Expert Foundations

Hey

I’m beyond ready for the weekend. But first…

Big idea 🍉

Teaching is fiendishly complex. This doesn’t just make our job hard: it also poses risks to how we develop expertise, and as a result: our impact over time.

Because: we all have an implicit mental model of how teaching works... built from thousands of hours of being taught as students along with our own trial and error at the front of the classroom. Unsurprisingly, this can feel like expertise... but often: it isn’t.

Teaching happens in what researchers call a wicked learning environment: the feedback loop between what we do and what students learn is invisible, noisy and delayed. In wicked environments, experience alone tends to produce mental models that are idiosyncratic and confidently wrong. "I explained it clearly, so they learned it" or “They're engaged, so they're learning" are the kind of theories that emerge.

The result is expertise that accumulates without a rigorous shape or structure: lop-sided, patchy, and lacking in hierarchy. And because our mental model acts as the compass for our practice, this can misdirect our focus and limit our impact.

Which is why I (and the folks at Steplab) have spent so many years obsessed with trying to figure out how to lay the best foundations for expertise. How to get the balance between simplicity and rigour just right.

The Simple Model of Teaching is the result: seven questions, organised around a model of how learning works, each an essential link in the causal chain between what we do and how our students learn.

Importantly, this isn’t about dumbing things down. It’s about moving novices more quickly towards how experts tend to organise their knowledge: around deep principles, not superficial features. And giving the more experienced of us something to hang increasing complexity off as our understanding evolves.

Of course, all models are wrong (by definition), but some are more useful than others. For example, the London Tube map is geographically inaccurate (distorted distances, straightened river), but… that’s exactly why it works.

In short, best frameworks are simple enough to use, and complex enough to trust. The simple model is intended to do just that. Next week: how to use it.

🎓 For more, check out this paper on how knowledge is organised for learning.

Summary

• We build models of teaching from classroom experience, but these can be inaccurate when the impact of our actions is unclear.

• The Simple Model of Teaching balances simplicity and rigour through seven questions linking what we do with how students learn.

• Whilst all models have limitations, the Simple Model of Teaching is accessible whilst retaining enough rigour to be useful.

Little updates 🥕

• Paper on cognitive load theory & SEN → explores how CLT can be used to improve instructional approaches for learners with additional needs.

• Meta-analysis of dual coding → finds visuals are most effective when they reduce irrelevant details, reflect lesson content & are supported by signalling.

• Paper on embodied learning → suggests that movement can improve learning when it is task-relevant, with support reduced as learners develop expertise.

• Study on formative assessment heatmaps → finds that visualising data can help teachers in accurately identifying learners’ strengths and weaknesses.

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