Skip to main content

Fad Fear


*Deep breaths*. OK, so you’re telling me that catering my lesson activities towards visual, auditory and kinaesthetic learners was a waste of time. Oh my.

And the classic ‘you retain 90% of what you teach’ stat; also nonsense. Yikes.

If you’re not a cognitive scientist, and you’ve been in teaching long enough, then you’ve probably experienced this kind of horror moment.

Dealing with the Feeling

When you read about the debunking of an educational myth that you’d (to some degree or another) gone along with, it doesn’t feel good. It fact, it feels a little embarrassing. How could I, a degree-educated and (hopefully!) reasonably intelligent person, have gobbled up this stuff with so little critique? It’s somewhat humbling. Hindsight's a great thing though remember.

 

Denial might be your first response. This doesn't last long though as defending the roundly debunked quickly becomes untenable. Second response: distancing. I didn’t write a book on any of this stuff, or lead any CPD on it, I'm not really implicated here. I didn’t promote these myths, so it’s fine. Then you realise that distancing yourself probably doesn't quite cover it. You know full well there were times where these myths casually rolled off your tongue in class, or where they influenced your planning. You momentarily consider the fact that most of the evidence is now consigned to your inaccessible stash of floppy discs. But eventually, it becomes evident that you need to swallow your pride. You admit that you now need to take a more critical approach to 'evidence' and adopting new strategies. Lesson (uncomfortably) learned.

How Did We Get Here

Generally speaking this is probably more likely to have happened to you if you were well-meaning and conscientious! You listened to those PGCE tutors, CPD trainers or others who propelled these myths, promptly took them on board and keenly implemented them in your work. Don’t beat yourself up too much. Most of us have had little experience of or training in research methods and everything you did was likely to have been done out of a genuine motivation to do the best you could for your students. Don’t lose faith.

Yet do consider that the issue is systemic and we should all reflect on our part. As a profession we have not been careful enough in the past with our use of 'evidence' and those tutors, trainers and writers (entirely well-meaning themselves) are probably feeling just the same as you now. But whether we dished it out or ate it up, we are all on a journey now and transition in education is underway.  

New for 2019

You probably have to have been living on Mars to have escaped at least some reference to ‘learning science’, ‘cognitive psychology’, ‘research-informed practice’ or something similar by now. Terms like these feature in black and white in the research overview document that sits behind the new Ofsted 2019 inspection framework. And even a brief scroll through anything education-related on Twitter will quickly expose you to terms such as ‘retrieval practice’, ‘metacognition’ or ‘dual coding’. 

So how do you respond now when it feels like another load of potential myths are coming your way?

Fad Fear

I would suggest that these are some of the common teacher response types out there:

  •  Ostriches – They’re not falling for this again. The pain and embarrassment of realising they’ve been taken in before are quite enough thank you very much and they’re not taking the chance again. They’re avoiding anything based on ‘evidence’ like the plague, thank you and goodbye. *Head in sand*.
  • Deniers – It’s all rubbish to these folk. “Look at all these fads in the past, they’ve all come to nothing. I’m not wasting time on changing anything as it’ll be debunked in another few years”. They either don’t believe, they’re weary after many years of edu-fads or it’s just plain convenient not to believe as that means they don’t need to do anything about it!
  • Groupies – They’re either new to this teaching game and haven’t felt the de-bunk pain or they’re experienced but still in denial and distancing themselves from any past fad fails they’ve been taken in by. Forward-looking and probably well-intentioned, they’re ready and keen to hastily jump on any bandwagon in town. 

Can you recognise yourself? I’ll admit to some fad-weary denier moments, especially after reading a raft of myth debunking info. This was passed on to me in a well-meaning way, but did nothing to support my motivation and self-esteem! I have groupie tendencies too. I want to be a great teacher. I try really hard, sometimes too hard, and that can be an issue in itself.



In fact none of these responses are probably helpful. Most experienced teachers probably need a few moments of honest reflection and acceptance of any past oversights. All teachers would benefit from reading around the latest research findings in a positive and professional, but informed and cautious manner. There is a balance to strike. Avoid over keenness and naively jumping on the next neuromyth/fad bandwagon. Also avoid outright negativity or fad fear that prevents adoption of genuine and credible research-informed practice improvements that could really benefit learners.      

My own approach has been to accept the past, pull myself together and try to move forward with a pro-active approach. This involves reading widely, thorough self-evaluation of my own practice and a cautiously optimistic approach to adopting strategies that I understand the research basis for and that resonate with my own practice and experience.  

A Word to the Wise

And finally, if you have been cautious, critical and informed only by sound research findings in your practice all along, then well done. Go easy on the rest of us though as we try to face our fad fear and catch up!

Leaders should have confidence to go forth in enthusiastically implementing new evidence-informed practice improvements where appropriate. But they would do well to be mindful of the emotions, personality traits and personal experiences of those they hope to take with them. Ostriches will need to be gently coaxed out of the sand. Deniers will need a boost of motivation and plenty of robust, convincing evidence. Groupies may need a focus and gently reigning in a little.

Build experts. Develop and value self-awareness and humility as traits which enable recognition and acceptance of past mistakes or oversights. Coach and train everyone to build knowledge of sound evidence-informed practice but also of the importance of careful treatment of findings and measured implementation.    

I’d be very interested in your own personal experiences and comments on this issue. Do feel free to leave a comment below or get in touch on Twitter @JonesLearnUK.



There is plenty of good advice out there for teachers and leaders alike. I would encourage you to peruse the links below which I have found particularly interesting and useful reading on this topic.

Useful reading for teachers:

Great article by Louise Lewis (with tips on what to ask of research).
@MissLLewis

https://www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2017/12/26/20-research-myths/
John Dabell covers 12 educational research myths in this useful piece on the Teacher Toolkit website. Brace yourself!
@TeacherToolkit @John_Dabell

Useful reading for leaders:

Interesting blog from Andy Tharby with reference to the EEF implementation guide and advice on pitfalls.
@atharby

Implementation tips from Greenshaw Research School.
@GreenshawR


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Back to the Future

Ensuring something happens in the future is potentially rather easier to achieve if you possess a time machine. In theory such a contraption facilitates your travel back in time to amend things that are wrong with the present before they happen, or enables you to leap forwards to tweak moments in the future for the better. However, as Marty and Doc humorously demonstrate, this isn’t always as simple as it might seem! For the rest of us non-time-machine-owning folk, our main hope for ensuring things happen in the future lies in the effectiveness of our ‘prospective memory’. As opposed to ‘retrospective memory’ (where we are trying to remember something from the past), the concept of prospective memory refers to our ability to remember something in the future. Will you remember to wish Lucy a happy birthday tomorrow morning? Will you remember to send Jack to the office at 12.20pm for their appointment? Will you put out the garden waste bin instead of the food waste bin next week? T...

Subject Symmetry

Some subjects appear to be awash with books on how to teach them and writing on what constitutes a ‘good’ curriculum in terms of that subject. Wise subject leaders who are engaged in curriculum design would of course do well to read such material to help aid their thinking, as would senior leaders who are responsible for quality assurance.   But what if little or nothing appears to have been written about the teaching of or curriculum thinking in relation to a particular subject? Where does a subject leader go for inspiration? How do they know if their curriculum is any ‘good’ or how it could be improved? How might senior leaders attempt to quality assure that curriculum?  The answer is that the curriculum thinking must be done from scratch. Before any work can be started the parties involved need first to educate themselves in the underlying principles and concepts of curriculum theory. These generic principles then need to be tentatively applied to the subject. There is n...

Turn over a new leaf...

“What is interleaving?”  Answering this question is rather like answering the question, “what is healthy eating?” It’s complicated. Eat Your Greens Answering that eating vegetables is likely to be healthy would be correct in the eyes of most. Propelling the cabbage soup diet? Probably not. The core and important ‘vegetables are healthy’ message can become warped when taken to an extreme. The best answers to the question involve balance and sense, but there is no single answer and interpretations vary. And so it is when understanding interleaving. The core ‘mixing up topics is useful’ message of interleaving can unfortunately become seriously contorted beyond recognition and bereft of value when applied without careful thought. Only precise understanding and delicate application appear to deliver the benefits of this interesting, research-based and valuable strategy and thus these are what I encourage you to pursue. So, let me take you on a journey. Let’s explore ...