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speaker-0: written and spoken a lot about this and I've got another blog post on the go at the moment about this actually. ⁓ I think education has a problematic relationship with evidence and even the idea that we can talk about evidence for some people in education is contested. And there is a bit of a tendency I think in education to want to talk about how many angels can dance on the head of the pin. rather than dealing with what teachers are going to be doing next Monday and what's going to create the best outcomes for the largest numbers of students. ⁓ I do feel ⁓ that, yes, there is this kind of paradigm difference that can be quite jarring. And I'm sure it's jarring for people on the other side. And there's a big influence in faculties of education in English-speaking countries of sociology, which is fine. Sociology is a very respectable field of inquiry and it's a very respected lens on ⁓ humanity and the world, but it can't answer all of the questions that we need to answer in education. And I do feel many in education are resistant. to research methodologies that go beyond their comfort zone of sociological research.
speaker-1: I think we're coming to a point, the observation has been made that the evidence has now become so overwhelmingly clear, pointing in a direction that people are ready to hear. So Pamela, there's this phrase that I heard you talk about in one of your previous podcasts, that it's not so much back to basics, it's forward to fundamentals. And there's a perception, I think, in some quarters, that that push for evidence-based teaching is a kind of step backwards. almost a nostalgic return to chalk and talk. You seem to see it very differently. What does this forward to fundamentals movement mean?
speaker-0: Well, first of all, I want to acknowledge that much as I love that term, it's not a phrase I coined. I can't recall who coined that phrase, but I do think it sums up the fact that a lot of learning in core areas of what we might think of as biologically secondary knowledge and skills, literacy and numeracy are good examples. A lot of learning in those spaces is highly sequential. So that's one thing. The other thing is that the curse of expertise that we as adults have. So we might look at the text in a beginning decodable text. The pin is on the hat and think, ⁓ that's just so demeaning and so trivial and ⁓ children need to be learning more, reading more interesting texts than such simple language. ⁓ But what we're doing when we say forward to fundamentals is respecting the complexity of what those five year olds are trying to master. We've got probably the most complex alphabetic system in the world. ⁓ As I've mentioned, we give children three years to master that. And if they don't get across that bridge in three years, then very often they're on struggle street for the rest of their schooling and the rest of their lives. Forward to Fundamentals is about us recognising as adults that just because something looks
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basic to us, it's not basic to a novice. But when we teach explicitly and sequentially, we're building knowledge and skills that are secure and allow students to add more complex, more elaborate knowledge and skills over time. And that gives them opportunities to engage right across the curriculum, across the school years. But there's a kind of Swiss cheese phenomenon that occurs with children who go forward with gaps because they can't learn algebra if they didn't master fractions, for example. So this is about respecting the complexity of what we're asking children to master at school.
speaker-1: Yeah, so it's sort of a back to the future concept of returning to the evidence.
speaker-0: In a way, but really respecting the complexity of what those novices are being asked to master. mean, if you think of driving a car, you know, as adults who've been driving for a long time, there's an awful lot that's been automatised for us and processes. But then our 16 year old brand new Elplator gets in next to us. And we realize, gosh, there's just so many principles and ideas that they don't know, so many isolated skills that they need to learn and they need lots and lots of practice ⁓ to do that. So yes, it's basic to learn how to reverse out of your driveway, but it also is fundamentally important to learn that skill. You're not going to get on the road if you can't reverse out of your driveway. I think just respecting the complexity of things that we're asking students to learn and respecting the fact that it's more efficient and more satisfying to be learning in a sequential, organized way rather than a choose your own adventure, throwing kids in the deep end kind of way.
speaker-1: that it reminds me that it's complex to keep it simple. I think I've seen it written, ⁓ seen you write somewhere that this kind of adds up to something like an uncontrolled experiment on children. And I know they're strong words, but yeah, just can you unpack that a little bit?
speaker-0: Well, we've had a flavour, if you like, or a preponderance, a choose your own adventure in education. And that partly came from the teachings and ⁓ views of people like ⁓ late Kenneth Goodman, who was the father of poor language, who in his writings said, speaking directly to teachers, you are the expert. ⁓ in your classroom, don't worry about what researchers say. They don't know your children as well as ⁓ you know the children in front of you and this idea that all children are different and children in different contexts learn differently. Of course, there's a grain of truth to those things, but that shouldn't be the starting point. So we've had this idea really flourish that we can let a thousand flowers bloom. when it comes to how we teach. So individual teachers in adjoining classrooms and the same school can be closing the door and doing their own thing. Oh, I tried a bit of this, I tried a bit of that. Now there's nothing wrong with trying new things, but we need to have a rationale. We need to know why we're trying them, what we expect, what we're gonna stop doing. There needs to be some scientific principles, if you like, applied when we go into modified practice. We'd all be horrified, I think, if that's how medical practitioners have performed their duties. Just said, well, look, you know, there may well be a Cochrane review, which is like a big systematic review saying that I should be doing this, but I've always liked doing it this way. So I'm just going to keep doing it this way and you can do it the way you want to. We have accountability. in other professions that really just hasn't existed in education. And I think that's a very uncomfortable conversation for education, for education policymakers, academics, and practitioners. That in other professions, when errors occur, there's really a high level of accountability. There are accountability measures in place. There are regulatory bodies. ⁓ It's a good way to find your name on the front page of the newspaper.
speaker-1: often use those parallels to the airline industry or the bit of inquiry, right? ⁓
speaker-0: And it always strikes me as ironic that people in education are the beneficiaries of high levels of rigor in research, research evidence, critiquing of research, understanding levels of evidence and changing guidelines and practice over time as the evidence changes. But there doesn't seem to be that urgency or ⁓ ethical imperative. to apply that level of accountability in their work.
speaker-1: Well, I guess we all know that teachers are caught in the middle. ⁓ So James, you've been a long time teacher and now working with teachers every day, ⁓ education, perfect. What's your thoughts on that?
speaker-2: think that cork in the middle sentiment does seem to be what we're hearing from from teachers. ⁓ some sort of ⁓ a sort of saying hey I've I've been I've been sort of ⁓ guided to teach this way and now you're asking me to change. I mean where's the where's the it was the support. So I mean I think the shift we're seeing is very real and it's gained real momentum. I think especially in the last year or two. ⁓ the policy is really really clear now ⁓ across Juristric. ju jurisdictions. ⁓ the intent does seem to be growing as well. ⁓ but I think the reality is practice in the classroom in a lot of cases is still catching up. ⁓ the the other thing we we we know though too is and and and we hear this ⁓ from the teachers that we work with is that there are some real barriers. So ⁓ teachers are stretched, they're they're sort of stretched and pressured with workload and with burnout. ⁓ and now sort of some saying, hey, but us being asked to sort of fundamentally change what we've been doing for years ⁓ in some cases. And sort of that on top is is is is quite a large quite a large ask. ⁓ and in a lot of cases, not all cases, but in a lot of cases, it's it it's not really a question of willingness either. ⁓ as I say, that sort of intent and that belief that
that is sort of there and growing. ⁓ it it it really in a lot of cases is about capacity and and ⁓ support. I think I think the other thing that is a real tension, and you spoke about this ⁓ a bit Pamela, and I'm keen to to dig in to to dig into it some more, is this idea that traditionally teachers have had a lot of autonomy. and now sort of we're we're coming with this ⁓ real ⁓ base of evidence ⁓ and real recommendations of the right way to do things. ⁓ and rebalancing with that auto that autonomy is is is is really, really difficult. ⁓ be ⁓ I'm I'm keen to pass to you, Pam, and just sort of see what what you're seeing in in in terms of this change that that we're going through at the moment and in that sort of policy to practice chatch.
speaker-0: I think you raised some really interesting points, James, and there's so many different narratives kind of intertwining with each other at the moment, I think. I do try to make the point wherever I can that where change is occurring and increasingly change is occurring and has been occurring over in particular, I would say the last five years. ⁓ I think a lot of that change has begun with teachers that ground up momentum, teachers finding communities of practice through closed Facebook pages, for example, attending research ed conferences, sharing best practice conferences, and often in their own time, mind you, those conferences happen on a Saturday. So that shows a big level of motivation and investment. Teachers engaging in online short courses like the ones we run at La Tribe and we've had somewhere close to 13,000 now do our online short courses and of course, know, further study and so forth. So I think we need to really acknowledge that a lot of that energy and impetus is coming from teachers, it's coming from the ground up. And I think it's time that education academics got on the bus because I think we're going to be living in some... interesting times going forward where there's change happening on the ground but not as much happening as should be in faculties of education. When so graduates are going to be coming out and seeing something very different that's very much at odds with what they've been taught about in their ⁓ lecture gear at university. And I think we are faculties of education really do need to be listening to practising teachers and listening to the sectors and not overly playing the academic freedom card because this isn't about personal, or shouldn't be, about personal preferences and ideologies. it needs to be about where the weight of evidence lies. And that leads us back to that fundamental problem with what is evidence and people contesting the idea that we can even talk about facts in some cases. ⁓ I wrote a blog post a couple of years ago where I borrowed ⁓ Malcolm Gladwell's ⁓ idea of the forest overstory. He talks about the different layers in a rainforest. And I borrowed that to talk about the fact that education academics are right up in the stratosphere with their heads way above the clouds and teachers are in a very different microclimate in the classroom and they're seeing very different things and have very different needs from what's happening in the very different air ⁓ up in those higher levels. So that's one thing. The other thing picking up on your point about autonomy is I think it's an accident of history that teachers have enjoyed the level of autonomy that they have and that's now quite difficult to correct. And I often remind education audiences that the professions that we hold in very high esteem, rightly or wrongly, but the professions that we do hold in very high esteem, like medicine and aviation, ⁓ actually have really quite low levels of autonomy. And that surprises some people when they hear that. But if you think about going to a local emergency department and experiencing chest pain, it doesn't matter whether you're triaged by a medical or a nurse, that person is going to be following an established protocol, a care pathway that determines what tests. ⁓ you receive. You're probably almost certainly going to get an ECG. You might get blood tests. There are steps that are undispray can and that's because of distillation of evidence into practice pathways that are applied at sector level and they're modified and updated as the evidence changes.
speaker-1: I want to bring this back because ⁓ we did skip over this notion. I want to bring us back to this concept of equity, actually, because it's not just ⁓ academic thinking for the sake of it. There's real consequences for students when instruction, it seems, doesn't follow the evidence. And your research sort of connects those foundational skills, we've talked about them in the early years, to some really confronting downstream outcomes, mental health engagement with the justice system you talked about. life trajectories. So what does the research tell us about what's at stake, particularly for those students who don't have that safety net at home?
speaker-0: Well, I think ⁓ it's useful to remember that the instructional environment is, in children's lives, is pretty much the only one that we can influence. We can't influence what happens in children's homes. ⁓ That's the ⁓ environment that parents and other caretakers, caregivers are responsible for. The instructional environment where children spend a lot of their time is the one where we get to pull levers that can change the trajectories of children's lives. And we see that in schools in low socioeconomic status ⁓ communities who change their instructional model. ⁓ Tretjul Karmai School was a good example of that. A school in the southeast of Victoria in a low SES community, quite a complex community. But Jackie Burrows, the principal there, changed the instructional model. She went down an explicit teaching path. She's seen a, or she and her team have seen a huge uplift in academic data and a huge uplift in student wellbeing, huge reduction in behaviour incidents. They used to
have a full-time staff member whose job it was to deal with behaviour problems in the school. and Jackie got rid of that position because it's no longer needed. I think we're going back to first principles. What can we do? I heard someone in a podcast interview a couple of years ago say, you know, sometimes policymakers and sometimes education academics actually say, ⁓ you know, we've got to fix poverty. ⁓ Poverty is the problem here. Well, We can't fix poverty overnight. ⁓ What we can directly influence is what children experience in the classroom. And over time, of course, that changes those life trajectories and gives children a pathway out of poverty. ⁓ But we need to remember what our sphere of influence is. The person in this podcast said, she says to teachers when they're saying, but it's all about wellbeing, we've just got to make sure that student wellbeing is as good as it can be. And she says, well, what are you going to do? Adopt them and take them home? The children who are facing difficult circumstances, you can't do that, but you can change their lives through high quality instruction and instruction that's got a high level of accountability attached to it. video.
speaker-2: I might jump in there with a follow-up actually. So what one of the things that ⁓ is fairly new thinking for me and many others I know, ⁓ and that I find really quite compelling about the whole evidence-based construction movement, ⁓ that's really gained momentum in the last few years, is the complete reframing of what equity actually means. And so it's not about lowering the bar for some students. It's very much about keeping the expectations high and for everyone and then providing the right level of support to get there. ⁓ so how do you think about that distinction between say adaptive support and the risk of and and the need to not change expectations?
speaker-0: Good question, James. And I often quote the line that interestingly is attributed to George Bush Jr. when he was president of the US, when he referred to the importance of avoiding the soft bigotry of lower expectations. That was possibly one of his speech writers who coined that phrase, but he used that in relation to reading first. ⁓ an initiative that his government tried to roll out at the national level and it stumbled for a range of reasons. ⁓ the idea of the soft figure tree of low expectations really calls us out on that idea that we should be lowering the bar for certain groups of students, they're students from ⁓ poorer communities, students from equity and diversity, students who are neurodivergent in some way. In fact, it's exact opposite. We need to have higher expectations of and for those Sweden's. Now that's nice rhetoric, but that actually has very significant implications on the ground for Kaisar and teacher. And if we take reading as an example, what we know is that Teachers have not been adequately prepared in their initial teacher education for the task of getting children across that metaphorical bridge in that first 36 months, the first three years of school. So they haven't been learning about ⁓ the nature of reading as a biologically secondary skill. and about the nature of the English writing system and what it is about our writing system that makes it particularly complex for our children to master. So ⁓ we obviously need to move beyond the rhetoric of raising expectations, but also acknowledge that that's got significant implications for the knowledge and skills of the workforce, who as Inley Hanford showed in her Sold a Story, ⁓ podcast series. Teachers have been doing the best with the knowledge and skills that they had. It's just that their initial food education preparation fell way short. And so now we're asking teachers to do a 100 Mati Dubore U-turn and in the process acquire a lot of new knowledge and apply. Sometimes, you know, they are initially quite complex new. teaching practices, obviously the more teachers do them in when they get coaching and support, they become more automatic. But teachers tell us this is a very big shift.
speaker-2: Yeah, I mean I'm I'm keen to dive into that initial teacher education as well. Just just just to carry on with that a little bit. ⁓ are we starting to see that shift ⁓ in in in terms of the the the teacher education starting to align with evidence informed practice or ⁓ is that is that sort of proving slow to ⁓ to adapt as well?
speaker-0: I think it's happening very slowly and it's happening as a result of external forces and factors like the 2023 Teacher Education Expert Panel, the requirement that universities demonstrate compliance for one of a better word with the recommendations of that report ⁓ in course materials. There's been a lot of pushback from universities, from education academics, a sense of indignation in many cases around, know, well, we're the experts. ⁓ Some people said at the time, some education academics said at the time, well, look at medicine and engineering, they'll be coming for you next. Well, that's unfortunately nonsense because medicine and engineering have honored their contract with the community and we don't have widespread concerns about the content of those degrees. We know that they're highly uniform and an accredited degree at this university looked very similar to an accredited degree at another university. That's not to say there aren't some differences, but that the core content is trustworthy and consistent. And I always say you can't have high variability and high quality. You've got to choose one. And unfortunately, we favored variability and that's very difficult. It's a very difficult kind of ethos to turn around. So you're in theory. ⁓ I guess there are moves afoot to improve the quality of the content of ⁓ teacher initial education and to bring it more into line with the recommendations of the ⁓ teacher education excellence ⁓ panel. ⁓ In practice, think there's probably going to be my theory is that there's going
to be quite a lot of ⁓ window dressing.
speaker-2: Yeah. I'm I'm I'm keen to sort of think about where to next. And I'm I'm especially just thinking in in the in in the shoes of a school leader who really wants to be getting getting this right and and really making sure that that ⁓ their staff, their the sort of departments and and and their teachers are are are really doing their best to sort of follow evidence informed practice, whether that be teachers who've been in the field for years or whether it that be new sort of teachers coming through. ⁓ As as a school leader is thinking about getting this right, where do they start? What what what what what do they prioritize?
speaker-0: Yeah, great question. In some cases, those leaders will themselves enroll in further study. know, you know, the tribe has a bespoke now language and literacy stream in the Masters of Education and that contains a lot of learning science content, not just language and literacy content. There are options like that, but there are also ⁓ plenty of avenues for school leaders to contact other school leaders who are further down the path on the change journey. And in fact, one of our research projects that we tried, the Momentum project, is pairing schools that are somewhat down the road on the change process with schools that are at the beginning of the change process. So... staff can go and visit and observe classrooms and talk to staff and look at data. ⁓ Looking at research evidence is one thing, but I think what makes it real for teachers is being able to go into a school. So teachers might have heard the term explicit instruction and they might think, ⁓ yeah, I teach explicitly. And then they go into a classroom where high quality, fast paced, highly interactive, ⁓ explicit instruction is occurring with mini boards, turn and talk, ⁓ formative feedback, reteaching. You're really at pace and lots and lots of opportunities to respond on the part of the students. And sometimes the first time teachers see that, they come out with their head spinning because they've literally never seen anything like it. But I think that can be quite transformational to go into a school with a similar SES demographic profile so there's no arguments that this works in your school but it would never work in our school. Well why wouldn't that work in your school? What's so different about your students and the way their brains learn that means that they wouldn't benefit from more explicit teaching? So I think getting out there, ⁓ working shoulder to shoulder with other schools and being in communities of practice is ⁓ proving to be highly valuable.
speaker-2: I think I think as well that that that's this type of thing that can really sort of fight any misperceptions about sort of any concept of sort of back to basics and and and any inferences that people mu might make about what that means.
speaker-0: It's a very big change in teacher practice from being the so-called guide on the side, the facilitator, to someone who is, know, shock horror. Actually teaching. Many teachers have never seen students sitting in rows facing the teacher at the front of the room who is doing that thing called teaching. ⁓ So we do need to acknowledge that this is a fairly steep hill to climb ⁓ in the change journey and it can be a bit daunting. having coaching in place, mentoring and support opportunities to share videos of classroom practice to talk about what went well, ⁓ what could be improved, ⁓ know, how can I... have a smooth transition into the classroom and have an icebreaker activity that gets everybody focused and working straight away. ⁓ There's lots of ways that student time gets wasted across a full day. And when we add all of those minutes up, ⁓ we see a lot of instructional time just burning. But we do need to recognise that this is very different way of teaching and it's a skill like any other that needs to be supported and cultivated.
speaker-1: And just on this topic of school leaders choosing high impact tools and feeling that responsibility, what's your thoughts on what a genuinely evidenced and aligned EdTech tool looks like? ⁓ What are some red flags in your view with EdTech?
speaker-0: I think ⁓ this is another example in education where practice got ahead of evidence. I often make the observation that in health we have ⁓ for TGA, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and there are equivalent statutory authorities in other nations. But the TGA tests drugs and devices. before they can be implemented in clinical practice. Now we have no such body in education. Really schools and individual teachers have been given, we talked about autonomy earlier, when in some cases they've only been given carte blanche to say, you know, this is how we're gonna teach. We're gonna be this kind of school or that kind of school. We've stopped doing this next year and we're gonna be doing this other completely different thing. ⁓ And I think, unfortunately, technology, the use of technology in schools got ahead of itself as part of that venereal slipstream. When we see something bright and shiny and new, we just buy it and see how it goes. And then it becomes embedded as a part of practice. And of course, we want students to become proficient in their keyboarding skills in the 21st century, that's important. ⁓ AI is another whole proposition. think buying the hands of people with expertise is ⁓ a potentially very useful tool. ⁓ But I do have a lot of concerns about its ⁓ odor application in schools. What I think the risk happening with ⁓ AI is that the practice gets ahead of the evidence in the way that things so often do in education.
speaker-1: about that needs to be in the hands of the expert teacher. And I think there is various agreement about that and there's a real movement which is encouraging towards that expertise. My final question, ⁓ last question is if you could change one thing about how we approach evidence-based instruction in our schools, what would that one thing be that would make the biggest difference in the lives of students?
speaker-0: ⁓ I think trying to level our understanding or create a shared understanding about what evidence is. ⁓ I think ⁓ I like to assume good intentions, but sometimes it's naive to assume good intentions. ⁓ But I think there's some obfuscation that goes on in this space and people want to slow down the debate by asking unanswerable rhetorical questions, you but what is knowledge, but what is evidence? ⁓ And I don't think that's helpful. ⁓ So I'd like to move beyond the rhetoric and the unanswerable questions ⁓ to a space where we're then debating ⁓ how we best use and value students' instructional time, which ethically belongs to students. It doesn't belong to us. And, you know, I there's an irony in the fact that the people having these debates are already well-educated and privileged. ⁓ And yet, in some cases, they're prepared to ⁓ back decisions and ideologies that throw other people's children's educations under the bus.
speaker-1: Yeah. Well, thank you so much for a really stimulating conversation. You mentioned you've got a blog post coming out soon. There's so much research I know that's still ongoing for you. Where do our listeners go to find out more about your work and where it's unfolding?
speaker-0: I'm reasonably active on X, the former Twitter, LinkedIn and my blog post, Listener Report.
speaker-1: We'll put that all in our notes. Thank you again for your time, Pamela. It has been wonderful talking to you.
speaker-0: All the best. you, Jewel and James.
speaker-2: Very much for your time.