A closed circuit of indifference

And a failure of basic scholarship

Deakin University hosts REDI, or The Centre for Research for Educational Impact (yeah, I know that doesn’t work but I didn’t make it up). Someone sent me a report, A closed circuit of influence: Evidence, ‘the science of learning’ and education policy, written for REDI by Deakin Distinguished Professor Jill Blackmore AM. I don’t think it is intended to be freely available online because Deakin has a placeholder page which does not host the document. However, with a bit of searching, I came up with this link from someone presumably at Deakin uploading it to a WordPress site—so you can read it for yourself. It may—and as we shall see, probably should—get taken down, so save a copy.

Blackmore’s report is yet another attack on the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) and it is full of the greatest hits. It is also longer than usual and includes a few elements we have not seen before—but more on that later.

The greatest hits

The report rehearses all of the usual arguments. We learn that there is no single science of learning. We already know this, but critics have an unhealthy fixation on the definite article and assume it implies that there is. As far as I am concerned, the science of learning, if it means anything at all, draws from cognitive science, teacher effectiveness research, educational psychology and traditional educational research. One of the key things about many of its recommendations, such as the use of explicit teaching, is that this finding is drawn from all these diverse areas of research and this is what gives me such confidence in that finding. Oddly, Blackmore seems to think the science of learning is founded entirely on what, at one point, she calls, ‘Random Controlled Trials.’

Blackmore also repeatedly insists that the science is not ‘settled’. At one point, Jenny Donovan of AERO is quoted as answering ‘yes’ when asked in parliament, ‘Would you say explicit instruction is settled science?’ I can understand why Donovan would say that, but I would have objected to the term ‘settled science’ as there is no such thing. There are some robust findings that it would be foolish to deny, but that does not mean we have somehow reached the final end state of everything there is to know about learning. Scientific theories are, in principle, provisional and that is part of the power of science.

Blackmore argues that the effective practices highlighted by science of learning advocates are ones that all teachers already do. Which is a familiar, if strange argument, but those advancing it must think it works. If everyone is already teaching explicitly, what’s the harm in asking teachers to teach explicitly? Apparently, the answer is that teachers need to be able to decide what methods to use and when. However, as is always the case, Blackmore ventures few criteria teachers might use for deciding when explicit teaching is appropriate or when an alternative would be better. The closest we get is when Blackmore references a blog post by Russell Tytler to argue that, “Direct instruction may have more value at building foundational knowledge, provide scaffolding, and modelling scientific thinking but its effectiveness is only when combined with student-centred, inquiry-based or balanced approach.”

This claim is false. The blog post does not substantiate the claim that direct instruction is only effective when combined with inquiry learning and this is a theme we will return to.

Blackmore continues through the standard shopping list of items that never quite address the main claims of the science of learning movement. The movement is ‘positivist’ in a vague 1950s way—a name-calling tactic that is very convincing to education academics and nobody else. Similarly, it relies on ‘research undertaken 30 years ago’. I’d like to know what this is but she provides no citation. 1995 must have been a fruitful year. And she also does the classic look-over-there by pointing out that academic performance is also affected by lots of factors outside the control of teachers, schools and, well, education academics. Yeah, we know.

And Blackmore seems to be making a stand in the last redoubt of ‘balanced literacy’—the trick that worked for years to convince policymakers that phonics was being taught when the focus was elsewhere:

“Teachers draw on a range of methods to teach literacy, what is called balanced literacy approach which includes both immersion and phonics, as is appropriate for their students (O’Leary & O’Mara 2024).”

The mangled English in that quote is typical of the document as a whole.

Conspiracy theories

At this point, Blackmore dons her tinfoil hat and starts weaving conspiracies. We hear about who knows who and who is funded by who. Any connection whatsoever to conservative politics is foregrounded because the tacit assumption is that conservatism is bad and readers won’t want to intellectually associate with it.

The conspiratorial approach creates some strange bedfellows. For instance, I have written posts criticising Maths Pathway but I am lumped in with its founder as part of the shady cabal taking over Australian education. And this is an interesting point. I am rarely mentioned by name by education academics. I think there is a widespread view that I am a self-promoter who should not be given the oxygen of publicity. If so, Blackmore did not receive that memo.

“The Director of TFA left to join a no-for-profit OCHRE- an online curriculum resource for teachers- which again promotes evidence based effective teaching practices which include ‘explicit instruction, formative assessment and retrieval and spaced practice’, knowledge and ‘vocabulary rich curriculum’; ‘sequenced and mapped’ pedagogy which ‘presents new materials incrementally, connecting new content to prior learning, and giving students ample opportunities to practice’. This is direct adoption of one strand of the science of learning (https://ochre.org.au). The co-founder of OCHRE is Reid, a teacher and Head of Curriculum, Assessment and Instruction at a 3 yo – Y12 independent school, Ballarat Clarendon College, Victoria. Greg Ashman, Deputy Principal at Ballarat Clarendon College, has been a vocal online promoter of explicit instruction targeting researchers in field of maths who do not agree. Ashman is from the UK, is a former Ph D student of Sweller’s and co-author with him on cognitive load theory (Sweller, Zhanng, Ashman et al. 2024).”

You get the idea. I should just point out a few things for accuracy. Reid has a surname: Smith. He no longer works at Clarendon but it’s hardly surprising that he would have come from a school that values a knowledge-rich curriculum, given what he has gone on to found. Clarendon is an exciting, innovative organisation with a focus on professional learning and research. If you are interested in working in such an environment, we are always open to expressions of interest.

Perhaps more fundamentally, we can hardly wait around for education academics to produce useful curriculum materials.

And if we are going to go with me ‘targeting’ researchers I disagree with by, presumably, disagreeing with them, I would like to point out that they are not just drawn from the field of maths. For example, I recently wrote a post criticising a lecture by Guy Claxton who Blackmore draws on heavily in her report.

Oh, and there is only one ‘n’ in Zhang.

Scholarship

Blackmore is concerned about the quality of scholarship used by science of learning advocates. In a way, this makes sense because she is a professor arguing to assert the authority of the academic establishment over a bunch of rude upstarts. However, this results in an unfortunate irony.

Blackmore criticises a paper I co-authored for drawing heavily on the work of cognitive load theory researchers. This is a factual observation, if somewhat beside the point. I can’t help wondering if she would rather I didn’t have a PhD because if I did not, I’m sure she would mention it.

Why am I so sure? Blackmore criticises the Grattan Institute for writing reports that, in her view, would not pass peer review, and she criticises its researchers for not holding PhDs. She points out that this is a prerequisite for all university researchers.

Why is this an irony? Because the scholarship in Blackmore’s report is extremely poor. We have already met some of this looseness, but I am going to provide two more examples, one grave and one amusing.

The grave example is the accusation of research fraud in the following passage for which Blackmore provides no reference:

“Again, as with AERO reports, Grattan reports would not pass peer review (the academic version of the pub test). Cited in the Reading Guarantee for example was the Mississippi Miracle study as evidence of phonics working. This study has since been shown to falsify its data and therefore its findings.”

I searched for information on this but could not find the smoking gun so I cannot comment if it’s true. I can find an AP report from 2023 showing that Mississippi invalidated over 900 test scores, but that seems to show a system working to detect irregularities and I’m not sure how that would have impacted the overall picture in the state. The source that the Grattan Institute’s Reading Guarantee report cites for Mississippi is the U.S. National Center for Educational Progress (2022) and it seems eccentric and potentially defamatory to be accusing that body of fraud.

The amusing example of scholarly sloppiness comes earlier in the paper:

“[Guy] Claxton also notes that it continues to be a small group of researchers who have created an in-group who cite each other, and who rely on research undertaken 30 years ago. Indeed, this group publicly derides research that does not fit with their view even within the wider field of sciences of learning (eg. Ashram blog).”

If you look up the reference at the end, it reads, “Ashram, G. Blog. https://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com.” That is the former blog site of Andrew Old. Not only that, but it’s a reference to the entire site, containing hundreds of posts, most of which are not commentaries on research, so it cannot possibly support the point being made. If Blackmore mistakenly thought this was my blog, she’s then compounded that error by spelling my name wrong.

We all make errors, but if scholarship is so important to Blackmore then she should really focus on the basics such as providing relevant sources for her claims and checking them for accuracy.

Panicking

There is much more to the report and more to criticise. I have not travelled down every citation rabbit hole but my sense is there is more to explore. Zooming out, however, I think we are starting to see an interesting pattern. All the anti-AERO posts on the AARE blog site and now this lengthy treatise add up to something. My sense is that it is an education establishment waking up to the fact that the ground is moving under them and that teachers and a grassroots movement are circumventing them and talking directly to power.

And they are panicking.