I agree with everything in this article except perhaps the choice of analogy. One way physics is very disanalogous to education academia is the rigor and overwhelming agreement about the fundamental principles.
If you try to be a serious physicist with your own idiosyncratic, vibes-based definition of relativity or quantum mechanics that departs even slightly from the very solid and rigorous existing understanding of these concepts you are dismissed as a crank. Not so in education. You can get very far by insisting that whole language teaches phonics correctly, or that inquiry learning involves explicit teaching, or that desirable difficulty means not telling novices the answers to questions, or [choose your favourite example here]
Which is fine I guess. An analogy can't be the same in all respects otherwise it wouldn't be an analogy. I take your point that *cutting edge* physics, just like educational research more generally, is underconstrained by experimental data. I guess I just instinctively balk at the idea that education is similar to physics because the state of educational academia is so much worse and we at least already know and accept a great deal about physics. In that sense, it's got all of the downsides of physics with none of the benefits.
Scepticism to new popular ideas would do a lot to reduce harm.
A proposed change to approach should have evidence to support it.
Much as Russel’s tea pot (proposed to be in orbit without evidence) can be safely ignored, a proposed change should need evidence to back its effectiveness before being imposed on teachers or students.
In medicine, prescribing a drug that lacks clinical trial evidence and causes patient illness is iatrogenesis. What’s the educational equivalent ?
The big problem with "evidence-based" approaches to education is that the academic literature is polluted with huge amounts of junky research, so that no matter how bad an intervention is there are sure to be journal articles supporting it. Pick your favorite progressive pedagogy theorist, and you can be sure that they'll a nice list of impressive-looking publications to point to.
Pádraig Hogan was my lecturer in Philosophy of Education for my Dip Ed. He referred to teaching as somewhere between a science and an art; he called it a craft, and therefore, it had a lore.
Lore is something handed on from one craftsperson to another. While there are similarities, it's not quite the same as scientific evidence.
Maybe any practice continued for long enough grows a lore, but the crafty bit of craft is the "how to" -- which is not the same thing as knowledge based on scientific evidence, I agree, but still knowledge. I'm not suggesting that teaching is purely and simply the transmission of knowledge, but if the transmission of knowledge is absent, it could be entertainment or ritual or some such, but it's not teaching.
We are on the same page. Transmission of knowledge is fundamental. The ‘crafty’ bit often lies in how the knowledge is transmitted. My successor may use the same methods as me, adapt them, or devise something new.
Every year, our students change. The craft needs to adapt to these changes without losing the essentials.
I'd just add that measurement errors are large and especially large for measuring progress from T1 to T2, the 'like schools' mechanism in NAPLAN is hugely problematic, as are the SES questionnaire results that PISA/TIMSS data gets fed through (and this coming from ACER staff themselves).
I agree with everything in this article except perhaps the choice of analogy. One way physics is very disanalogous to education academia is the rigor and overwhelming agreement about the fundamental principles.
If you try to be a serious physicist with your own idiosyncratic, vibes-based definition of relativity or quantum mechanics that departs even slightly from the very solid and rigorous existing understanding of these concepts you are dismissed as a crank. Not so in education. You can get very far by insisting that whole language teaches phonics correctly, or that inquiry learning involves explicit teaching, or that desirable difficulty means not telling novices the answers to questions, or [choose your favourite example here]
Sure. The analogy definitely breaks down.
Which is fine I guess. An analogy can't be the same in all respects otherwise it wouldn't be an analogy. I take your point that *cutting edge* physics, just like educational research more generally, is underconstrained by experimental data. I guess I just instinctively balk at the idea that education is similar to physics because the state of educational academia is so much worse and we at least already know and accept a great deal about physics. In that sense, it's got all of the downsides of physics with none of the benefits.
Quite so. Well put.
Scepticism to new popular ideas would do a lot to reduce harm.
A proposed change to approach should have evidence to support it.
Much as Russel’s tea pot (proposed to be in orbit without evidence) can be safely ignored, a proposed change should need evidence to back its effectiveness before being imposed on teachers or students.
In medicine, prescribing a drug that lacks clinical trial evidence and causes patient illness is iatrogenesis. What’s the educational equivalent ?
The big problem with "evidence-based" approaches to education is that the academic literature is polluted with huge amounts of junky research, so that no matter how bad an intervention is there are sure to be journal articles supporting it. Pick your favorite progressive pedagogy theorist, and you can be sure that they'll a nice list of impressive-looking publications to point to.
Isn't craft knowledge based on the experience of generations? In other words, empirical evidence?
Pádraig Hogan was my lecturer in Philosophy of Education for my Dip Ed. He referred to teaching as somewhere between a science and an art; he called it a craft, and therefore, it had a lore.
Lore is something handed on from one craftsperson to another. While there are similarities, it's not quite the same as scientific evidence.
Maybe any practice continued for long enough grows a lore, but the crafty bit of craft is the "how to" -- which is not the same thing as knowledge based on scientific evidence, I agree, but still knowledge. I'm not suggesting that teaching is purely and simply the transmission of knowledge, but if the transmission of knowledge is absent, it could be entertainment or ritual or some such, but it's not teaching.
We are on the same page. Transmission of knowledge is fundamental. The ‘crafty’ bit often lies in how the knowledge is transmitted. My successor may use the same methods as me, adapt them, or devise something new.
Every year, our students change. The craft needs to adapt to these changes without losing the essentials.
I'd just add that measurement errors are large and especially large for measuring progress from T1 to T2, the 'like schools' mechanism in NAPLAN is hugely problematic, as are the SES questionnaire results that PISA/TIMSS data gets fed through (and this coming from ACER staff themselves).