Things that should matter less in schools

How systems may help

Image via AI

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We like to worry. We are never happier than when we can point to things that matter and worry about them. However, I believe there are things about school that could and should matter less than they do.

Socioeconomic background

We know that a child’s socioeconomic status—whether they are born rich or poor—influences their performance at school. For example, Juan Liu and colleagues (2022) found that socioeconomic status explained between about 5% and 8% of variability in academic outcomes. This is significant, while at the same time perhaps a surprisingly small level of influence. Liu et al. also found that, “GDP per capita and economic equality did not affect the relations [and] higher net enrollment ratio and longer duration of compulsory education did not weaken these relations.” This is strange because we might expect an expansion of access to education to reduce the effect of economic factors.

Interestingly, Nicholas Waters and colleagues found that, “after controlling for baseline academic skills, verbal ability, and other child- and family-level covariates, only working memory mediated the association between parent education and children’s math achievement.”

We can reduce some of these differences by making school less reliant on what children bring in from home by teaching a knowledge-rich curriculum. This requires courage. Curriculum should be largely—although not exclusively—chosen based on its likely cognitive effects rather than ideological views about relevance or dead, white European men. In short, everyone should have a right to access the same knowledge as the elite.

We can make working memory less important by structuring teaching to take this into account and applying the lessons of cognitive load theory. The fact that working memory has such an impact implies these lessons are not widely applied. Which leads to my next point.

Intelligence

At the recent cognitive load theory conference in Sydney, John Sweller gave a keynote talk on human cognitive architecture. Sweller made the point that tests of intelligence are not culturally neutral, however they are sold. We know this, he explained, from the Flynn effect, which is the fact that people in modern societies have tended to improve at taking these tests over time. Such tests align with the kinds of cognitive tasks the modern world requires of us. They would underestimate highly intelligent individuals from premodern cultures to which the kinds of abstractions these tests involve are alien.

Yes, part of an intelligence test may depend on working memory capacity, but a surprising amount depends on cultural knowledge. As Sweller pointed out, when we have a problem with our car, we go see a mechanic, not someone who has done well on an intelligence test. Knowledge relevant to a specific problem is many orders of magnitude more useful in solving that problem than general intelligence. This is due to the effortlessness with which knowledgeable individuals can draw on that knowledge.

We can make intelligence matter less in schools by breaking down complex tasks into small chunks, again following the principles of cognitive load theory. This makes the fruits of many generations of human inquiry accessible to all, not just those with superior working memory resources. We can make intelligence matter less by teaching an ambitious curriculum using these principles.

Once we are turbocharged by knowledge, raw processing power becomes less relevant.

Neurodiversity

I will preface this by noting that for many people, their neurodiversity matters a great deal. It is part of their identity and I don’t wish to diminish that. However, we can make it matter less in schools in terms of the way that ADHD and autism can sometimes impede learning.

Many in education are working to a broken model of managing disabilities, disorders and neurodiversity. We might call this the ‘spinning plates’ model where teachers are expected to implement many different adjustments—a fidget toy here, additional printed materials there—while trying to keep on top of the bureaucracy associated with it all.

Oddly, the evidence on ADHD and autism does not imply this model. It instead suggests these students will benefit from predictability, routines, clear rules and structures and the explicit teaching of these rules and structures.

Not only will neurodiverse students benefit, as with my other suggestions, all students will benefit. Some of the best-kept secrets of effective education have been hiding away in faculties of special education, not because students involved in special education are fundamentally different, but because the practices that work best for everyone are even more important in these contexts.

Teacher expertise

I attended a forum last Friday where Glenn Fahey of the Centre for Independent Studies addressed issues facing the education system. At one point, he commented that in an ideal scenario, the highest quality teachers would work in the most disadvantaged schools and yet our system seems to drive them in the opposite direction.

One obvious reason for this is student behaviour, which is often more challenging in disadvantaged schools. Why would the best teachers, who have the greatest number of options, choose to work in schools with poor behaviour? However, the basic effect—the well-researched finding that teacher quality affects student outcomes—is one I think should matter less.

Teaching is a weird profession. The basic expectation is that teachers plan and deliver lessons crafted to the students in their classes. In addition, they need to work out a way to relate to these students, creating their own personal system of behaviour management. Not only is this a problem for students who need predictability and consistency, it raises the importance of individual teacher quality. The teacher is not only flying the plane, they first have to build it and once it’s in the air, serve the drinks. This multiplies the effect of a particularly good or bad teacher.

Good teachers then become rockstar figures—the kind Hollywood makes movies about. This can, and often does, drive the ego and maladaptive behaviours.

The way we make teacher quality matter less is to make fewer things dependent upon the idiosyncrasies of individual teachers. Common lesson planning, of the kind we have at Clarendon, means all teachers are using resources that benefit from the wisdom of the most experienced and have often gone through several iterations. Our explicit aim is that a new or inexperienced teacher who has done their preparation can deliver a lesson that is 85-90% of what an experienced teacher will deliver. It is no longer a lottery, with sharp-elbowed parents jockeying to ensure their child is in the rockstar’s class.

Similarly, a clear and consistent approach to behaviour makes classroom management less dependent upon an individual teacher’s charisma.

It may seem strange to seek out issues that should matter less, but only because we exist in the hyperbolic world of education.

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