Curriculum, learning and teaching
Against intuition Simon Foley considers how international schools can promote evidence-based pedagogy
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they may lead to poor pedagogical choices. International schools are not immune to this phenomenon. Culturally and linguistically diverse, they bring together educators trained in different national systems, each with its own beliefs about effective classroom practice. Gaining any consensus of good teaching and learning is challenging. Without the benefits of close professional learning networks prevalent in many national systems, just how should international schools ground their actions in evidence? What tools do they have at their disposal to promote research-based learning? Weinstein et al (2019) make a compelling argument that using our intuition, when it comes to learning at least, is a risky business. Within their work, they use a Roediger and Karpicke (2006) study of an oft-repeated experiment. Two groups of students prepare for a college-level exam. One group reads and re-reads course material. The other reads small sections of content once only and spends the rest of the time with retrieval practice; they write what they can from memory. It will come as no surprise to readers of International School magazine that the retrieval group outperforms the reading group considerably. Yet the reading group reported significantly higher levels of confidence just prior to taking the examination, whilst the retrieval Spring |
Autumn
What constitutes excellent teaching and learning? The fierce debate on pedagogy is often remarkably binary; direct instruction vs student-led inquiry, knowledge vs skills, tradition vs technology. Like their national counterparts, international schools have a moral imperative to invest their energies where they will have the most impact on learning. Largely free from the constraints of national curricula and the oft-dreaded school inspection, teachers and leaders in international schools should know both what has the most impact on learning, and which interventions are costeffective. Education is notoriously faddish. Many of us find ourselves jumping on bandwagons, and investing time, effort and energy because interventions make sense to teachers and school leaders. One only has to think back to ‘learning styles’ to consider something which made sense at the time, only for it to be shown later to have no discernible impact on student outcomes. Too many schools continue to base little of their practice on the abundant evidence about what works and, more importantly, what does not. Experience and intuition continue to play a large part in building effective teaching strategies, and so they should. However, without careful attention,
| 2019
