Curios of the week #64

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

Image via AI

---

Another week began in Melbourne. This time, we were celebrating my better half’s birthday with a tour of some pleasant spots to eat and drink. I must say, however, that V/Line, the public transport service running regional trains to Ballarat and the rest of country Victoria, needs a review. Twice, now, we have caught a train full of football fans with no seats for anyone who gets on from Ballarat onwards. Wise to the problem, this time, we boarded at Wendouree and did manage to secure a seat. Why not have football special services? And why does a regional train have to stop in every suburb on the way through Melbourne when they are supposed to have their own metropolitan network? Growl. Growl. Grumble. Grumble.

It has been an interesting week at Clarendon. On Monday, Tom Bennett came to visit us and I documented that visit here. A decision we made to trial asking students in Years 5-9 to not bring their drink bottles into the classroom blew up on mainstream media, with many articles published. You will forgive me for not wishing to comment further but if you are interested in the story, the ABC has the most complete account.

This week’s Curios include deplatforming, literacy wars, the assessment of general capabilities and much more.

Circular logic of the week

People often say ‘begging the question’ when they mean ‘raises the question’ and this is a problem because ‘begging the question’ has a valuable meaning in its own right. ‘Begging the question’ is an example of circular reasoning. If I argued that, “Homework is beneficial for students because it helps them,” then you might immediately spot a problem with that statement. ‘Beneficial’ and ‘helps them’ mean the same thing.

However, circular reasoning is often present in education studies and it can be harder to spot. As an example, consider a new paper by Yasemin Copur-Gencturk and colleagues on a professional learning intervention for maths teachers. As a result of this intervention, teachers set more ‘mathematically rich’ tasks. These are great because:

“The knowledge and skills that are required for quality mathematics teaching—the teaching that helps students develop a robust understanding of mathematics by using cognitively rich tasks and by linking mathematics concepts and procedures in a conceptually coherent manner—have long been of interest to scholars”

Yes, but what about cognitive load? Surely, it will matter when such tasks are set and the prior knowledge of the students completing them. How will we know that simply setting more tasks of this kind is a good thing.

Yeah, whatever. The researchers concluded that their professional learning program was effective because, in a randomised controlled trial, U.S. teachers who completed the program made use of more of these tasks than those who did not.

This is a classic archetype of education research and its use of circular reasoning.

Image via AI

Substack post of the week

While in Australia, Tom Bennett gave a series of three lectures at Notre Dame University. He has now posted a draft of the first of the lectures on his Substack. I recommend subscribing if you don’t already follow him.

In the lecture, he reflects on his own experience with behaviour as a trainee. He writes of students dealing drugs at the back of his classroom, ignoring him or swearing at him. Unless you have had similar experiences, it can be hard to empathise with teachers’ views on the subject.

Bennett explains what he learned as a result:

“The experience battered me, and it taught me my first lesson: if children weren’t behaving the right way, nothing else was possible. When the room was chaotic, nobody was learning; no one was safe, no one could relax, no one could ask, ponder or wonder or blossom. Literally nothing worth doing in a classroom could be done when people were ignoring you, shouting over you, like trying to build a house of cards in a hurricane. Nothing complicated, fragile or sophisticated can be done in chaos. We could not have this lecture were every single one of you not attending so wonderfully, as you are. I was right to be worried about behaviour, we all were.”

I imagine those who oppose the kinds of behaviour policies that Bennett argues for think they are on the side of the angels, making a stand against oppression. In reality, they are on the side of chaos, violence and educational failure.

Deplatforming of the week

Although less frequent than in some spheres, deplatforming does happen at educational conferences. Last year, Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert was deinvited from the Rethinking Education conference in the UK due to other attendees’ objections that they would not ‘feel safe’. Dr Cuthbert has argued the concept of ‘white privilege’ should not be taught in schools.

This is a ridiculous cancellation. However, what if a speaker were accused of antisemitism?