Is Explicit Teaching Easier?

Note: This post is an exercise in my meandering thoughts. I usually try to bring these around to something practical, but I'm not sure this is one of those times. You've been warned, but you are also reading a blog called "On the Rabbit Trail," so maybe that is to be expected.

Edu Twitter is predictable. At certain times of year, you can rely on certain trends or arguments. Some are legitimate discussions about pedagogy (learning styles, discovery, etc.) and classroom practice (deadlines, cold calling) while others are just preferences disguised as debates (when you should and should not answer your email is the teacher equivalent of where to squeeze the toothpaste). In most of these debates, opinions are high and acceptance for the opinions of others is often low. 

Occasionally, there is one that is more intriguing than others. In this case, it isn't about whether something is right or more effective, but about whether it is easier. What I find interesting about that discussion is that it seems like a straightforward question, it more complex than you might think. When the question is about effectiveness, experiments can be set up, and test results can be analyzed. But the question about whether something is easier is largely based on perception and that perception is shaped by multiple factors. 

The question is "Is explicit teaching easier for the teacher than discovery learning?"

Let's define our terms -  Both explicit teaching and discovery are terms loaded with academic jargon and emotional baggage, so let me define what we mean in this discussion.

• Explicit teaching - It is not the same as lecturing, but it is often confused for it because the teacher is standing at the front of the room explaining things. What's the difference, a lecture is all in one direction and has no interaction with the students. Think of it this way: If you could have delivered the same lesson after hitting play on a video of yourself teaching, that's a lecture. Explicity teaching (sometimes called direct instruction with a small d and i because capital DI is specific scripted program) is very interactive, pausing frequently for formative assessment and retrieval practice to make sure students understand and will remember what the teacher is teaching.
• Discovery learning - People on my side of this argument often set up the straw man of assuming a proponent of discovery learning is talking about "pure discovery." Pure discovery would meant the teacher goes in with no preconceived notion of what students will learn and allows them to just freely explore. I say this is a straw man because I have NEVER seen anyone do this in practice. Even the most ardent fans of discovery learning I know go in with a plan for the outcomes and fences around their playground. So, in practice, what we are talking about is "guided discovery," in which the teacher is setting the destination but allowing students to get there is a variety of ways.

When Done Well . . .  This may be the most common (not to mention meaningless) phrase used in the eduTwittersphere. No matter what the discussion, someone will come along and say, "When done well, this is effective."  Well, duh. Anything done well is going to be more effective than the same thing done poorly. For that matter, even a poor practice "done well" will be more effective than a good practice "done poorly." 

In the case of this discussion about what is easier, it's an even dumber phrase. Doing something well requires effort, energy, organization, and time. Doing it poorly usually results from the lack of those inputs. So, either "done well" is harder than the other "done poorly." 

So, let's set that argument aside and assume two classrooms, one employing explicit teaching and the other employing guided discovery, but both being done as well as they can be.  In other words, both being "done well." Let's look at the factors that might make one style of teaching easier than another.

1. Lesson content - Some lessons lend themselves better to discovery than others. If I want students to know what factors influence rate of dissolving, it is not hard to set up an experience that will allow them to time how long it takes to dissolve a cube of sugar in hot water v. cold, while stirring v. keeping it stationary, and keeping the cube whole v. crushing the cube into powder. While I wouldn't say that is easier than explicitly telling them those factors, it might be worth the effort. But if I want them to learn the underlying empirical formulae for ionic compounds, it is going to be difficult to learn through discovery. I'll grant that it was originally learned that way, but that was by scientists who devoted months and years to one substance, not high school students in a class period. So, in instances like this, explicit instruction would be much easier.

2. The students - We all have one class that is, how shall we put this diplomatically, more challenging than the others. It could be the class you have righter after lunch or the one you have the last period of the day. You know the one I'm talking about though. They are the ones that make you want to pull your hair out when there is still 30 minutes of class yet. As a young teacher, I thought they would be the ones to benefit from discovery because the needed to move and talk more. Oh, my! Was I ever wrong?!?! That was the opposite of what should have been happening. My life became so much harder than I ever imagined.

3. Teacher personality - We always find a thing we love to do easier than a thing we don't. We get in a zone and things just seem to flow. If you are a teacher who loves explicit lessons, it is not going to feel hard for you to plan one. You are going to enjoy coming up with metaphors and planning your questions. This will feel easier for you. For my friend, Hannah, planning a purely explicit lesson would be torture. She loves the process of giving her kids something mysterious and pulling the concepts out of them. For her, this will seem easier (even though it objectively takes more energy) because she finds it energizing. For her, discovery teaching is easier.

I know I haven't answered the question about whether explicit teaching is easier; I didn't intend to. I don't even really know what conclusion I'm trying to draw here. (To be fair, I did warn you that this wasn't going anywhere practical.) I guess I would say that just because something is easier for you doesn't mean it will be easier for someone else. 

So, don't base any decision on whether another teacher finds it easy.  Is that a good ending?

Wait! Don't Tear Down That Fence Yet

 "Don't ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up."      
- GK Chesterton

Imagine you are walking through a field and come upon a fence. It looks old, and a few boards are missing. It's blocking your ability to get from one place to another in the field. You think about it for a minute and say, "I don't see any use for this fence. I'm going to help out by tearing it down." As you begin removing boards, you feel very proud of yourself for being smarter than whoever put this fence up and allowed it to remain for so long in this condition. You've made progress, removing a section about 6 feet wide when a bull comes charging through the gap. And, now, you realize why the fence was there. You were well intentioned, but you created a danger because you didn't consider one question. Why did someone take the time to put a fence here?

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We see this frequently in the world around us. Several years ago, the city I live in was kicking around the idea of banning the sale of kitchen garbage disposals. People's opinions on this matter of law inevitably came down to whether or not they used their own. There seemed to be no one amongst the people who did use them that was capable of imagining why anyone else would, and thus, were fine with them being banned. (If you are interested, this ended up not happening because our water sanitation system requires that there be something to feed on, so the city actually needed people to put food scraps in the drain.)

Social media is, of course, the best place to witness this phenomenon. People with little knowledge of any given situation have VERY strong opinions about what should be done and how things should change. There are many, for example, with heated views about the electoral college system, daylight savings time, or car emissions testing. While it is valid to have discussions examining whether or not these things should still be part of our lives in the 21st century, it is worth examining why something like the electoral college was established in the first place. It's not like the writers of our constitution wanted to make things as complicated as possible. They were trying to balance the needs of smaller, less populated states with those containing larger cities. If we are going to discuss eliminating it, we must ask ourselves if those conditions still exist. Only then is it appropriate to discuss potential replacements for the system. Why did we decide to start changing our clocks twice per year? There was some reason. It may no longer be necessary, but it is important to know what problem was being solved by it before we eliminate it.

Any organization where people gather in groups is subject to a well meaning person who wants to change things. They come and see something that doesn't make sense to them and propose changes. This isn't always a bad thing; sometimes we have become so set in our ways that we don't see solutions to problems (or sometimes even the problem itself). But if you are a new person in a place, it is worth listening to those who know the history.

I worked in the same school for 21 years. There are a lot of things that are nice about that, and one of them is that I carried institutional memory. For most things, not all, I knew what the reasoning was behind a policy or a procedure. Sometimes, a new person came in and said, "Why don't we do this?" My reply was often, "We tried that a few years ago. Here's why it didn't work." What the person was suggesting was logical. There was a reason we had tried it in the past. But not everything this logical works in every setting. It's important that we not limit our perspective.

This is a good conversation to have with students. They are, like us, often unaware of their limited perspective. They often have strong opinions about school policies, classroom procedures, or things their parents do. Part of helping them to mature isn't to dismiss them out of hand with a "rules are rules" attitude, but rather to talk through the reasons behind the issues. I remember once having a conversation in which I shared the student's opinion, but it was still important to show support for the administration. Since I am a science teacher, I brought it back to the idea that we draw conclusions based on available data but are open to changing our minds when new data is presented. I said to her, "Is it possible the administration knows something we don't?" Of course that was possible. "Might we think the way they do if we had that information?" This was good for both of us to consider. 

Anytime you find yourself confused by a practice or policy, slow down and have the humility to ask yourself, "Why is this here?"

We Dream in the Dark for the Most Part

One month from tomorrow, my book, Show Your Work: Teaching Smarter With the Science of Learning, comes out. (Here's the obligatory shameless link for pre-ordering it from Bloomsbury and Amazon.) 

If you had told me twenty years ago that I would be publishing a book, a for real book through an actual publisher, I would have thought you were crazy or on drugs. I was a teacher, and a good one, but I didn't think I had anything special to say. I didn't think I was doing anything different from any other good teacher out there. 

If you told me five years ago, I might not have thought you were completely crazy, but I would have, at minimum, asked some diagnostic questions. At that point, we had just survived the hybrid year and were grappling with what would come next in our classrooms (ChatGPT was just barely on our radar and there was some talk of continuing a model that included some virtual components, which scared all of us out of our shoes). But I was becoming a person with something to say to other teachers at that point, so I might have found the idea of writing a book about the science of learning intriguing. 

And, now, it is happening.

What changed during that time? 

• Experience and position in my school. The longer you teach in one place, the more you become a person newer teachers come to for advice. Talking through pedagogy with other teachers is fun and great way to develop professionally as both people think of ideas they might not have otherwise. 
• Blogging - I started this blog at the suggestion of Laura Warmke, our media specialist and technology coach, in 2013 (sort of - there were only 5 posts that year, and then I forgot about it until May of 2014). Laura insisted that I had something to contribute to the wider world of education, and I was willing to do anything to earn a badge in the Level Up program she created for our PD. It turned out to be a great way to work out my thoughts about pedagogy, curriculum, and school life. And it helped me hone communication through writing.
• My classroom textbooks - In 2014, I attended an Apple Apps education workshop and found out that I could write a pretty slick looking digital book in iBooks Author (it sadly doesn't exist anymore) and decided I could write my own textbook for my 8th grade classroom. Two years later, I followed it up with a physics textbook. These were not publishable; they weren't mean to be. They were meant to be a resource for my students and included videos and hyperlinks for anything I thought might interest them. Post pandemic, I processed my trauma through companion videos (118 of them). While none of this ever went outside my classroom, it all contributed to my confidence in writing and its organization.
• Learning and the Brain - In 2018, I attended my first Learning and the Brain conference. Then, the one in 2019 turned my world upside down. Once you learn about cognitive science and the principles of the science of learning, you can't help but evangelize for it. I began giving PD presentations to my colleagues and at one conference. (I also spoke at a fundraising dinner and got to introduce a speaker at a teachers' meeting - while neither of these were about learning science, they made me realize that I could talk to adults, something I had previously said I was not called to.)
• Matt's Class at the YMCA - While Matt is not my entire Y experience and I have several amazing instructors, I do credit him with building something in me that wasn't there before - a confidence to do things I found intimidating. When I first met him, it was in a cardio kickboxing class. I left school that day saying, "Well, I'm about to go be terrible at this" only to find that it was the highlight of my week. A couple of months later, I went to his weightlifting class. That's really the one that did it. I had been avoiding strength classes. When I walked in that night and saw people setting up benches and bars and weight collections, I thought, "If anyone but Matt was teaching this, I would turn around and leave right now." But, it turned out to be something I loved and a way to challenge myself in ways I hadn't before. Now, I take it four times per week and know when to push myself and when to back off. He turned me into a person who says, "Yeah, it's scary, but that's not a reason to say no."

These experiences are not foreseeable from our perspective. Twenty years ago, I was finishing my 3rd year at GRACE and had just finished my first yearbook. I couldn't have seen blogging and digital textbook writing coming; we were still doing our grades with a pencil and calculator. My evaluation that year listed one of my weakness as "does not seek out professional development," so Learning and the Brain  conferences were nowhere near my radar screen. I didn't know I would join the Y 18 years later. The path is in front of us, but our ability to see it is limited. 

God knew that He would create this in me and exactly how He would do it, but I couldn't have planned it. My dreams were smaller than reality because I was in a dimly lit world, only able to see the next few steps, not a mountain it would take 20 years to climb. I couldn't see (and would not want to see) very far. I once heard a sermon on Psalm 119:105. He said, "The Psalmist calls the Word 'a lamp unto my feet,' not a lamp that shines for miles because He wants us to trust Him for the step that is not yet illuminated." God wisely doesn't overwhelm us with knowledge of the future because He knows it would likely paralyze us and because He wants us to walk in faith.

That's the reason we dream in the dark for the most part. In these next few months, as I have a book launch event, do four presentations at three conferences, and guest on two podcasts (a terrifying thing I've never done before), I will be grateful that God built this and revealed this a little at a time. Otherwise, much like the weightlifting class, I might have opted out.

Teachers, you have students with definite plans. Some of them will do that thing, and some of them will end up going in other directions. Let them grow and change and pursue different things than they said when they were in high school without feeling they have disappointed you. You also have some students who are concerned because they do not yet have a plan. Encourage them to explore different classes, a variety of electives, and whatever extracurricular activity seems interesting. You never know what experience will lead them.