Stop Telling Us What to Do
Get the education consultants and academy out of the way and let teachers do what they want to do—(mostly) direct instruction.
A few thoughts on Dan Meyer's recent post about inquiry-based learning vs. direct instruction. Reason has a hard time competing with manic head-nodding and fawning, but I keep trying.
Education researchers are real live people who do actually care about teachers and students. I am working now with researchers in both the U.S. and U.K. on the topics of metacognition and misconceptions. Both groups comprise "pure academics" and former teachers. They are fun! And they are truly passionate about helping students and expanding our knowledge base around teaching and learning. Meyer paints education researchers at the beginning of the post as "burrowed deeper into their scholarly mouseholes" and then throughout as blinkered careerist dictators:
These scholars imagine their research functions like legislation, that if they would only produce an airtight case, control all of the variables except one, and produce a scholarly QED, that teachers and their practices would fall into line. . . .
Especially if you are not on the tenure track, if you are not right now seeking an endowed chair in the building closest to the center of campus, there is very little incentive for you to do this to yourself.
Actually, researchers are uniquely meek when it comes to conclusions—like those mousehole-burrowed scholars who produced penicillin, the Internet, and calculus. They have to be. Because they belong to a community who are committed to jumping on bias and unfounded declarations of proof. If you've ever been admonished about education research in any way, the chances are really, really high that it wasn't a researcher doing the admonishment. If you are looking for scholars who have delusions of legislative grandeur, go yell at someone like Jo Boaler, who has actually turned problematic interpretations of real researchers' work into actual policy with the California Math Framework.
And yes, people seek career advancement—teachers and researchers alike. It can be a fraught enterprise to navigate such advancement without feeling like you're selling too much of your soul in education.
You can't forget about gravity. Meyer—and just about everyone else—treats this debate between inquiry-based and direct instruction as though there are no forces out there sucking you in to one side or the other. But honestly, for those of you who work in American schools, when was the last time (or any time) you heard about a direct-instruction advocate providing PL to your colleagues on a regular basis? Are your PL sessions primarily about how to make the best of worked examples or are they primarily about how to loosen up from that "antiquated" orientation and set your students free to learn by themselves or whatever? Yes, if we close our eyes and pretend we live in a different reality where there are no large masses creating wells of influence to which we are attracted, sure. But that's not reality.
My own children—2 out of the 4—came home with growth-mindset letters, direct from the desk of Zweck or Boaler and completely unimpeded by or in any way filtered through the brains of the teachers or admins in charge of the school. Gulp, gulp.
It really doesn't matter all that much if teachers "do what works for them" or "take good ideas wherever you find them" if their entire universe involves inquiry-based nagging from education consultants and the academy where they are trained.
You actually don't need to know about research to decide. I've honestly lost count of the number of times I sat in the back of an education conference or PL session (always promoting an inquiry-based orientation) and either watched teachers roll their eyes, shake their heads, or, yeah, just turn to me and say, "bullshit."
This isn't an ignorant reaction. It's an honest one—and a good one. Have you ever watched an inquiry-based lesson in action? It's pretty cringey. And the reason is simple: it's not how anyone normally talks to anyone else when they want to convey information for the listener's benefit. You wind up pretending—really awkwardly—to be Socrates or a psychiatrist, and what ultimately happens is fisheye. You get your top 20% of the class onboard and the rest of the class copies those students.
And it takes 2 to 3 times longer than the direct method. Why would anyone do this? To seem important? To just be different? To rescue the lowly status of teacherhood in the eyes of the citizenry in order to make it seem esoteric, insular, and professional?
If we really want teachers to be professionals and decide for themselves, then get the stupid education consultants and academy out of the way and let teachers do what they want to do—(mostly) direct instruction.
