The first in a two-part series on AERO and evidence. Tomorrow: Evidence is important, but what is the problem?
The Federal Government has now ordered an independent performance evaluation of AERO, conducted by KPMG. You can provide feedback here.
There have been debates about whether teaching is an “evidence-based” profession, or whether it should be.
The discourse around evidence-based teaching and learning has been dominated by “effectiveness research”. That’s driven by a neoliberal obsession with metrics, the most convenient metrics being standardised test scores like NAPLAN and PISA.
Declining scores on these tests is most often attributed to poor teaching. Specifically, the blame is attributed to the quality of teachers graduating from university initial teacher education (ITE) programs. Part of the Australian Government’s solution to this perceived problem is to increase oversight of ITE programs in universities. This has led to the introduction of highly prescriptive “Core Content” for ITE programs from the Strong Beginnings report, and further surveillance of ITE through a new Quality Assurance Board (to regulate the regulators).
The Core Content mandates teaching strategies and approaches that are “shown by research” or “proven” to be effective.
The evidence for these assertions comes from the Australian Educational Research Organisation (AERO). AERO was established as part of the Gonski 2.0 reforms, as a national evidence body. It was intended to “conduct research and share knowledge to promote better educational outcomes for Australian children and young people”. AERO publishes a range of resources, including “Explainers”, intended to provide advice to teachers about evidence-based practice. But is this evidence-based practice, or a new avenue for governments to further intrude into the classroom?
Should teachers trust AERO to interpret the evidence for them?
As Nicole Mockler and Meghan Stacey explain, it’s hard to argue against ‘evidence-based practice’ but the devil is in the detail. Evidence-based practice as it is understood in medicine, is a far cry from evidence-based practice as it’s currently understood in teaching. Evidence-based medicine was conceived as a reflective practice grounded in individual judgement by the medical practitioner, considering systematic research evidence, their own expertise and the patient’s needs. It emerged from the medical professions in the 1990s and was pioneered by David Sackett, It has since evolved beyond Sackett’s original vision, extended to balance the patient’s values and preferences, the clinical context, the practitioner’s expertise and research evidence.
Evidence-based teaching has been driven by policy mechanisms, promoting models of evidence use that emphasise generalisability and scalability. It reduces teaching to a set of formulaic strategies. The evidence and resources presented by AERO appear to position teachers as incapable of understanding and interpreting research, then making professional judgments based on their students and the school content. AEROpresents the research as if it was black and white– “proven”, incontestable facts. The evidence is presented as an instruction manual, with no space for professional judgments or critique.
Education researchers know this is very rarely the case. Let’s look atAERO’s explainer on Managing cognitive load. Drawing primarily on Sweller’s cognitive load theory, the explainer proposes that explicit or direct instruction helps to avoid students experiencing cognitive overload. This can occur when too much new information is presented at once. It can also occur when previously taught knowledge is not regularly revisited.
Arguments and counter-arguments
There is significant evidence to support the educational psychology of cognitive load theory. But there are also counter-arguments. Sweller argues that unguided learning “does not work”. But others provide evidence that problem-based and inquiry learning can be effective, and that contextual factors must inform pedagogical choices. When we consider these perspectives on the research, we begin to see the selective approach to research on which AERO has built its “evidence base”.
This is not just a concern for practising teachers. It is a concern for the entire educational enterprise. Critical thinking is identified as a crucial skill for the 21st Century. It drives innovation and preparing students for a world we can’t yet imagine.
The Australian Government promotes the importance of critical thinking. But at the same time, AERO recommends strengthening evidence-based practice through highly prescriptive approaches to teaching. It mirrors the same top-down, narrow interpretation of ‘what works’ that characterises AERO’s materials.
The government asks no questions of AERO’s research
The Australian government appears to be not engaging in any critical thinking, taking AERO’s research explainers at their word. An example of this is the full acceptance of the Strong Beginnings recommendations, including the swift implementation of the Core Content for ITE programs.
Content from the Managing cognitive load explainer dominates Core Content areas 1 and 2 from Strong Beginnings, with all ITE programs expected to teach their students:
1.2.3 The most effective teaching practices to reduce cognitive overload, including explicit instruction, scaffolding, and clearly structured content that connects new information to prior learning.
2.2.3 The importance of presenting all information required to complete these chunked tasks in one place and at one time, excluding information not directly related to the task, to reduce cognitive overload.
2.2.6 Why independent problem-solving is only effective once a student approaches proficiency (i.e. after ample opportunities to practise progressively challenging tasks) and why independent problem-solving should not represent a large proportion of teaching and learning time.
(Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, 2023)
There is no nuance in this policy language. It tells teachers what is effective and what is not. AERO presented the research as black and white, and now the policy does the same.
Evidenced based teaching is only as good as the evidence itself
Under the present evidence-based regime in education we have lost any consensus on what evidence-based practice even means. Some suggest that evidence-based practice is oppressive, that it is in opposition to good education, leading to pre-determining of teaching practices with no regard for local context.
Others suggest that the problem is narrow definitions of what counts as evidence, and that evidence-informed policy and practice are vital to the profession. The version of evidence-based practice promoted by AERO reduces evidence to prescription, positioning teachers as technicians. This is not what David Sackett envisaged when he first articulated evidence-based medicine: that professionals make decisions in uncertain, complex, and relational contexts by drawing on research,experience, and the needs of those they serve.
Can teachers trust AERO’s evidence?
So, can teachers trust AERO’s evidence? Maybe they could if trust meant more than compliance. But perhaps the bigger question is why doesn’t AERO trust teachers? What if AERO treated teachers not as technicians, but as thinking professionals in relationship with their students. Maybe AERO needs an “explainer”?
Rachael Dwyer is a lecturer in curriculum and pedagogy at the University of the Sunshine Coast. Her scholarship is focused on creating social change, through decolonizing, arts-based approaches to teaching, advocacy and research. James Humberstone is a senior lecturer in music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. He specialises in teaching music pedagogies, technology in music education, and musical creativities. Brad Fuller is an educator and researcher with over 35 years of experience in music education and curriculum innovation. He is associate lecturer in music education at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney.
James Humberstone, when you teach foundation music skills to young children, do you use an explicit or inquiry approach? When you do opt for explicit instruction, don’t you make adjustments based on your judgement of the child, their skill, their motivation at that time, their level of engagement?
Thanks Sarah, that’s a great question. Your suggestion that I, or any good educator, makes adjustments for the child, is bang on. You’re also intimating that a good teacher doesn’t actually choose between an explicit OR inquiry approach, but carefully balances what students need for what is being taught. Again, I think you’re bang on! John Dewey agreed with you, too – in 1938 he wrote a list of such “extreme opposites” and warned against such dichotomous thinking in education.
(Brad Fuller and I published a chapter on this in the music context in “The Routledge Companion to Creativities in Music Education” – hit me up for a pre-print on ResearchGate if you don’t have access to that through your library.)
Not only would we like the research evidence put forward by those advising the government to be balanced, independent, and peer-reviewed (as we’ve shown here, it isn’t at the moment), but we would like teachers to be empowered to balance what they learn from research evidence with the context they teach in, their own expertise, and the values, needs, and circumstances of each and every student in their class. We’ll expand on this in our second piece tomorrow.
Thanks for such a great question!
Much of this post is right on the money; some of it less so .. for example, the view that Cognitive Load Theory is well supported by the evidence. My summary of the position, from https://insidestory.org.au/the-trickle-down-theory-of-schooling/(subsequently posted by EduResearch Matters:
“Learning science” is an even less reliable vessel. There is in fact no such thing as “learning science.” The learning sciences (plural) include experimental psychology, social and affective neuroscience, cognitive anthropology, developmental psychology, robotics and AI, and neurology, systems theory and many others. AERO relies on a particular subset of a particular branch of the learning sciences, cognitive load theory, or CLT, which is held in low esteem by many for its failure to take into account “the neurodynamic, attitudinal, social, emotional and cultural factors that often play a major, if often invisible and unsung role in every classroom.”
And is ‘evidence-based teaching’ is a good idea? Evidence-informed’ or better still ‘evidence aware’ would be closer to the mark. Teachers do and should draw on many kinds of evidence in deciding what to do and how to do it, some conscious/deliberate, much intuitive. What scholarly research has to offer is just one of those kinds of evidence, and a rather less valuable one than academic researchers – not exactly disinterested parties – imagine
Hi Dean, thanks for sharing your insights. We’re fans of your work 🙂
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head – AERO relies on a particular type of evidence. Our piece coming tomorrow digs into why that’s a problem, and what it might look like for teachers – as professionals – to engage with research evidence to inform their practice.
Whose evidence counts? In the UK, music teacher/composer Filipe Augirre provides sheet music on coloured paper. He claimed in a LinkedIn post “Some students have specific conditions that make white paper difficult or even impossible to use effectively.” What’s the evidence? Australian students (eight of them in a school of 900) reported “its easier to read [words]”; two said “it wasn’t glary; “I was able to complete the exams and I didn’t get headaches”. One said, “words in the background didn’t move”. Despite such evidence, policy inaction for students who need coloured paper prevails. What’s the problem? It’s too political?
Seems like something that could have been easily addressed, in the way we address lots of other accommodations/student needs.
Thank you Rachel, seems simple to fix, but most teachers do not know about this.
As a former music teacher I’d like other teachers (including music teachers) to know. Students’ reports are documented in my book which is based on PhD research: “Light Sensitive Learners. Unveiling Policy Inaction, Marginalisation, Discrimination”.
Firstly, with regard to the issues with ITE and the under preparedness of new teachers, the contemporary changes from political interference must be viewed critically. ITE programs have been infilitrated with many subjects/courses that are better addressed at a later stage in a teaching career. In the initial course, pedagogy and content should remain the key courses….how to teach and what to teach through focusing on the learner (who the learner is) and how learning occurs. Contemporary programs for both primary and secondary future teachers are impacted by political need to ‘tick boxes’ e.g. cultural learning and learners, neurodiverse learners. If new teachers build a strong understanding of learners generally, learning to read, learning to write, learning to measure, learning to…. and how to interpret curriculum, they have firm foundations to critically structure programs for neurodiverse learners etc.
In simple terms, too much too soon in the ITE programs.
Secondly, this article refers to Core Content 2.2.3 with “presenting information.” Teaching is not about delivery or presenting information but rather, about children learning, children wanting to learn and by having teachers who want to motivate children to learn. Delivering PowerPoint after PowerPoint of content which is a current well-instituted approach has no evidence-based but is the new way of designing a program of learning for a term or a week.
Quite, Dr Thrupp. It’s in the name – “Core Content”. These government bodies tend to have a functionalist view of education, what Freire called “The Banking Model”. The teacher depostis knowledge and (to use the government’s own phrase) “the brain learns” (not the child). We wouldn’t accept an undergraduate essay that had such a one-sided view of research evidence, yet we’re lumped with it from institutions like AERO.
On the question of what should be covered in ITE, I strongly agree (and, funnily enough, the research also shows) that most important here is your use of the word “critical”. We need to empower young teachers with the ability to interpret and respond (to curriculum, to policy, to the young people in their care…). There are thousands of hours in ITE degrees, so I think that we can cover all kinds of things, and I would argue that the experienced teachers and academics who write those programs should be given the freedom to develop the most brilliant programs they can without need for the “box ticking” that you rightly identify.