Routines redeploy attention

Hey 👋

Hope your experiments in taking the shortest path have been going well. This week's big idea combines two of my favourite topics: attention and routines. Let's go.

Big Idea 🍉

Routines enable our students to learn more with less. How so? Let's dive in:

↓

First up, a routine (aka habit) is essentially a chain of actions that gets executed on a cue (or prompt), all of which happens with minimal cognitive effort or conscious control. They achieve this cognitive efficiency by stripping out decision costs, reducing the amount of novel information that needs to be processed, and exploiting our ability to think less about the things we repeatedly do.

When your alarm goes off in the morning, you get up, shower, dress and have breakfast—all without really thinking about it. The cognitive efficiency of this flow is insane...

Routines are particularly powerful because human attention is so heavily limited—we can really only attend to one thing at a time. As a result, when a routine is in place, students end up needing to think less about the process of their learning, and so can think more about the content of their learning—the substance of our teaching.

In short, routines redeploy attention.

This is important, because what our students attend to is what they end up thinking about. And what they think about is ultimately what they end up learning. Routines hack the attention economy of the classroom to help our students learn more with less.

Fine, so what can we do about it? Well, routines fall into 2 broad camps:

1. Instructional routines

2. Behavioural routines

Instructional routines involve activities such as whole-class discussion or independent practice. These make the most of the time we have available for learning. Behavioural routines involve activities such as classroom entry or resource management. These enable us to free up even more time and space for learning. It's worth investing in both.

Now, routines are often painted as boredom-brokers and creativity-killers, but I'm not sure this is quite accurate. Effective routines can secure success and so act as an antidote to boredom. Also, they tend to increase confidence and feelings of safety for students (particularly those with SEND). And they free up the precious mental capacity needed for creativity to flourish. In general, routines are net positive for students. And they can also help us teachers, by:

• Reducing the behaviour management burden.

• Freeing up teacher cognitive capacity to monitor learning and be more responsive.

In short, routines are powerful tools for learning and teaching.

Caveat → I'm not saying that lessons should be formulaic. Instead, it's probably more useful to think about having a strong 'repertoire of routines' to draw upon. This ensures that teaching can be both efficient and responsive, in meeting the diverse needs of our students and curricula.

🎓 For more on the mechanics of routines, see How To Form Good Habits? by van der Weiden et al.

🎓 And for some examples of routines in teaching, check out TLAC 3.0 and the just-released Teaching & Learning Playbook, from Dixons Trust.

So there you have it. A brief tour of the mechanics of routines and how they link with learning. What routines do you lean most heavily in your teaching? Are there any aspects of your work which might benefit from being 'routinised' further?

Little Updates 🥕

• This week sees a new paper from Hattie on The Power of Feedback (£). Sadly, it's paywalled*, but you can read the original article here. And relatedly, here's a nice review of feedback models.

• If you're interested in supporting struggling readers (as a teacher or even parent), you'll likely enjoy this podcast from K-Mac and big-brain Chris Such.

• And finally, the EEF are looking for schools to support with some trials. If you're interested in getting involved, more details here.

*As far as possible, I try to signpost papers which are open-access (🔓). This limits the range of stuff I can share, but I reckon the trade-off in 'actionability' is worth it. Shout if you disagree.

Hope this week's Snack has tickled your tastebuds. Now go hone those routines.

Peps 👊