276°
Posted 20 hours ago

The Teaching Delusion: Why teaching in our schools isn't good enough (and how we can make it better)

£7.5£15.00Clearance
ZTS2023's avatar
Shared by
ZTS2023
Joined in 2023
82
63

About this deal

Although I have suggested that it is ‘good load’, as is often the case, we can have too much of a good thing. Too much intrinsic load will lead to cognitive overload. Hence, we are trying to optimiseit. Extraneous loadis the unnecessary, avoidable loadassociated with how content is presented. Because it doesn’t lead to learning, it can be thought of as ‘bad load’. We aren’t trying to ‘optimise’ extraneous load; we are trying to minimiseit. Sadly, this is often misunderstood. In a misguided attempt to ‘personalise’ the curriculum according to interest and preference, some schools advocate approaches designed to do exactly this. They are making a big mistake. Principally, there are two reasons why. Consuming time and learning gaps The reason that students will always need teachers is because, by definition, students are novicesand teachers are experts(certainly, we assume that they are). The best way for novices to learn is through ‘Specific Teaching’ approaches with experts. If we leave them to learn independently as novices, they won’t learn as well as they would have with an expert. Because every lesson is about learning, every lesson should have a clear learning intention, whether this be for students to learn something new, to consolidate their learning (through practice or revision) or to demonstrate their learning.

The Teaching Delusion 2: Teaching Strikes Back by Bruce The Teaching Delusion 2: Teaching Strikes Back by Bruce

Learning intentions are statements which summarise the purpose of a lesson in terms of learning. A useful acronym is WALT: ‘What weAreLearningToday’. Teachers across the country are tying themselves in knots with learning intentions and success criteria. Some are using them well; some are not. Some aren’t using them at all.It can be useful to revisit learning intentions during lessons, reminding students of the learning focus. By the end of the lesson, something should have changed: students should know something that they didn’t before, they should be able to do something that they couldn’t before, or they should have improved at something. Every lesson should impact on learning; every lesson should count. Success Criteria Ironically, gaps are the very thing that differentiation should be fighting to prevent. ‘Equity of opportunity’ through access to a core curriculum, and ‘differentiation’ as different content and activities, are diametrically opposed to one another. The problems with a personalised approach Yes, being able to write and create presentations matters. And yes, we do need to teach students how to do such things. However, once this is done, writing and creating presentations are simply vehicles to communicate knowledge and understanding. The more knowledge students have, the more likely it is that they will surprise and amaze us with what they write and create as a synthesis of this. The less they have, the more likely it is that we will simply be keeping them occupied. And now to what I found to be the most interesting and useful part of the whole book: the Lesson Evaluation Toolkit. Robertson sells this as a key part to developing a culture of improving teaching, as it can be used in many ways:

5-Minute Guide to: Differentiation – The Teaching Delusion A 5-Minute Guide to: Differentiation – The Teaching Delusion

With this in mind, it doesn’t make sense to be arguing for a ‘skills-based curriculum’ or against a ‘knowledge-based curriculum’. Allcurricula are knowledge-based, skills-orientated. Guiding our thinking about the class as ‘a unit’ should be the 80% Success Rulethat we discussed in the previous chapter: before we move on, we want at least 80% of the classto be demonstrating success. As with almost everything, we will always find the odd exception to this rule. There area small minority of students who, in particular subjects, are able to learn well on their own, with little need for a teacher. However, this is very rare. The vast majority of students learn best according to the novice–expert principle.

In theory, the principle that teachers should take steps to cater for natural differences between students is a sensible and equitable one. However, this does notmean that different students in a class should be taught: Hands up if someone has observed a lesson you taught and told you: ‘You need to differentiate more.’ Hands up if you have observed a lesson and suggested the same to the teacher. If your hand isn’t up, I’m going to suggest that you are in the minority. Differentiation has become an all- consuming beast in schools. This isn’t a good thing. Effectively, intrinsic load is ‘good load’ and extraneous load is ‘bad load’. That’s perhaps oversimplifying things a little, but it helps to reinforce a key point: to maximise student learning, we should be aiming to optimiseintrinsic load and minimiseextraneous load. 4 Excessive intrinsic load can also be avoided if complex content is broken down and presented in smaller, cumulative chunks. The natural intrinsic load of the content is still there, but this is processed gradually, rather than all at once. Long-term memory can be used to store each chunk, giving working memory access to it, when required. Once learned, one by one the chunks can be brought together and processed in working memory. Nowstudents are able to think about the full complexity of the content, but the load is reduced. Long-term memory is helping working memory out. However, if you had tried and failed to jump an even wider ditch beforehaving success with the three-metre one, you might not have bothered with the three-metre ditch, deciding that you don’t really like jumping ditches and you’ll look for a bridge instead.

The Teaching Delusion - Some Reflections - Interactive Maths The Teaching Delusion - Some Reflections - Interactive Maths

Cognitive Load Theoryexplores the limits of working memory and how these can be overcome. Dylan Wiliam has described this as ‘the single most important thing for teachers to know’. 2If teachers need to know it, then school leaders need to know it too. The principle that teachers should be aiming to do themselves out of a job isn’t a bad one. Nor is the idea that we want students to become less and less dependent on teachers as they learn. Where the concept of ‘independent learning’ goes wrong is when people start to talk about particular ‘independent learning skills’ that students can be taught. The theory goes that, once these skills have been acquired, students will be free of the need for teachers. For some, ‘independent learning’ is the holy grail of education. Teaching students how to learn by themselves, without the need for teachers, is what they believe schools should be aiming to do.At any point within any learning sequence, any student may require support. This can come from the teacher, from peers or from resources created for this very purpose. Getting the support matters more than the form it takes. Challenge The big mistake we have made… is to assume that if we want students to be able to think, then our curriculum should give our students lots of practice in thinking. This is a mistake because what our students need is more to think with. Taken from The Teaching Delusion 3: Power Up Your Pedagogyby Bruce Robertson, published by John Catt Educational. Chapter 3 is an exploration of "The science of how we learn", and Robertson works through 7 keys ideas: If we expect our working memory to think about too muchat one time, or about content that is too complicated, we will overload it. As a result, we will stop being able to think, we will make mistakes, and learning will stop.

The Teaching A 5-Minute Guide to: Cognitive Load Theory – The Teaching

If we think it is okay for different students to learn more or less than others, this suggests we think it is okay for different students to have different opportunities once they leave school. I do not think this is okay. As teachers and school leaders, we should be doing as much as we can to ensure that everystudent has the same opportunity. This means that we need to do as much as we can to teach them all the same core curriculum. Mutated differentiation Success criteria relate to the evidence you are looking for to determine if students have learned what you intended. A useful acronym is WILF: ‘WhatIamLookingFor’. Intrinsic loadis the natural, unavoidable loadcaused by thinking about anything. It is essential to learning. The first is that such approaches to differentiation consume teacher timeto such an extent that it not only becomes unreasonable, but unmanageable. The perceived benefits could never balance with the very real costs. No teacher should be expected to differentiate like this. Ever.

Let me get this straight. We’re behind the rest of our class and we’re going to catch up to them by going slower than they are?’ An exception is when it comes to students learning what we plan for them to learn. Here, difference isn’t a good thing. We want allstudents to learn everythingset out in our curriculum. However aspirational this aim might be, it is what all teachers should be aiming for.

Asda Great Deal

Free UK shipping. 15 day free returns.
Community Updates
*So you can easily identify outgoing links on our site, we've marked them with an "*" symbol. Links on our site are monetised, but this never affects which deals get posted. Find more info in our FAQs and About Us page.
New Comment