Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Emily's avatar

I really enjoyed reading this!

You are correct: teachers will do what they are confident doing AND what has produced the best results for their students previously. Also, teachers who have been around for a few decades often cop it because they are "inflexible" but they are able to articulate to me that "we did this years ago, under the name of ______" and they will/won't embrace that thing based on their (legitimate) past experiences.

I also had a good laugh about those in ivory towers trying to get the best seat possible within their institutions. That said, I've found that those within higher education who GENUINELY CARE about outcomes for students and about developing teacher competencies are APPALLED at this kind of criticism as they have spent decades trying to help teachers move out of their snail shells of knowledge/experience and into the greater garden of learning, and they fear that criticism of academia will send the snails into full blown retreat. Fair enough.

What resonated most with me is the double dipping approach. It's true! I utilise both pedagogical approaches. You can't teach students to be adaptable, collaborative learners without inquiry based learning. They will never excel at problem solving if you are just using direct instruction approaches, and that's not ok. Likewise, I find that most students benefit from a measure of routine and of meaningful explicit teaching. Ironically for the inquiry based learning camp, you need to be able to learn by direct instruction in order to excel in higher education... The two can work in tandem

Expand full comment
John Warner's avatar

Very thoughtful and illuminating. I hadn't ever considered the research to practice industry in quite this light because I've always attacked it from the practice side. It makes me more sympathetic to the other POV, even though it tends not to resonate with me. When my book of writing curriculum came out I was advised to try to set up a controlled experiment that could prove the curriculum "works" because being able to point to that evidence would make for a much easier sales pitch at the school/district level, but after much thinking I couldn't even conceive an experiment that I could believe in as meaningful. The student/teacher experience is qualitative, not quantitative and the "success" of the curriculum relies on the teacher/student dynamic, rather than something inherent to the curriculum itself. Don't get me wrong, I think the curriculum is great, but having developed through the work of teaching I knew that really, the curriculum itself was a relatively small part of the equation and to champion it as the solution to whatever problems I was talking about was less than true.

Expand full comment
24 more comments...

No posts