Welcome to Chalk & Talk, a podcast about education and math. I'm Anna Stokke, a math professor and your host. You are listening to episode 31 of Chalk & Talk. My guests in this episode are Dr. Nidhi Sachdeva and Dr. Jim Hewitt. They co-teach a course on the Science of Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education or Oizee at the University of Toronto. They also co-author a newsletter that explores the latest science of learning research and its
practical applications. In the first part of the episode, we discussed the innovative science of learning course that they designed. It is my hope that more courses like this will become available for educators worldwide. I recently met Nidhi and Jim at Research Head Canada where they presented on equitable instruction. They reviewed the literature on various instructional techniques to determine what works best for closing the achievement
gap. I found their presentation fascinating and thought my listeners would too. In the latter part of this episode, they share their findings with us so be sure to stay tuned. It was an absolute pleasure to have this insightful and informative conversation with Nidhi and Jim. You won't want to miss it. Just a note, the resource page for this episode lists articles discussed in the episode. Now without further ado, let's get started.
I've got an exciting conversation plan today. I am joined by two people in Toronto, Dr. Nidhi Setch Dava and Dr. Jim Hewitt. Dr. Nidhi Setch Dava has a PhD in education from Oizee that's the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are micro learning, cognitive science and evidence informed instructional design. She has a master's in applied linguistics from York University and a BSC in occupational
therapy from Delhi University. She teaches at Oizee and she's received an e-campus Ontario fellowship to support post-secondary educators with digital fluency. Dr. Jim Hewitt is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at Oizee. He has a PhD in educational technology from Oizee and a B-math in Math and Computer Science from Waterloo. His research focuses on the educational applications of computer-based technologies and he previously taught
math and computer science at the secondary level. He teaches educational technology and courses in online teaching and learning. Now as a team, Nidhi and Jim designed and they co-teach a course called Science of Learning to Educators and Pre-Service Teachers at Oizee
and we're going to hear a lot about that today. They also write a sub-stack called the Science of Learning which is a newsletter examining the latest science of learning research and its implications for instructional practice and I will put a link to that on the resource page. Welcome to both of you. Welcome to my podcast. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. Thank you. I'm excited to talk about your course
which sounds amazing. So let's start with that. So why did you decide to design a course on the Science of Learning? Well the idea kind of grew out of work that Nidhi and I had been doing together. So about five years ago I was feeling a bit disillusioned. I was frustrated by all the different educational theories and all the fads and it didn't feel like the field of education was making much progress and at the time I was on sabbatical.
So I became really interested in hunting down scientifically rigorous studies. I wanted to know what we could learn about effective teaching and so I started reading all these review articles and some meta analyses and around this time I became aware of a new book called How Learning Happens by Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendritt. It was a really helpful book because it talked about some of the landmark studies and educational research and
what the studies can tell us about effective teaching. So around this time I think it was late 2020. I met Nidhi and she agreed to do a reading course with me and so we both started reading How Learning Happens Together. I think I should add that it was Jim Colbert to do the reading course with me. So this is the time when I was in my second year of Doctoral program at OASI and I was doing my course work in among all the courses that
I was doing. I had a very strong research interest in my co-learning and what that would mean in formal higher education if there's a place for it and if there is how does that look like. So I wanted to take a course but there wasn't really a specific course in that area of micro learning and higher ed within our course offering. So I wanted to do an independent research and reading course and I was looking for professors who would
be able to supervise me for that kind of course. So I went to Jim and so that's what I mean I am glad that he agreed to do the reading course with me and we put together a reading list and as a part of that course Jim was working on that book or reading the book How
Learning Happens at the time and he headed over the book to me and he said let's read this book together and what you could do is as a part of your micro learning assignment you could develop five or so micro learning videos kind of like a series and see where
that takes us and how we can work with that within higher education. Of course I did a literature view on micro learning as well but that's sort of how I got connected to that and as we did this work we felt that there was just such great material here in that book for a course on how people learn and we didn't have a course on this topic at our institution at the time and we said to each other hey what did it just be a great idea
to build a course like that. So it's sort of based on the book How Learning Happens by Paul Kirschner and Karl Hendrick right. That is a great book and I recommend that anyone read it but I think it's excellent that you're using that book for a course so what are some of the main topics that are covered in the course.
Yeah so we developed as I mentioned using the course using the first edition of the book How Learning Happens by in 2020 and what's really great about this book is that it's organized around a set of 28 significant studies in education of ecology that illuminate different aspects of how learning takes place. It's almost like the hits of education
of the college you're in there. So what we did was we curated the course with specific chapters from the book and some other resources like other research papers and various large scale studies and meta-analyses and videos that we felt would be very useful for our students or teacher candidates and are even for educators out there. So we developed some 120 learning objectives on topics like cognitive load, dual coding theory, explicit instruction or
deep processing, importance of prior knowledge. We also talk about David Geary's evolutionary educational theory, mutual practice, we cover multimedia principles, we talk about self efficacy, motivation and a bunch of other topics in there. Okay sounds great. So my understanding as well is that you incorporate some of the learning techniques taught in the course within your instructional design. Can you elaborate on
that? Yes we do our best to incorporate these techniques in our own teaching. Students have commented on the fact that we practice what we preach which is nice to hear. So we teach our course online, we have an hour long Zoom meeting each week and the rest of the time students do assignments and have text-based discussions in an asynchronous environment that we have called pepper. And we teach the entire course using explicit instruction.
We work very hard not to overload our students. We have lots of retrieval practice in the form of brain dumps and pulls and many quizzes and we use a variety of tools to make connections to students prior knowledge and experiences. One of our more interesting innovations in the course is the midweek micro lesson. This was Niddy's invention. We were worried about situations where we have a Zoom session on a Monday and then students don't think about our course again until the following Sunday.
So we thought, let's introduce this midweek micro lesson that will mail out to them halfway through the week. And what we do is we send them a short self-contained five minute lesson usually in a video format on some really interesting topic that you know something that really kind of sparks their interest. And that gets them thinking more about their readings and the material that they're studying. Niddy usually ends the micro lesson with a little
test-me quiz so that students can make sure they understand the lesson. The micro lesson itself is a great example of the explicit instruction. But all of this is to say that we make a real effort to embody the principles we teach in our course because it helps us students learn better if we do so. Awesome. So just to follow up on that and Niddy, I'll ask you this because I understand you know a lot about micro learning. So when you talk about a micro lesson, that's generally
a very short lesson. In this case, a short video. So what should the length be? Would micro lesson the idea of length the way we design or we talk about is not so much in terms of timing or how long it should be or like a timeframe. We always talk about especially within our course as well from the notion of mental complexity and cognitive overload. So yes, it should be short, but you'll want to think about things like you know from
few seconds to a certain number of minutes. But if we focus so much about on the idea of timeframe or how long it is going to be within a scope of something that you can measure in seconds or minutes or whatever, then what we may miss out on is that you could still overload someone, cognitively overload someone, even if it's less number of minutes
or seconds, right? So when you pay attention to the mental complexity part, when you pay attention to if you're going through the loops of covering prior knowledge and giving students or whoever's doing that micro lesson, giving them enough exposure to explicit instruction, clear instruction and how to do that, then I think that's really important. Of course, you don't want to make it like an hour because then that's sort of really further along.
But having a clear focus, short non-overlapping, well organized, explicitly sort of explained lesson would be in our mind and micro lesson. So I've done a lot of work in my doctorate research and I also. Okay, got it. It just reminded me because in my classes, I use short little videos to do the worked example effect. When students are working on their own, I want them to see a worked example and then sort of mimic that and then do problems on
their own. So I don't like to go past six or seven minutes mainly because I think attention span is something I have to think about with students. But yeah, so anyway, it was just reminding me of that. So I was just curious about that. It's a really great thing for math, isn't it? Because you have these things and you can reuse them each year and students can stop them and rewind them and see each step. Absolutely. And the students do appreciate it. I mean, certainly I teach direct instruction
when I'm teaching new concepts. But I do give them these little mini videos and my colleagues use them too. It works pretty well. And I'll just add, if you don't mind here, I have younger kids and they are learning math and what ends up happening is when something is not clear. So their math program does offer these short videos that they can watch if they can stuck on a specific step. And then they know they automatically not know they've
been trained to do that. They just go back to this video, this short micro learning video and you can watch these steps. And it's usually around like that seven, eight minute mark. So the point I'm trying to make here is that it not just works for like adult learners, but it also works really, really well with younger learners too. If they have access to it, especially in the context of math learning also back to your course. So you were kind
enough to give me access to your pepper page. So this is like your learning management system that you use for your course. And I did notice that you discuss educational myths. So for example, learning styles and the learning pyramid, I'm wondering are the students surprised to hear that some of these things are myths? Yes, they're, they're very surprised actually. So what we do know is that we actually have a dedicated folder in our learning environment
called educational myths. And what we do is that each week we post an additional reading sort of busting a popular myth could be learning pyramid or this notion of left brain, right brain or things like learning style that you mentioned or multitasking or even things like that teaching facts is not important, but busting myths of that sort. So what we find is that students really enjoy this folder and they wait actually for the latest article
that we're about to share or we will be sharing that week. And sometimes we've also seen that they also share some myths that they come across. They feel it's just getting a bit of an activity for them or they are right up there in the interest now. Oh, I came across this and they share that and students do often respond with surprise. Sometimes they respond with frustration as well and anger even I've seen many of our students are
practicing educators or even learning designers. And when they learn about some of these popular myths, they often react by saying, well, why is this the first time I'm hearing of this? Why haven't I heard this before? And I remember when we first introduced the learning styles met in one of our groups. One student came to me and said, I feel like my whole life
is a lie as a teacher. And then I thought to myself, it's actually funny. First I laughed at it and then you think, it's actually not so funny at the same time because it really affects them, right? Finding this out so late in their career and that really sometimes upsets them too. So anyway, we started the myths folder in our course as a bit of an experiment in the beginning, but it's now a regular part of the course.
Yeah, I think that's a great idea and there are a lot of myths out there. So I think it is important to address these. Unfortunately, sometimes the myths are actually taught though. That's sort of what I've discovered from speaking with education students. What sort of feedback do you receive from students who've taken the course? Do they find the course beneficial and is the course popular? Yes, we get really good feedback. Students tell
us they really like the course, they like the readings, the discussions. Students sometimes have these aha moments like when we talk about the differences between how experts learn and how novices learn or when we explain what biologically primary knowledge is and what biologically secondary, I think panelists know, explain that really well on a recent
podcast, but this is new to them and they really appreciate hearing about it. We also have an online environment, which is very active with student discussions and contributions. And many of them tell us that this information is very new as you say, it's not always something they encounter in their regular teacher training. So our course evaluations have been very positive. Some students tell us they took the course because of a friend's recommendation.
And the fact that students are recommending the course to their friends means a lot to us. It shows that we're having an impact. So we do think that there's a real thirst for this kind of content among educators. And I'm not surprised that students are happy to get this course because it makes sense to get a course where you actually learn about how students learn because it's going to help you as a teacher. Right. I wanted to add here, we've actually taught the course. Well, the first time we
taught it was all 2021. And I think we've taught it about 10 times since so in different forms, actually, at OISI and all together about 400 students have taken so far. So yeah, we're very excited for what we've been able to do so far. And I think hoping to continue to teach and not share this really important area of literature in educational psychology and in education generally with our future educators as well.
I thought we'd shift and talk a bit about equitable instruction. You gave an excellent presentation at Research Ed in Toronto. You co-presented. I attended the presentation. And actually it was one of the best presentations that I attended, I thought. And the title of your presentation was the Science of Learning and Equitable Instruction. So why did you
choose that topic? First of all, thank you for attending Research Ed for Toronto and being there and attending the conference and just those really kind words that you said about the session and the conference. So talking about equity. So equity is a really, really important theme. Definitely today, even more so. And again, it's very important in school and in teacher education programs. And there are a lot of ideas about how to
achieve equity. So as we built our course, we started to see a lot of studies that had implications for equity. And we became very, very interested in this. So we decided we want to examine the equity literature more closely, particularly with respect to large skill studies. So things like what instruction strategies have the best track record in terms of promoting equity that turning to our presentation at Research Ed. Toronto.
And I think it was really well received in general. Like I saw a lot of people there, a lot of people were taking pictures of your slides. I mean, when I saw it, I thought, oh, yes, I have to have you on the podcast to talk about that because there's definitely an interest. So you reviewed the literature on various teaching strategies in the context of improving educational outcomes for struggling students. So let's talk about your findings.
But first, what do you mean by equitable instruction and why is it important? Well, there are many different ways to study equity, but Midian Eier focused on academic outcomes. And we find that especially in some topics like mathematics, there can be a huge difference in student ability in a single class. And we want to know how do you shrink the achievement gap? And what has worked in the past? What can research tell us about this?
Part of the problem is that we have to recognize that children start from different places, some start from a position that disadvantage, and different children will have different needs, and some are going to require more supports than others to succeed academically. But a good indicator for us of improved equity would be to see children who are struggling in math, say, to start to succeed and do better and better in math over time.
I think we're interested in this because we feel that outcomes are important. Academic success, particularly in a subject like math, opens up all sorts of career opportunities, and it improves a person's chances in life. And ultimately, of course, it also produces a healthier and more diverse community. So we feel it's very important. Absolutely. And I'll just follow up on a couple of things you said there. So for sure,
there are lots of gaps among students in math. And because math is really cumulative, they can snowball, right? It doesn't get better. It only gets worse, unless there's a way to sort of narrow those gaps. And we do want students to have opportunities. These inequities can start early, and parents who can afford it, they'll get help for their kids, and those who can't afford it,
they won't get that help. And so this is just making things worse, right? So we do want to make sure that we're thinking about ways that are going to narrow those gaps in the classroom. Exactly. That's exactly what we're trying to figure out. What's the best way to do that? And so we decided to challenge ourselves for this presentation at research at, and we did an extensive literature review. We talked about equity. What about inclusion? Is there a difference
between equitable instruction and inclusive instruction? Inclusion is about creating classroom environments where all students feel valued, like they belong, and no one feels left out or left behind, and everyone feels free to participate in fields that they have a contribution to make, and they can feel proud about it. And inclusive classroom is one where differences are respected and honored. So inclusion is also really, really valuable, and there's been a lot of great research
on that as well. So we truly believe that both inclusion and equity are important, but for the purposes of our research and presentation, when we were looking at the literature, we focus on equity, because as Jim mentioned, we were more interested in figuring out what strategies are effective in closing achievement gaps, those specifically academic gaps. All right. Now you found that three whole class instructional strategies have been shown to reduce inequities. So let's
talk about those. The first you mentioned was explicit instruction. So can you recap some of the main components of explicit instruction? Sure. I think people sometimes have the wrong idea about explicit instruction. You know, I've seen people refer to it as if it was the same thing as lecturing or wrote learning or passive learning, or they think it's just regular teaching. And I think those are our misrepresentations and misunderstandings because
explicit instruction is something bigger than all those things. So explicit instruction is about teaching in ways that best support learning. And it generally involves a bunch of different things. First as a teacher, you have to be very aware that students have limited working memories. So this means you can't teach them too much at once, or they'll get overwhelmed. You need to teach new
concepts or skills by breaking down material into chunks that are easy to understand. You need to think about what students already know and don't know and try to connect the new concepts in the lesson to ideas that are already familiar to them. You need to be really precise in your language. Gotta be very sensitive to the vocabulary you're using because unfamiliar words can easily confuse
students. And this is particularly a problem with many second language students. Another part of process is showing students how to apply the new knowledge and provide them with some examples. It works examples as you were talking about earlier. And then you need a period of guided practice where students try to apply what they've learned with support from the teacher. And then ultimately, with practice and support and feedback, students will be able to apply the new knowledge or skills
independently. And at this point, the students own the new knowledge. So good explicit instruction requires a lot of planning and thought. And one of the ways that you know you've been successful in explicit instruction is if you have a high success rate and students can grasp the new ideas quickly. If you can do this, then students will feel good about themselves. It'll increase their confidence and they'll be more motivated. But one of the best ways to motivate a student is to
help them be successful at it. And so all these components together, that's what makes up explicit instruction. That was a phenomenal summary of explicit instruction. So thank you very much for that. I do agree that it's often misunderstood or caricatured. So we do have to take these opportunities to define it correctly. You stated that explicit instruction is inclusive instruction. So what did you mean by that? Expulsive instruction is great for all learners because it's about
starting from where the learner is. In younger learners, we would say where the child is and gradually helping them build these new skills and abilities. However, it's particularly beneficial for students who are struggling. These are the students who benefit the most from clear direct guidance and support. So students who are struggling for one reason or another, they tend to do best
with explicit instruction. If you look at research studies, you'll see that explicit instruction is after recommended for children who are on the autism spectrum or the ones who suffer from learning disabilities like dyslexia or ADHD. So this makes sense if you think about it. Effecting explicit instruction is all about clarity and breaking down information and minimizing the load on working memory. So as Jim mentioned, you don't want to overload the learner.
So this is why we say explicit instruction is the inclusive way to teach or explicit instruction is inclusive instruction. So if you're teaching the class using explicit instruction, then a greater number of students can benefit from it. And it reminds me of something Pamela Snow said on the podcast previously is that explicit instruction is necessary for some hurts no one and benefits all. She attributes it to someone else, but I associate it with her
because she said it on the podcast. So that's essentially what you're saying as well, I think. Yes, that's right. That's a great summary. So you also said that there's good evidence that explicit instruction improves educational outcomes. So what type of evidence is there? Yes, there are a lot of studies that show that explicit instruction is effective. Hadi, for example, looked at meta-analyses and calculated a good effect size of 0.5 line.
But the point that needy and iron making is not simply that explicit instruction is effective. The point we're trying to make is that it's both effective and it helps level the plan field. It prevents struggling students from being left farther and farther behind. There's good evidence from a number of studies that disadvantaged students benefit from explicit
instruction. There's a math study by Crosenberg and colleagues from the Netherlands that randomly assigned low achieving students to one of two conditions, either an explicit instruction condition or a small group constructivist condition. And the explicit condition was shown to be much
more beneficial for low cheating students. There's a kind of another study by Anderson and Anderson that looked at 56,000 students across 825 schools and found that again, teacher-directed explicit approaches tended to reduce educational inequalities while the more inquiry-based approaches tended to increase it. We found another paper by Baker published in 2002 that was a meta-analysis of 17 studies that again identifies explicit teaching as one of the things that helps low achieving students
learn math. In some ways, it should be obvious why explicit instruction supports equity, because if you're explicit to students about what they're trying to learn, if you break it down for them, if you provide lots of guidance and feedback and practice, then students don't have to guess what
the teacher wants them to learn. The problem we sometimes have with inquiry-based methods or to scurry-based methods is that they tend to privilege students who have backgrounds like the teacher, students who have a sense of what the teacher wants or who have access to educational resources at home. And this can widen the achievement gap instead of narrowing it.
I just want to add something there. So when a child does not receive explicit instruction, let's say in the topic like math, but then they have to do an assignment or some of them a task, and it was done in sort of the more popular forms of teaching like inquiry-based or discovery. That child then goes home and if they have access to support at home, then they'll get it.
And the parents will probably be doing the job of doing explicit instruction. If the parents are not available or not able to do that for some reason, and if they have means, then they'll send that child to a tutoring center or some kind of learning space where that specific requirement will be fulfilled so that the child can do the task. This is the big problem. So in the end, the product shows like the task was achieved, but the explicit instruction was still missing.
And that's where the problem with equity or the challenge of equity comes is that the ones who had these means available to them, they did it and the task was completed. But the ones who didn't will not be able to do that. And that just continues to widen this cap for the learners who do come from this invented background. It could be the background knowledge or other reasons, right?
And that's why if we gave explicit instruction to everyone, then we'd be taking care of that or at least addressing that issue and everybody would be able to do the final assigned task, leveled playing field. All right, so you also talked about project follow through. Can you say a bit about that? Yeah, project follow through was a massive, a huge study back in the 1960s and 70s and that focused specificity on equity. In fact, it's probably the biggest educational study in
history. And a goal of the study was to compare a bunch of different teaching methods to see which one best helped children from low income and other socially disadvantaged communities succeed academically. So what they did was they tested 22 different teaching models. Some models focused on discovery learning with lots of student inquiry, some models examined open learning, there were models that looked at fostering self-esteem, some were all about developing students
congress fields where students learn collaboratively. And then there was this one method called direct instruction, the upper case, D.I., which was the explicit learning model. Now, each of these 22 models at the time of the study were tested in schools in economically depressed areas of the United States. And there was control groups for each of these models. Anyway, so this project ran for about eight or 10 years before the results for tabulated and released and what they discovered
was that the students in direct instruction condition made huge gains. They excelled in language, they excelled in math, they were more confident and they were also better problem solvers. And in comparison, students and the other models who were let they taught using this company learning or who were taught thinking skills didn't seem to benefit at all. And in some cases, they did worse. And what happened after the results were released?
Well, that was the funny part because a few people objected to it and there was a bit of paper writing back and forth. But after that, it was kind of completely ignored. I was I think 56 years old, 57 years old, before I learned about project follow through and I've got two educational degrees. I had never heard of it. I got through teacher training, I've got a master's, a doctorate,
I had never heard of it. I think what happened was the wrong team won on this case. You know, back then direct instruction was associated with behaviorist learning and there was kind of a movement at the time towards more constructivist methods. And the story of project follow through didn't really fit into the narratives of teacher education programs back then. And it just generally became lost in time. It was fascinating and a bit of a shock to me to discover it and learn about it.
So what about today? Did they teach about project follow through in teacher education programs today? Not that I know of, of a midi-niath course, we put it into our course. But we think it's fascinating and it's a tremendous story to tell not only about the results of the research, but what happened afterwards and how it's been lost in time. We do usually teach it in the week when we bring all the teams together and we talk about explicit instruction towards the end of the
course. And Jim and I, whoever is doing the lead teaching that we will talk about the story of product follow through. And I, as a speaker, as a presenter in the moment, I feel like, you know, I have these goosebumps when I'm talking about it and I'm getting a bit emotional with all the results that we saw and the emotional part also comes from that nothing happened out of the day. And so students also respond with just like with learning myths. This is one of those things like
this is not a myth. This is the truth that they should know about it and why. So there's like this, again, a surprise, frustration and anger, all of that together. I don't know if there's a word for that combined feeling, but I feel it literally every single time during that week when I'm teaching. And I found myself saying this to students as well, but I know I've said this to Jim many times. What would be the world like today? Had we be listened to the results of project follows?
What are discussions around diversity, equity, inclusion? Be different today? It was so clear. The results and it wasn't like a result of one year. It lasted for 10 or so years. It had the longest study ever conducted. And anyway, just, it just makes me really emotional every time I talk about it actually. Yeah. Like how many lives could have been changed if over the past 50 or so years, we had embraced the science rather than embracing what was convenient for our beliefs at the
time. It's staggering. That's why we're here today. And that's why we're talking. We think that we do have to start looking a little more closely at the science at the rigorous studies and start following some of that. I mean, we need to do this for the children, right, for education. I'll mention that Zach Groschel has a great podcast called the Direct Instruction Podcast that kind of goes over the whole history about project follow-through. And I would encourage listeners
to check that out. So we'll move on from that. The second whole class instructional strategy that has been shown to reduce inequities is retrieval practice. So just to recap, retrieval practice involves getting students to retrieve things from memory, things that have already been taught. So what are some good examples of retrieval practice? Yeah, retrieval practice is wonderful. It's sometimes called the testing effect. And it's called
this because a hundred years ago, researchers noticed a strange thing. And that is, if you test someone on a subject, their long-term memory of that subject improves. So more generally, whenever a student retrieves knowledge for memory, it strengthens those memories. So if a teacher regularly prompts students to recall things, they can taught. Then their memories of those things will become stronger and they'll be less likely to forget them. So there are many different ways to
do retrieval practice. And I think good teachers already do a number of these. Low stakes quizzes are a form of retrieval practice. Think of pair share using flashcards, ticket up the door, or just asking students questions and getting them to write their answers on many whiteboards that they hold up. Anything where students are prompted to retrieve stuff from memory is retrieval practice. And good retrieval practice has a number of important qualities to it. First, it should
be low stakes. You know, it shouldn't be a stressful experience for students. And second, it should cover material that students have already been taught. You don't want to use retrieval practice for new stuff. And teachers need to remember when they do retrieval practice that the goal of retrieval practice is not to assess students, but to get them to solidify their knowledge. It's a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy. Yeah, and it even has two strong effects,
right? So the first one is it helps students solidify that knowledge in their long-term memory, which is what we're going for. But it also prepares them for more high stakes tests. You know, it reduces their stress levels for when they take those high stakes tests, right? Exactly. Yeah. It's surprising some of the benefits it's had on things like test anxiety and math anxiety. It lowers both of those. Okay. So can you mention one or two studies that show the effectiveness of retrieval practice?
There are hundreds and hundreds of studies actually on this topic. And that's a thing is amazing, which makes it such a strongly evidence-informed strategy to use. But a few really stand out. So one of them is a review paper from Educational Psychology Review. This was published in 2021 by other while in colleagues. And this paper looked at safety different experiments on retrieval
practice. And it found that it consistently had a big impact on learning. The thing I really like about this review is that the researchers focused on studies done in real classrooms with actual students. Another study by other while from 2017 was published in the journal Memory. This one found that why retrieval practice is effective for everyone. It's especially beneficial
for students who have lower ability as I would learning. So if you're a teacher who wants to promote equity in their classroom, then doing more retrieval practice could definitely be one of the things that strongly will help those students and promote more equity in your class. Lastly, there is a fascinating article by Smith and colleagues that shows that students who regularly do in class or to a practice exercise. They report better learning and lower levels of testing's
ID. And this is something that you were also talking about at Surveil. And if you think about it, this would make a lot of sense, right? If students are used to taking lots of low-stakes quizzes, then they're going to feel less stressed. And it comes to the, and when it comes to real tests. And because the computer retrieval practice is supporting long-term retention, students not truly also feel more comfortable with the content.
Absolutely. And even just if you can find time to add those regular quizzes that are testing on content and even incorporating like space practice, making them recall stuff that you did a couple weeks ago, I think those things are really helpful. So Rosen shines for principles where we understand what explicit instruction is. And in the name of misrepresentation of explicit instruction, the first principle says daily review. That's the first principle of
explicit instruction. And that's really in a sense for dual practice also. So when you start your class with the daily review, which is also part of space learning, then you're helping students with long-term retention, you're increasing their motivation by providing success. You're also developing their meta-commentive awareness with what they don't know. And at the teacher, I also get to know what my students don't know, like in try to fill those gaps. I mean, there are just so many benefits.
And because students are so used to starting a class with the daily review, the automatically get comfortable with the idea of when they're asked a question, they'll answer. So ultimately, it also helps with reducing anxiety. So I just wanted to mention that. Sure. And the daily review is best if you can make it so that it's not you doing the review because we commonly do that. Right? So you'll recall yesterday that we learned the quadratic formula and here it is, well,
blah, blah. It's better if you get the students to tell you what the quadratic formula is, right? Because they have to be on their toes and they have to recall the information. Absolutely. The third whole class instructional strategy that you discussed was formative assessment and feedback. So can you say a bit about that? Sure. Well, when we talk about formative assessment and feedback, we're kind of cheating because formative assessment is also part of good explicit instructions.
So this is kind of embodied in the previous principle. But the point we want to make is that formative assessment and regular feedback by themselves are recognized as playing a significant role in promoting more equitable outcomes. So formative assessment, if it's done regularly, allows teachers to monitor student progress, identify misconceptions and provide timely feedback.
This is really essential for low achieving students. It helps them learn new content, helps them understand and recognize their mistakes and make more progress over time. So teaching that is rich in formative assessment and learner feedback is associated with more equitable outcomes. One really powerful study that we read about was a randomized control trial involving 140 secondary schools in England. And this involved over 25,000 students aged 14 to 15.
And the research found that the students enrolled in the embedding formative assessment schools made the equivalent of two additional months progress. And most importantly for this research, they found that the additional progress made by the children in their lowest third of the class was greater than the gains made by the children than the highest third.
So when formative assessment and feedback are properly implemented, as part of your routine teaching practices, the benefits for disadvantaged students can really be significant. And by formative assessment, we mean things like checking in with students, making sure that we know that they're understanding the material as we go and then providing feedback.
Correct? Correct. So you want to check in with students, make sure they're doing well, provide them with suggestions and actionable suggestions so that they're not expected just to receive the feedback. It's not just like receiving comments back from the teacher, they're expected to do something with the feedback and actually implement it and try it again. That's the most effective form of feedback. I had Dylan William on the podcast. He talks a lot about formative
assessment. That's kind of his thing. We talked about some strategies for formative assessment there. I mean, he talked about cold calling, for instance, and as well, he uses finger counting. So you come up with a multiple choice question on the spot and you ask the student to hold up the correct finger or you can use cue cards that have ABCD. That's what I do in my class and you just try to do this throughout the class. You use it as part of your daily review as well.
Right. And so in our own course, we do a lot of anonymous polls to see what students have as a response to various questions. And that helps us check student understanding. And then it also helps us make clarifications afterwards if we detect problems. So I often teach in the teacher education program. So most of my learners are adult learners. But once in a while I go to my kids as a school and do these sessions. And after the session,
I do kind of like a quick retrieval practice. And the moment you do it, you may not have the students attention during the session. I'll sometimes be able to the moment you say, okay, I'm going to ask you in a couple of questions. Everybody's just like, I want to see final though. The point I'm trying to make is that it actually excites learners. They they want to be able to answer that and you see that. So I used what you just said, let me cue card. So I gave them these
papers at the beginning of the session. And I said, just write one, two, and three. And I'll tell you what we're going to do with this. And then these multiple choice, very simple questions. We were talking about a festival that happens in India. And I want to talk about the festival. And I wanted them to understand, you know, some of the themes around it towards the end. And they would just raise it. And you should see that excitement back into it. So this is kind of like an immediate
retrieval practice, but also a formative assessment. And you just find them at the end of the school day talking about it. And that's a good learning is all about. It just inspires you. And what's you in that feeling of awe that, yes, I learned something new and I liked it today. Now when people talk about promoting equity and classrooms, we don't often hear them saying these things that you're saying we don't hear them talking about explicit instruction, retrieval practice,
or formative assessment. Do you find that strange? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The research and explicit instruction, retrieval practice, and formative assessment is very, very clear. These approaches were designed to help students understand the material we're trying to teach. And it seems to be an essential part of clothing the achievement gap. But when people talk about equity, you're right. We don't hear them talking about these things. So definitely I find it strange and worrying at
times too, because this is accessible research. This is very well prescribed research. And we know how to apply this in classroom. And we know that it works. So yes, strange and worrying, I would say. Well, we'll share this podcast around. So more people will hear about it. That's why we're here. So what about some of the conventional recommendations that we often hear about for improving the educational outcomes of struggling students? For example, let's talk about collaborative, small
group learning. What did you find when you looked at research supporting group work? There's some good evidence for the benefits of group work. However, it's not the case that all group work is necessarily effective. And part of the problem is that the group work literature, the research is huge and it's really complicated. One of the problems is that there are so many different variables. You can have different groups sizes, different tasks, different expectations,
different amounts of structure and so on. And so a lot rides on how you are actually implementing these groups and what you're asking them to do. So should you group the students of different abilities or should groups have students of the same abilities? There are a lot of variables. Overall, a large number of controlled studies suggest that small group learning can lead to positive gains, but a lot of things can also go wrong. And so one problem is the free rider effect or
a social loathing effect. And this is when one or two students do most of the work. So this often happens if the goal is to create a single group product or a single group answer. And those kinds of situations, low achieving students or ESL students, perhaps if they're if they're having trouble with language, might be shut out while a couple of the students do all the work and gain
all the benefits. Some of the best results from experimental research come from group tasks where the group is assessed based upon whether all members of the group can understand the material being learned. And this pushes students to teach one another. When we looked at the collaborative learning literature, one important thing we are looking for was some sense of who benefits the most from small group learning. Is it the high achievers or is it the low achievers? And we didn't
find any compelling evidence that one benefited more than the other. We find it really tricky. Group work that's properly structured can be a good tool for getting students to practice new concepts and apply them in new situations. Things like, you know, think-pares shares a very simple form of group work that can be effective if it's getting students to do a little bit of retrieval practice.
But you've really got to be careful when you do group work that the most vulnerable students benefit from these kinds of activities in ARC further disadvantaged by it. So I'll point out a few things about group work that I find concerning. The first is I think that a lot of times the more confident students take over the group. So I think you've got to plan your groups really carefully if you're doing group work. The second thing is some students will take over
and teach things incorrectly. So for example, my daughter was part of one of these thinking classrooms and she's very smart and she knows her math and she would come home and she would have these solutions and they were all wrong and we would say, well, where did you get this from? Right? And it was another kid in the group because everybody can contribute. And so I think this can result in some misconception. So my husband and I would fix it and that would be fine,
but she would have known how to do it, but she's too shy to say anything as well. So some of these things sort of happen in groups. So I mean, I think it's something to be careful about. Yeah, I agree completely. I think sometimes there's a misconception that you put students in groups and they're going to learn and it's not that simple. I mean, and as you say, there are a lot
of risks and there are a lot of things that can go wrong and do tend to go wrong. And some students don't want to speak out and offer their opinion because they don't want to be wrong in front of their peers. So it's a very complex situation. Another phrase that we hear a lot is culturally responsive teaching. So what are your thoughts on that? So there are actually two approaches that have somewhat similar names. So one, as you said, is culturally responsive teaching and the
other is culturally relevant teaching. Culturally responsive teaching is a way of teaching that recognizes and values students cultural backgrounds. And the idea is to integrate aspects of students' cultures and their cultural knowledge in lessons. And this makes learning more meaningful for students from different backgrounds and creates a welcoming and supported classroom and helps students understand and appreciate other cultures. There has been a good lot of research
on culturally responsive teaching. One of the things to remember about culturally responsive teaching is that improving academic outcomes is not its only goal. It has other goals as well, such as fostering more equitable attitudes or increasing inclusivity and affirming student identities. And the idea here is that if people feel included and valued and if there is more
trust between student and teacher, the student is more likely to be engaged. So the research is very clear that culturally responsive teaching does a great job of creating a more inclusive classroom environment. And the hope is that once they have nurtured an inclusive and supporting environment, that academic achievement will follow naturally. But I want to highlight here that inclusion and equity are two different things. So we wanted to know whether culturally responsive
teaching is able to bring in more equity by addressing those gaps that exist. There aren't a lot of well-designed large scale control studies of the academic effectiveness of culturally responsive teaching. Part of the reason for that is that culturally responsive teaching is rooted in critical pentagogy, which tends to be more qualitative research. And we feel that culturally responsive teaching and explicit instruction are both very important for equity in education.
Configure responsive teaching can really foster an inclusive environment while explicit instruction will provide the needed clarity and structure that students need to succeed academically or to achieve those academic goals that we were talking about that will bring everybody closer in that equitable sort of framework. And we think providing these two approaches can create a more
equitable and effective educational experience for all students. It's almost like culturally responsive teaching can be a great complementary approach along with explicit instruction and bringing inclusion and bringing in equity together. So the instruction part of the study or providing students all these clear instructions, doing retrieval practice, doing formative assessment, things that we just discussed, they should always be a part of that as well.
So how about social emotional learning? Yeah, social and emotional learning are, I think it's sometimes called SEL. It sometimes promoted as a means of bringing about equity. And it does this by helping students manage their feelings and achieve their goals and be more empathetic, build positive relationships, and make good decisions. So it helps kids get along with others and cope with the challenges that they experience in their day-to-day lives. So they're good life
skills that everyone should have. SEL has a lot to offer and there's good evidence from the research that it promotes positive attitudes and better relationships, help students cope with the problems they're facing. But the impact on academic outcomes is still a bit iffy. It seems to be generally positive, but different studies report different things. Some studies find it promotes academic gains
and some don't. The other thing we're not sure of is how beneficial SEL is for disadvantaged students in particular. So the bottom line I think is we still need more experimental data on the on the academic impact of SEL. We don't know yet if it leads to more equitable academic outcomes. So there may be a lot of good reasons to do SEL, but it's not clear that SEL on its own
will make a significant dent in reducing the achievement gap. We think something more is needed and something along the lines that focuses on student knowledge, like express teaching and retrieval practice and formative assessment. So what can you say about differentiated instruction? Of course, if you have a class of learners with different needs and abilities and if you want to support all of them, you have to provide differentiated instruction. The tricky question is how
to do that. You can provide all the students with individualized instruction. It's just not feasible for one single teacher in really large classroom or class sizes to be able to do that. It's hard to provide even a couple of students with individualized instruction if you think about it. So what some researcher suggest is that you deliver core instruction to the entire class using
high quality explosive instruction. So you meet the needs of as many students as possible. It's almost like casting a net as wide as possible and you're able to support most students in your class. And then after that, you provide more targeted interventions and that could be in smaller groups or sometimes individually based on what the students needs are and students that need more support. This idea is also called multi-tiered systems of support or MTSS.
I mean, I guess the obvious biggest problem with it is that it's pretty hard to do from a practical point of view. So the idea is you provide whole class instruction and then you have small groups
for those students who need extra support. Yeah, that's right. And if we don't end up doing something like this, then what happens is students, again, going back to the idea of equity students who don't learn well enough in classes because explicit instruction was, let's say, not enough or was missing, for example, then they had the resources, parents will provide them and then
they do end up getting private, let's say, differentiated instruction. But that's not possible, which can be very expensive and that's not possible for some students or many students for that matter. And then this idea of equity or inequity continues to just grow, sort of say, right? Yes. I think that's very important. If we could do explicit instruction for the whole class and yes, there's always going to be someone who's going to need a little bit more support and then we can work
with different levels there. So absolutely. And I would also add just to have bonus questions for the faster students because they deserve challenge too. So just to have a little extra for them as well. So I would suggest math contest problems for that personally, but because we don't want to leave them out either. No, no, definitely not. And they love the challenges and they love the my kids love doing that to challengers or bonus questions and it's exciting for them to get to it.
Let's close off with a couple more questions. So there might be some people listening who would like to offer a course on the science of learning at their post-secondary institution. So how can they make the case to their colleagues that it's worthwhile? Well, that's a great question. I hope they do want to offer a course. We think it's terrific. One of the most important things that I think educators want new teachers to know is how to help disadvantaged or marginalized
students succeed academically. And the teachers that we work with are quite eager to hear how to do that. So I think listeners can make a case to their colleagues that a course on the science of learning is aligned with the goal of promoting equity. It just kind of makes sense. Let's get new teachers to look at some of these large-scale classroom-based studies that have tried to help struggling students succeed. What has worked? What hasn't worked? And why have things worked? How does
focusing on how people learn support equity? And I think there's a lot of good, if we just take a look at the evidence, I think there's a lot of good reasons to embrace things like explicit instruction and retrieval practice and formative assessment. In our experience, new teachers want this information. It excites them. And I think we're doing a huge disservice to new teachers. If we're not telling them about all the exciting experimental research that
took care. Absolutely. Okay, so to both of you, what is a main point you would like to leave listeners with concerning equitable instruction? I think equity is a priority for most teachers, and one of the things that could strengthen the equity movement would be to augment current efforts with a more evidence-based focused on knowledge and skill development. So there's a tremendous body of research that suggests that explicit instruction with lots of retrieval
practice and lots of feedback is of great help to disadvantaged students. Not only did these approaches build expertise, but they also build confidence and the increased motivation. And yet, you know, I'm a little worried that these things are often left out of the conversations about equity. And we think that needs to change. And I think we have to work on the challenges
of equity and inclusion from multiple front. So contrary response to teaching, social and emotional learning, these are terrific for fostering inclusion, self-regulation, growing that sense of belongingness. And these are definitely going to be important elements for many, many students. But at the same time, we can't forget that one of our biggest goals is to
help the learner develop knowledge and skills. And we're not going to make progress on equity if students feel included, but still end up dropping mad because they lack the foundational skills. And that's exactly where we believe explicit instruction comes in. So explicit instruction is about equity. That's what I would like the listeners to think about. That's an amazing way to close it off. So thank you so much to both of you for coming on my podcast. I really enjoyed talking
to you today. And thanks for sharing all your research and expertise with us. Thanks, Anna. It's going to a real pleasure. Thank you, Anna. Such a big fan of the work that you do. And to be able to share some of these insights here is such an honor for you. As always, we've included a resource page for this
episode that has links to articles and books mentioned at the episode. If you enjoy this podcast, please consider showing your support by leaving a five-star review on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Chalk and Talk is produced by me, Anna Stalky, Transcript and Resource Page by Jasmine Boa Claire, social media images by Nicole Melem Gutierrez, subscribe on your favorite podcast app to get new episodes delivered as they become available. You can follow me on X for notifications or check out
my website, anastalky.com for more information. This podcast received funding through a University of Winnipeg Knowledge Mobilization and Community Impact Grant funded through the Anthony Suede Knowledge Impact Fund.