Category: Education

Policy and pedagogy, curriculum and change – everything and anything to do with general education.

  • The Science of Learning verses The Art of Teaching

    The Science of Learning verses The Art of Teaching

    In the early 2020’s there became a real shift in New Zealand Education. Evidence Based Practice. The Science of anything. Every teacher was getting this thrown down their throats in a force-fed effort by every PLD provider in the country.

    It’s okay. Catch-phrases are fairly common to teachers.

    One large piece of popularised evidence was that of the Science of Reading. In it, researchers looked at how we learn to read. They identified core elements of reading that young children need to become good readers.

    How do children learn to read?

    As a fully trained teacher, I won’t even pretend to tell you that I know how children learn to read. I wouldn’t have a clue.
    I can show you methods and ways in which I encourage reading in my class.
    There are strategies to help students improve their comprehension and understanding of what they have read.
    I have a range of supports for students when they get to a word they don’t know how to read.
    But as for answering ‘How do we learn to read?’, I don’t know if I would even know where to start.

    I think this is why the Science of Reading took off so fast. Many teachers have no idea on how we learn to read. We are led to believe that knowing how we read helps us identify how to teach children to become better readers. Sounding credible and academic helps. Putting “The Science of” in-front of anything will do that. “The Science of Cupcakes” will sound far more academic and evidence-based than “Grans Cupcake Recipe”. However, we all know which one we would rather have!

    The Science of Learning sought to deepen our understanding of how the brain learns. It explores how to maximise memory, instant recall and long term cognition. We identify methods of teaching that enhances and “hacks” the way the brain learns best. Intertwined with things like Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), Scope and Sequence, and Working Memory, it provides a scientific basis for many things we generally take for granted.

    Putting “The Science of” in-front of anything will do that. “The Science of Cupcakes” will sound far more academic and evidence-based than “Grans Cupcake Recipe” – even though we all know which one we would rather have.

    Shift

    It has been a long time since such a shift in pedagogy has occurred. Certainly not since Tomorrow’s Schools in the late 1980’s. Teachers have observed students struggling with their reading for years. They implement a vast array of strategies and teaching approaches to address the decline.

    Along comes Structured Literacy, backed by the Science of Reading and supported hand in hand with the Science of Learning, and find themselves in the middle of a storm of teachers looking for answers. I’m not going to suggest that it was just happenstance. I believe early adopters saw positive results in the first instance. This placed confidence in the approach, allowing them to encourage others to adopt it and the word spread.

    Not Convinced

    I am naturally skeptical. It does make me mildly negative to be around at times. I question. I don’t just accept things at face value.

    Change is hard. I’ll admit. I don’t enjoy change.

    I’m not one to just keep doing the same thing and expect different results. Because of this, I try to keep my practice up to date with the latest insights and research. I’m often either the one giving new approaches a try, or being an early adopter with others.

    It is difficult to keep up with the latest insights and research. Especially when there is such an overwhelming amount of it. It feels like its changing for popularity sake – a fad. A trend rather than anything pedagogically sound. It is also very difficult when you see first hand the cons before you see any pros.

    Science of Reading, the Science of Learning, and the Science of everything else does not convince me. There are several reasons that it leaves me skeptical. Some may appear trivial to you, but no one said reservations had to be well founded.

    The Science of…

    The Science of Reading, Learning, Writing… what next – the Science of Science? There are at least two reasons why Science in general does not impress me:

    1. Society regularly juxtapose Science against my faith. Creation vs. Big Bang Theory is a decades old fight. ‘Evolution’ as a theory factors in our curriculum which I am never likely to teach due to my beliefs. The secular world sees ‘Science’ as the truth, or the pursuit of truth; seeking to understand that which we don’t yet understand. For me, the pursuit of truth is found only in Christ. My belief leads me to know that we won’t understand everything. It is only faith that allows us to bridge that gap between what we understand and what we can’t comprehend.
    2. Science and Art often appear on opposite sides of the curriculum. The main basis for this is that we use different hemispheres of the brain when dealing with them. Science based on facts, figures, experiments, data and logic. Art based on creativity, imagination, visual representations, emotions and ideas. My mind as a creative prefers to use the opposite side of the brain to what Science requires.

    Needless to say, chucking ‘The Science of…’ in front of everything doesn’t impact me the same way in which it does others. If anything it probably has the opposite affect. It allows me to question, where others feel like they just have to accept it, because they’ve been lead to believe Science is truth.

    The Art of…

    Guy Claxton, who we read more from later on in this article, puts it as such:
    “Another part of the problem is the gullibility of educators in the face of authoritative claims to scientific warrant by a small posse of overconfident, and in some cases ideologically-driven academics and consultants. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.”

    One of my biggest issues goes back to an anciently old adage that is still strong in education. It is, and always has been ‘The Art of Teaching’. Yet here we are, in the mid 2020’s, and we are being told that it is the Science of Learning. And maybe that’s where the two opposites meet. However, the way in which the Science of Learning then suggests how we are to teach in order to allow students to learn in the most effective ways, it is fast assuming that it has to be the Science of Teaching as well.

    Explicit Teaching: How We Teach Matters

    The Science of Learning says that the most effective way to teach is by explicitly teaching information and concepts. This has been widely adopted throughout education in this country and is the single biggest shift in how I teach. Explicit Instruction flips the script teachers have used for decades.

    An example of this would be when learning about Dolphins. In the past, I would have asked the class “Okay class – what do we know about dolphins?”. Of course, my ideal class would all put up their hands and wait their turn, but in reality, the answers come thick and fast with various students calling out louder than others. “They’re fish!”, or “They have flippers”.

    Example

    Explicit teaching doesn’t ask the question. It states the facts and then checks for understanding. Now, using an Explicit Teaching approach I would say “Okay class – Dolphins are fish and the have flippers.” – teaching the content that students need to know. Checking for understanding would then have me asking “What are dolphins?” and “What is something that they have?”
    We flip the script. The explicit teaching of a concepts happens first, and then the students can answer.

    To some extent this makes sense. If we were approaching a topic the students knew nothing about, asking them to tell me what they know about it is pointless. Getting them to guess answers isn’t the way we learn best. “I don’t know”, even if muttered internally, is a sure fire way to get a brain to shut down to new learning.

    However. I’m not sold.
    The good thing is I’m not the only one with reservations.

    The way in which the Science of Learning then suggests how we are to teach in order to allow students to learn in the most effective ways, it is fast assuming that it has to be the Science of Teaching as well.

    Simplistic Views on Complex Reality

    Guy Claxton is a UK based cognitive scientist who has a wide range of experience at a number of prestigious institutions in the United Kingdom.

    On his blog he has written about the Science of Learning and the Practice of Teaching. In it, he outlines shortcomings, misunderstandings, and areas of contention with the Science of Learning.

    One of his early points centres around the limitations of the research into the Science of Learning. The main issue is the limits on purpose or outcomes. He says that if you focus on superficial tests of understanding (i.e. “A dolphin has flippers – what does a dolphin have?”) then explicit teaching has positive outcomes. However, explicit teaching does not foster curiosity, independence, imagination, which are also incredibly important in developing functioning individuals and learners.

    It follows that there is no such thing as ‘good teaching’, only teaching that is good for certain purposes or outcomes. For example, if all you are concerned about is scores on relatively superficial tests of understanding , then there is a good deal of research that shows that explicit or didactic teaching – that which maximises Explanation (by teachers) and minimises opportunities for Exploration (by students) on the grounds of ‘efficiency’ – is perfectly good.

    If, however, you also value (note: in addition to, not instead of, ‘knowledge’) the cultivation of character strengths such as curiosity, independence, imagination, critique, collaboration or intellectual humility, then different kinds of teaching are needed. Indeed, relentless ‘explicit teaching’ may well stunt the development of such valuable strengths.

    One size fits no one.

    Claxton takes umbrage at the promotion of explicit teaching across all areas of teaching. Promoting the good version of explicit teaching and pitting it against the bad version of inquiry-based learning is bad faith.
    He says: “Any kind of teaching can be done ‘badly’. Explicit teaching can be dull and disengaging, just as inquiry-based teaching can be unfocused or pitched inappropriately. It is intellectually lazy to promote a ‘good’ version of one by attacking a ‘weak’ or caricatured version of the other.”

    Claxton continues: “In reality, the craft of teaching mostly involves a judicious and dynamic mixture of both explanation and exploration, depending on a whole variety of factors… to which good teachers are sensitive and responsive… To try to enforce a single template is bad education and bad science.”

    Claxton raises a good point here. It tends to be a bad trait of teachers in that we are one-trick actors. The research tells us that explicit teaching is effective. It is sold to us as ‘best evidence practice’, so we assume that we need to apply it to each and every situation, . It’s not that we can’t teach using multiple methods throughout the day, but that we’ve been sold a lie; because this is how brains learn, then this is how we must teach to be effective.

    Cognitive Load Theory

    This is exacerbated when we learn that the research behind CLT derives from work on high school mathematics and science teaching. These subjects are not valid prototypes for other subjects on the curriculum nor indeed for the many wider forms of out-of-school learning.” The Science of Reading has it’s podium crumbing under it. It wasn’t even a subject that was researched under CLT and yet we find it being used to promote specific teaching methods in Reading at primary school level.

    Not only that, but it is made worse by the insights of this cognitive scientist who points out that things like Working Memory and Long Term Memory, of which CLT leans on, were “…formulated in the late 1960s and [are] long past [their] sell-by date (except apparently in dwindling bubbles of cognitive and educational psychology).”

    In teaching circles, some of us are familiar with ‘Learning Styles‘, which even though were debunked, still find their way into public perception of truth because that’s what they were taught, and they sound completely plausible.

    Complexity and Consistency

    Another contention Claxton has with the Science of Learning is that teaching is such a complex task, juggling so many variables and consistently making judgement calls, that to over-simplify that task by whittling things like CLT down to the reason why students might be struggling with a learning task, when in reality, there are an incredibly wide range of factors that could be impacting on that student.

    The primary aim of CLT is to explain why some students find learning some things hard, and to derive teacher actions from this explanation. There are a host of reasons why a child is apparently struggling with a particular learning task, that may reflect preoccupations with emotional matters in or out of school, lack of interest, the ‘work’ being too easy and boring, or its difficulty (for a particular class) being misjudged, the desire to appear rebellious to peers, and so on. To leap to narrow cognitive explanations without taking account of these and many other possible factors, is facile and often unhelpful.

    Simplifying Complexity

    Closer to home, we have Prof. Stuart McNaughton, Chief Education Science Adviser to the Ministry of Education for 10 years and Professor at Auckland University since 1976. Earlier this year he wrote about the mandate of Structured Literacy across the county and expressed concern in it’s implementation.

    “Unfortunately some of our recent policies and practices suffer from simplism by markedly simplifying the complexity of teaching, learning and education,”

    His article outlined the concern that “…years of experimental studies found focusing on decoding words in the first years of primary school could raise decoding levels “but has limited (if any) impact by itself on medium to long term comprehension.”

    Radio New Zealand, 11 July 2026: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/education/698992/education-professor-pans-simplistic-school-reforms

    “Clearly you need a form of structured literacy in place in order to teach some of the basics… What I’m worried about is focusing only on those relatively simple components, the phonics components, and ignoring or at least not supporting an emphasis on the more complicated things like the role of self-regulation in early reading and writing and maths, or, like in the case of reading, enjoying reading.”

    I wrote about this earlier this year after seeing first hand the de-motivation of a group of students due to the explicit teaching approach in Reading.

    Dismissal of this View

    The supporters of Structured Literacy and the Science of Reading in this country were quick to dismiss McNaughton’s opinion – none more so that Sir James Chapman. Chapman was made a knight this year upon Stanford’s suggestion for his work in Structured Literacy in this country. You can read his rebuttal here: https://www.liftingliteracyaotearoa.org.nz/blog/the-flimsy-case-against-structured-literacy-in-nz-schools

    What I’m worried about is focusing only on those relatively simple components, the phonics components, and ignoring or at least not supporting an emphasis on the more complicated things like the role of self-regulation in early reading and writing and maths, or, like in the case of reading, enjoying reading.”

    Any Actual Reasons?

    But what reasons do I actually have from my own experience that the Science of Learning, Science of Reading, or Structured Literacy aren’t all they’re cracked up to be?

    Well, there are a few.

    Less Motivated

    Firstly, as mentioned above, I’ve seen first hand students becoming less and less motivated to read due to teaching using a structured literacy and explicit teaching approach to it. As a society, we’re ‘already battling the decline in students reading less and less in their own time, as their access to more entertaining alternatives chew up the time that our predecessors would have used for reading.

    Increased Results? Not yet

    Secondly, so far, I have yet to see any significant improvement in any reading, writing, or mathematics results in the standard tests. Over the course of 15 years as a classroom teacher, I’ve got a pretty good idea as to where students sit within the curriculum, and what level they are at for Reading. In the 2 years I have been beginning to teach using explicit instruction and following Structured Literacy guidelines to the best of my knowledge and ability, I’ve yet to see a significant shift in academic results in Reading.

    Now, that’s not to say that it won’t happen. 2 years is more than likely too soon to make any statements regarding its effectiveness, and I am prepared to give it more time. But it begs the question – how long before we should start seeing significant improvements? 5 years of implementing and effective practice? 7 years? 10 years?
    I’m just not seeing the results that I’ve have been lead to believe I would get.
    Maybe I’m doing it wrong!

    Supporting Struggling Learners

    My other reasons focus more on holistic views of teaching. One is the ability to adequately support students where they are at in their learning. Explicit Instruction has lead teaching towards a whole class model, where all students participate in the same lesson learning the same content.

    Providing additional support in smaller break out groups can happen at an earlier, or later time, but the main focus of teaching has shifted to having the whole class participating in whole class lessons. The idea would be to then set the class up with independent follow up tasks while you, the teacher, pull out small groups of students who need support. But this feels too targeted, and too obvious for it to not be detrimental to a students’ psyche and how they see themselves as a learner if they’re always getting pulled out and never get to do the independent work everyone else is doing.

    Increased Planning Time

    Another factor is planning time. I have begun taking to creating slideshows for my Reading and Writing lessons. This is in an effort to work smarter and have resources for the future as I begin to cover similar curriculum content over the next few years. Slideshows not only help present the content to the students, but assist in driving the lesson and prompting me as the teacher what my lesson sequence is, instead of having to refer to a lesson plan all the time. The slideshow IS the lesson plan.

    But this does not negate the fact that this is time consuming and considerably impacts on my time. Creating and making two slideshows each week, ensuring that the content is right, the formatting and layout is effective, for two curriculum areas each week can take upwards of two hours.

    And yes; the introduction of AI tools could enhance the use of this time; but I have several reservations about using AI at all, and being the graphic designer I am, I not only find enjoyment in making slideshows and formatting them to be graphically pleasing, but I simply don’t trust that it can format it in a way that follows the template of how I want it to look.

    Beyond that however, making the slideshow myself locks it into my memory on an intrinsic level that allows me to present the slideshow with confidence, knowing what I had planned to come next and knowing what parts get revealed and when, as well as what information or task or instruction comes up next. If I left the slideshow creation up to AI, I would have to then work to learn the slideshow myself, which wouldn’t be as intrinsically memorable as creating it is.

    Conclusion

    The Science of Learning sounds legitimate. Evidence based. Science backed. Popular and has a large base of promoters that celebrate it’s success across every curriculum area.

    But learning is complex. More complex than the implementation methods of The Science of Learning (such as Explicit Teaching) take into account. There are a myriad of factors that impact students in what they find difficult, what they find easy, what they already know, and what they have no experience of. And these are just scraping the surface of the things students are dealing with in their learning.

    Teaching is an Art. It requires creativity, engagement of emotion, relationship, nuance.

    And we mustn’t lose that.

    Further Reading

  • Edu-research: A new approach to evidence-based practice

    Edu-research: A new approach to evidence-based practice

    This may be an unpopular opinion. Brace yourself.

    There is so much research into education that it has become, at minimum, problematic; at most, toxic. There are five C’s to explore why educational research is writing itself into irrelevance. Call it the “C’s of Evidence” if you’d like.

    Clocking-In

    Teachers are already time poor. I can’t remember the last time I got the chance to sit down and read anything work-related, more than scanning through to read the lesson outline or writing resource to implement in my class that week. Much less any educational white-paper that someone came up with with new evidence that I should now be implementing in my classroom.

    And yet that is what teacher’s are expected to do.
    Evidence-based Practice became the catchphrase of the 2020’s in education circles as teachers sought to justify themselves and their classroom decisions.
    But how many actually look at the actual evidence?
    And how much of the evidence is actually classroom tested?

    Time to read white-papers is one thing. But it’s a whole other thing to implement the findings into your own practice, and apply it across multiple curriculum areas, whilst remaining within school policy and expectation. The time that takes is greater than you might initially think, especially when considering overviews, planning, guides and resource creation. Doing this while continuing to teach a class on a daily basis can often be measured in years rather than months.

    This can be sped up of course if the research has already been synthesized for the classroom, a resource developed, and the overview written in a way that classroom teachers can pick it up and run with it. However, in many cases, what this leads to are teachers following the research second hand – trusting the resource in their implementation of the research, rather than ever reading the research and what it is based off themselves.

    Conditions

    Research is like a Science experiment. You have a series of variables that you are observing and trying to test, with constants to be able to judge the variables against, and some control conditions that allow for baseline results to be compared against. Research in education is conducted with a series of conditions, with the likes of control groups, limited sample sizes, and narrow focuses. There are many, many issues with the way in which education research is conducted. It’s not so much an issue just with education research, but any research in which humans are the test subject.

    Multi-factor Generalisations

    There are simply so many factors that can contribute to the make up of a person, what they do, why they do it, and what we can learn from that. A child who scores 12 out of 100 in Maths can have a long list of reasons that can contribute to such a score. Did they wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Are they hungry? How long is their attention span? How much learning support at home have they had in the past two years? Are they struggling with a learning disability? Have they experienced significant trauma in their lives. Is this their first, second, third, or fourth school? Does their family hold a positive view of education? Has there been health issues that impact on their attendance at school? These are all variables, for which there are zero controls. None of these remain constant, and each impacts on a person to differing degrees.

    Of course, all of these factors are impossible to take into account for the research to be conducted. You can’t possibly control all of these, and so they are largely ignored.

    Don’t work with animals or children

    Children are notoriously inconsistent. They are still learning the world around them. Whilst this makes for some naivety and therefore a degree of honesty that adults tend to be able to mask or fake, children also are much more in-tune with the imaginary and make-believe that there are serious questions over the validity of any results involving them.

    Small Samples

    Along with the myriad of variables that are trying to be accounted for, these then get multiplied by the number of students in a class that a teacher has to work with. Research is inherently dealing with smaller sizes. Rather than try and conduct in-depth research using every student in the class, they might take a sample of 5 students at random. Rather than interview every class, they might select one or two at the school. Rather than go to every school in the area, they might select one or two. The list of ways that the research is limited in order to make it manageable.

    But when was the last time a teacher had five students where factors could just be ignored? Never. Each day, there are 20-30 students to account for in the class, any number of factors impacting on them.
    So how applicable is any research conducted in the name of education?

    Contradictions

    Recently the education community has jumped on the Science of Learning bandwagon (one in which I believe the wheels are falling off quicker than they said ‘click click’ to the horse). This brought with it the Science of Reading, which looked at ways in which we actually learn to read and therefore to direct effective ways in which to teach Reading.

    Marie Clay, one of New Zealand’s most honoured education researchers, was a world power in educational research. She single-handedly lead the drive for programmes like Reading Recovery in every school to support struggling readers in the 1980’s, and was a proponent of ‘whole-language’ literacy.

    However, with the influx of the Science of Reading, as well as, researchers from various universities (particularly in the United States), her methods are now criticised as being ineffective, showing no improvement and even purported to have negative effects later on.

    Yet, while looking through a pile of seriously old education books, I stumbled upon her book in which she introduces Reading Recovery. In it, she outlines her research and what she did in order to reach her conclusions (which was that early, specific and individualised intervention supported struggling readers to get back up to speed with their peers). The depth and detail in which she goes into, the considerations made and the testing of her intervention was evident in the brief skim through I had of her initial chapters.

    What it showed me was real proof that educational research is somewhat insignificant. Because here was someone who has been lambasted and rubbished in recent years for implementing a programme in many countries all in effort to support and raise literacy levels of students who find reading difficult. She conducted her own research in order to find out what it was that made the most difference. She was meticulous and her findings were evidence-based practice.

    Now I’m not saying research can’t be disproved, and I’m not saying that additional research can’t find shortcomings, or even find better, more effective strategies. Of course they can. But at the same time, who is to say that if the likes of Marie Clay, whose research is just as legitimate, can be tossed out and the proponents vilified, then in my mind; so can absolutely any other piece of research.

    The vile statements of utter contempt recent converts of the Science of Reading have for the very mention of Clay’s name is something to behold. ‘She’s a disgrace. Caused terrible disservice to an entire generation of children.’ and other similar comments.

    So we have one piece of research saying one thing. Another piece of research saying the opposite. Undoubtedly both with a different range of variables and an indeterminably amount of factors, and neither of which had the combination of students, needs, families, experiences as those in the classroom in front of you as the teacher today.

    Shortly after, this came across my social media feed, and I simply had to screenshot it.

    This statement was made, quoting the following aritlce about research carried out by Becky Taylor in the United Kingdom.
    https://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/jun/comment-should-we-stream-school-students-based-ability

    It found streaming Year 7–8 students was beneficial for higher-ability students. These students made three months’ more progress in schools that streamed students for maths that those that did not. Streaming also did not damage the results or self-belief of students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

    In fact, this study found students who were not streamed made only one month less progress overall than students who were, after two years. Students with disadvantage and students with low prior achievement made similar amounts of progress regardless of how they were grouped.

    These findings were surprising because they seem to contradict previous claims streaming can harm some students without benefiting others. This new study can and has been interpreted as showing streaming benefits some students while creating no harm to others.

    However, the findings do reinforce previous research suggesting streaming is inequitable and widens achievement gaps. The new study found high-achieving students made much more progress than low-achieving students when streaming was used.

    When presented with contradicting research, how are teachers meant to know which piece of research is correct? Which one do they listen to? The only way to really know would be for them to read both and take into consideration the sample sizes, the measures used and the methods applied for data retrieval and how the data was analysed and the evidence collated.

    And we’ve already found out that no teacher has the time to do that. By the time any teacher has been able to do that, new research would have been found and contradicted everything you’ve just read.

    When presented with contradicting research, how are teachers meant to know which piece of research is correct? Which one do they listen to?

    Count them All

    With the coining of the phrase ‘Evidence-based practice’, or ‘Evidence-based approach’, education now relies on there needing to be research in order to do anything in classrooms. It would appear to me that this is clearly a supply-and-demand issue. Teachers are wanting research conducted so that they can say they are following the evidence, and so research is conducted en mass.

    There has been a noticeable increase in educational research in the past decade.
    Is this true? Or does it just seem that way because everyone is talking about it?

    Well, I did a quick Google Search (with AI search disabled for the record!), and was thrown to this paper where researchers are now researching whether there has been an increase in research. Go figure!
    https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41979-026-00184-5
    I, of course, do not have time to read it in any depth.
    Instead, I simply jumped to the results tab which shows exactly what I suspected;
    The sheer number of research papers being published has exploded since 2020.

    Graph of increase in published research

    Not only do we not have time to read all the research, there is now so much of it to read through, that it has become an impossible task for any classroom teacher to keep up with the sheer amount of it.
    To be clear, what these numbers above show;

    • In 2009 (when I began teaching) there were about 150 journals of education research being published. That’s on average one journal published every two days throughout the year. I read a grand total of 0 of these at the time.
    • A decade later, in 2019, the total number of journals published had pretty much doubled, to over one for every weekday of the year. The number of these I had read to date had also doubled. Double nothing is still nothing.
    • Come 2020, and suddenly we have 750 journals published. That’s 750 journals in a year. That’s 3 journals for every workday that year.
    • It remains around 750 published journals for the next 5 years. That’s a mere 3,750 journals published. To be clear, that’s the same number of journals that were published in the 20 years from 1997 to 2016. I did the maths.

    Put simply, researchers have written themselves into oblivion. What I mean by that is that there is simply so much research that we simply cannot keep up with it and we are simply numb to all of it now. The sheer magnitude in the number of research papers in education is creating a saturation of the market, sending them into obsolescence and irrelevance.

    Teachers are routinely told ‘The Research says this…’, ‘The Research says that…’, and the vast majority blindly follow along, accepting of whatever approach we’re being told about. This is mostly because we don’t have the time, and simply because we can’t be bothered looking up the research, analysing the methods, and processing their conclusions. Let alone searching through the 750 journals published this year, which could be disproved within the next year at the rate that we’re going. It’s easier to nod our heads and just believe what is being told to us. We rely on our own experience of our classrooms, of teaching, our own understanding of how student’s learn, and the plausibility of what is being said as being true. If it sounds reasonable, there are many who will just give it a go until we’re told otherwise.

    All this research, where findings can vary, and just about any hypothesis can be backed, is essentially rendering research as completely unimportant. Evidence-based practice isn’t a status to be touting if research can back and support anything and everything. With so much research out there, not only is it obsolete because very few have the time to read it, but with so many articles out there, evidence can probably be found for anything and everything. The saturation of the education research market is like an empty glass that is being filled, yet once the cup is full, the tap was left on and the water is now overflowing. The value of the water is depleted and we are no longer thirsty.

    “The sheer magnitude in the number of research papers in education is creating a saturation of the market, sending them into obsolescence and irrelevance.”

    Cash is King

    Why do we need all this research? One reason is the ‘evidence-based practice’ rhetoric. And because of that, in order to push through any new resource, or any new approach to teaching, providers need to have evidence for which to claim their product as being ‘evidence-based’. What this leads to of course, is every large educational conglomerate as well as governments providing funds for research to be carried out.

    Education is big money. In 2025, the total income from education was a staggering $1,106,000,000.00. Yes. You read that right. $1.1 trillion. Of course, there is expenditure to take into account, but it leaves the country with $95 billion dollars in profit.

    And that’s just New Zealand.

    – Figure.nz: https://figure.nz/chart/kIpNw1H5r3cVIesv-O0u2toDAfNpAyifH

    This then brings in a whole other reason to be skeptical of research that is conducted. Which master is the research serving? The wider educational community, or the company that is funding them to find what needs to be found in order to push their products through?

    Concluding Evidence

    One of the key statements I will hold onto was from one such researcher; Steve Graham. I was lucky enough to hear a lecture about Writing Instruction in which he outlined some of his findings from his unironically named ‘Evidence-based recommendations for teaching writing‘ paper.

    You can view it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03004279.2024.2357893

    Photo of Steve Graham
    Steve Graham

    Graham essentially said that upon reflection, any evidence, including his own, needed to be seen for what it is; evidence from a research environment.

    He said (in not so many words) that just because it happened in a research environment, regardless of sample size, “…does not mean it is going to replicate in every situation and circumstance.”
    In this one statement Graham made it clear that just because they found this in their research conditions, it does not mean it will translate into every classroom all of the time. Some classrooms may find benefit. Others may not. Some students will benefit. Some won’t.

    It is probably the single most self-reflective statement I have heard from any education researcher – a real, truthful, and down-to-earth statement about the reality every piece of research, including his own. It provided an unusual confidence in which one can stand on to challenge any research. It provided confidence to take on board research, but not make it the be-all and end-all that some try to make it.

    Moreover, I am of the opinion that each and every day, teachers around the world are conducting their own educational research. Observing, questioning, recording, planning, implementing strategies and lots of trial and error. It may not be published anywhere, and it may not carry with it the backing of a distinguished university, but that does not mean it is not important, nor less valuable. The evidence for my evidence-based practice? The 15 years I’ve spent in the classroom.

    That’s now my evidence based approach.

  • Reading for Enjoyment in the Age of Science of Reading

    Reading for Enjoyment in the Age of Science of Reading

    Background Reading

    These articles are what sparked this post. Check them out before reading my ramblings.

    The Science of Everything

    In 2020, a shift was beginning to happen in NZ schools. Schools were continuing to see the same story in their achievement data year after year, without much shift, despite increased efforts and implementations of systems like Learning through Play and Student lead Inquiry cycles. Schools began searching out something different.
    Many found this thing called “Structured Literacy”, a return to phonics based teaching in reading and writing that many of us received in our education in the 80’s and early 90’s. Teachers of the bygone era loved it; digging out their resources to revamp, update and digitise and sell to whoever came along, happy to see the old adage that everything goes in circles in education. Everything goes around and comes around again eventually.

    Structured Literacy was just the beginning of course. Minister Stanford hilariously coined the phrase ‘Structured Maths’ in an effort to put Maths into the Literacy bandwagon that most schools were now on. And even though many schools were implementing elements of Structured Literacy into their classroom programmes and developing consistency throughout, the government had to claim credit for it by mandating that every school implement this way of teaching.
    Now, what the Minister actually meant by ‘Structured Maths’ was simply applying a structured method to teaching Mathematics. One of the key aspects of ‘Structured Literacy’ Is that the learning has a scope and sequence. That means a beginning point and end goal, and a specific sequence of required knowledge that builds on each other with adequate review of new concepts built in throughout that creates a sequence from beginning to end. The method for teaching moved from getting students to guess answers based of what they know, to teaching the students concepts explicitly and getting them to practice what they have learned, so that they can apply it later.
    This is what has come to be known as ‘explicit teaching’. It is counter-opposite to the ‘inquiry’ based model schools have been operating with for the best part of 20 years.
    To get my head around the shift, I use the following:
    Instead of asking students “What do you think this colour is? How do you think you could make it?”, you would explicitly teach “This colour is Pink. It is made up of Red and White”.

    The proponents of Structured Literacy were all too happy to promote their ‘new’ way of teaching. They also had to back up their method with research.
    Cleverly, this was coined as “The Science of Reading”. Automatically, the whole thing sounds legitimate and unquestionable. It sounds evidence based, backed by research and the answer of truth. All because it has the word “Science” in it. It meant that it has been picked up and implemented very quickly, usually without question, purely because of it’s name.

    It all pointed to ‘evidence based practice’ that unpacked how the brain learns, was sympathetic to cognitive load, how the brain retains and recalls information and how this can all be implemented within the classroom.
    Explicit teaching became the norm, and with it a whole range of practices that were deemed to be ‘High-Leverage’ in being able to reach learners and be effective. Practices like whole class instruction, call and response, gradual release of autonomy, fast paced, roam and check, teacher arena and more would completely change the way in which teachers did their job. Teachers returned to the front and centre of the class, giving instruction and stating facts for students to sit and listen to – known as the ‘Teacher’s Arena’. Students returned to desks all facing the front and set lesson routines that chop through each part quickly with no time to allow for distractions, and expected to read along and quickly jot responses on individual whiteboard to show they have understood the concept being taught. The teacher speaks almost constantly, because if there is ‘dead air’ then the students will fill it with their own chatter, assumed to be off task. The pace of the lesson is snappy, in an effort to keep students engaged and no time to distract themselves.

    Before long, this methodology was expected to be applied across all subject areas, and the Science of Reading was supplemented with the Science of Learning and the Science of Writing. No doubt the Science of Mathematics exists somewhere, and eventually we’ll have the absurdity of the Science of Science and God-forbid the Science of Art.

    The explicit teaching model was no longer just being rolled out for phonics and spelling. Now the entire Reading programme was built around the method. Teacher at the front. Students listening and absorbing the information, responding to show they were paying attention. Quickly. Chop chop. Get it done. Onto the next.

    Then they do it all over again in Writing now. Same process. Different subject, but all linked and all the same.

    Then Mathematics.

    Skeptical at Best

    It became very clear to those of us with an ounce of skepticism that there are questions that need to be asked.

    Age Appropriate?

    One in particular that those of us in the senior school (Year 5-6, 7-8) were having was how long does this go on for? The phonics based lessons seemed incredibly young and well better suited to those in the earlier years of school. This may just be a case of early adoption and intervention, where by those in the senior primary school who missed out on the Structured Literacy lessons need to be caught up to speed with what they missed because it wasn’t taught to them earlier.
    But when spelling programmes are being developed up to Year 8, with increasingly difficult words, or instructions for using ‘age appropriate texts’, the expectation of continuing this for upper primary looks set to stay.

    Reading for Enjoyment?

    When the expectation was to expand the spelling and phonics into reading, I was immediately concerned about the Literacy well-being of students at the upper primary age.

    My reason is simple – In my 15 years of teaching this subject in low socio-economic communities, I’ve seen the importance of students needing to be able to read for enjoyment. Yes, they need to know how to read – but if they don’t see that reading can actually be enjoyable and valuable beyond just information gathering, then part of the intrinsic motivation to learn to read will not be there. They might know they have to be able to read because they see their parents struggling to read, or maybe there’s generations of (usually undiagnosed) dyslexia in the family, and they know they HAVE to learn to read; but if they can’t do it and enjoy it, then their struggle is only going to multiply and compound.
    My concern was immediate because I could see that the method of explicit instruction of Reading in the Structured Literacy model did not lend itself to enjoyment. Routine is all well and good to build consistency and certainty and predictability for students, but when it becomes repetitive in every single aspect of the day, the spark dies. The repetition becomes stale. Boring. Students switch off and enter the ‘why-do-we-have-to-do-this” mindset quicker than you can say “I do, we do, you do”.
    The ability for a teacher to foster a love for reading is severely diminished. Reading becomes a task and a chore. Reading becomes purely fact gathering about a topic we’re inquiring into as a class (and rarely something that the student is ACTUALLY interested in). There’s no enjoyment. There’s no entertainment. There’s no getting lost in another world of whimsy or relatable characters in gritty situations.
    These reservations were almost instant upon being encouraged to teach in this manner, and the writing was on the wall when it was mandated in the curriculum of HOW teachers should be teaching Reading.

    A mere year later, on the 20th May 2026, and an unsurprising headline came across my newsfeed.
    “Children’s enjoyment of reading, writing and maths drops”.
    Curriculum Insights did a study regarding students perceptions of the subjects, their interest in them and their perceived ability in them. They conducted one in 2018/19, interestingly and thankfully around the time that this Science of Learning movement was gaining traction but certainly wasn’t widespread. Upon comparing the results from 2025, there has been significant shifts in the way children see these subjects.

    “They showed the percentage of Year 8s who said they did not like reading climbed from 8 percent in 2019, to 11 percent in 2023 and 16 percent in 2025.”
    Thats no small feat. In the space of 6 years(the time it takes for a student to go through primary school) the percentage of Year 8 students who do not like reading doubled. Yes. Doubled.
    Then there’s the individual mentality. How do the Year 8’s perceive themselves as readers? In 2018/19, 6 percent of the Year 8’s did not agree they were good at reading. This dropped to 4 percent in 2023 before climbing to 13% just two years later.
There’s a similar story for the Year 6 students who were surveyed.
    
Sue McDowall, a researcher at NZCER surmises some of the findings. There’s a myriad of speculations as to why there is a spike in the lack of enjoyment in reading. She suggests Screen time as one of those possibilities. However, anecdotally, I’d say that screen time has remained vastly the same over the given timeframe. One thing is for certain, that one thing that has changed in that time, is how we are teaching those subjects. She stops short of pointing at Structured Literacy as a reason, but does lay out some important considerations for Reading in education moving forward.

    “It really matters. Let’s take reading again as an example. We know there’s a bi-directional relationship between being motivated to read and your achievement as a reader.”. This is what I have been outlining in the paragraphs above. Motivation and achievement are strongly linked in Reading.
    “So it’s really important that teachers not only focus on teaching children how to read texts and to make meaning of them and to critically analyse them and to use them to meet their own needs.
    “It’s also important that teachers provide children with opportunities to engage with texts and to read for pleasure, to read to meet their own interests and needs, to become motivated readers and see reading as something that they want to do in their own time.”

    Further down the article, some are willing to point at Structured Literacy and its possible impact on the enjoyment of reading. Ruth Boyask from Auckland University says “…she had examined the NMSSA data in depth and it showed that children enjoyed reading more if they had control over what they read and less direction from teachers.”
    “She said the government’s focus on structured literacy approaches to reading might be affecting that.
    “There are differences of approaches that are being promoted within the educational and school environment at the moment that perhaps are moving away from children being more actively involved and engaged in their reading.”

    Continuing down the article we see comments from Stephen Lethbridge, an outspoken and well renowned principal in the Auckland region, who I have respect for in my limited interactions with him, who says, whilst it is too early to place sole blame on Structured Literacy, the trends are there:
    The principal of Point Chevalier School in Auckland, Stephen Lethbridge, was critical of strict adherence to the structured approach but said it was too early to know if that was driving down children’s love of learning.
    “What we do know as good teachers is that having quality books, talking about what kids are learning, especially at Years 4, 5 and 6 we’re getting into talking about themes, talking about what’s going on in stories and that may not be happening as much in the senior school anymore as they are also doing structured literacy at the moment.”

    This is happening across the globe. Read this for yourself

    And that sums it up in a nutshell. Teachers are being pulled in the direction of “Science of Learning”, somewhat blindly (in that I don’t believe half the teachers ‘following’ the research have actually read any of the research – I’m in this camp!), and even more so now that HOW we teach Reading has been mandated in the curriculum (See under the heading ‘Structured literacy approaches’ here). And so, jumping in the pool with both feet, we are drowning the students in explicit instruction, unpacking vocabulary and asking search and find comprehension questions, focusing on fluency and reading out loud in a whole class setting, regardless of what level of reader you are, and completely eliminating any aspect of enjoyment from reading – or even suggesting that reading could be enjoyable at all.

    Void of Motivation

    Earlier I mentioned about reading for enjoyment and the motivation that comes with it.

    Motivation is such a huge factor in learning.

    Motivation isn’t something that science can measure. The evidence behind the Science of Learning looks only at what helps the brain to learn, and the most effective practices that utilises these pathways. But I would challenge this and say that those pathways are only open if the student is motivated to learn. A student who isn’t motivated simply isn’t going to learn, regardless of how effective your practice is or what shortcuts into the brain science we utilise.
    You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink.

    Explicit instruction and High-Leverage practices can be implemented all they like, but all the talking from the teacher, the gestures and signals, the focus on the front, will only maintain the attention of the students for as long as they want to give attention.

    And attention is not motivation.

    I can tell you now, that the students in my class generally dislike spelling. They’ve learned to endure it, and put up and shut up. I’ve worked tirelessly on encouraging the right attitude, to try and circumvent the lack of motivation towards spelling lessons. But there is only so much you can do once they’ve made up their minds.
    This is a similar case in Reading, where students are genuinely engaged in their Inquiry and finding out about a topic and making a quiz or a presentation or any number of follow up inquiry tasks. In order to access that, they know they have to do the reading first. So it is done as quickly and reluctantly as possible.

    Even that term, ‘High-Leverage’ suggests there is an admission that there is going to be resistance from students, and they need to be ‘leveraged’ into the effective learning that the Science of Learning provides.
    You know what circumvents any need for ‘leverage’ with your class?
    Motivated students.
    And before you try to shift blame that I must not be teaching them enthusiastically enough, or setting the right tone in my class, or not making it interesting for them – It’s not that.

    In what seems like a previous life; even though it was only five years ago – I used to teach using a programme called Daily 5. It is a programme developed out of the United States by two teachers who had reached the end of their tether with the copious amount of planning that Reading groups required.
    Daily 5 centres around independent choice. Five activities that are designed to increase Literacy practice in students. And through that choice, comes motivation.

    It wasn’t perfect by a long shot, and there was a lot of room for opting out. But I’ve seen what motivation looks like. I’ve seen a struggling reader in Year 3, become a competent and independent reader in Year 4 and the only thing that changed was using Daily 5 as my Reading and Writing programme. But the biggest piece of evidence I have for motivation, comes from the students themselves, who on multiple years, have asked; yes, ASKED, to do Daily 5 on the last day of school. I can tell you now, that does not happen with any other reading and writing programme I’ve tried.

    Why?

    Motivation.

    Students had choice. They had agency in their learning. They could choose what they read. They could choose what they wrote. They could choose when they read, and when they wrote.
    Through that choice; through that agency – came motivation. In spades.

    What choice do students have in explicit instruction?
    What choice do students have in a teacher arena?
    What choice do students have in any high-leverage functions?

    Reservations

    These are just a few of the reservations I have about everything to do with the Science of Learning, the Science of Reading, the Science of Writing, the Science of anything and everything.

    Don’t get me wrong; despite these reservations, I am still teaching using these methodologies. I am still implementing this because having taught for as long as I have, I am not too proud to acknowledge that I don’t have all the answers. I will give most things a go, because over the course of many years, I’ve yet to find a way to teach that creates amazing progress in low-achieving learners. I do not wish to be a disservice to my students if the evidence and research is accurate and repeatable in many, if not every instance.

    But remember; Science is not always the truth.

    It’s well known that Science is the opposite of Art. And maybe it’s the fact that I’m a creative, an artist, that has me opposing this despite being told about the mountain of research that supposedly backs the Science of Learning.

    It may well be the Science of Learning, but it is, and always will be, the Art of Teaching.

  • A.I. as a Teacher

    A.I. as a Teacher

    “I’m here to tell you the mission of your generation is to destroy A-I. Kill it. To accomplish this, you’ll have to capture and reprogram an A-I to be on the side of humanity, then commandeer its own time-traveling technology, send it back to the past to defeat the current A-I before it gains sentience. This isn’t just graduation day, this is Terminator 2 Judgment Day.”

    “And I know, I know there’s someone sitting out here right now who’s just like, “Well, you know, what about the use of A-I to pioneer breakthroughs in medicine and physics?” Well, first of all, shut up, nerd. I’m not talking about that. Obviously, if you’re using it for that purpose, you’re not the problem, okay? I’m talking about the accumulation of cognitive debt due to excessive use of large language models according to a study by MIT published in 2025 in Archives.”

    “Look, this is actually good news, okay? This is why you guys shouldn’t be scared of AI, because I think AI is just going to end up making mediocre people dumber. Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They’re always like, “Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?” Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can’t do that? How useless are you? You need artificial intelligence just to match me? I’m a dumbass who couldn’t get into Harvard.”

    “From what I can see, getting an actual advantage from AI in the future will require a minimum escape velocity of intelligence that I’m assuming you guys from Harvard have. Everyone else who can’t match that is just going to get dumber, and that’s when you run up the score on them, assuming we still have a functioning society, of course.”

    “Untalented people love bragging about using AI to help them draft their speeches and their scripts and their podcasts and their promo videos for UFC fights at the White House, which to be fair, even if they had filmed that for real, it would still have looked like AI. But what they’re missing is this. The creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?”

    “You know what problem I want A-I to solve? I want the problem of AI making everything look like shit. I want AI to solve that problem. How about that?”

    Ronny Chieng, 2026

    There are so many truth bombs being laid out here. There’s such a degree of humour that it’s hard to take it seriously. And yet, so much of what Ronny Chieng said at Harvard was absolute truth. As guest speaker at Harvard’s Class Day as part of their Commencement 2026, Comedian Ronny Chieng took to the stage and laid it all out. You can read the full transcript here: https://singjupost.com

    A couple of weeks a go I began to get ads in my feed advertising the latest education AI build.  “Get your Sundays back” it said, hinting that teachers spend their Sundays planning, and that instead of doing that, AI could do it for you, or make it so you don’t spend your entire Sunday planning.

    The reality is, I choose to do my planning on Sunday, for a number of reasons. In my early career, I used to do my planning throughout the week for the following week. On Wednesday afternoon after 3pm, I would make the Maths plan. Thursday was Reading and Writing, and Friday was for everything else.

    The problem was, by the time Monday came around, things had changed. Maybe on Friday we didn’t get through the work I thought we would of, and so adjustments would have to be made. What’s more, on Monday morning I would have to look at the plan to refresh my memory; given I was operating from a plan devised in the middle of teaching the plan I’d devised the week prior.

    For a long time I refused to do planning in the weekend. One, I wanted to preserve the weekend for myself and my family. Two, as a Christian, Sunday was hands off for anything work related as I observe a day of rest.

    I’m not sure what changed, but for whatever reason I made my day of rest Saturday, which is traditionally the Sabbath anyway, allowing me to complete my planning on Sunday. It transformed my entire workload. Things were more clear, with the week before being complete, and I could plan from where we left off exactly, rather than adjusting things if we didn’t get as much done as was hoped. But the biggest payoff by far was the retention of the plan in my head. No longer did I have two days of family time creating a mental block between my plan I made last week and what I had to teach this week. The plan from Sunday flowed into the teaching of Monday, and rarely did I have to look at my planning. Now, if I have all my resources sorted for the week, it is very rare I have to even look at my planning. Usually it’s just a quick reminder of any anomalies to the routine.

    So, no. I won’t bow to the suggestion of getting my Sunday’s back. I use Sunday’s for reasons. Reasons that make my job easier, not harder.

    I’ve made a conscious decision to limit my use of A.I. Especially when it comes to teaching. Those that know me, know that I enjoy making things look nice. I’m fairly particular in how I want things to look like. This ranges from resources, to classroom displays, to Powerpoints and even unit plans.

    Using AI to do things like resource creation is problematic. Not because the resource is made in next to no time, but because it doesn’t end up looking like I want it to. I then have to modify and adjust the design to my liking, rather than just beginning with a blank canvas and doing it myself. Secondly, I nearly never remember anything that A.I. has done – certainly not to the degree that I remember things if I make it myself. The brain just doesn’t process it the same. The sentiments of Ronny Chieng ring true.

    “The creating is the fun part. The best part of comedy writing is figuring out the puzzle pieces of a joke and getting the self-regard from having accomplished a difficult thing. Why would I want AI to take that away from me?”
    “Have you heard how dumb people brag about how they use AI? They’re always like, “Hey, did you know that AI can now read my email, summarize it, and drop a response?” Yeah, you know who else can do that? Me. I can do that. You can’t do that? How useless are you?”

    When I tried to utilise AI to formulate my Maths planning of three groups using a widely used resource, I found I had to double-check what it had come up with, and then spent twice as much time adjusting the prompt and asking A.I. to recreate it. By the time I’d finished, it would have been quicker, if not about the same amount of time to have just made it myself – and I would have the added bonus of being able to recall what I had made without necessarily having to re-read it all.

    Having A.I. make and create planning might require no brain power and minimal time spent initially, but at some point I will have to spend that time reading it and understanding it in order to teach what it has planned for me to teach.

    For me, if you begin to rely on A.I. for these tasks, you are going to lose those skills that are an important part of teaching. The creativity. The organisation. The logistics. The resource knowledge. The autonomy. As Chieng said – Why would you want AI to take that away from you?

  • Uncertainty in an Education Reform

    Uncertainty in an Education Reform

    Teachers and Schools are facing an uphill battle; one that is seemingly never ending in the current climate.

    We have a government hell-bent on reforming every aspect of education. Thankfully for them, they inherited the beginnings of a curriculum change from the previous government. However, rather than continuing in the same vain, they chopped it up and replaced it with their own ideology, jumping on the “structured literacy” bandwagon that many schools had begun moving to, invented a phrase “structured maths” to fake legitimacy in the idea and rewrote the curriculum in both areas, somewhat overnight with very little consultation. It comes as no surprise to those who have unpacked the new new curriculum that it was heavily written by AI and this explains the speed in which the revision happened.

    I could spend a whole series of essays outlining the motivation behind these changes, but that is not the objective of writing this.

    No. This article is to outline the plight of the teacher.

    Teachers got told about the changes to the draft curriculum at the end of August of 2024, whilst of course, we were still familiarising ourselves with the ‘old’ draft curriculum. Somewhat hilariously, schools were still receiving professional development from the Ministry of Education around the Mathematicss curriculum when the curriculum changed. During the course of Term 3, teachers were somehow expected to continue teaching from the old curriculum, prepare for reports, carry out assessments, and now review and give feedback about the new draft curriculum.  The shut off for consultation happened and in October 2024 the ‘draft’ was finalised. 

    It was then announced that primary schools would have to begin teaching Reading, Writing and Mathematics from the new curriculum in Term 1 of 2025, giving mere months for the changes to be implemented school-wide. In those months, teachers would be focussed on end of year activities, conducting final assessments, finalising reports, organising end of year activities, organising transition to next years classes, prize givings and senior end of year functions, finishing off the year and farewelling the students leaving. Add in the only ACTUAL break teachers have due to rules around when leave is allowed to be taken, with Christmas and New Year taking priority. If teachers granted themselves two weeks “off”, this would leave a mere 3 weeks before beginning school. Thats three weeks to get your new class organised, synthesise assessment to get an understanding on where your class sits, read notes on the students in your class, arrange desks and implement new or better refined routines, class lists, seating plans, wall displays, and begin to formulate unit plans for the first term.

    Somewhere in all of that, teachers were expected to read and implement a new curriculum for the two biggest subjects in the curriculum. Let’s not forget as well, that not only did the content of the curriculum change, but how it is formatted changed as well. Curriculum Levels are out and ‘Phases’ are in. No longer did we have a curriculum that spanned two years per level, but now every single year had a series of expectations of what was to be taught (despite most schools in the country running composite year classes). On top of this, for the first time in recent history (this century at least!) the curriculum not only outlined WHAT teachers had to teach, but HOW they were to teach it. Whole class, explicit instruction, exposure to many concepts instead of mastery of a few, all methods inspired by the ‘Science’ of Learning ideology that is the latest concoction of pedagogy. If you could ever set up an entire workforce to “learn on the job”, the government had just done it with the entire primary school sector. Teachers were literally teaching from a curriculum that they were still reading and coming to grips with. It is no wonder that teachers were ill equipped for this change, and there was zero confidence in what they were teaching or how they were teaching it, relying heavily on intuition if they had any left, and additional hours spent watching webinars and video clips to try and best follow the curriculum they’d been dealt. 

    Before you knew it, the next lot of curriculum changes were being pushed into draft, and suddenly the ball continued rolling, as well as expanding the existing new curriculum to include Years 7 – 10, completely confusing the entire procedure. Furthermore, with the expansion of the English and Maths curriculum for Year 0-10 came with it amendments and changes to the existing curriculum that Year 0-6 had already been teaching from! So now teachers had a new, new curriculum to unpack; but now they had to figure out what the changes were and make the changes themselves to what they had been teaching. 

    Why would teachers invest their energy in getting to know a curriculum and implement it if there is a high likelihood it is just going to change on them as soon as they do?

    The uncertainty of this very thing leaves teachers in no man’s land.

    Then there’s the uncertainty around the messaging schools receive from the Minister and the Ministry of Education.

    When ‘Structured Maths’ was dreamt up on the coattails of ‘Structured Literacy’, the Minister announced four providers that schools could choose from to implement this new venture. 

    Certain programmes schools were using were discarded and millions upon millions of dollars went into providing workbooks and teacher guides and online subscriptions around the country. Schools didn’t want to miss out on the funding for these resources, and had to decide fairly quickly as to which provider they were going to go with.

    However, looking into it, this was never mandated. The language used was never legally binding, instead this was announced at the same time as Minister Stanford gazetted the implementation of the new Maths Curriculum for Term 1 2025. It was stated that the Ministry would provide supplementary, Ministry-funded classroom workbooks, sourced from four suppliers. So you can see how it would appear that use of the resources was mandated, when in actuality, it was not. They were merely provided to support the mandate that was made regarding the curriculum.

    This has lead many principals to now check with any of the changes being made (mostly to protect themselves, their staff and their schools from unnecessary changes given the sheer volume of changes there have been) whether the change has been gazetted (mandated) or is it merely a suggestion or recommendation by the Ministry?

    The mere fact that this due diligence needs to be done over Ministry announcements just goes to show the complete distrust, lack of faith and complete uncertainty that exists throughout the sector.

    The Minister announced in Term 2 of 2026 that she has pushed back the roll out of the other curriculum areas, to give teachers the time that they have been asking for.

    Unfortunately, this does nothing except delay the inevitable. It doesn’t give teachers more time to study the curriculum and get their heads around it. Why would any teacher do that when the track record would suggest that they’re just as likely to change it between now and then. So instead, just as with the current changes that have already been implemented, teachers will simply have to continue to learn on the job, teach on the fly, given they complete uncertainty and zero faith they can have in the curriculum changes. 

    The uncertainty that exists is stress inducing. It’s additional workload and time-based pressure that could all be alleviated with proper implementation plans that aren’t being rushed through. Carefully implemented plans that work with the sector would go a long way in actually making a difference. However, the whole process has been forced and rushed, and an insurmountable about of pressure out on schools and teachers to just get on and do it.

    Solution Focussed

    A more considered approach is required.

    Measured steps need to be taken instead of rushing widespread changes.

    The changes in curriculum implementation I want to see are as follows:

    Draft curriculum released in its entirety for all to see. 

    Appropriate avenues of feedback provided and actively engaged with the sector – not just giving deadlines for feedback that are adverse to what else teachers are required to do.

    Once a draft is finalised, provide the sector with the finalised version. It should be legalised that this then needs to be in printed form. (One of the reasons I believe they are so prolific with changes is that it doesn’t cost anything much to update content on a website, which is currently all they have to do to change the curriculum. By having to print it, the Ministry will be less likely to make changes, given the cost that it would take)

    Once the curriculum is finalised, give the sector a year to begin exploring the curriculum and implement it during that year if they’re comfortable with it, and only mandate teaching from it in the following year.

    That would provide a clear, and certain plan for schools and teachers to work to. It provides fair and legitimate time for implementation and confidence can return to the sector because of the lack of uncertainty.