In last Saturday’s Curios, I noted some reported comments by Associate Professor Jill Brown of Deakin University in Australia. In those comments, she argued for a push back against a drive for explicit teaching in New South Wales. Over on Bad Mathematics, Marty Ross also picked up Brown’s comments, among others, noting a ‘travelling carnival’ of the same voices lining up to give explicit teaching a bash in a series of newspaper reports.
Ross sees efforts to provide evidence of explicit teaching as unnecessary, stating that, “The benefits of explicit teaching, more simply referred to as ‘teaching’, are obvious.” And perhaps, if I wasn’t quite so far down this rabbit hole — one I first ventured into in 1997 at the beginning of my teacher training — I might be inclined to agree.
However, I have come this far and so I guess I will continue to push on. I also happen to think forms of explicit teaching that are highly interactive are more effective than other forms and so I will continue to make this case.
Brown has now published a full-length exposition of her views over on the blog of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). As is often the way on the AARE platform, it neatly encapsulates all that is wrong with Australian education.
Before I get to that, I need to note that the post contains some editing errors. A paragraph near the start is repeated in the conclusion and a piece of the post I want to refer to has a strange break in the middle of it:
“Those pushing explicit instruction,do not recognise that the literature doesn’t support its use in mathematics education. It’s either commentary or
y or uses literature focused on research outside the field of mathematics education (e.g., literacy in the early years) and is not drawing on other mathematics education research literature. Other research is in very specific situations, such as students with some specific disability, or where the ‘thing’ being learned is very narrow.” (sic)
Setting this aside, Brown appears to be claiming that the evidence for explicit teaching either comes from the teaching of subjects other than mathematics or from students with disabilities. This would come as a surprise to David Reynolds and Daniel Muijs whose 1999 review focused on the considerable process-product and experimental research into maths teaching that demonstrates the effectiveness of what they variously refer to as ‘direct instruction’ or ‘active teaching’.
And I wonder whether Brown has heard of cognitive load theory? Cognitive load theory’s worked example effect, in which novices learn more from studying and applying worked examples than from solving equivalent problems, was first established with school-aged children learning algebra. Indeed, one criticism of cognitive load theory is that its research base is biased towards maths and science — this is true, but efforts to extend research into other subject areas have not tended to refute the main principles of the theory.
Perhaps Brown considers explicit teaching as somehow distinct from direct instruction or active teaching? — they are usually considered to be broadly synonymous. Perhaps she does not see the worked example effect as evidence for explicit teaching? Perhaps the get-out clause, “or when the ‘thing’ being learned is very narrow,” can be levelled at any evidence she finds inconvenient? We don’t know and Brown does not explain.
The article is a classic of the ‘explicit teaching is bad but everyone already does it anyway’ genre. One particular passage gives us insight into why teachers and academics who are clearly pushing inquiry learning tend to insist that it somehow includes explicit teaching:
“Alternative approaches, where students investigate or inquire into mathematical and real-world problems are typically described as student-centred. A lesson based on this ideology typically begins by considering a real-world situation or mathematical context that demands exploration and application of prior mathematical and/or real-world knowledge and problem-solving processes. As is often the case in social settings (including workplaces), students are encouraged to work on the task both independently and in small groups. The skilful teacher then draws on their planning and observations of students’ learning to orchestrate discussion whereby key ideas and thinking strategies are shared and evaluated by the class. This too, is explicit teaching… but the enactment allows for greater student agency and voice. This interactive, cyclical process might be repeated several times as students are supported to solve the problem.” [my emphasis]
“This too, is explicit teaching.” No, it is not. It is inquiry learning. Why not just own it?
In an inquiry learning approach, concepts are not fully explained and procedures are not fully demonstrated in advance. Instead, students are supposed to figure it out by having a chat with each other, with the teacher perhaps deigning to share some examples at the end — albeit cryptically.
If you have ever seen this method in action, you will know what it looks like. The teacher will desperately try to nudge one of the more advanced students towards saying something approaching what’s in the teacher’s head and then jump on that and try to echo it to the rest of the class:
Teacher: So, what do you notice about the two shapes?
Child: They’re different
Teacher: Yes but Jasmine over here turned hers around. What do you notice about them…?
Child: Hers are a different colour.
Teacher: I mean about the shapes the counters make. What do you see?
Child: They are rectangles?
And so on until everyone understands the commutative property of multiplication.
Instead of a carefully constructed explanation, broken down sufficiently to ensure students can understand each step, we rely on happenstance, with all the potential to explore conceptual dead-ends that involves. This is not a superior way to construct maths knowledge — it is a vastly inferior one likely to confuse all but the most advantaged.
As we know from the fairy tale, the emperor’s new clothes were only visible to those who understood nuance and so we are informed that teaching is complex and nuanced:
“Australia is a low-equity education system. This means our classrooms are highly diverse. The idea that there is one best way to teach all students is not evidence-based and warrants scrutiny. Making judgments on how to teach students well relies on professional knowledge of the school, the students, the curriculum, and the real-world contexts that are important for students to learn about. Planning for student learning, and teaching effectively in the moment, are skills that teachers develop through their initial teaching qualification(s) and practice over the course of their careers.”
If there is no one way to teach and if all depends on a range of contextual factors, then the bit that is rarely explained is how we decide which method to use based on which factors. Exactly how do we make these judgements? Exactly what professional knowledge of the school or the students will indicate we should be using inquiry learning rather than explicit teaching? Would this not require us to make some assessments? What would they look like? How would we interpret the results?
Aside: I am co-author on a paper that addresses exactly these questions.
Instead, crickets. That ball is dodged and we are on to the fetish for ‘planning’ and the idea that if teachers just know their students well enough and sit in a darkened room for long enough, the answers to all such questions will be revealed.
A system of explicit teaching — where concepts and procedures are broken down and fully explained before gradually handed over to the students — is the best way we know to teach maths. It aligns with what we have learned about how the mind deals with new knowledge. Because it is the method most likely to lead to learning, it is the method most likely to lead to a sense of mastery, fueling future motivation for the subject. No, it may not suit the development of a ‘general capability’ of ‘critical and creative thinking’, but that’s because no such general capability exists.
If we want young people to be able to do advanced maths problems set in tricky contexts they have have never encountered before, our best bet is to teach them some maths.
Is that obvious? Maybe. Or maybe it’s not obvious enough.
I enjoy reading your excellent descriptions of what explicit instruction actually is. Read Jim Stigler’s seminal work “The Learning Gap” details how the Japanese use their version of explicit instruction to have one of the highest levels of average academic achievement in the world. The Dallas public schools recently turned around their poor academic performance by focusing teachers’ efforts on classroom teaching, not developing their own curricula. In 2000, I worked to bring a very successful Spanish Language math program (APREMAT) to the U.S. because 2.5 million Spanish-speaking k-3rd graders were not learning math.
The clear evidence that explicit instruction, as you define it, works well is irrefutable. Educators are one of the clearest examples of Danny Khaneman’s “Theory induced blindness.” John Wooden’s quote is relevant: “Don’t mistake activity for achievement.” Educators should note that Anecdote is merely an indicator for actual research.
I know you've talked about this elsewhere but it echoes this general rule of "we already do that".
In a small PD today we looked at a quick YouTube that explains whole language vs phonics really well and quickly. Then I showed some staff, two of which were primary teachers, some examples from about 2 terms of remedial reading with high school kids. It was a list of about 8 words with the "guesses" students had made when reading (we have many more examples so it's not isolated stuff). The guesses showed very obviously the kids hadn't attempted to sound the words out (the program literally records the students).
The primary teachers (like every other I have ever asked about this) said, but we do teach phonics, there's literally no other way of teaching reading, I've never heard of anyone doing it another way.
It's a funny thing. We have roughly half out students doing remedial reading and they almost all do this guessing. But apparently this just happened randomly...
I must say our intake is from year 3 on so it's not to say these teachers are lying or deluded. But it's confusing as to how they would otherwise interpret this pervasivene pattern of guessing whole words from a few letters at the beginning and end.
Somehow it's simultaneously true that everyone teaches phonics
and yet, with literally hours of recordings listened to and evaluated, a huge proportion of students don't attempt to sound out unfamiliar words or know very common sound/letter patterns.
Maybe it's aliens?