children's cognition. Working memory capacity is the amount of information your mind can process at any one time. Placing significant demand on working memory capacity, does not and cannot by itself improve working memory capacity. Projects with teacher facilitator and long complex instructions frequently overload working memory capacity, and this situation disadvantages the lowest achievers the most. There have been attempts to directly improve working memory capacity or executive functions (the name given to our abstract thinking skills) through computer games, but there isnt good evidene it works.
3) Memory is way more critical to our thinking and problem-solving than an, “engage through challenges" approach supposes. Information, general cultural knowledge, vocabulary, phonics and automaticity of many functional elements of math are essential for the competence to solve difficult or complex problems. Information in memory isnt some added extra, its the very substance with which we think.
4) You learn what you think about. Many modern pedagogical techniques focus on the *how* of learning, they create fun learning experiences so that children *want* to do the work or are inspired. Because thinking about the material is less fun than playing a game or moving around the classroom, pedagogy has emphasized the latter. This bells and whistles pedagogy of fun, means less thinking about the content and less learning happens. Oh and it also kills teachers workload.
5) Because pedagogy has emphasized choice, and children wanting to do fun things, more traditional discipline practices such as rules and consequences, have been deemphasized. If we want kids to think about things they might not naturally be interested in, routines and consistent systems are needed to counter natural proclivities to mess about.
When I found all this out, I was astounded. How can it be that we got things so wrong? But my outrage isn't really what's at stake. What matters is the future of America's children, and without upping the research knowledge of teachers, there are unlikely to be any significant changes in this regard. Check Ego at the door, and come together to take a long hard look at what has been going wrong. If we don't teach kids using what we know about how they learn, things aren't going to get better.
It’s not progressive to ignore science and stick with what hasnt been working. This discussion needs to be moved away from trueish sounding platitudes, to what we know about how children learn, and then parents should demand this is used in school. We are in a topsy-turvy world if so-called progressive education refuses to embrace new ideas that can help the most vulnerable just because these ideas cause discomfort to the status quo.
Yours,
Some British guy
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