On Saturday, we hosted researchED at Ballarat Clarendon College. The traditional post for me to write when I have attended a researchED conference is a precis of the day and my journey through it.
I could certainly write that post. Our keynote speaker was the amazing Tim McDonald who discussed the picky details of implementing a behaviour curriculum. Throughout the day I flitted from talk to talk, taking pictures for the @researchED_Aus Twitter feed and mining a few nuggets and gems. I also found the time to give my own light-hearted talk on education myths and the grains of truth within them.
Hopefully, in the fullness of time when I can find a moment to review them, we will release a few of the talks to the researchED YouTube channel.
However, I want to focus on a different point.
At the end of the day I hosted a Q&A session with Trisha Jha of the Centre for Independent Studies, Amy Haywood of the Grattan Institute and Katie Roberts-Hull of Think Forward Educators. At the opening of the day, I had told the attendees that they were special. They were operating in a world in which the vast majority of teachers just float right past researchED, having little idea what it is or represents. They were the three hundred who were different. They were the nerds who were beginning to understand how the machine works while everyone else just presses the buttons.
This provoked a question from the floor — would we always be special? What would be needed for evidence-informed ideas about education to have greater currency and not be the preserve of a few?
The other panelists pointed to signs of progress. In Australia, we now have researchED and its emulators that are growing in popularity. We have entire Catholic education systems moving over to evidence-informed practice, led by the Canberra-Goulburn diocese under Ross Fox. These comments caused me to privately reflect on the growing number of visitors we are welcoming at Clarendon.
In my own answer, I noted this progress. However, no matter how well led, I argued the Australian system is not suited to top-down solutions. Such programs become garbled and bureaucratised. We end up with a mere performance, pastiche or diorama of what was originally intended. Instead, the biggest driver of change is horizontal — teacher to teacher.
Twitter (or ‘X’) is still a good forum for debating educational ideas and an opportunity that Australian education has still not fully grasped. The point of a Twitter debate is not to persuade the person you are arguing with but for silent third parties to see both sides of the argument and make up their own minds. I mention Twitter because that’s where I’m active but forums on Facebook should do the same.
Substack also presents an opportunity. The more teachers who can find the time to write, the better. I know that’s easier said than done when you’re all there late at night updating Individual Education Plans, designing lessons from scratch or marking books — tasks of questionable value sent to torment us and test our faith in this vocation.
However, one issue I didn’t mention in my response has been a paying on my mind since then. How will we know we are making progress?
At present, the enlightened education discussion in Australia is a generic one. researchED is a conference about all things education. I can stand up and talk about cognitive load or educational myths and what I have to say is likely to have some relevance to all teachers. researchED has some sessions devoted to maths, early literacy or even history and science, but they are situated in a broad program.
The bulk of the transformative work any school needs to do is subject specific. Generically, we necessarily talk in abstract terms or flit between different specifics. The only way of developing an enriching history unit is for history teachers to get together and work out what it all means for them.
Currently, a small band of teachers are talking to each other. If and when this movement starts to grow and we gain recruits, we will start to have the numbers to take things to the next level. That’s when you’ll see subject specific evidence-informed conferences and social groups start to blossom. That’s when the main conferences for history or maths teachers will be dominated by evidence informed practice.
And that’s how we’ll know we are getting there.
Thanks for this post!
The question about how we will know that we are making progress in adoption of evidence-based practices (procedures, programs, curricula, methods, materials...) will not be answered by measuring clicks on links to Web sites or even attendance at conferences promulgating e-bp. I agree to some extent with your proposal that "we'll know we are getting there" when conferences for subject areas "are dominated by evidence informed practice."
I can relate an anecdote that aligns (I think) with your metric for success. In July 2008 I attended a conference on reading instruction for US educators. The conference was sponsored by the Reading First program of the US Department of Education. I was essentially an observer and probably only a dozen or so of the 1000s of people knew I had anything to do with Reading First.
I was sitting in a large room where people were taking a break. At a neighboring table a small group of people who were attending the conference were discussing their experiences with a couple of young students who were *not* zooming ahead. When I hear educators talk about situations in which students are not doing well, I was accustomed to hearing those educators bemoan the child's home life, his (usually his) lack of motivation, his bad attitude, his spotty attendance record, etc. Instead, these teachers were talking about how the student had done on specific measures of aspects of decoding.
==> "I wonder...does he have the letter-sounds down cold? How's he doing on the Dibbles sounds?"
==> "Does it seem like he's struggling to sound out words?"
==> "How Is he doing with spelling simple words, you know, C-V-Cs?"
In other words, these teachers were doing exactly what the advocates of Reading First were hoping they would be doing. They were trouble-shooting the student's difficulties using performance data.
Now, that's just an anecdote, and it's incidental and subjective. But, in that instant I had the impression that all the effort that went into the effort to get schools to adopt e-bp had worked for those teachers.
Of course, it didn't work. Reading First was bludgeoned. Naysayers pointed at RF as a failure and filled the gap with whole language, three cuing, readers' workshops, superficially appealing intuitions, and so forth.
And so, we ae still here, encouraging folks to base their teaching on trustworthy research, avoid getting sucked into the warm-and-fuzzy goop, reflect critically about edu-charlatans' bologna...Sigh.
Hi Greg--thanks for this. We've had researchEd US at my school pre-COVID and I agree with your views. For me the rubber meets the road when the time comes for strategic planning by the admin/trustees/school board. Who will leadership listen to--the IT person and some faculty/staff who are all-in on the latest thing or the teachers who are trying to adopt evidence-based practices? Sometimes I think we end up being the cranks muttering in the corner because what we believe isn't "sexy" or new. We've dealt with ridiculous conversations about growth mindset, grit, the joys of VR headsets, and now AI. For me, progress comes when the admin actually listens--I managed to get them to back off of using "brain-based learning" whatever the heck that means. Unfortunately, they also listen to the enthusiasts...