Bureaucrat SLAMS the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO)

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The Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO) recently released an extremely brief document, At a Glance: Explicit Instruction. The document is effectively an extended definition of explicit teaching, pointing out what it is and what it is not. AERO have published extensively on explicit teaching, including making videos of what it looks like—I was filmed as part of this project. So, it would be unfair to suggest that the At a Glance document is all they have to say on the matter.

As part of the At a Glance document, the writers give a brief example of what explicit teaching might look like in primary and secondary classrooms. The primary example is:

“A Year 1 teacher introduces the concept of a square. She draws a large square on the whiteboard and points out its 4 equal sides and 4 corners. Students repeat after her: ‘A square has four equal sides.’ The class goes through examples and non‑examples of squares on the board. Once the students are confident identifying squares, they independently sort cut‑out shapes into squares and non-squares.”

Clearly, this is a quick summary. The writers do not explain what ‘non-examples’ of a square might look like and so this is far from a lesson plan. It is just there to flesh out the definition.

Nevertheless, writing on LinkedIn, Martin Westwell, has treated it as a lesson plan and developed a detailed critique. Westwell is Chief Executive of the South Australian Department for Education and I recently wrote about his enthusiasm for non-existent generic skills and so-called productive struggle, as well as his scepticism towards explicit teaching.

Westwell runs the quoted text from AERO through EdChat, the South Australian education department’s AI chatbot, and asks it to do better. This is interesting because EdChat is not available to the general public.

Does the AI do better? It certainly elaborates on what was never a lesson plan in the first place, but the bot appears to have been created in Westwell’s image.

The first example the AI spits out is essentially the AERO plan with more detail added. It discusses rectangles and a rhombus as non-examples and a square on its side as an example. The teacher is to measure the sides of the square with connecting cubes and use a ‘corner checker’ to show the corners are right angles. As someone who has not taught Year 1, I’m not sure exactly how far into angles it is fair to go so this left me wondering.

Students then have to discuss why shapes are or are not squares—a task where I would ask for a whole class response—and build their own squares with paddle-pop sticks. This could be fun for them, but I doubt it adds much educationally. The bot is convinced this last part is a good addition because it uses ‘hands-on materials’.

The second example from the bot is classic ‘constructivist’ twaddle:

“A Year 1/2 teacher begins by showing photos of real objects: a window tile, a sticky note, a clock face, a book and a diamond-shaped road sign. She asks, “Which of these are squares? How do you know?” She then explicitly teaches that a square has 4 equal sides and 4 equal corners that are right angles. She models how to check side length and corners, thinking aloud as she compares a square and a rectangle. Next, students work in pairs with a set of shape cards. Together they sort them into ‘square’ and ‘not square’”

This is apparently a good thing because it ‘connects learning to the real world’.

I don’t understand this obsession with ‘the real world’. If it is meant to make mathematics more interesting then that betrays a poor view of the inherent beauty and worth of mathematics. We don’t learn mathematics so that we can use it to do humdrum things in other fields. We learn mathematics because it’s cool to know and be able to do mathematics.

And has anyone ever noticed how little children like stories about fairies and space aliens and magic potions that make people grow to enormous sizes? What possesses people to think they will be enthused by window tiles?

The teacher then works with a small group that needs extra support while the rest look for squares in the classroom. This is great because: differentiation! As regular readers will know, differentiation can mean many things and is not necessarily a good thing in its own right. Simply ladling it in does nothing and could be disruptive. Who, for example, is making sure the rest of the class are studiously finding squares around the classroom rather than taking a break, socialising or possibly even engaging in mischief?

How would the teacher know who needs the extra support? What evidence would they collect to inform them? Is there some form of assessment built in? We can infer there might be and we can imagine what it might look like, but it is not mentioned, and this is important because Westwell’s entire critique of AERO is based on details the AERO writers did not include.

It is, at best, uncharitable of Westwell to focus on this one AERO resource in the way he has. It gives the impression that he has an axe to grind. Nevertheless, he has given us an insight into EdChat’s manifest flaws that we would otherwise not have had.