The science of learning: debunking the myths and misconceptions

Transcript 

KENDRA PARKER: 

Hello everyone, and welcome to this podcast, being recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to Elders past and present and acknowledge First Nations peoples as the first educators and learners on this land.

My name is Kendra Parker and I'm the Director of the Leadership Excellence Division here at the Victorian Academy of Teaching and Leadership. Today, I'm excited to be talking with Dr. Nathaniel Swain to discuss the science of learning through exploring some of the myths, misconceptions, and cynicism around this topic. This episode is perfect for school leaders, teachers, and any other education professionals interested in the science of learning.

Nathaniel is a teacher and instructional coach, author of Harnessing the Science of Learning, named as a 2025 most influential educator and founder at Think Forward Educators. He's well recognized as an expert in this area. And along with his many presentations and keynotes, he also delivers professional learning for us here at the Academy.

This is the first of a two-part podcast looking at the science of learning. Today, we will be looking into the evidence around the science of learning and a future episode on leading implementation in schools. But today, we'll be discussing the evidence and concepts behind the science of learning, but through the lens of exploring the myths and misconceptions that are circulating about the science of learning approach. So let's get started. Welcome, Nathaniel.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Thank you, Kendra. It's a real pleasure to be here.

KENDRA PARKER:

It's lovely to have you here and to have this conversation together and really love us to have a conversation here today and not just an interview.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Oh, it'd be great to have a nice chat as well.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, lovely. So the move to a science of learning approach to teaching and learning has been around for a few years now with some schools deep in this space and others of course are just beginning. I've heard you say yourself that the science of learning has a PR or an image issue. The thing I hear mostly focused on in the discourse amongst educators is the practice of explicit teaching and also a lot about the work in primary schools, particularly in Victoria, we're hearing.

I just wanted to explore that a little bit. You talk in your book as a definition of explicit teaching very broadly as any form of direct and clear modeling or explanation followed by targeted student practice guided or independent that build upon the initial modeling or explanation. How does that definition fit with what you hear people talking about out in the schools and on the shop floor as they say?

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Well, I think the PR issue is live and well and not necessarily a good thing for progressing this discussion. People think of explicit teaching or the science of learning and immediately picture a lecture or they picture the teacher standing up and sort of drilling the students all day every day. I think really, it's about setting up learning experiences so that it's really clear what students are needing to do and so that the students feel confident to learn new concepts, to learn new skills, but actually be given lots of responsibility. So that gradual release of responsibility is really, really important. Something we've been talking about for much longer than this conversation, but it definitely applies.

And the idea of that I do, we do, you do, that might happen in one cycle across a lesson or multiple cycles within a lesson or across a number of lessons. So really, people will say that explicit teaching is all these sort of nasty things, but actually, it's just great teaching at the end of the day, and that we don't actually teach in this same mode all the time. There's room for other kinds of modes that we're going to talk about today as well.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, great. And I really like that you've acknowledged that because, again, I think that's one of the misconceptions that we hear around is that it's just that explicit teaching is all that we do now where it's just a part of what we do in schools.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Exactly. And I think it's part of that whole suite of pedagogies that we have that allow us to meet the students' needs where they are. If we're teaching something new, we're probably going to be dealing with novice learners, in which case they need more guidance, more modeling, more direct explanation. But the whole point of working with novice learners is to move them toward intermediate as well as independent learners or experts if you like. And that's going to require stepping back as the teacher. So if you are standing at the front of the room the entire day, then you're not probably doing explicit teaching exactly right.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yep. That's great. I think it gets confused as well, there's so much different language around it. We have explicit teaching, explicit instruction, direct instruction, explicit direct instruction.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Yes, that's right. Lots of different ones.

KENDRA PARKER:

Lots of different ones.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

And there are slight differences between those and the histories behind them. I tend to say explicit instruction or explicit teaching, and certainly in Victorian context, explicit teaching has been the focus, but like you're saying, Kendra, it's not that explicit teaching is the only way that we're allowed to teach. It's that it's a powerful set of practices that are used at a certain time in the learning journey. And whatever you call, it should involve lots of active engagement, not a lot of teacher just talking at students, which I think is the stereotype where we're moving up against.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, I agree with that one as well. And it's no secret, I've spoken to Nathaniel in the past that this has been a challenge for me as someone who's been in the education sector for most of her life. So I've really found it interesting and I've really gone out of my way to learn more about it and to understand it better. And the more I learn, the more I understand the nuances that go along with this science of learning approach. And as you said, I really like Victoria's stance of abounding explicit teaching as part of a broader model.

The phrase, evidence informed is another one that comes up all the time when we talk about this work in this field. It's used a lot to referring to classroom practices aligned with the science of learning. I just want to raise the issue or address the issue that I hear about some defensiveness of some teachers, particularly those perhaps of my vintage who have been around for a while, and the implication that everything that we've done previously was not evidence informed and was perhaps poor quality teaching, et cetera. And just what do you think about when you hear that, or have you seen that reaction from some people?

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I certainly think maybe the way in which some messages are being put forward or the way that they're being interpreted as being pretty either or, or black and white, can throw up some of these questions and make people feel uncomfortable or rightfully have a sense of grief or loss or something like that. But I think really, if we are thinking that it's either or, or it's good or bad, we probably have missed some of the nuance of the conversation.

So I think teaching as a profession continues to evolve and continues to use different bodies of evidence and essentially put different emphasis on different things. You might say that, that's a move of the times or a way in which there's a wave of change in the instructional sort of space, but it doesn't mean that everything that came before this moment was not good. It's quite the opposite. I think many of these practices and ideas have always been there just at different points or in different emphases, and some messages I think have just resonated more with teachers at different times.

At the moment, everyone's talking about explicit teaching. It wasn't the case three years ago. It shouldn't be that explicit teaching is seen as the only thing that we should be talking about. In fact, some of the other big parts of the signs of learning are around student practice and around student retention and the importance of students regulating their own learning process. And I think those messages haven't made it to the forefront yet. So people might think, "Oh, well, this means that everything I've been doing is not quite right." Quite the opposite. Maybe what we're doing is tweaking one aspect of our pedagogy around how to do really clear, really easy to understand and follow initial instruction, but the student practice or the need to develop students' questioning or the desire to get students to ask their own questions, all of those things have been present in our practice for a long time and really should be seen as part of the toolkit.

KENDRA PARKER:

Great. I love that. Yeah. And acknowledging that we all come with some strengths in this field already.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

It's not all about one pedagogy there over the other. I think the more you know about some of the research and also matching that with your own classroom expertise and knowledge, the more you can then make better choices. I think the science of learning is not really one pedagogy or one thing. It's a body of knowledge we can use as teachers to make better decisions.

A lot of the time, our intuitions are pretty good, but sometimes our biases might get in the way and we might think the students are getting something when in fact they're just nodding along and saying, "Yep." So it's something like checking for understanding can really help whether you're teaching explicitly or more student led at that moment. When you do check for understanding through a sort of targeted question or task, you get a reality check saying, "Is it just polite nodding? Or is this true understanding?" And little things like that can make a huge difference, but it's not saying that one practice like that isn't compatible with a whole suite of other pedagogies as well.

KENDRA PARKER:

I know we often draw analogies to the medical field, and would you like doctors to still do what they did back then? And of course we wouldn't. I don't think we can always compare them, but I think-

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Not always directly comparable. No, I don't think so.

KENDRA PARKER:

No. The similarity I think though is that what you do at the time is the current evidence and the current research and the current practice. And as we learn more, that knowledge base that we're drawing from becomes bigger and more accurate, and that's what we're doing now. We have a lot more accurate information available to us about how students learn and how we can support that with excellent teaching.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I agree. And I think if we want to maintain and continue to grow our sense of professionalism and that we are continuing to improve our own shared or collective knowledge and expertise that we just need to be open. Something I like to say quite a bit is that the science of learning is not static. It's dynamic. It's constantly being updated. And as big ideas or insights come through, we have to be ready to re-evaluate. And that might mean that we're doing our best practice as we know it for now, but as more evidence emerges, different theories get further developed because of research that's going on, we just need to be ready to respond to that.

I think it's not just taking a study and implementing it, it's always about sifting through what's relevant and what's helpful and making sense of that with the kids that we have in front of us. But I'd see it as a constant sort of improvement or a constant evolution of our practice rather than anything else.

KENDRA PARKER:

It's that lifelong learning that teachers always talk about. And now, I think they've got more skills to practice that themselves, to be lifelong learners, to not just rest on their instincts or learn from others, but to actually take the time and the understanding to read the research for themselves and support their own learning and development and improving their practice.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I think so. And maybe something that will help us in the next phase. I'm not as long in the profession as some people and I haven't seen a lot of the-

KENDRA PARKER:

Not as long as me, is that what you meant?

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Well, I haven't seen as many of these pendulum swings if you like. I think the metaphor of the pendulum is so unhelpful. It makes it seem like we're constantly swinging back and forth when in fact, I think we're moving from different positions or moving through different challenges, but that we're never actually going back to something that we've done before.
When people say it's a back to basics approach, it really irks me because we're not talking about back to basics, we're talking about getting the foundations right and we're not returning to some heyday where teachers knew how to teach and students knew how to ... That's not what we're talking about here. So I think it's always a constant process of us being open to having a dialogue. And if we have really deep-seated beliefs, making sure that we do check those beliefs and sort of think, "Well, where does that come from? What knowledge, what expertise, what experience do I use to inform that belief?"

And if that belief starts to rub up against something really profound from the research, that's actually us telling us to lean in rather than to push back, and really try and understand it. As you've been doing Kendra, I think in these big conversations and big thought processes that many of the teachers like yourself have been doing and school leaders have been doing as well.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah. Yeah, I think everybody's really leaning and then learning as much as they can, which is terrific. You're sort of moving me onto the next misconception or myth that I wanted to raise with you and that is the one around autonomy and professionalism and that this sort of an approach de-professionalizes what teachers do.

When I think about some of the schools that I've seen, the routines with their explicit instruction and the kids sitting in rows, PowerPoints, scripted lessons, I can see where that point of view stems from. Can you talk a bit to us about that?

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

So look, the seating arrangements, the use of materials like PowerPoints or sort of lessons that have a strong focus, whether it's scripted or just really structured, all of these are not the be-all and end-all of these practices. They're basically tools or methodologies for helping schools or teachers to embed these practices. We could say to the teachers, you have to create everything that you're doing completely new, completely new pedagogy from start, from scratch, and you have to start with a blank piece of paper.

I think it would be somewhat overwhelming to be given that level of autonomy or that level of responsibility. And also, as the Victorian government has been sort of talking about in the last few years, probably too much burden on the workload of teachers. So with the sharing of high quality materials as a starting point or as a thought-provoking sort of example or exemplar, I think teachers can see that as something that can help them get closer to practices that will eventually make their teaching more effective, but also make their lives a lot easier.

I always like to say that initially, when you're learning something new, it always feels awkward and it always feels like you don't know what you're doing, because that's what new learning involves. Being back in the novice seat in terms of a new pedagogy can be quite confronting if you're an experienced teacher or if you've gotten into your groove and now someone's sort of shaking it all up. But if there's good rationales for those changes, then essentially we shouldn't see it as an affront to autonomy, but instead being an opportunity to reflect on our practice and continually improve.

I think as a profession, we should have a level of choice and, obviously, a level of flair and that every teacher needs to make these practices their own. If that means that eventually you grow out of the script and you don't need the structured lesson because you know what to do, that's exactly what we need to do. And I certainly don't take the position that you need a scripted lesson to be able to get to these practices, it's just that in certain approaches or certain programs that some schools might use, the script is the starting point to make hopefully the job easier, hopefully not harder, but hopefully easier.

Look, I think we're at a position now where teachers will probably feel a bit confronted by some of the practices that are brought in because they are higher expectations and they are high levels of structure, but that's not the end point. I think that's really the starting point and that depending on what school leaders and school teachers elect to do, you don't have to follow that same path to get to the same end point. Where I would love us to get to is that other professions where some of these things just become our bread and butter, we then are able to get to the outcomes that we're wanting in terms of student engagement, student achievement, a sense of success of teachers having all the knowledge in their toolkit ready to make those intuitive and on the fly decisions. I'd love us to get there. But when we're teaching almost something completely new because this pedagogy is quite unfamiliar or we haven't had to teach in this way before, I don't know if we can avoid that awkwardness stage. What do you think about the autonomy question based on what I've said there, Kendra?

KENDRA PARKER:

Well, it brings up some memories for me. When I was doing classroom teaching, I worked at a school in Victoria where I would say we very much had explicit instruction and we taught phonics and we had lots of routines, and that school is one of the highest performing schools in Victoria. I wouldn't have labeled it the science of learning at the time or explicit instruction. We'd certainly didn't sit in rows, we didn't have PowerPoints, but every teacher had certain routines that we did in the classrooms and they were known.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Shared.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah. Every morning at 8:45, the classroom doors were open, the kids came in, put their books away, sat and read silently. At 9:00, teaching began on the dot. So it was a routine that the kids knew and the parents knew. 9:00, parents walked out, kids started learning.

So I look back now and think, "You know what? That was really successful, really great high quality teaching," but I never thought of it in terms of the pedagogy. And I was a much younger teacher as well, but now I look back and go, "You know what, that's what worked in that school and still works in that school."

So I agree with you, I think that it's important to have that autonomy in your classroom, but to understand the importance of the routines, and I think it's important for teachers to see themselves as professionals, and this is what professionals do. They continuously reflect on their practice and improve whatever field you're in. That's how you keep progressing.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Look, I think some teachers, you could make the argument that I just don't want to start at 9:00, I want to start at 9:05, or I want to start when I want to start. But there are some things that as a school, if you can agree on important routines, not everything is routinized or not everything is sort timetabled in that way. But if certain things are timetabled or predictable, it does create a lot of structure and it creates a lot of safety for certain students and the bulk of students who actually really appreciate that predictability.

At the end of the day, I think we are serving the kids. And if the research shows that more predictability, more structure does support more children to feel successful and to have an easy transition from one teacher or one class or one subject to the next, then I think that's worth sacrificing a little bit of free for all for their benefit. But that doesn't mean that there's not the opportunities throughout the day or throughout the week where you can actually, "Oh, I'm going to schedule this thing in right here, because this is where it makes sense to me." But as a school, I think we all need to work together with our colleagues to say, "What do we really value? What things should be tight and which things should be more loose?" And I think if we're clear about that, then there is space for autonomy, but there's also space for shared professionalism and shared expectations.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, yeah. And we used to just talk about safe and orderly environment, which is exactly the same.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Same thing, isn't it?

KENDRA PARKER:

It's routines that kids know and feel safe and the importance of not having to, "Oh, now, I'm in Mr. Swain's room and I've got to at least sway-"

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Completely different rules.

KENDRA PARKER:

"... to what I do in Ms. Parker's room, et cetera." So, yeah, I'm all for that sort of consistency.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:
Make it easy for the students, maybe slightly harder to begin with for the teachers. But then if it becomes a routine, it's easy for the teachers as well. And it means that no matter which class you step into, you're not going to get, "Well, that's not the way that Ms. Parker does it." Right?

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, that's right.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Which is a constant thing if you're jumping into the classroom as a middle leader. I always was being told off about the way that I did things because it was slightly different to that particular teacher.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah. And the kids always liked the particular teacher had the less routines.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Yes, we like it like this.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yes.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Ideally, we keep the focus on the learning and kids' engagement, the kids' sort of sense of purpose as well, rather than arbitrary differences.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah. And yet, really leading me onto the next big idea that I wanted to talk to you about today was this idea that there's no room for student voice or agency in the classroom. And also the ability to differentiate comes up a lot in that sort of space as well.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

It does.

KENDRA PARKER:

How do I treat kids as individuals? I used to say to parents, happy kids learn. And when you learn, you feel happy as well, because you're being successful. And often parents would say, "Oh, I just want my child to be happy, this concept of being happy at school and ..."

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

And happy right now, isn't it?

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, happy right now. I used to say, "Well, they might be happy right now in grade five or six that, that's important to you, but they might not be happy when the 18, 19, 20, can't get a job, can't get an apprenticeship, get into university because they're missing some of the skills." So it's that longer term thinking. But anyway, I'm sort of digressing, but yeah. So the point around student agency and voice particularly, what do you say when people bring that up with you?

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Well, I talk about this in the leading instructional excellence course with the principals from around Victoria, and I've been really privileged to be able to do that with the Academy this year and continuing next year. Essentially, by the time we get to the end of the course, there's not a lot of disagreement around the question of, yes, we believe that there should be room for agency, room for voice and choice, but that it doesn't mean it's a free for all. And it doesn't mean that students get to determine that they can opt out of parts of the curriculum.

I think we have to always keep our eyes on the prize of what are we trying to achieve and where can students meaningfully make what I like to say is an informed choice. So not just, I don't want to learn maths, so I'm not going to, and I've heard, I know this sounds shocking, but I've heard of some schools in and around the traps. I'm not going to name which state or jurisdiction where students are given the option to opt out of mathematics because it's seen as too hard and you don't want to stress them out so they can just read a book instead and they won't do maths this year.

That's not a choice that you want to give to students. Maybe it's very hard to learn maths for them. Maybe they need some specific support, but I think giving them the choice to completely opt out is actually taking away choice later, which is what you've been foreshadowing with your example before. If you can't do basic arithmetic, that's always going to be something that limits your choices later. So I think we can achieve agency for students and give them meaningful ways to give voice.

I think things like student representative councils, things like using student feedback in a meaningful way and incorporating choice of things that really matter to them can be powerful, but being really intentional about what we're going to have really high expectations and that we're going to help students meet those expectations. And that means that, initially, there might not be a choice about every single thing.

Sometimes I think people take agency literally and think they have to be deciding exactly what they want to learn, and I've heard of it. Here's another extreme example. In the UK, school that took that approach and said they're going to determine everything that they learn. Kids with privilege often make better choices. They often have more knowledge to use to choose something. So when they've been asked what they want to learn about, they say, "Oh, we want to learn about the Romans and the ruins that are around the corner in some part of England that this example is from."

Then they ask the disadvantaged kid in the same class, "What would you like to learn about for the next two weeks?" And they're looking around for something in the room like, "What can I look at?" And they see dust in the corner and they say dust. And in this example, this is a really example, they did a two-week unit on dust, because that's what the student said, and that's not a great choice. It's not the student's fault that they didn't have the kinds of parents that were sort of priming them with great things to suggest or great ideas to put forward.

Essentially, our role as educators is to give everyone a level playing field, which might mean initially we're all going to work towards the same goals or to have those high expectations. And then, boy, you're going to have a lot of choice and a lot of things to use to have an informed decision around what you might want to do, whether it's subject choices or the way in which the school interacts with the parent body and so on. I think there's really meaningful choices that can come, but it's not a free for all.

KENDRA PARKER:

Love the way you've explained that, not a free for all. We talk about being open=minded as a skill of leaders or a capability of leaders in the disposition, but it doesn't mean that you have to take everybody's opinion as truth. It's about picking out an understanding and that sometimes you have to acknowledge that some people are experts and their opinion does weigh up more. And as a teacher in the classroom, you are the expert.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Yeah. And especially the initial stage of teaching, you're going to take that role of I'm going to share some important information, some really clear skills or knowledge that I want to impart to you, and then you'll be able to go straight into these fantastic projects or self-directed learning as well. There's room for all of that as long as that initial work has happened.

KENDRA PARKER:

And once again, a beautiful segue.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Not deliberate.

KENDRA PARKER:

Not likely. I think we'd planned this, because I was very much in the early 2000s talking about 21st century learning skills and the skills of the future and the workforce, et cetera, which I think is funny. Now, we're a quarter of the way into it and we still talk about it.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Still talk about it. Yeah.

KENDRA PARKER:

But in those days, it was all the Cs, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, communications. There was a lot about skills, and we hear in the science of learning approaches and what schools are happening now about knowledge rich curriculum. Just want to talk to our audience a little bit about that knowledge rich curriculum and the idea of what that is.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

So I see the goals of those say four or five Cs or however many you sort of choose, so your creativity, critical thinking and so on. I see those as not incompatible with the things I'm about to talk about, but that one is almost like a precursor to the other.

I think when we're thinking about 21st century skills, we have to remember that these skills aren't domain in general, so you can't actually be creative or critical about anything. You can be creative and critical about the things that you have knowledge of. And I think that piece has probably been missing from the conversation and probably wasn't. It didn't actually gel or didn't click in the way that teachers were operationalizing some of these principles. That might be because there was literal statements in some of these documents from the OECD and from other big sort of education bodies that knowledge wasn't important anymore, that you can Google it. Now, you can use AI to generate it.

And before that, even in the days of Aristotle, he was worried about literacy because literacy was a way of bypassing the need to learn things and remember them, because you could look at them up in a book. I know that's ridiculous now thinking two and a half thousand years later, but the same principle applies.

If we don't have anything in the tank, so to speak, we can't use it as raw material to do the mental work, which defines creatively collaboration and critical thinking. So I think the reason why people might be starting to talk about knowledge rich curriculum, and that's a term that's starting to be bandied about a little bit in Victoria and other parts of Australia, is because we want students to learn rich content knowledge about the world, about themselves from things like history, geography, science, and the arts. And that knowledge is actually critical for critical thinking and for creativity and collaboration.

And I think the way that we win the argument, if you like, the traditional knowledge versus skills argument that has been also talked about for the last 25 years, the way you sort of round it out is to say, "Well, you can't have one without the other." And that the knowledge is the thing that you can reliably develop, and the creativity and critical thinking needs to be given time and space to emerge and given rich tasks in order to do those things, but you need to have raw materials to sort of do it.

I did a presentation recently in Tasmania for the Teaching Matters Conference, and it was on creativity, which was great to talk about because it allowed me to go right into the literature and see the connections between say the cognitive science and the work of people like Sir Ken Robinson who was saying that schools kill creativity and we need to watch out for that.

And I made the argument that I don't think that thesis necessarily carried through because rather than killing creativity, maybe schools don't give adequate attention to how we've been doing things, giving students the knowledge they need to be successful, and then giving students the time and the opportunity to try and fail and iterate in order for that critical output or creative sort of output to emerge.

I don't know if we've got time for this, but distinction between two parts of thinking that allows for creativity emerges is called one's called focus thought. This is where you're taking in information and really learning something from a teacher and bringing it all together from reading or interacting. And there's another form of creativity, which is diffused thought, and diffused thought happens when you're not thinking about it directly, so everyone gets their best ideas in the shower or on the train as you said before, or when you're sort of not deliberately thinking about something.

What's interesting about diffused thought is that you can't look anything up when you're doing diffused thought. The reason why you get ideas in the shower is because you're not looking at anything. You're not reading something. You're not trying to think. So if we ignore knowledge and if we don't have a focus on that as our learning that we're trying to develop with students in all those subjects, then creativity create critical thinking won't actually be able to happen because a lot of those new connections and the best ideas that we have actually occur when our brain is mulling over what we already know. So I think that, for me, that just rounds out the whole debate. It's like, "Well, we have to know things in order to-"

KENDRA PARKER:

Be critical.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Be critical or be creative. And because a lot of that stuff happens in the inner workings of the mind and not in a sitting down and listening or focusing or trying to solve a problem. Sometimes we have to step away from a problem to really solve it.

KENDRA PARKER:

I think that's how I definitely see the idea of knowledge-rich curriculum. I think back again to my teacher days and to my principalship days where we did units of work, but it was always the first part of that unit was sharing the knowledge, building the knowledge before we moved into those steps. And I've heard that spoken about in regions here in Victoria as well that we're not throwing it all out. It's inquiry based learning or whatever, and putting all those skills into one heading like that. It's just that, that's not the starting point anymore. Would you agree with that sort of very short summation?

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I would with a slight caveat in that I think it's actually, it's still okay at the start of one of those units to plant a seed or to ask a provoking question or build a sense of curiosity. It's just that you don't want to spend a whole lot of time getting students to wonder about something they don't know much about. So I would say have a little bit of wondering or a little bit of, "Oh, I wonder what that is." Or sharing a phenomenon or showing something in science or in history or geography, but then actually spending some significant time building that sense of understanding or that building that knowledge around the topic that you're looking into.

And then I've seen as well, Kendra, in schools around the state and the country where students do amazing things after they've been given that initial introduction and that what happens next is really important and shouldn't be thrown out, definitely not, but also should be given that proper attention. So sometimes it's called mode A instruction is your explicit teaching or your knowledge building and your mode B instruction, as Tom Sherrington would talk about, is your creativity, your project-based, your student voice, student choice sort of opportunity, the chance to go further than what the teacher has said based on what the students are interested in.

And I think both of these things are compatible. As you said, it's all about timing, it's about purpose, and it's about proportion as well. How much of each one makes sense based on how the students are getting to know this field of study?

KENDRA PARKER:

And even those skills in themselves need to be scaffolded and learnt and taught.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Oh, definitely.

KENDRA PARKER:

They also have to be part of your explicit teaching.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I think that's where we probably get a bit muddled is some people think, "Well, I do, do explicit teaching. I teach them how to inquire." But I think it's a bit of both. It's teaching them how to inquire or how to do a research project or how to create a film or engage in a debate or a discussion. So not just the how knowledge, but also the what. So we actually still need to teach them content, and it can't all be picked up mainly because of that distinction we've been talking about between novices and experts.

Novice learners won't see the same things that expert learners will see, but once students start to have a body of knowledge, those investigations, those inquiries, those excursions, all those cool things that you can do with students, they will mean more because they already know something about that topic and can attach that new learning to something. It's all to do with schemas and the things that Piaget and someone called David Ogilvie used to talk about with meaningful learning theory. The biggest predictor of what students will learn next is what they already know.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, it's making that connections.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Exactly. We're meaning making creatures and students will do that. And in the way that you had successful units in your principalship and in your teaching practice, it's because students were attaching meaning to these fantastic experiences, which all built and accumulated across the whole unit.

KENDRA PARKER:

I think we called it scaffolding learning. You don't hear that as much now. We hear a lot more about being systematic so to speak.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Right. Yeah.

KENDRA PARKER:

We hear less about scaffolding, but I think it's something if we ... Linking back to cynicism, people go, "Oh, but we've always scaffolded learning." And I think that's it that we're still talking about that. It's how we're building that unit, but just two things we're doing, we're building knowledge and we're building skill.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I think if we can do both really well, then you get the best of both worlds there. And I think scaffolding probably should be talked about, but not necessarily as synonymous with explicit instruction because scaffolding is a part of that sort of process, but it's something that you do in order to make the learning more possible, that sort of Vygotsky definition of giving ... And Bruner. So giving them something that they allows them to solve a problem or see a connection or understand a topic that they wouldn't be able to do otherwise. But the whole point of scaffolding is to then take it away so that you've built something underneath.

So I think there's new books and things that have come out on scaffolding that aligns beautifully. There's a group called InnerDrive in the UK that have released a whole book on scaffolding that's just come out, which will be great to look at because I think it will connect the old and the original sort of views of scaffolding with some of these new applications. So it might be something that's worthwhile bringing to the surface.

If you are telling me people aren't talking about scaffolding, then we probably should change that, but then clarifying what's explicit teaching, what's initial instruction, then what's feedback, what's scaffolding. These all have slightly different nuances or variations that I think we can all just dive into and really have a good dialogue and debate about, because when you see it in practice, you might not call it the same thing, but we know good teaching when we see it.

KENDRA PARKER:

Good teaching is good teaching. And I did my teacher training in the era of phonics. I remember writing flashcards as part of my preparation to be a classroom teacher, and I've always held that with me, but yeah, good teaching is good teaching and there is specific things that you do to be a good teacher, and it's not about being the most popular teacher.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Yeah, exactly.

KENDRA PARKER:

I heard you talk in a podcast where you talked about culture building moments, and I just love that because people have this thinking at the moment that I can't be myself with my classroom.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Well, I think that links to the autonomy question, does it? I guess if you're feeling overwhelmed or if you're feeling like you're having to teach in a way that doesn't make sense to you or that you're not comfortable with, there's two things that might be going on there. One thing is that you could be just very new to it and therefore just overwhelmed by how much new things you have to think about. And that's how all novice learners, and as teachers, we are continual lifelong learners as we've been saying.

We need to sort of work through that to become more comfortable, to become more familiar, and then we'll be able to make better choices and say, "Oh, you know what? I've seen how this program works. I've done it for this six month period, now I know which parts I'm actually going to really emphasize and which parts I can sort of, actually, my students don't need as much on that."

So I think that's the first part, but the other point there is that sometimes we think that we have to just be doing the same kind of instruction or the same kind of work all the time, and there's no time to do, like you said, those culture building moments. I think if that's the case, we need to be more careful with our time, because those moments are really important and that they shouldn't be overshadowed by the need to just deliver content or the need to deliver skills.

I know in secondary contexts, it's always a sense of we're teachers of content and we just need to get through the curriculum, and if I haven't taught it, then I have done it to service. But if we're rushing through all that content and cramming out those opportunities to have that sort of sense of culture and sense of community in our classroom, that we're not going to be doing either of those things very well, because students will not engage if they don't feel part of a community, if they don't feel like they belong.

Another great course at the Academy is the one around school pride and school connection and belonging that Amy Porter and Adam Hogan have been facilitating as principals in residence. And I think this is that third part of the puzzle. It's not just about curriculum, not just about instruction or well-being. It's about how that all comes together with that sense of purpose of what are we doing here together?

You could educate students individually if you had all the money in the world, but even if we had all the money to do that, I don't think we would want to because you'd miss that sense of community, that sense of connection and that rare thing that you have as a teacher, that glorious thing that we all get the opportunity to do. And we've got our own class to build a culture, to build a sense of community in our classroom and our school. So definitely build those moments in. And if you feel like you're time poor, there's a reason to become a little bit more efficient with some of your explicit teaching, just don't drag it out. Make sure it's efficient so that you've got time for those 15 or 20 minute or 30 minute discussions and share moments and extra time to do fun things, because it's not either or.

KENDRA PARKER:

That's right, and learning is fun.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

It should be, exactly. If it's not fun, then it's probably something is not quite working. It shouldn't be at the expense of fun, but I also like to say, we shouldn't be doing fun despite the learning. We should be doing fun in service of the learning. And I think it's easy to do when you feel confident and when you feel like you understand where you're coming from.
I think we're in an age now where teachers might be feeling like they don't quite see how it's meant to be fun, and they don't quite get how it could work, and they therefore might be feeling quite rightfully uncomfortable. But I think if you're feeling like that flag to who you're working with, flag to your colleagues that you want to learn from them or you want to see how it's working for them. Because as social creatures, we actually learn best from seeing models from explanations, from someone helping us out. And that I think these pedagogies are not incompatible with fun, but might initially feel like a bit full on, in which case it doesn't feel like there's enough fun because the teacher's not having a great time. So the two things can be conflated, but I think it's all a progression that we can work through together and lean into it. Don't push away from it.

KENDRA PARKER:

And it comes back to that theory with adult learning where you're unconsciously skilled at something, so you keep doing it without thinking about it, but then you learn about something new such as explicit instruction, and you think that's different for me, so you suddenly become consciously unskilled. That's the uncomfortable space. And I think teachers, we're not really great at being in that uncomfortable space.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

It doesn't feel good. No.

KENDRA PARKER:

But we have to learn to embrace that so that we can keep improving our practice as well.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

And having those shared understandings, which I think the VTLM 2.0 that the Victorian government has released in the Victorian context, I think is helpful, because it gives a framework and it gives language to some of the things, and whether you call it explicit instruction or whether you call it great teaching, if we have some good language that's shared, we can then have better understanding about what we're doing and where we want to go next. So I agree, it's really important that we don't just pull away from something because it's now making us feel consciously unskilled that we can work through that to become consciously skilled, which is what we want to be.

KENDRA PARKER:

Unconsciously skilled.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

And unconsciously skilled, because we've automatized it.

KENDRA PARKER:

That's right, we move on to it.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

But it takes a while to get there sometimes.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah. But we're also supporting our students to get there by offering them these routines so that they can focus on what they need to focus on and not how to behave in that classroom compared to that classroom.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I think so. And on that differentiation piece, because we didn't touch on it before just really quickly, I think sometimes with the science of learning, people think that, "Oh, this means it has to be everyone is doing exactly the same thing all the time."

And while I do value the importance of whole-class teaching as a starting point, because we don't necessarily want to break up our hour into five different parts and have only a fifth of the time we're working with students. I think there's a strong reason to bring them together initially. That doesn't mean that, that's the end. So the initial whole-class instruction is the starting point, and that there's opportunities for more follow up for those who need it, more challenges for those who need it, as well as something that I think we can all get to eventually is building in different gradients of challenge into every question or every task.

So yes, some students might do question one and two, and that's where they're at, but some questions might do three and four and others will make their own questions and then answer those. So I think if people are not familiar with that idea of adaptive teaching, the idea of increasing challenge, I'd be more than happy to talk more about it, because I can't get that message out far enough. One of the biggest things that people take away from the instructional excellence course is, "Oh, that mild, medium, spicy idea of different levels of challenge is so helpful, because I've been dealing with lots of questions about how do we cater for different needs." And I think we can do it, we just have to think about it differently.

KENDRA PARKER:

Well, we just about come to the end of our time together, but Nathaniel, it has been lovely, and I do feel like it's just been a bit of a conversation and not too formal, but really, really interesting. I tried to raise some of the misconceptions and address some of those throughout this podcast around the ideas of explicit instruction or explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, autonomy and professionalism, and student voice and agency, 21st century skills. So hopefully, maybe we've gone some way today to helping build the image in the PR lens for the science of learning and helping people understand a bit more about it.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

I don't want to ever give the impression that there's a definitive answer to every question. If people are feeling like their discussion points or questions haven't been answered, think of this as a start of a conversation. If that's you, reach out and get in contact, because I'd love to hear those questions and those points of difficulty in people's practice, and also points of confusion or discontent as well.

I think if we're not open to have these conversations, if people feel like they're being shut down, that's also not great for our profession and for people's sense of professionalism. So, yeah, I hope this has been a good conversation starter as well as might've answered some questions as well for some people.

KENDRA PARKER:

Yeah, just raise some of the issues. And I think really important, if you do want to raise those questions, Nathaniel is doing some programs here at the Academy that you can get involved in, but do make sure you have that bit of research behind you and have your own knowledge when you come to those programs and think really deeply and reflect on your practice and what aligns for you. The one thing I wanted to end on is that there's no teacher that goes into school every day and says, "I want to make it a really bad day for kids, and I don't want them to learn."

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Definitely not.

KENDRA PARKER:

And I think we always talk about when you're having challenging conversations, the importance of starting with common ground. And the common ground is that every educator who were listening to this has the deep moral purpose of improving outcomes for kids across our state and wherever you might be listening from. And I don't think we should ever forget that, because nobody's taking that away. Nobody's been a bad teacher deliberately or even been a bad teacher, I should say, not even just deliberately.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Well, it's just the of good and bad doesn't really make sense.

KENDRA PARKER:

It doesn't matter. Yeah, that's right. So really think deeply, as I said about reflect on your practices and let's celebrate the intention of teachers is all the same across the world, and that is to improve the lives of students.

So thanks, Nathaniel. As I said, I've really enjoyed this today. I'll look forward to our next episode where we're actually going to dive a bit more into that. You talked about the program leading instructional excellence here at the Academy, but really thinking a bit more about using the Academy's leadership excellence framework. How do you as a leader implement this work in your school, particularly when you're hearing about these misconceptions or some of this pushback that you might be getting. So how do we deal with that? So I look forward to having that conversation with you in the near future.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

So do I, it'll be great.

KENDRA PARKER:

I hope you've enjoyed this podcast episode. Don't forget, you can stay up to date by subscribing to Academy Podcasts and following the Academy on social media. Thanks for listening.

NATHANIEL SWAIN:

Thanks everyone.