Tag: science of learning

  • 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.