Last week, I wrote a couple posts on the incoming orthodoxy of “Explicit Teaching” and the perverted form it has taken in some schools, with the mandating of PowerPoint lesson plans and of what are either arguably or undeniably scripted lessons. I suggested that, with his strong ET advocacy and his media omnipresence, Greg Ashman (and Ochre) might wish to consider saying something, anything, about this fresh pedagogical hell. A few days later, Ashman responded, in his co-Caiti podcast.
Ashman, while seeming to agree that such mandates were a bad idea, was a little grumpy with me in places, which is hardly unexpected and is of course entirely fair. He suggested that I did not understand how lessons worked at his school and that I wasn’t really interested to find out, which may well be true. I am sure if I were to ask to visit, Ashman would be very welcoming. Such a visit, however, would involve me traipsing all the way to Ballarat and so quite possibly I’m not interested enough to enquire, and we may never know. No matter. Ashman also criticised me for failing to genuflect to Pope Rosenshine, however, and this, I think, matters.
On my second post, a commenter brought up Barak Rosenshine and his principles, suggesting that there was a “hoax going around”, with a non-Rosenshinian interpretation of “Explicit Teaching” being pushed by some. There then ensued a mini debate-discussion. I yawned through most of it, and Ashman was displeased with my yawning:
So I think that’s a bit of a, like, for instance, [Marty] has this thing where he says, “Oh, explicit teaching is just teaching”. And you say, “Well, no, it’s a bit more than that.” And he said, I’m not interested. So, in one of the comments, someone tried to mention Rosenshine’s principles, and he just basically said, I’m not interested in that. So, you can’t convince him of anything, …
Readers can decide if I am generally less or more open to being convinced than Ashman, but let’s be clear why I was yawning in this instance. All I care about is what sucks and what does not suck. If Rosenshine does not suck, then great: bring on the Rosenshine. But, so what?
It is not that I don’t care about Rosenshine’s principles; it is that I don’t care whether the principles are Rosenshine’s. And, more pertinently, I don’t care whether it is a Rosenshinian or non-Rosenshinian version of “Explicit Teaching” that is being shoved down teachers’ throats; I care that what is being shoved down teachers’ throats is garbage, and that this garbage is being packaged with the label of Explicit Teaching, a label that should promise Good Stuff.
Am I missing something on Rosenshine? Of course, it is possible. But I do not believe in educational gods because I simply do not believe any of this is that deep. I do not believe there is much more to teaching than KKK and plain common sense and a ton of learning to teach by teaching. If Rosenshine demonstrates “it’s a bit more than that”, well, great. But, if it’s only a bit more than that then is it really worth getting one’s knickers in a knot? If it is a lot more than that then tell me: tell me what I don’t know. But intoning “Rosenshine’s principles” like one is holding stone commandments ain’t ever gonna impress me.
Long-time readers will know my standard line, which was the basis of a very interesting and fruitful competition:
Every new idea in modern mathematics education is either trivial or false.
if someone thinks Rosenshine is different, that his principles are new and not trivial and not false, then I am listening. I will note that I have now read Rosenshine’s Principles, and Rosenshine’s New and Improved Principles, and Rosenshine’s Principled Teaching Functions. When I am not swearing or pissing people off, I read things. And, I am listening.
Of course, Ashman would claim otherwise, that there is no point attempting to convince me, seemingly of anything, that I would simply have “switched off”. Maybe he’s right. But if the reader is convinced that Rosenshine is so wonderful, then try me.
I always have to resist the temptation to shout at Dr Ashman: what the so-called “Rosenshine principles” have done for your school is simply ordinary practice that has been implemented in Chinese classrooms for decades.
Well no shit. This isn’t really the gotcha you think it is. Rosenshine’s principles come from observations of statistically effective teachers in actual classrooms. I’m sure Ashman is well aware of this, in fact their universality is probably why he keeps banging on about them.
Well, maybe you can tell me how Rosenshine’s principles help a teacher explain the meaning 3 ÷ (1/2) in a mathematics classroom. That’s really the point I am trying to make.
And if these principles were distilled from the practices of many effective teachers, then why does someone always seem to be claiming, “we are doing something different”?
Who is claiming that this is something different?
Alfven, I am referring to Ashman’s most recent blog:
https://fillingthepail.substack.com/p/i-already-do-that
You can judge for yourself how often the message is essentially: “many teachers think they are doing it, but we are doing it differently.”
Because, unfortunately, it really is new to them. ie it’s a revelation to those who underwent woeful teacher ‘training’ (any time after the ‘60s?) and ilacked the capacity to work it out for themselves through commonsense & experience.
Thanks, Susan. Who is “them”? I’m curious, but I don’t know anything of the world you’re talking about. Happy to have you email me stuff if you wish.
The teachers to whom Jj refers. You do know something of that world 🙂 I’ll mail you.
There are many worse bizzos around than R’s Principles. But it’s tragic that they have to be held up as a living Bible to teachers who’ve been ‘teaching’ for decades.
No question. I’m not for a minute advocating a return to or continuance of the stuff that RP-explicit is supplanting. Nonetheless, some of the stuff being shoved with RP-explicit branding is absolutely horrid.
I think it may be the gotcha Jiqing thinks it is.
The root issue here is that older Western teachers learnt to teach before this fashion for all sorts of odd practices, including enquiry learning, came about. Now we gradually appear to be returning to what worked for centuries in the West. In the view of older teachers, these new words “explicit teaching” simply mean a return to what we simply called teaching and had no need of a special name for.
For younger teachers, who were trained to do the faddish practices and found they didn’t work, “explicit teaching” describes an evidence informed approach that actually works in comparison with the faddish practices they were taught in teacher training. A label is needed to distinguish it from what doesn’t work – hence “explicit teaching”. They are often resistant to realising that it is just what was done for centuries in the West and in China (no surprise that Chinese kids in classrooms generally are better at maths in high school – having been taught their times tables etc etc).
That said, Rosenshine codifies quality teaching practices (no bad thing) and we can all improve our teaching – ancora imparo as Michelangelo said. I am particularly interested in ways to better check for understanding.
Perhaps the bigger crime is just how much little decent support teachers get to improve their own practice [including explaining 3 ÷ (1/2)], often being subjected to much useless professional development and having little time for productive discussions at school.
Thanks, JJ. That’s exactly why I think we need more PD sessions focused on how to explain mathematical ideas such as 3 ÷ 1/2, rather than an endless stream of general SOL or Rosenshine discussions.
Thanks, JJ. That’s a pretty good summary. To the extent that Rosenshine is a clear codification of good practice, that is obviously valuable. I think there are at least two likely problems, however, apart from the irritation with people constantly going “Oh wow!”, like Rosenshine suddenly turned water into wine.
I am still figuring this out in my mind, and I will reply to Alfven’s comment as soon as my brain kicks back into gear. But this whole Ashman-explicit thing really deserves long, pseudo-thoughtful posts. I have a list already of about four posts to do on this stuff, but it is all feeling weighty, that I have an obligation to write these posts. Which is, in turn, making this blog less fun. I have enough obligations in real life.
So, I will reply to comments on this post, but I’ll probably save the main ammo, first write some more fun posts, and save the counter-counter-revolution for later.
That absolutely hits the nail on the head. And not just for maths.
Hi Marty, I know you will probably just shoot me down but I will have an earnest stab at explaining the significance of Rosenshine’s principles. They may seem trivial to you, but I have watched a lot of both new and experienced teachers teach and, believe me, a lot of this stuff does not come naturally to a lot of people.
Studies show that if you ask teachers (or even academics) what “good teaching” is, you mostly get a bunch of waffle and nonsense about relationships and motivation. What Rosenshine did was cut through the crap to find a set of 10 principles that pretty much always work, even if they seem obvious. Universities frankly do a terrible job of exposing trainee teachers to what actually works, and most students, like myself, leave university with the impression that explicit teaching is somehow bad for students. That we should spend our time in the maths classroom doing games, inquiries and problem-solving in the hope that you can just inspire the kids to love maths and that they will magically get better at it without practice. That doing open-ended tasks is the only way for students to develop conceptual understanding
Education for the last 20-30 years has been obsessed with inquiry and discovery learning. The idea of just telling students how to do stuff and then getting them to practice is a big departure from what universities and education departments have been telling teachers. Case in point: our terrible curriculum.
While Rosenshine’s principles are not new, they are certainly not trivial. A lot of the teachers I watch will just talk their way through a few slides, or do some work on the whiteboard then send the students off to do exercises. What Rosenshine emphasises is the importance of breaking things down into small chunks then making sure that all students are actually doing things correctly before letting them practice. There is no point getting students to practice what they don’t know how to do or are doing incorrectly, but you would be shocked at the number of teachers that just allow this to happen. They expect that the students will just figure it out along the way (spoilers: they don’t). There is no point waffling for 20+ minutes at students and expecting them to retain any information but many teachers do.
Now, the universities do not like explicit teaching. Their research is often unverifiable, their statistical understanding is often poor or non-existent, they get overly excited by technology, and for some reason they spend a lot of time asking people to do surveys. Journals seem to publish anything and everything and you can make a career selling shiny new fads that have no actual evidence behind them. They don’t want to move away from the ideas that they have made a lot of money from, so they make up reasons why explicit teaching is bad – it’s all scripted, there’s too many powerpoints, explicit teaching is controlling or racist, explicit teaching =memorisation, etc. If you want a laugh, look up the “Phallic teaching” paper on the AARE blog.
A lot of these arguments require a bit of rhetorical gymnastics, such as redefining explicit teaching to be reading from script (a literal book that the teacher reads word for word) in order to scare people. I don’t know how explicit teaching became associated with powerpoints, but that’s a whole different can of worms. What Rosenshine gives us is a really robust definition of what explicit teaching is, to fight back against the nonsense.
Thanks, Alfven. I genuinely appreciate the effort. You might also look to see what I, and it seems Jiqing, are on about, and why I/we are frustrated by all this.
I am rushing now but will read carefully tonight(ish) and get back to you.
Thanks, again, Alfven. I won’t respond with an essay, but I’ll try to cover your many points.
First of all, I totally understand that new teachers will have very little intuition for what does and does not work in the classroom. This would be true even if they hadn’t wasted two damn years on fifth rate sociology and philosophy, and being indoctrinated in inquiry twaddle. Of course we are on the same page when it comes to our disgust with the education academic nitwits and the damage they do, and have done for at least fifty years. But, even without these nitwits, teaching is hard anyway.
Teaching may be based upon natural human interaction, but teaching itself is not natural; it must be learned, and is mostly learned by practice and thoughtful reflection. That doesn’t mean it is deep: “chop the material into more easily consumable chunks” is anything but deep (and anything but new). But, to the extent that good tradition has been forgotten, and to the extent that inquiry nitwits are confusing gullible teachers by shouting poisonous mistruths, and anyway, a clearly written code of good principles of teaching is a valuable thing.
To that end, but possibly with some serious reservations (that I am still sorting out in my mind), I *liked* Rosenshine’s principles. There was not a single thing new or surprising to me, but also nothing that stood out as intrinsically objectionable: readers of this blog will know how rare it is that I’ll write that.
Your paragraph on “universities” was sillier. I fully appreciate that there are AARE types writing all manner of idiocy. But that does not mean that there are not valid objections to what is being sold as “explicit teaching” and what is being mandated. From your comments, you simply seem to be unwilling to acknowledge that there is some really shitty stuff being thrust down teachers’ throats, and this shitty stuff, rightly or wrongly, is labelled “explicit teaching”.
You can choose not believe me, and others who have commented in this manner, but your denialism makes it comes across as if you’re more batting for your team than trying to honestly consider what is really going on, why it is going on, and what responsibility Ashman and Ochre and Donovan and the rest may have for this, if only in their silence.
I have thoughts about this. I have thoughts of why a perverted form of Rosenshine-explicit-whatever is gaining a very strong foothold. I am also wondering if the cause may be inherent in Rosenshine’s principles, that Rosenshine might provide the seed for its own perversion. But I have to think about this a lot more before writing anything and, as I replied to JJ, it will probably have to wait.
No, the cause is not in Roseshine. As far as I can see, some well intentioned people have tried to resurrect sound teaching practices of yore – like actually teaching kids to read, write & ‘add up’ – calling it Explicit Instruction (an offspring of Engelman’s Direct Instruction). But the times are so totally out of joint & so many fingers in every educational pie, that the movement is already fracturing, at least pedagogically. That’s the least complicated version, but I’m too tired to go through it now.
Thank you, Susan. I just realised that I didn’t reply to your comment.
I don’t necessarily think Rosenshine is the cause, in the sense that he is advocating anything specifically bad. But I wonder if the generality of Rosenshine may create fertile ground for nonsense, that he is inadvertently giving license for nitwits to interpret his principles in a nitwit manner.
Ashman would of course disagree, but I am not so sure. I haver to think about this more, and at the moment I would prefer to watch the soccer than think.
Personally, I quite like Rosenshine’s principles. One great use of them is to help people get through teaching degrees. When I did my last teaching placement during COVID times in Melbourne, there weren’t a lot of placements to go around and I got one where I was given the opportunity to teach calculus to a Year 11 methods class. I think the school was nervous about letting a student teach it after students had missed so much learning time – the principal called me to ask if I was confident with the maths (that was the only part of teaching I felt any confidence with) and the teacher asked me to “please don’t waste their time.”
But for uni assignments, you need an educational theory with approved references to base your teaching on. I chose Rosenshine’s principles (using the second reference you linked to). I think the only thing that changed about how I might teach was I checked more often that the students were getting everything that was explained to them. (3. Ask a large number of questions and check the responses of all students: Questions help students practice new information and connect new material to their prior learning.)
It seems to me that choosing an educational theory is similar to choosing a religion. There are many from which one can choose. Just this week I learned about perennialism.
Only just now I learned about perennialism (from your comment).
Me, too.
If “gets you through a teaching degree” is the best that can be said for Rosenshine’s Principles, then no one should really care.
As it happens, I think a lot of good can be said about RP, but I don’t see that anybody is selling it very well. (I’ll get to the other comments soon.)
Perhaps reading Rosenshine’s “Principles of instruction” could replace a teaching degree.
Click to access rosenshine2010a.pdf
Perhaps not.
I think “Ask a large number of questions and check the responses of all students” is the least intuitive. And also the biggest difference between modern EDI and what traditionalists might call common sense etc.
Reading Rosenshine’s summary you don’t get the full sense of just how many questions you’re supposed to be asking. So a lot of casual readers imagine it’s the natural semi-lecture thing where you throw in the odd rhetorical question or that rhythmic open questioning where it’s mostly just breaking up the monologue. Maybe asking a genuine check for understanding beforehand for prior knowledge or after 10 minutes of exposition (often believing it takes that long to get to something worth checking). And even then, making it a “hands up” voluntary response (gee whiz, shocking that the kid who eagerly chooses to respond knows the answer).
Whereas the research this draws on is recommending you ask ALL students a question every minute or so. That you have ways to either check all those answers (eg. mini whiteboards), or accountability mechanisms to make sure everyone is mentally answering before sampling the room by cold calling. If you want the questions to be decent quality and to span abilities then you need to be planning them by the dozens for every class. It ends up being the main thing that you do plan. (This is admittedly easier in Maths, where it’s easier to iterate and vary)
I think most people massively underestimate how unnatural this all is. How much you have to train kids to do it etc.
So it isn’t trivial. Though I suppose that does leave the possibility that it’s wrong.
Thanks, Alex.
I don’t know what that principle (#3, for those keeping count) might mean, or might must mean, in practice. If it means the teacher always being inquisitive, in regard to all students, on whether they’re getting it or not, then it is good and pretty trivial. Such inquiry can take many forms and can be flexible, and need not be that formalised or micro-planned.
But, if this very sensible general principle morphs into some little hitler specifically mandating the use of mini-whiteboards, and mandating that the teacher yell “chin it!” every three minutes, then it is false (i.e. insane).
For an alternative set of teaching principles, read Paulo Freire “Pedagogy of the Oppressed”.
Jesus, Terry. I’m busy wading through a stack of Rosenshine stuff. One over-hyped guru at a time, please.