tackling the myths of progress
TRANSCRIPT
Tackling
the myth of progress
David Didau
The Key – L i fe After Levels
19 th May 2015
We can’t see when we’re wrong
We can’t see when we’re wrong
If it looks like a duck…
What is progress?
1. Forward or onward movement towards a destination: “the darkness did not stop my progress”.
2. Development towards an improved or more advanced condition: “we are making progress towards equal rights”.
What is progress?
• Is it inevitable?
• Can it be both rapid and sustained?
• How can you measure learning?
Two definitions of learning:
1. The long-term retention and transfer
of knowledge and skills
2. A change in how the world is
understood.
Performance
Learning
Warsaw
We believe “engaging in learning activities…transfers the content of the activity to the mind of the student…”
But “as learning occurs, so does forgetting…”
“learning takes time and is not
encapsulated in the visible here-and-now
of classroom activities.”
Graham Nuthall (2005)
The input/output myth
What we think
progress looks like
What it actually
looks like
Or maybe...?
Not
knowingKnowing
Threshold concepts
• Integrative
• Transformative
• Irreversible
• Reconstitutive
• Troublesome
• Discursive
Meyer & land 2010
Threshold concepts in English• Understanding the relationship between grammar and
meaning
• Understanding the effect of context, both on writers and
readers
• Understanding the need to use supporting evidence for ideas
• An awareness of the ways in which language can affect
readers
• Understanding how the structure of a text can produce
different effects and meanings
• Understanding that texts can be subjected to analysis to
reveal a variety meanings.
Overlapping waves theory
3 assumptions:1. At any one time children think in a variety of ways
about most phenomena;2. These varied ways of thinking compete with each
other, not just during brief transition periods but rather over prolonged periods of time;
3. Cognitive development involves gradual changes in the frequency of these ways of thinking, as well as the introduction of more advanced ways of thinking.
Reading• Nuthall (2005).The cultural myths and realities of classroom
teaching and learning: A personal journey. Teachers College
Record
• Siegler (1998) Emerging Minds: The Process of Change in
Children's Thinking
• Meyer & Land (2010) Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning
• From my blog: – The Myth of Progress
– Assessing what we value