Curios of the week #116

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

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Cross-country season is under way with the local club competition in full swing. Last Saturday, we headed out to Creswick and I was somewhat inconvenienced to find nowhere to park because the place was swarming with Lycra-clad mountain bikers. This is not the Ballarat way but it may have been something to do with what looked to me like an old BMX track. I’m not even sure if that is still a thing.

The sunshine we have been experiencing could not last forever and so it was that Saturday saw the first proper cross-country weather conditions. The rest of the week has been sunny but cold. Winter is coming.

This week’s Curios include a strong claim, a job application, some questionable advice and much more.

Interview data of the week

I am familiar with having my arguments dismissed by education academics as lacking in evidence. If I suggest, for example, that in my experience, teachers don’t rate their training, critics will say I don’t have any evidence for such a claim, knowing full well that few researchers are interested in collecting data that would prove or falsify such a claim. When I run a survey for my blog that demonstrates this precise point, critics claim it did not go through an ethical review process—despite being voluntary and anonymous—and was not published in a peer-reviewed journal.

It is similar when discussing the preponderance of different teaching methods. I am fairly sure that until recently, at least, most Australian primary schools have not been using a systematic phonics approach when teaching early literacy but the same caveats apply.

Which is what makes a recent paper by Tanya Serry and colleagues in the Australian Journal of Education so interesting. It reports a modest study of nineteen parents who had children in the early years of an Australian primary school during pandemic school closure. The sample method was also not ideal—as no sampling method of this kind can be. What is important is that this study plays by all the rules I am accusing of flouting when I make anecdotal statements on the subject of reading instruction.

The parents were interviewed about their experiences with the work their children were asked to complete remotely and the paper is full of insights that would not align with what has become known as the science of reading. For example:

“Spelling instruction was most commonly described as having children learn lists of words by rote; one parent noted that their child received a list of words containing the ‘ch’ sound. It seemed apparent that many children were encouraged to learn whole words, rather than learning skills associated with sublexical analysis, as references made by parents to phrases such as ‘camera words’, ‘bubble words’ and ‘wonderful words’ were frequent.”

Some parents were satisfied with the quality of reading instruction their children received, but others were not, with the latter group sometimes doing their own research and even purchasing systematic phonics programs to use at home.

Gauntlet of the week

I am not successful at finding people who will debate with me on teaching. My latest challenge to Guy Claxton did not gain a response, although that was for understandable reasons. I have debated people in the past and been nice about it. For example, here is me debating Pasi Sahlberg in 2020.

Dr Chris Duncan is the CEO of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia (AHISA) and has been writing to his members several times recently about his scepticism of cognitive load theory and explicit teaching. He also co-authored a paper about cognitive load theory which I have previously critiqued.

I therefore challenge Duncan to debate these issues. We could put it up on YouTube so that others could see the different perspectives and make up their own minds. Would someone with the resources and reach like to step in and organise it? I’m an affable fellow, and I’m sure Duncan is a decent man—so I expect it would be a cordial exchange.

Job advertisements of the week

Given that I am such an affable fellow, would you consider working with me at Clarendon? We have recently posted some adverts on our website for Primary, Science, Physics and Chemistry. As ever, we also have Expressions of Interest open for all areas. Follow this link.

Mathematical fibres of the week

On the heels of the parent interview paper, another research article caught my eye for entirely different reasons.