Chapter 3 is an exploration of "The science of how we learn", and Robertson works through 7 keys ideas:

The Teaching Delusion A Five Minute Guide To… Learning - The Teaching Delusion

Although I have suggested that it is ‘good load’, as is often the case, we can have too much of a good thing. Too much intrinsic load will lead to cognitive overload. Hence, we are trying to optimiseit.

An exception is when it comes to students learning what we plan for them to learn. Here, difference isn’t a good thing. We want allstudents to learn everythingset out in our curriculum. However aspirational this aim might be, it is what all teachers should be aiming for. Extraneous load tends to be caused when students are expected to pay attention to too much at once. Quite simply, there is too much information coming at them. For example: To consider this, let’s think about the challenge of jumping across a ditch. If the ditch you are to jump across is one metre wide, that’s probably not much of a challenge. You could do it, but it wouldn’t prove particularly satisfying or memorable.

The Teaching Delusion 3: Power Up Your Pedagogy The Teaching Delusion 3: Power Up Your Pedagogy

This does not mean that we are aiming to produce clones. Far from it! Rather, it means that we want allstudents to know and be able to do specific things, as a minimum. In other words, we want allstudents to learn our core curriculum. This is about social justice and inclusion. It might take some longer than others, and some might need more support than others, but everyone should be aiming to learn this curriculum, in full. For example, if we want students to be able to debate the causes of climate change (a skill), they first need to learn specific declarative knowledgeabout the causes of climate change. If we want them to be able to perform a particular dance (a different skill), they first need to learn specific procedural knowledgeabout this dance. Like so many principles and initiatives in education, ‘differentiation’ has evolved into something it never should have been: it has undergone a ‘lethal mutation’. 1 Let me get this straight. We’re behind the rest of our class and we’re going to catch up to them by going slower than they are?’The first is that such approaches to differentiation consume teacher timeto such an extent that it not only becomes unreasonable, but unmanageable. The perceived benefits could never balance with the very real costs. No teacher should be expected to differentiate like this. Ever. Cognitive Load Theoryexplores the limits of working memory and how these can be overcome. Dylan Wiliam has described this as ‘the single most important thing for teachers to know’. 2If teachers need to know it, then school leaders need to know it too.

The Teaching Delusion: Why teaching in our classrooms and

Because every lesson is about learning, every lesson should have a clear learning intention, whether this be for students to learn something new, to consolidate their learning (through practice or revision) or to demonstrate their learning.

It can be useful to revisit learning intentions during lessons, reminding students of the learning focus. By the end of the lesson, something should have changed: students should know something that they didn’t before, they should be able to do something that they couldn’t before, or they should have improved at something. Every lesson should impact on learning; every lesson should count. Success Criteria Through our teaching, we aim for students to become more and more expert in particular knowledge domains. Ultimately, we want them to become as expert as their teacher – if not more. It is at this point that they can be truly thought of as independent. Lovell, O. (2020) Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action. Woodbridge: John Catt Educational Ltd.

The Teaching Delusion 2: Teaching Strikes Back by Bruce

I had never thought about this before but, after reading your post and revisiting some original research by Vygotsky, I suspect there is no benefit to a younger child in separating the learning objective from the success criteria; indeed there may well be a strong advantage to our scaffolding function as teachers to combine them. Thank you, it made me think. As they move from novice to expert, students should become less and less reliant on their teacher. The stabilisers can be removed, gradually. However, to achieve the independence we are aiming for, we mustn’t leave students to be independent on the journey. This is the great paradox of independent learning: the best way to achieve it is to not allow it to happen. 1 A sixteen-year-old student who knows very little about general relatively won’t necessarily be better at learning this independently than an eight- year-old student learning about air resistance. The difference between the sixteen-year-old and the eight-year-old is much more likely to relate to the complexityof what they are learning. When performing a skill, you are applying specific knowledge of things you know about (declarative knowledge) or how to do (procedural knowledge). Skills are knowledge in action. They emerge from knowledge: Because all of these things cause extraneous load, none of them are good for learning. The more extraneous load there is, the less intrinsic load working memory can process. Hence, the less it can think about the things that are most important for it to be thinking about.

Sadly, this is often misunderstood. In a misguided attempt to ‘personalise’ the curriculum according to interest and preference, some schools advocate approaches designed to do exactly this. They are making a big mistake. Principally, there are two reasons why. Consuming time and learning gaps Taken from The Teaching Delusion 3: Power Up Your Pedagogyby Bruce Robertson, published by John Catt Educational. Thisis how we should be thinking about differentiation in schools: differing levels of support and challenge as common content is taught. We can reasonably expect teachers to be able to do this, and it won’t create learning gaps. The 80% Success Rule As important as ensuring that all students have access to appropriate support when they need it is ensuring all students are appropriately challenged. When we get this right, we propel learning forward. When we get this wrong, we slow learning down. But what is an appropriate level of challenge? Jumping ditches Teachers across the country are tying themselves in knots with learning intentions and success criteria. Some are using them well; some are not. Some aren’t using them at all.