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Hey 👋
Happy Thursday folks and a big welcome to 975 new members joining the Evidence Snacks fam. This weekend is Chinese New Year—2023 is the year of the Rabbit. And this week's big idea is a challenging one, so let's hop to it.
Big Idea 🍉
The ends of school should not be conflated with the means of school. This is an unintuitive idea, but one that's worth all teachers understanding. Let's dive in:
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One of the main aims of school is to create people who can further our understanding of the world. Who can critically analyse and solve a diverse range of problems within a specialist domain. Such as the scientist who develops a vaccine for a new virus. Or the artist who uses AI to create a novel visual experience.
However, just because this is a desired end point of education doesn't mean it's the best way to get there. We must be careful about conflating the ends of school with the means of school. Why exactly?
Well, for experts, learning time is best spent using approaches such as inquiry, problem solving, and established protocols (such as the scientific method). They must do this because these are the only ways to generate new knowledge. And they can do this because they have lots of domain specific knowledge.
However, to learn existing knowledge (rather than generate new), these methods are not efficient. Especially for novices who don't have sufficient domain expertise to problem solve or think critically at depth.
Giving someone lots of problems to solve isn't enough to help them become a mathematician. Giving someone lots of experience with the scientific method isn't enough to make them a great scientist. Doing science demands a different set of tools to learning science.
Without sufficient domain knowledge to steer thinking, inquiry based approaches can easily overload working memory, frustrate our students, and generate idiosyncratic understanding and misconceptions. The ends of school are not best used as its means.
A better approach is to employ carefully constructed curricular sequences, precise explanation, practice with feedback, retrieval, and so on... In short: explicit instruction.
“We teach problem solving through math(s), not math(s) through problem solving. We teach critical thinking through history, not history through critical thinking.”
Note → I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't introduce students to problem solving in math(s), or the scientific method in science—it's important that students learn how knowledge is created in various disciplines—just that we shouldn't use these methods to help students learn about them.
🎓 For a thorough treatment of this idea, see Epistemology or Pedagogy: That Is the Question, by Prof Paul Kirschner.
🎓 And for the inspiration behind my visual plus some examples of what this stuff looks like in English (from Sarah Barker) and geography (from Mark Enser), see Novices, Experts and Everything In-between, by the talented Adam Boxer.
Summary
• A primary goal of school is to produce problem-solvers and critical thinkers
• But just because this is a desired end doesn't make it the best means
• Explicit instruction is a more efficient approach for learning existing domain knowledge
Little Updates 🥕
ICYMI here's a recent paper comparing traditional vs progressive teaching approaches, and free UCL webinar with the author (Dr Sam Sims) discussing it next Thursday.
Talking about webinars, the Centre for Educational Neuroscience have released the dates and topics for their Spring Series, and UCL are running a Research Seminar with Prof Simon Burgess on that teacher effectiveness study from Snacks #1.
Finally, a couple of meaty new reports, one on the long-term consequences of educational disadvantage, and another on the ongoing teacher recruitment situation.
That's all fur this week. See you on the other side.
Peps 👊
PS. If you have a second, help me make the most of your time by giving some rapid feedback:
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