“Wonder is the thread that stops us from giving up or surrendering to cynicism. Wonder is the thread that allows us to make and remake education landscapes free from orthodoxy and certainty. Wonder is an ache and belief that provokes us towards imagined worlds in which we make education good and right.” (O’conner and Gomez, 2022:50)
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.” Rumi
‘Stay curious, ask questions, stay open minded, slow your thinking down, keep wondering …’ This is some of the ‘self-talk’ that has preoccupied my mind for several weeks now. Central to my work, indeed, central to my identity as a teacher and a learner, is an inquiry stance. So it follows that when faced with ideas and beliefs contrary to my own, I have to work even harder to cultivate that stance. But cultivate it I must - especially in when it comes to current discussions about ‘The Science of Learning’ and the accompanying pedagogical implications championed by some systems/schools. One of the most influential educators in my early career was the late Donald Graves. His book ‘Writing: teachers and children and work’ instilled in me a passion for the kind of learning that happened with and forchildren rather than to them. Looking back, I can see how Graves’ work helped develop values that remain central to my teaching practice: agency, curiosity, collaboration, authenticity and depth. As I learned to confer with individual children about their writing, often inspired by their interests, I came see each child as unique, both as person and learner. It instilled within me some much needed humility as I realised just how much expertise and experience even my youngest learners brought to the classroom. Conferring with children taught me learn to listen and to resist automatically defaulting to telling and explaining before I listened. What a gift that was to me as a young teacher! Without even realising it, I was developing my ‘image of the child’ as agentic, capable, connected and curious. I devoured so much of Graves’ work, but there was one thing he wrote that returns to be over and over:
“The enemy is orthodoxy.”
I have found myself thinking a lot about that phrase over the last couple of years – and even more so over the past weeks as a somewhat imposing wave of ‘The Science of Learning’ continues to roll into the educational discourse here in Australia. While I am working in classrooms around the world, constantly impressed by the capacity of young people to own their learning and, with guidance, develop deep and powerful understanding about their world, I am also reading through documents explaining ways to introduce the ‘science of learning’ to schools. These directives purport to provide clear guidance on ‘best practice’ and together with the seductive phrase ‘evidence-based’, identify ‘preferred’ instructional strategies that generally involve a lot of teacher explanation and demonstration as a means to ensure proficiency. I am receiving messages from perplexed young teachers who have been directed (yes) to re-organise their flexible seating in the classroom and place children are in permanent rows, facing the front. The language in some of the documents I am reading seems to suggest there is one path to learning for all children. An orthodoxy of sorts. But as I am reading, and as I am receiving these messages I’m trying hard to walk the talk – to read and listen with an open, questioning, critical mind. I know I need to be able to make connections, find points of common thinking, extend my thinking, notice what is challenging and what I am called to challenge.
Forgive me for getting all ‘meta’ with this, but it has been intriguing to notice my own responses to documents in which I feel the subtle (and not so subtle) subjugation of inquiry. My initial, natural reaction is one of defensiveness – especially when tired old tropes appear that suggest explicit instruction is absent from an inquiry approach or when inquiry is characterized as involving ‘minimal teacher guidance’ (such as in the oft quoted research paper by Sweller et.al. from the early 2000s.) As Seth Godin recently pointed out: “they’re apt to set up inquiry learning for failure by using a caricatured version of it, a kind of pure discovery rarely found in real-world classrooms, with teachers providing no guidance at all so that students are left to their own devices.” To be honest, anyone who thinks they are ‘doing inquiry’ by simply sending kids off to figure it all out on their own does not understand the approach at all. So, when inquiry is dismissed as ineffective, one always needs to ask ‘what do you mean by inquiry?’. My hunch is that this phenomenon of over-simplification is also true of direct instruction. There are silly, ineffective and extreme versions of both.
Anyway. I read on. I breathe. I listen. I notice my reaction is not so much to the ideas and advice but to the whole concept of “best practice”, of THE science of learning. It’s the sense of orthodoxy to which I react even more so than the content.
I remind myself… ‘Stay curious. Ask questions. Notice. Wonder …’
I find myself wondering: How can I use this material to help me and the teachers I work with reflect, re-think and clarify? How can we bring intellectual humility to all this AND stand by the values we hold of curiosity, creativity, agency, differentiation, depth and authenticity? It’s not easy, but with an open mind, we can find elements that connect with and add to our knowledge, as well as ideas we might question and challenge. Accepting such directives without question and without consideration of our local contexts, values, beliefs and needs of our community would be intellectually lazy - as would failing to read views of those equally steeped in learning sciences but who draw quite different conclusions (see some suggested reading below). We teach our students to be critical inquirers – so should we be.
No educator should ever feel they have ‘arrived’ at a place of complete understanding about teaching and learning. We are NEVER done learning and always need to grow and adapt to new information. When system level policies seem to fly in the face of some of our deepest held beliefs, we need to stay open to growth and to the benefits of changing our minds. This has been true for me in the literacy area where, in reading the excellent work of Burkins and Yates (2021) I have had cause to rethink some of my understandings about the teaching of reading. Their work is amongst the best examples of resisting orthodoxy – of bravely entering the conversation about the science of reading, embracing new thinking, letting go of some dearly held ideas about reading instruction AND remaining committed to balanced, meaningful learning for children. Similarly, I continue to yearn for a ‘both/and” approach, eloquently stated by Dr. Linda Darling-Hammond and Dr. Pamela Cantor principal researchers, and also experts in learning sciences, in the Design Principles Project (2021):
“a teacher can skillfully blend inquiry-based learning with strategic elements of direct instruction using multiple modalities of learning that help students draw connections between what they know and what they are trying to learn.” (https://k12.designprinciples.org/)
When I sat down to write this blog post, I thought I was going to pick apart the numerous dogmatic arguments made by some who champion what they call ‘the’ science of learning, but that’s not where I needed to go. Others far more qualified than me have done that eloquently and I encourage you to read their pieces (links below). In the end, this post was really just about me trying to BE an inquirer – to stay in the space that Rumi calls ‘the field beyond’ and hold on to the power of wonder to fight my own cynicism and, at times, despair. This has been my attempt to avoid ‘doubling down’ and instead to amp up my curiosity so that I can keep learning and growing. So, in the spirit of wonder, the best I can do with all this is to leave you with some of the questions that have been rolling around in my head as this strange battle of ‘best’ practice rages on. I hope these questions might be helpful to you as you engage in continued dialogue about the complex, demanding, vital and ever-evolving work we do:
· How can we argue for what is best without asking, ‘best for what purpose’? And if the answer is, ‘for learning’, then what kind of learning do we mean? What do we think school is for in 2024 and beyond? How might we bring this question to the staffroom?
· Where are our points of agreement? How might we find common ground? We all want to do the right thing by children and their families. What are our shared values?
· What can I learn from the particular view of the ‘science of learning’ being promoted in schools? How might the advice on ‘explicit instruction’ help refine the moments when, during an inquiry, we do indeed engage in direct teaching? Can I do a better job of that part of my repertoire? How might a better grasp of high quality explicit instruction assist us to work with some students for whom ‘release of responsibility’ might take more time?
· Is there one, universal ‘Science of Learning?’ I note that MANY critics suggest otherwise. What do other respected researchers in the field of learning have to say? Whose voices are we not hearing/reading?
· What is really meant by the term ‘knowledge rich?’ Whose knowledge? Why privilege this? What about, for example, indigenous ways of knowing that might have a very different context, purpose and approach?
· What does ‘evidence-based’ really mean? In schools in which I work – such as those who use Kaser and Halbert’s ‘spirals of inquiry’ model, evidence of impact is drawn by careful analysis of a range of data about the children within their communities. What counts as evidence?
· In his excellent forward to Claxton’s ‘The Future of Teaching and the Myths that Hold it Back (2021) Dylan Wiliam states that while those advocating a more traditional approach to teaching have ‘empirical’ evidence on their side, this is, according to Wiliam, largely due to the fact that researchers have focussed on the “… easily answered questions. It is much easier to decide whether one teaching approach is better than another if the goal is to get students to balance chemical equations than if the goal is to debate effectively the science and ethics of genetically modified foods:” (2021: xix). I find this an enormously helpful reminder when reading claims about evidence from research. What kind of learning has the research focussed on? How do we avoid sweeping generalisations and interrogate the evidence more productively?
· To what extent has ‘warm data’ informed this work? (I am only just learning a little about this concept but it seems very relevant) “Using only analysis of statistical data will offer conclusions that can point to actions that are out of sync with the complexity of the situation. Information without interrelationality is likely to lead us toward actions that are misinformed, thereby creating further destructive patterns. “ (Batesoninstitute.org)
· How can we tackle the question of ‘what works’ in a more nuanced way? Should we not also be asking, ‘what works, and for whom and where and under what conditions’? (Wrigley 2018) How do we ensure that we keep the focus on the needs and characteristics of the local communities of learners in which we work?
· If explicit teaching is deemed more ‘efficient’, is that amongst the criteria for effectiveness? To what extent do we value efficiency? Are there things that we could and should teach efficiently? What requires time and depth? What can stay on the surface? When we talk about effective learning – what do we mean? How might we share that with each other in more open and honest ways?
· Systems all over the world talk about the importance of learner agency – indeed it is one of the key principles in the most recent OECD education report. What impact might a strong diet of direct and explicit instruction have on learner agency? How can we help teachers navigate their way through a sea of mixed messages?
· As an educator with a strong commitment to, and deep understanding of, a more constructivist approach to teaching and learning, how can I do a better job of challenging the persistent myths about inquiry? Why DO these myths persist and how might I take some responsibility for that? What new stories can I tell about inquiry as a stance that might better reflect the nuanced and sophisticated work so many teachers are doing?
· What might I need to change and rethink about the way I talk about teaching and learning that invites professional dialogue and productive collaboration rather than division and conflict?
· How do I best support colleagues who do extraordinary, deep and loving work with children and who so very deftly and effectively scaffold and support exploration before or with explanation. How do I help people resist a culture of orthodoxy and continue to value their expansive and flexible repertoire? How can I support teachers to be informed AND to feel they can intelligently defend the range of approaches they might use according to the needs and context in which they are working? How might we meet in the field beyond?
Already, some of these wonderings have been the seed for some powerful dialogue with fellow educators. There is nothing like being challenged to help one clarify and refine thinking and this is best done in the spirit of inquiry where curiosity does indeed remain a powerful antidote to cynicism and despair and, if nurtured, create fertile ground for continued professional growth. I have found the following posts and articles helpful. If you have been engaged in conversations about ‘THE’ science of learning, what question s have you found yourself pondering?
Just Wondering …
Wrigley, T. (2018). The power of evidence: Reliable science or a blunt set of tools? British Educational Research Journal, 44(3), 359-376.
O’Conner, P. and Gomez,C. Slow Wonder: letters in imagination and education, 2022:50
Claxton, G. (2021) The Future of Teaching and the Myths that Hold it Back. Routledge.
Hannon, V. (2021) Thrive: The Purpose of schools in a Changing World, Cambridge
https://www.alfiekohn.org/blogs/clt/
https://ckarchive.com/b/4zuvheh5nv9dki6ovveola3v24l77
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/topic/deeper-learning
https://www.humanrestorationproject.org/writing/there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-science-of-learning
https://www.guyclaxton.net/post/the-sciences-of-learning-and-the-practice-of-teaching
https://www.oecd.org/education/2030-project/
https://www.shyambarr.com.au/blog/beyond-cognition-embracing-the-multifaceted-nature-of-the-science-of-learning
https://smata.substack.com/p/there-is-more-than-one-science-of?utm_source=profile&utm_medium=reader2
https://bevanholloway.com/2024/04/16/424/