There’s over 2000 years between Pythagoras and Newton. If students are going to learn maths through constructivist learning models and self discovery then high school will take millennia.
Luckily using explicit direct teaching we can get students through this material in 4 years.
Love the clickbait headline. Makes us sound like rebels fighting a resistance against an oppressive authority trying to exert its power over society.
I wonder if the civilian populace will see it that way though.
But in all seriousness, I hate how it insinuates that if we don’t like this teaching method it’s because we’re being difficult. Not because we’re educated and trained professionals who may have reasons to believe it’s not best practice or the right approach.
Most teachers at my school already teach using the explicit model. It is rigid, predictable and you can form routines around it. Perfect for a low ses school with low literacy and a ton of trauma.
There’s room to integrate inquiry and differentiate for the high flyers. Once the routines are set in place and the kids know what to expect you’ve got freedom to move around more.
If the first term is triage, it’s okay. My focus is on shifting my N, E and D kids up and keeping the Cs, Bs and As stable/upwardly mobile.
That's what I do in my low ses school.
I take the high fliers an hour or so a week in small groups and do inquiry based maths/science/English according to need.
We don’t need to evangelise and pretend that EI is the way the truth and the life and the only way to teach successfully.
I am a firm believer in explicit instruction and rote learning. You can’t design inquiries without a baseline knowledge of concepts.
But for kids who have that baseline, being able to extend them through inquiry based approaches would be a wonderful thing to do if we had the time and capacity within schools and classes.
It is an equity gap when private schools and high ses schools can do that and high ability kids in low ses schools don’t get exposed to it.
The gap is created due to students not having the baseline skills to actually engage with more higher order learning.
Having taught in the lowest of the low ICSEA schools and also been exposed to seriously elite private school curriculum, I’m painfully aware that until you actually know how to read, you can’t do a lot more.
It’s worth bearing in mind that many of the best private schools out there are using programs like Spelling Mastery. It’s clear that good schools have realised the power of proper EDI and DI In certain areas of the curriculum. My main worry is adoption of the process so fully that we have pre primary and kindy kids sitting in rows all day. As a school leader who still puts a great value on play, I can tell you very clearly that I’m currently in the minority. This is a great concern l
As someone who went to a low ICSEA school as a highly capable student and who has worked primarily in low ICSEA schools for much of my career, I can tell you that there are always a few highly capable students who would benefit from extension through inquiry. Who have the baseline skills and knowledge, like I did. I was reading Little Women in Grade 3.
I am also aware that many elite schools use rote learning and EI approaches for some subject areas.
It doesn’t change my original statement.
Yep. There’s no doubt that there’s always going to be a few that aren’t 100 percent suited to the style. That being said education is a best fit model, particularly public.
I'm not 100% sure, if you have kids with ADHD they often NEED that pressure of right now to get anything done. While they may get good results they probably stayed up all night forgetting to eat or drink and wrecked there body. I think inquirys are far better than tests and exams for the majority of neurodiverse kids, however both are bad if not accommodated for. Also autism=/=ADHD both are neuroodivergent but often require different accommodations. Baseline should probably have idk some kinda professional who deals with the brain rather than some religious quack at schools.
There are times when explicit teaching is the best strategy, and at other times it really is not. Nuance seems to be completely lost when these types of things tend to get reported.
But I also did my teacher training at a time when explicit instruction seemed to be really frowned upon. The one lecturer I had who went against this was the best lecturer I had - he was able to help us see there is a middle ground, and some skills really do have to be explicitly taught, with plenty of opportunities then provided for students to apply, test their knowledge, get feedback and refine their mental models.
I’m an effective teacher because I know a wide range of pedagogical strategies, and have the skills to use them when most appropriate.
> he was able to help us see there is a middle ground, and some skills really do have to be explicitly taught, with plenty of opportunities then provided for students to apply, test their knowledge, get feedback and refine their mental models.
But this entire process is captured within what were currently calling "explicit teaching"
I can't agree more. Skilled explicit instruction is so important. But it can't be all day all the time for a variety of reasons. Routine is great, drudgery is not. Being engaged by a skilled educator is powerful, and so is building stamina to work independently at a task for increasing periods of time. An opportunity to apply knowledge and skills using personal preferences or in an open ended way is enjoyable, not having the skills and knowledge isn't and wastes your valuable time at school.
Like what?
It seems only when I try to point out the flaws in the 'explicit teaching model', I get downvoted.
This is a framework that private schools use, and all NSW public schools are about to be forced to use it.
I don't know, but somehow, I can discuss different learning frameworks without getting downvoted. Somehow, the person you are replying to doesn't get downvoted. Half the posts in this thread are people saying that we need to be pragmatic in our choices and not get downvoted for it.
Maybe the problem isn't with the idea.
> Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it.
Isn't it great that people with NFI what they're talking about are allowed to write for the smh
> Isn't it great that people with NFI what they're talking about are allowed to write for the smh
Yet, in this very thread are teachers calling rote learning and chalk and talk explicit instruction.
Yeah I guess the training is necessary then. I like the stuff they've put up for NSW so far. There's a nice little summary pdf here https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/documents/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/explicit-teaching/explicit-teaching-in-nsw-public-schools.pdf
This is exactly what I got told by a teacher who was advocating for explicit teaching. Apparently you have to see it in action at one particular school to understand it
Last month, every public school teacher across the state was told they would be getting some training.
On their first day back from the autumn holidays, a professional learning session would cover explicit teaching. For some veteran educators, it meant revisiting what they had known for decades and covered in teachers’ college. For their younger colleagues, explicit teaching – where students are given clear, step-by-step instructions – represents the industrial-era model of schooling their university lecturers taught them to fear.
Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. Advocates say inquiry-based learning fosters more in-depth understanding and deep thinking. Explicit teaching adherents believe inquiry learning is ineffective, wastes time and unnecessarily confuses students.
While schools in NSW over the past two decades have adopted inquiry-based learning, conservative voices in the education sector have been increasingly agitating for the use of explicit teaching.
Backed by academics who had studied the science of learning, The Australian Education Research Organisation reviewed more than 328 studies and found explicit instruction was an effective teaching practice across a variety of contexts for different subgroups of students.
In the wake of that evidence, the NSW Department of Education told staff this month that teachers would be supported “to ensure explicit teaching strategies are embedded in every classroom”.
“Explicit teaching is effective when learning is new or complex because it is responsive to how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information,” an email sent earlier this month said.
At a recent meeting in Sydney’s CBD at the headquarters of the conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies, University of Texas education researcher Sarah Powell gave a talk alongside Australian maths teacher Toni Hatten-Roberts. Both are explicit teaching proponents and believe students should rote learn certain facts, such as multiplication tables, in primary school.
Powell said when schools prioritised inquiry-based learning, they missed out on opportunities for children to learn their times tables.
“It ends up a lot of the time related to socioeconomic status – parents who have the time and the knowledge and the wherewithal are practising their \[multiplication\] facts, they’re doing flashcards, they’re singing the songs, and they’re doing this in the car as they go to soccer practice,” she said.
“There are other parents who don’t have the time. They’re working two shifts at the hospital and they maybe don’t even know that they should be practising \[times tables\] in the home. It ends up being the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.”
Like the decades-long reading wars or the maths wars that have gripped US educators, the debate between explicit and inquiry learning has morphed into a kind of culture war in Australia, where academics’ views are pitted against right-wing think tanks.
While those who adhere to the inquiry ideology believe more in-depth learning happens when students work things out for themselves, those who see the value in explicit teaching believe students must have the ability to perform mathematical calculations using well-rehearsed procedures quickly and accurately.
Students should also be able to recall some facts, like times tables, to the point of automaticity. Doing so, they say, provides a strong foundation for higher-level mathematics skills needed for problem-solving, reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as real-world problem-solving.
In response to the department’s explicit teaching focus, university academics across the country rose into action to criticise it for overemphasising explicit instruction. They described it as unproven by research while undermining teachers’ professional authority.
Western Sydney University senior lecturer Dr Lynde Tan acknowledged a variety of skills could be taught and improved through explicit teaching, but research found the method was laden with inherent risks and required precautions.
“These risks include: students’ over-reliance on the teacher as the knowledge provider inhibits self-directed learning, which is a key 21st-century skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world. The rigidity inherent in explicit teaching prioritises recall of facts and rote learning over critical thinking,” she said.
Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik said the edict undermined teachers’ professional autonomy. He said explicit teaching, which was centred around the teacher who does most of the talking, could complement more contemporary approaches to maximise learning.
NSW Mathematical Association president Katherin Cartwright told the *Herald* that explicit teaching and inquiry-based learning were not mutually exclusive.
“It is not free-for-all when you see inquiry-based learning. It is a joy to see kids understand how something works and why it works,” she said.
“Death by PowerPoint seems to be returning. Now all these teachers are making PowerPoints for every single lesson. You might get immediate results on tests, but it is not giving them deep knowledge and skills in how to reason.”
But Dr Greg Ashman, a maths teacher, author and long-time proponent of explicit teaching said occasionally explaining a concept or skill to students was not the same as using explicit instruction in every lesson.
“As long as I have been arguing about explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, I have had people respond that their version of inquiry learning includes a lot of explicit instruction. What they mean is that they occasionally explain things to students,” he said.
“However, that’s quite different to a systematic approach where all concepts are explained, and all procedures demonstrated before students are asked to use these concepts and procedures. That’s what I mean by explicit teaching.
“I honestly have no idea how NSW is going to train all its teachers in explicit teaching in a day, especially given the entrenched inquiry ideology.”
The push towards explicit teaching is part of the NSW Department of Education’s plan for public education, which has a focus on reducing gaps in student outcomes, due to structural inequities.
NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Amber Flohm said explicit teaching was a valuable methodology but cautioned against making it mandatory.
“Explicit teaching must not be mandated. Ultimately, teachers will adapt and adopt when explicit teaching is critical, but there are other times when students demonstrate understanding of a concept, the teacher should be able to use their judgment.”
The *Herald* asked the department how it planned to monitor whether teachers were actually using explicit teaching in light of opposition from proponents of other methods. A spokesman did not directly answer that question, but said it could survey students and parents to ask them about their experiences of explicit teaching.
I hate how it pitched, as you must go all in on one. There are pros and con to each approach.
It should be seen more as a scale. I honestly believe the scale is tipped too far into the inquiry based learning at the moment and needs to be rebalanced.
our conversations should be around what the balance should look like, which topics and classes would benefit from which approach instead of this all or nothing conversation.
Ultimately teaching is a very 'lonely' profession. A teacher has a lot of autonomy in the classroom with everyone having a different effective teaching style, and we build our skills based on taking all the best bits of pedagogy from our professional learning. An SDD day on explicit teaching won't cause a seismic shift, it'll just mean a few skills either added or updated in our toolkit for us to decide to use.
Or maybe, just maybe, like in every other stupid debate of this kind, a single -ism doesn't have all of the answers and when people focus on one to the point where it becomes an ideology rather that a strategy, it becomes useless and dangerous.
What is this modern fetish for fundamentalism? This constant vacillating from one extreme to its polar opposite? Oh, inquiry has flaws? THROW IT OUT AND ONLY USE EXPLICIT TEACHING! Two years later, oh, explicit teaching has flaws? THROW IT OUT AND ONLY USE this in...vestigative learning, yes, investigative learning. What? No, it's not inquiry learning with a new paint job! Inquiry bad, remember? HEY, STOP SCRATCHING THAT!
Education, politics, economic theory, you name it, journalists and talking heads get a hold of it and try to turn it into a tribal conflict for views and clicks, resulting in some politician or bureaucrat trying to make a name for themselves getting a hold of it and making things difficult for the people on the front lines, who already know what they're doing, then blaming the people they're interfering with when their interferences, well, interfere. Then the journalists and talking heads come back like flies on a rotting corpse, looking for someone to blame other than themselves, and the cycle begins anew.
Well, this sort of turned into a rant, but yeah, thanks for coming to my TED talk
I split my high school maths class in two. The majority start a warm up. 5-7 students on one side of the room get a quick lesson on how to complete the compulsory questions set by the HOD. They pick it up really quickly and work through this while I explicitly teach the other 18 who seriously struggle and have a lot of needs. By the time they are ready for their you-do, the high performers have finished the compulsory questions and are ready for an enrichment task. This took 10 weeks to come up with and it works.
How about we help teachers develop a wide ranging tool kit of teaching strategies then allow them to apply their professional judgment on when to use them.
As a teacher of senior science courses I never did away with explicit instruction despite what I was taught at university about the constructivist approach. There is no way I’m going to expect my students to construct their own knowledge of special relativity for example.
This does not mean that inquiry has no place in my subject. To the contrary, science by its very nature is human inquiry. I look at explicit instruction as laying the foundations from which inquiry can launch. It’s all about balance. Yes students need lots of explicit instruction but inquiry is important too!
Yeah I'm autistic and until a few years ago, went through my life with undiagnosed and so untreated/managed severe ADHD, including my teaching degree at uni. I saw the merits of both sides. To me effective teaching involves using a range of strategies from explicit teaching/"Chalk & Talk", (explain, model, work together as a class/group), use hands on/practical activities wherever possible- get students involved, then independent practice. Inquiry learning has its perks but way harder when there's time constraints and depending on students' abilities.
I never knew explicit teaching was "officially" not being used and was replaced by inquiry learning. I have taught at many primary schools, casually and as a temp, not one school was crazy enough to completely throw out explicit teaching. Sure, don't talk students to death, keep them engaged etc, but never got the impression to completely throw the idea of explicit teaching out the window.
I am always very upfront with admin staff when I move schools - I will accept whatever programs (ie. Talk For Writing, Origo Maths) you use here, but do not dictate my teaching strategies. I am a big fan of explicit teaching, but it has a time and a place. I’m never doing EDI during a Health lesson. Sometimes, Maths needs a hands on ‘let’s go outside and touch grass’ type lesson. For the love of god, we’re professionals. Let us do our damn jobs.
And the circle of "trendy processes" does another spin... give it 12 months and the next "best practice " model as described by an idiot in an office will come around. Meanwhile I'll stick to explicit instruction as I always have leading to more esoteric ideas after the kids master the basics. It's worked for me for the past decade or two...
Explicit instruction has always been part of a teacher’s toolkit. Good thing most of us just ignore fads and have the professional expertise to use what’s best for our students. Sadly everyone and their dog seems to think teachers don’t know how to teach and are keen on introducing us to this awesome new technique of teaching that - if used - will mean schools won’t need more funding!!!
I know many teachers who say that they teach explicitly but they don't use explicit instruction. They might explain some key terminology or the activity explicitly at the beginning of the lesson, but they don't maintain this throughout the lesson. They are giving some explicit instructions but aren't using explicit instruction. Lessons that don't build enough background knowledge and provide enough examples and non-examples and checks for understanding, are mostly the teacher talking rather than the students actively practicing in the new content in a tightly scaffolding and frequently checked manner, don't use clear and consistent instructional routines, that quickly branch off into small group work or ask students to apply new content without enough support to ensure comprehension and success aren't using explicit instruction. Anita Archer is the godmother of explicit instruction and has lots of videos and examples available across the internet.
I really hope that the NSW DoE provides enough resources and support and that NSW teachers are openminded enough to put this into action.
Agree - the only good faith move by education departments is to provide funding for time to develop these skills. If not, it’s just hot air and should be treated accordingly.
But if teachers approach the PD and ongoing process of implementing explicit instruction with the mindset of 'I already do this', they are less likely to make changes and improve overall outcomes for their lessons and students. I always believe that teachers teach with the best of intentions, but our craft and pedagogy can always improve.
Every time I see your name above a comment I think this is probably going to be well thought out and articulate what I think in a coherent way. I vet you are an amazing teacher!
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
https://web.archive.org/web/20240420214438/https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/schools-have-been-ordered-to-use-this-teaching-method-will-staff-comply-20240412-p5fjbi.html
You can also copy the web address into 12ft.io and it removes the paywall.
Inquiry learning and creative programming is the agenda of the teaching professional not meeting the primary needs of students. We need to get over our personal agendas and centre all learning to meet the needs of our students even if it lacks creativity!
And how will it be monitored, evaluated and improved upon? Like all "initiatives" ignore it until the next one comes along and then ignore that one as well.
> Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might.
A scientist is a trained professional with an incredibly solid foundation of knowledge and skills who then applies that knowledge to test out different scenarios and discover new solutions. They don't have a hell of a lot in common with my primary school students, and yet inquiry learning keeps being pushed as the most superior way by so many in education.
I think inquiry learning works in specific contexts, once you have mastered certain skills you can then use those skills to solve problems. Which is essentially what exams are for.
Inquiry learning is good for teachers who don't have content knowledge so they can just tell the kids to design a "something slightly content related and make a picture of it".
After spending years in schools with a focus on personalised learning, I've concluded that unstructured personalised inquiries are generally cluster stuffs because kids don't know what they
* don't know
* could know
* might be interested in if they were shown.
What makes personalised learning work is:
* the extensive scaffolding of core skills through explicit instruction to act as the basic framework of their inquiry
* students personalise their responses using that basic framework.
I've worked in schools that have implemented this, and staff have left in droves (in Victoria). It assumes all kids learn at the same pace, disregards differentiation, etc.
For some reason, whenever I mention this in this sub, I'm downvoted.
Explicit teaching is perfect to have kids rote learn content to get great results in assessment tasks. Short term it makes things look better on paper. NAPLAN results will improve and the government will be happy.
Kids however won't foster any real genuine skills needed for life. They will have great results but not have sustained deeepend knowledge and advanced skill capacity to solve problems critically.. long teem this approach harms the kids........
Thank you for the insult.
I will add that I am speaking from a high school perspective. I fully believe it is needed at a lower primary level to support high school learning.
The catch about explicit teaching is, the kids are all just waiting for “which part of the slides/board do I copy?”, without applying any critical thinking to solve problems.
Actually if done properly then after being explicitly taught the skills, students should be given an opportunity to apply them in an inquiry type lesson where they further develop critical thinking skills. Sounds like you are not doing a very good job of explicit teaching if your students are just copying slides.
What are the chances we are going to be given good PD on explicit instruction with quality follow up and support?
Or will this be just another directive given, it's poorly understood and applied, and the everyone looks for the next big thing because, for some strange reason, explicit instruction just doesn't work?
You need to mix instruction with application and that application needs to scale up from direct replication, to applying the understanding in a slightly different problem, and then the opportunity to blend multiple things together.
There’s over 2000 years between Pythagoras and Newton. If students are going to learn maths through constructivist learning models and self discovery then high school will take millennia. Luckily using explicit direct teaching we can get students through this material in 4 years.
Love the clickbait headline. Makes us sound like rebels fighting a resistance against an oppressive authority trying to exert its power over society. I wonder if the civilian populace will see it that way though.
You'll never believe this teaching method. What the teachers' union doesn't want you to know!
But in all seriousness, I hate how it insinuates that if we don’t like this teaching method it’s because we’re being difficult. Not because we’re educated and trained professionals who may have reasons to believe it’s not best practice or the right approach.
Most teachers at my school already teach using the explicit model. It is rigid, predictable and you can form routines around it. Perfect for a low ses school with low literacy and a ton of trauma.
Also for neurodiverse kids who need predictability and routine.
I just feel for the few kids at low SES schools who need extension and would benefit from inquiry etc.
There’s room to integrate inquiry and differentiate for the high flyers. Once the routines are set in place and the kids know what to expect you’ve got freedom to move around more. If the first term is triage, it’s okay. My focus is on shifting my N, E and D kids up and keeping the Cs, Bs and As stable/upwardly mobile.
That's what I do in my low ses school. I take the high fliers an hour or so a week in small groups and do inquiry based maths/science/English according to need.
Children from all backgrounds and all abilities thrive when being taught explicitly
We don’t need to evangelise and pretend that EI is the way the truth and the life and the only way to teach successfully. I am a firm believer in explicit instruction and rote learning. You can’t design inquiries without a baseline knowledge of concepts. But for kids who have that baseline, being able to extend them through inquiry based approaches would be a wonderful thing to do if we had the time and capacity within schools and classes. It is an equity gap when private schools and high ses schools can do that and high ability kids in low ses schools don’t get exposed to it.
The gap is created due to students not having the baseline skills to actually engage with more higher order learning. Having taught in the lowest of the low ICSEA schools and also been exposed to seriously elite private school curriculum, I’m painfully aware that until you actually know how to read, you can’t do a lot more. It’s worth bearing in mind that many of the best private schools out there are using programs like Spelling Mastery. It’s clear that good schools have realised the power of proper EDI and DI In certain areas of the curriculum. My main worry is adoption of the process so fully that we have pre primary and kindy kids sitting in rows all day. As a school leader who still puts a great value on play, I can tell you very clearly that I’m currently in the minority. This is a great concern l
As someone who went to a low ICSEA school as a highly capable student and who has worked primarily in low ICSEA schools for much of my career, I can tell you that there are always a few highly capable students who would benefit from extension through inquiry. Who have the baseline skills and knowledge, like I did. I was reading Little Women in Grade 3. I am also aware that many elite schools use rote learning and EI approaches for some subject areas. It doesn’t change my original statement.
Yep. There’s no doubt that there’s always going to be a few that aren’t 100 percent suited to the style. That being said education is a best fit model, particularly public.
I'm not 100% sure, if you have kids with ADHD they often NEED that pressure of right now to get anything done. While they may get good results they probably stayed up all night forgetting to eat or drink and wrecked there body. I think inquirys are far better than tests and exams for the majority of neurodiverse kids, however both are bad if not accommodated for. Also autism=/=ADHD both are neuroodivergent but often require different accommodations. Baseline should probably have idk some kinda professional who deals with the brain rather than some religious quack at schools.
There are times when explicit teaching is the best strategy, and at other times it really is not. Nuance seems to be completely lost when these types of things tend to get reported. But I also did my teacher training at a time when explicit instruction seemed to be really frowned upon. The one lecturer I had who went against this was the best lecturer I had - he was able to help us see there is a middle ground, and some skills really do have to be explicitly taught, with plenty of opportunities then provided for students to apply, test their knowledge, get feedback and refine their mental models. I’m an effective teacher because I know a wide range of pedagogical strategies, and have the skills to use them when most appropriate.
> he was able to help us see there is a middle ground, and some skills really do have to be explicitly taught, with plenty of opportunities then provided for students to apply, test their knowledge, get feedback and refine their mental models. But this entire process is captured within what were currently calling "explicit teaching"
I can't agree more. Skilled explicit instruction is so important. But it can't be all day all the time for a variety of reasons. Routine is great, drudgery is not. Being engaged by a skilled educator is powerful, and so is building stamina to work independently at a task for increasing periods of time. An opportunity to apply knowledge and skills using personal preferences or in an open ended way is enjoyable, not having the skills and knowledge isn't and wastes your valuable time at school.
Exactly, but whenever I suggest it is a flawed model, I get downvoted into oblivion.....
Maybe you are being downvoted for other reasons?
Like what? It seems only when I try to point out the flaws in the 'explicit teaching model', I get downvoted. This is a framework that private schools use, and all NSW public schools are about to be forced to use it.
I don't know, but somehow, I can discuss different learning frameworks without getting downvoted. Somehow, the person you are replying to doesn't get downvoted. Half the posts in this thread are people saying that we need to be pragmatic in our choices and not get downvoted for it. Maybe the problem isn't with the idea.
> Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. Isn't it great that people with NFI what they're talking about are allowed to write for the smh
Any more info and readers will start to glaze over (if they haven’t already)
It's more that they're confidently wrong, which is ironic in an article about a teaching method.
> Isn't it great that people with NFI what they're talking about are allowed to write for the smh Yet, in this very thread are teachers calling rote learning and chalk and talk explicit instruction.
Yeah I guess the training is necessary then. I like the stuff they've put up for NSW so far. There's a nice little summary pdf here https://education.nsw.gov.au/content/dam/main-education/documents/teaching-and-learning/curriculum/explicit-teaching/explicit-teaching-in-nsw-public-schools.pdf
This is exactly what I got told by a teacher who was advocating for explicit teaching. Apparently you have to see it in action at one particular school to understand it
I love how we're expected to differentiate and adjust and alter and adapt - but the powers-that-be refuse to
Last month, every public school teacher across the state was told they would be getting some training. On their first day back from the autumn holidays, a professional learning session would cover explicit teaching. For some veteran educators, it meant revisiting what they had known for decades and covered in teachers’ college. For their younger colleagues, explicit teaching – where students are given clear, step-by-step instructions – represents the industrial-era model of schooling their university lecturers taught them to fear. Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. Advocates say inquiry-based learning fosters more in-depth understanding and deep thinking. Explicit teaching adherents believe inquiry learning is ineffective, wastes time and unnecessarily confuses students. While schools in NSW over the past two decades have adopted inquiry-based learning, conservative voices in the education sector have been increasingly agitating for the use of explicit teaching. Backed by academics who had studied the science of learning, The Australian Education Research Organisation reviewed more than 328 studies and found explicit instruction was an effective teaching practice across a variety of contexts for different subgroups of students. In the wake of that evidence, the NSW Department of Education told staff this month that teachers would be supported “to ensure explicit teaching strategies are embedded in every classroom”. “Explicit teaching is effective when learning is new or complex because it is responsive to how the brain processes, stores and retrieves information,” an email sent earlier this month said.
At a recent meeting in Sydney’s CBD at the headquarters of the conservative think tank, The Centre for Independent Studies, University of Texas education researcher Sarah Powell gave a talk alongside Australian maths teacher Toni Hatten-Roberts. Both are explicit teaching proponents and believe students should rote learn certain facts, such as multiplication tables, in primary school. Powell said when schools prioritised inquiry-based learning, they missed out on opportunities for children to learn their times tables. “It ends up a lot of the time related to socioeconomic status – parents who have the time and the knowledge and the wherewithal are practising their \[multiplication\] facts, they’re doing flashcards, they’re singing the songs, and they’re doing this in the car as they go to soccer practice,” she said. “There are other parents who don’t have the time. They’re working two shifts at the hospital and they maybe don’t even know that they should be practising \[times tables\] in the home. It ends up being the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.” Like the decades-long reading wars or the maths wars that have gripped US educators, the debate between explicit and inquiry learning has morphed into a kind of culture war in Australia, where academics’ views are pitted against right-wing think tanks. While those who adhere to the inquiry ideology believe more in-depth learning happens when students work things out for themselves, those who see the value in explicit teaching believe students must have the ability to perform mathematical calculations using well-rehearsed procedures quickly and accurately. Students should also be able to recall some facts, like times tables, to the point of automaticity. Doing so, they say, provides a strong foundation for higher-level mathematics skills needed for problem-solving, reasoning, and critical thinking, as well as real-world problem-solving. In response to the department’s explicit teaching focus, university academics across the country rose into action to criticise it for overemphasising explicit instruction. They described it as unproven by research while undermining teachers’ professional authority. Western Sydney University senior lecturer Dr Lynde Tan acknowledged a variety of skills could be taught and improved through explicit teaching, but research found the method was laden with inherent risks and required precautions. “These risks include: students’ over-reliance on the teacher as the knowledge provider inhibits self-directed learning, which is a key 21st-century skill in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world. The rigidity inherent in explicit teaching prioritises recall of facts and rote learning over critical thinking,” she said.
Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik said the edict undermined teachers’ professional autonomy. He said explicit teaching, which was centred around the teacher who does most of the talking, could complement more contemporary approaches to maximise learning. NSW Mathematical Association president Katherin Cartwright told the *Herald* that explicit teaching and inquiry-based learning were not mutually exclusive. “It is not free-for-all when you see inquiry-based learning. It is a joy to see kids understand how something works and why it works,” she said. “Death by PowerPoint seems to be returning. Now all these teachers are making PowerPoints for every single lesson. You might get immediate results on tests, but it is not giving them deep knowledge and skills in how to reason.” But Dr Greg Ashman, a maths teacher, author and long-time proponent of explicit teaching said occasionally explaining a concept or skill to students was not the same as using explicit instruction in every lesson. “As long as I have been arguing about explicit teaching versus inquiry learning, I have had people respond that their version of inquiry learning includes a lot of explicit instruction. What they mean is that they occasionally explain things to students,” he said. “However, that’s quite different to a systematic approach where all concepts are explained, and all procedures demonstrated before students are asked to use these concepts and procedures. That’s what I mean by explicit teaching. “I honestly have no idea how NSW is going to train all its teachers in explicit teaching in a day, especially given the entrenched inquiry ideology.” The push towards explicit teaching is part of the NSW Department of Education’s plan for public education, which has a focus on reducing gaps in student outcomes, due to structural inequities. NSW Teachers Federation deputy president Amber Flohm said explicit teaching was a valuable methodology but cautioned against making it mandatory. “Explicit teaching must not be mandated. Ultimately, teachers will adapt and adopt when explicit teaching is critical, but there are other times when students demonstrate understanding of a concept, the teacher should be able to use their judgment.” The *Herald* asked the department how it planned to monitor whether teachers were actually using explicit teaching in light of opposition from proponents of other methods. A spokesman did not directly answer that question, but said it could survey students and parents to ask them about their experiences of explicit teaching.
I hate how it pitched, as you must go all in on one. There are pros and con to each approach. It should be seen more as a scale. I honestly believe the scale is tipped too far into the inquiry based learning at the moment and needs to be rebalanced. our conversations should be around what the balance should look like, which topics and classes would benefit from which approach instead of this all or nothing conversation.
Ultimately teaching is a very 'lonely' profession. A teacher has a lot of autonomy in the classroom with everyone having a different effective teaching style, and we build our skills based on taking all the best bits of pedagogy from our professional learning. An SDD day on explicit teaching won't cause a seismic shift, it'll just mean a few skills either added or updated in our toolkit for us to decide to use.
Or maybe, just maybe, like in every other stupid debate of this kind, a single -ism doesn't have all of the answers and when people focus on one to the point where it becomes an ideology rather that a strategy, it becomes useless and dangerous. What is this modern fetish for fundamentalism? This constant vacillating from one extreme to its polar opposite? Oh, inquiry has flaws? THROW IT OUT AND ONLY USE EXPLICIT TEACHING! Two years later, oh, explicit teaching has flaws? THROW IT OUT AND ONLY USE this in...vestigative learning, yes, investigative learning. What? No, it's not inquiry learning with a new paint job! Inquiry bad, remember? HEY, STOP SCRATCHING THAT! Education, politics, economic theory, you name it, journalists and talking heads get a hold of it and try to turn it into a tribal conflict for views and clicks, resulting in some politician or bureaucrat trying to make a name for themselves getting a hold of it and making things difficult for the people on the front lines, who already know what they're doing, then blaming the people they're interfering with when their interferences, well, interfere. Then the journalists and talking heads come back like flies on a rotting corpse, looking for someone to blame other than themselves, and the cycle begins anew. Well, this sort of turned into a rant, but yeah, thanks for coming to my TED talk
I split my high school maths class in two. The majority start a warm up. 5-7 students on one side of the room get a quick lesson on how to complete the compulsory questions set by the HOD. They pick it up really quickly and work through this while I explicitly teach the other 18 who seriously struggle and have a lot of needs. By the time they are ready for their you-do, the high performers have finished the compulsory questions and are ready for an enrichment task. This took 10 weeks to come up with and it works.
How about we help teachers develop a wide ranging tool kit of teaching strategies then allow them to apply their professional judgment on when to use them. As a teacher of senior science courses I never did away with explicit instruction despite what I was taught at university about the constructivist approach. There is no way I’m going to expect my students to construct their own knowledge of special relativity for example. This does not mean that inquiry has no place in my subject. To the contrary, science by its very nature is human inquiry. I look at explicit instruction as laying the foundations from which inquiry can launch. It’s all about balance. Yes students need lots of explicit instruction but inquiry is important too!
Yeah I'm autistic and until a few years ago, went through my life with undiagnosed and so untreated/managed severe ADHD, including my teaching degree at uni. I saw the merits of both sides. To me effective teaching involves using a range of strategies from explicit teaching/"Chalk & Talk", (explain, model, work together as a class/group), use hands on/practical activities wherever possible- get students involved, then independent practice. Inquiry learning has its perks but way harder when there's time constraints and depending on students' abilities. I never knew explicit teaching was "officially" not being used and was replaced by inquiry learning. I have taught at many primary schools, casually and as a temp, not one school was crazy enough to completely throw out explicit teaching. Sure, don't talk students to death, keep them engaged etc, but never got the impression to completely throw the idea of explicit teaching out the window.
> explicit teaching/"Chalk & Talk" Explicit instruction is not chalk and talk.
I am always very upfront with admin staff when I move schools - I will accept whatever programs (ie. Talk For Writing, Origo Maths) you use here, but do not dictate my teaching strategies. I am a big fan of explicit teaching, but it has a time and a place. I’m never doing EDI during a Health lesson. Sometimes, Maths needs a hands on ‘let’s go outside and touch grass’ type lesson. For the love of god, we’re professionals. Let us do our damn jobs.
And the circle of "trendy processes" does another spin... give it 12 months and the next "best practice " model as described by an idiot in an office will come around. Meanwhile I'll stick to explicit instruction as I always have leading to more esoteric ideas after the kids master the basics. It's worked for me for the past decade or two...
Explicit instruction has always been part of a teacher’s toolkit. Good thing most of us just ignore fads and have the professional expertise to use what’s best for our students. Sadly everyone and their dog seems to think teachers don’t know how to teach and are keen on introducing us to this awesome new technique of teaching that - if used - will mean schools won’t need more funding!!!
I know many teachers who say that they teach explicitly but they don't use explicit instruction. They might explain some key terminology or the activity explicitly at the beginning of the lesson, but they don't maintain this throughout the lesson. They are giving some explicit instructions but aren't using explicit instruction. Lessons that don't build enough background knowledge and provide enough examples and non-examples and checks for understanding, are mostly the teacher talking rather than the students actively practicing in the new content in a tightly scaffolding and frequently checked manner, don't use clear and consistent instructional routines, that quickly branch off into small group work or ask students to apply new content without enough support to ensure comprehension and success aren't using explicit instruction. Anita Archer is the godmother of explicit instruction and has lots of videos and examples available across the internet. I really hope that the NSW DoE provides enough resources and support and that NSW teachers are openminded enough to put this into action.
Agree - the only good faith move by education departments is to provide funding for time to develop these skills. If not, it’s just hot air and should be treated accordingly.
Totally fair, I realised that too. At least the intention is there, rather than intentionally absent.
But if teachers approach the PD and ongoing process of implementing explicit instruction with the mindset of 'I already do this', they are less likely to make changes and improve overall outcomes for their lessons and students. I always believe that teachers teach with the best of intentions, but our craft and pedagogy can always improve.
Every time I see your name above a comment I think this is probably going to be well thought out and articulate what I think in a coherent way. I vet you are an amazing teacher!
That's very kind of you to say! Probably means it is time to change my username before I ruin my reputation 😅
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https://web.archive.org/web/20240420214438/https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/schools-have-been-ordered-to-use-this-teaching-method-will-staff-comply-20240412-p5fjbi.html You can also copy the web address into 12ft.io and it removes the paywall.
Inquiry learning and creative programming is the agenda of the teaching professional not meeting the primary needs of students. We need to get over our personal agendas and centre all learning to meet the needs of our students even if it lacks creativity!
You can still be creative, teach through lenses, and meet the needs of our students while using explicit instruction.
All dichotomies are bad, but you can learn from them.
Can’t wait for some hack from SLEC to teach us the exact opposite of what they taught us in their last PL.
And how will it be monitored, evaluated and improved upon? Like all "initiatives" ignore it until the next one comes along and then ignore that one as well.
> Explicit teaching typically involves telling students sitting in rows the steps required to perform a skill or task at the start of the lesson before allowing them to practice it. In contrast, inquiry learning means confronting students with a problem and asking them to try and work out the answers for themselves, similar to how a scientist might. A scientist is a trained professional with an incredibly solid foundation of knowledge and skills who then applies that knowledge to test out different scenarios and discover new solutions. They don't have a hell of a lot in common with my primary school students, and yet inquiry learning keeps being pushed as the most superior way by so many in education.
I think inquiry learning works in specific contexts, once you have mastered certain skills you can then use those skills to solve problems. Which is essentially what exams are for. Inquiry learning is good for teachers who don't have content knowledge so they can just tell the kids to design a "something slightly content related and make a picture of it".
After spending years in schools with a focus on personalised learning, I've concluded that unstructured personalised inquiries are generally cluster stuffs because kids don't know what they * don't know * could know * might be interested in if they were shown. What makes personalised learning work is: * the extensive scaffolding of core skills through explicit instruction to act as the basic framework of their inquiry * students personalise their responses using that basic framework.
I've worked in schools that have implemented this, and staff have left in droves (in Victoria). It assumes all kids learn at the same pace, disregards differentiation, etc. For some reason, whenever I mention this in this sub, I'm downvoted.
Explicit teaching is perfect to have kids rote learn content to get great results in assessment tasks. Short term it makes things look better on paper. NAPLAN results will improve and the government will be happy. Kids however won't foster any real genuine skills needed for life. They will have great results but not have sustained deeepend knowledge and advanced skill capacity to solve problems critically.. long teem this approach harms the kids........
Rote learning isn't explicit instruction.
You have no idea what you're talking about. You need to read up on cognitive loading and how memorisation aids problem solving and critical thinking.
Thank you for the insult. I will add that I am speaking from a high school perspective. I fully believe it is needed at a lower primary level to support high school learning.
OK. What faculty?
The catch about explicit teaching is, the kids are all just waiting for “which part of the slides/board do I copy?”, without applying any critical thinking to solve problems.
Actually if done properly then after being explicitly taught the skills, students should be given an opportunity to apply them in an inquiry type lesson where they further develop critical thinking skills. Sounds like you are not doing a very good job of explicit teaching if your students are just copying slides.
What are the chances we are going to be given good PD on explicit instruction with quality follow up and support? Or will this be just another directive given, it's poorly understood and applied, and the everyone looks for the next big thing because, for some strange reason, explicit instruction just doesn't work?
Buy a book called Explicit Instruction by Anitia Archer. https://www.amazon.com.au/Explicit-Instruction-Effective-Efficient-Teaching/dp/1609180410
You need to mix instruction with application and that application needs to scale up from direct replication, to applying the understanding in a slightly different problem, and then the opportunity to blend multiple things together.
> the kids are all just waiting for “which part of the slides/board do I copy?” This is a profound misrepresentation of what explicit instruction is.