Here’s a confession: some of my most memorable school moments had nothing to do with reading or writing in a classroom. What’s stayed with me are the concerts, the footy trips, the train rides with mates. I still remember winning the Year 5 touch football competition—with Anthony Mundine refereeing the final!—and having the SkyFeast at Sydney Tower with my Food Tech class.
What are your most vivid school memories?
These memories highlight a crucial point: education encompasses so much more than just sitting in classrooms. However, as someone who just last week presented to thousands of educators across the country, it’s clear that the question of effective instruction remains central. While I firmly believe in its importance and it’s vital to understand that the primary focus of schools should be on learning, it’s not the only thing that matters.
In education, we often get caught in debates where people talk past each other. Sides are taken, lines are drawn, and not much listening happens. One of those debates is around the idea that “education is more than just explicit instruction.” And I agree—but I also think there’s a missing piece in how we’re framing that conversation.
That’s what I want to explore in this article.
The Pitfalls of Solely Focusing on “Memorable Moments”
While the desire to create fun and engaging experiences for our students is understandable, there are dangers in making this the sole driver of our educational efforts. Here are some reasons why:
- Episodic memories (experiences) are more memorable than semantic memories (facts and figures) (Tulving, 1972).
- Learning takes place over time, so we’re not necessarily going to remember the precise moment that we learnt something because it is likely to have developed over a series of learning encounters.
- Teachers confuse the need for engagement with the need for students to be actively thinking about the main thing. So, what happens is we try to create lessons that we think will be fun or aligned to their interests and think that this will build their motivation in wanting to learn.
Yet what happensunder these circumstances is our students often remember the experience, but don’t necessarily take away what the intended learning outcomes were. The classic example is trying to teach fractions through a lesson baking pizza. In this scenario, all the students think about is who got more toppings and nothing to do with building their understanding of fractions. Keep the pizza baking lesson until the end of the unit as a way of celebrating how much they have learnt and to build class culture.
Things that should happen at school
To create a shared understanding of what else I feel should be included within a school day, I have created a list of things that should happen at school. This list is not extensive and not in order of what should be prioritised:
- Students (and teachers) should have fun
- Staff and students should have positive relationships
- Students should be provided with opportunities to participate in sports and the creative arts
- Students should go on excursions to provide them with experiences outside of the school gates
- All students should learn
- Explicit instruction should be given to students who are at the novice/acquisition stage of learning
- Students should have opportunities to complete projects and problem-solving tasks that require them to apply and extend themselves
- Students need to be taught how to be respectful citizens of our society.
* This one probably shouldn’t need to happen at school, but due to societal changes (e.g. both parents working longer hours, different expectations and cycles of disadvantage), parents and families can no longer be relied upon to teach this.
Why schools should focus on learning
The main reason why schools were originally created was so that experts could impart their knowledge to novices. It’s the one place that novices can go to where they will be connected with an expert who has the skillset and knowledge needed to know the why, what, when and how of the topic. This is why learning still needs to be the central focus of schools.
The Vital Role of Explicit Instruction
Firstly, I think it’s important to state that I don’t believe that education is all about explicit instruction and even when it comes to the pedagogical approach taken by teachers, I don’t believe that explicit instruction should be delivered by teachers all day, every day.
When delivered effectively, explicit instruction requires significant effort from both teachers and students . Teachers need to be responsive, constantly planning, providing timely feedback and understanding their students’ needs. Students need to be fully attentive, processing information, responding accurately and integrating new knowledge. This level of engagement is exhausting to maintain for extended periods.
Also, explicit instruction is not necessarily needed for every activity/lesson each day. In the Learning Rainforest, Tom Sherrington talks about an 80/20 split between explicit instruction (Mode A) and other types of activities (Mode B). However, teachers need to know the purpose of the lesson and what stage of learning their students are at. Without this knowledge, teachers are simply “stabbing in the dark.”
For example, there are times when students just need to “get the reps in” and practice what they have been learning. If it’s to build fluency, the teacher actually needs to get out of the way and create the conditions that maximise the amount of practice opportunities the students get in the set time frame.
Interestingly, even when assigning projects and open-ended tasks, the most effective way to explain what is required is often through explicit instruction. Teachers need to provide clear and logical steps for students to follow and check to ensure that they understand the steps and instructions that they need to follow.
This is an example of how a teacher might use explicit instruction to introduce their Year 5 students to an open-ended mathematics task:
- State what the learning objective is and invite students to read it aloud together
- Model an example and use a think-aloud to describe the decision-making process you might go through for a similiar problem
- Explain what the expectations are for how students need to complete the task. Check that these expectations are understood.
- Present the task to the students and check that they understand by getting them to perform a turn and talk before calling on groups to share what they discussed.
- On mini-whiteboards, ask students to write down what strategies they could use to complete the task.
- Gradually release students for independent practice depending on the responses that they give.
- Provide scaffolds and prompts to students who require further support.
If the purpose of a lesson is for students to apply what they know, then what changes is the percentage of time that the teacher spends modelling and providing scaffolds and prompts and moves towards giving students more time in applying what they know. As you can see in this example, checking for understanding in this scenario is more about ensuring students understand what to do and that you are confident that they know how to do it before releasing them to have a go.
Learning doesn’t need to be and often won’t be fun
It needs to be understood that when the purpose of a lesson is to teach students things they don’t know yet, the most effective and efficient way is by using effective instruction strategies like:
- Providing a model and using things like exemplars and worked examples
- Performing a think-aloud
- Using examples and non-examples
- Providing prompts and scaffolds
- Checking for understanding
- Providing multiple opportunities to respond
- Giving clear, timely and specific feedback
- Gradually passing the responsibility over to the learner
- Giving students repeated practice opportunities on the task that you have just shown them how to do
Some people might call this explicit instruction, but I wanted to define some of the key features to avoid links being made to it being lecturing, just “chalk and talk” and not involving students.
When students are at the novice/acquisition stage of learning, they don’t know what they need to know. Haring and Eaton (1978) refer to it as the “frustrational” level and that’s because when you are at this stage of learning it is effortful and difficult. Think about the last time you tried to learn something new, how did your face look? Was it happy and smiling or slightly scrunched up and confused?
When presenting, I often use the analogy of the stages of learning that we go through when learning to ride a bike. Children start with lot’s of scaffolded practice (balance bike, trike) before attempting to ride a two wheeler where a parent holds on before eventually releasing. Experiencing the joy of the wind blowing through your hair doesn’t come until true fluency has been achieved. The same applies in the classroom – fluency precedes joy.
Keep the main thing, the main thing
Ultimately, knowing the purpose of what you are doing is key. If the goal is to build class culture and have fun, then embrace it! If it’s a brain break, let students relax. If it’s preparing for a competition, ensure they are well-prepared. If it’s applying learned knowledge, ensure they have the necessary foundation. However, if the purpose is to teach something new to novice learners, then the effective teaching strategies that aligned with explicit instruction, are essential.
In a nutshell
- Education encompasses more than just explicit instruction, although explicit instruction plays a crucial role in enabling learning.
- It is important that educators understand the purpose of a lesson to determine the most appropriate teaching strategies.
- When students don’t have the required skills and knowledge to complete a task or activity, explicit instruction is the most effective and efficient way to teach it to them.
- Don’t think that learning needs to be fun for it to happen, in fact, most of the time, the “fun” aspect will become a distraction.
- Fun stuff still needs to happen at school, but it doesn’t have to happen when the focus is on learning.
- Learning at the initial acquisition stage can be challenging and may not always be enjoyable. This is a natural part of the learning process when students are encountering new information or skills.
‘the primary focus of schools should be on learning’
I beg to differ.
If all we do in education is to teach what is already known, how will we develop new knowledge?
I have real problems with the ‘Explicit Teaching’ movement. I am, at my core, a constructivist. A student will learn something only when they want to.
I remember when one of my daughters was in Foundation or Grade 1. She related a moment where she said, “The teacher was talking about something, but I was concentrating on a bird in the tree outside the window.”
Thirty years later, that daughter has a Master of Special Education degree.
I believe we learn very little of what we are taught.
We only learn when we incorporate concepts into our internal mental models.
And to be contrarian, I also disagree with your statement:
‘The main reason why schools were originally created was so that experts could impart their knowledge to novices.’
Education is much more than ‘imparting knowledge’. For a start there is ‘developing skills’. This can only happen partially by teaching. It mostly happens from guided practice.
And, it brings tears to my mind that a great push during the 80s for education to include ‘understanding’ seems to have disappeared entirely for current discourse.
It’s interesting how you wrote, “We only learn when we incorporate concepts into our internal mental models” as it appears that you’re not really understanding the point that I’m trying to make because you have a very different mental model. You admitted yourself that you have issues with the explicit instruction movement and you’re a constructivist, so you’ve read my article looking to disagree.
Not sure why you wrote, “If all we do in education is to teach what is already known.” I never said that in education we should just “teach what is already known.”
Also, I feel many of the points that you make that are “disagreeing” with my points are actually aligned. I agree that students need to want to learn in order to learn something. If they aren’t motivated to pay attention, then they won’t. I also agree that, “we only learn when we incorporate concepts into our internal mental models.” I also never said that education is just about ‘imparting knoweldge’ in fact that’s basically the whole point of the post.
If we learn very little of what we are taught, I would argue that teaching hasn’t actually happened. Your example of your daughter’s story is actually an example of what I was saying about how our memory works. We’re more likely to remember experiences (episodic memory) than when learning actually occurred.
In short, my point is that education is more than explicit instruction, but if something is unknown the most effective and efficient way to learn that is through explicit instruction (explicit instruction is NOT just just the teacher explaining things, guided practice is part of explicit instruction).
Out of interest, if the purpose of schools isn’t to teach kids stuff, what do you feel the focus of schools should be?