October.21.2024

Science and writing: Why AERO’s narrow views are a big mistake

By Russell Tytler

Will narrow instructional models promoted by AERO crowd out quality teaching and learning?

A recent ‘practice guide’ from the Australian Education Research Organisation (AERO), on ‘Writing in Science’ raises significant questions about the peak body’s narrow views on teaching and learning. Is AERO leading us in the wrong direction for supporting teachers to provide a rich and meaningful experience for Australian students?

The guide  explains the nature of simple, compound and complex sentences in science. It  provides student writing with feedback  teachers could provide to improve the writing. There are suggestions for teachers to generate and unpack exemplar sentences and lists of nouns and adjectives, provided by practice exercises. 

Yet a close reading shows these analyses fall well short of best practice in analysing science writing. Further, this advice is missing any comprehensive linguistic account of grammar as resource for meaning in text construction;any critical perspective on the function different kinds of texts to make sense of science, and; any attention to the commitment of teachers of science to developing science ideas. 

We are world leaders

Yet, Australian researchers in literacy are world leaders in thinking about the functions of text in generating meaning across different genres and writing to learn in science

AERO has ignored such research. It  sacrifices what we know about engaging and meaningful teaching and learning practice on the altar of its ideological commitment to impoverished interpretations of explicit teaching. 

While the practice guide is  useful for alerting teachers to the importance of explicit attention to writing in science, it could do better by drawing on our rich research base around meaningful pedagogies –  (which include explicit teaching elements) that engage students and enrich science teachers’ practice.  

This story of ignoring a wealth of sophisticated Australian and international research to enforce a simplistic instructional model is repeated across multiple curriculum areas, including science and  mathematics. AERO’s ‘evidence based’ model of a ‘science of learning’ is based exclusively on studies involving one research methodology. It uses experimental and control conditions that inevitably restrict the range of teaching and learning strategies compared to those found in real classrooms. 

The research findings of the community of Australian and International mathematics and science education researchers who have worked with students and teachers over many decades to establish fresh theoretical perspectives and rich teaching and learning approaches have been effectively silenced. 

What underpins this narrowing?

What underpins this narrowing of conceptions of teaching and learning that seems to have taken the Australian education system by storm? AERO bases its instructional model almost entirely on the theoretical framing of Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), particularly the research of John Sweller who over four decades has established an impressive body of work outlining the repercussions of limitations in working memory capacity. 

Sweller argues that when students struggle to solve complex problems with minimal guidance, they can fail to develop the schema that characterise expert practice. His conclusion is that teachers need to provide ‘worked examples’ that students can follow and practice to achieve mastery, an approach aligned with the ‘I do’, ‘we do’, ‘you do’ advocacy of AERO and the basis of the mandated pedagogy models of both New South Wales and Victoria. 

The argument that students can lose themselves in complexity if not appropriately guided is well taken. But this leap from a working memory problem to the explicit ’worked example’ teaching model fails to acknowledge the numerous ways, described in the research literatures of multiple disciplines, that teachers can support students to navigate complexity. In mathematics and science this includes the strategic setting up of problems, guided questioning and prompting, preparatory guidance, communal sharing of ideas, joint teacher-student text construction, or explicit summing up of schema emerging from students’ solutions. 

What really works

The US National Council of Teachers of Mathematics identifies seven, not one, effective mathematics teaching practices some but not all of which involve direct instruction.  An OECD analysis of PISA-related data identified three dominant mathematics teaching strategies of which direct instruction was the most prevalent and least related to mathematics performance, with active learning and in particular cognitive engagement strategies being more effective. 

Sweller himself (1998) warned against overuse of the worked example as a pedagogy, citing student engagement as an important factor. Given these complexities, AERO’s silencing of the international community of mathematics and science educators seems stunningly misplaced. 

This global mathematics and science education research represents a rich range of learning theories, pedagogies, conceptual and affective outcomes, and purposes. The evidence in this literature overwhelmingly rejects the inquiry/direct instruction binary that underpins the AERO model. Further, the real challenge with learning concepts like force, image formation, probability or fractional operations has less to do with managing memory than with arranging the world to be seen in new ways. 

To be fair, the CLT literature has useful things to say about judging the complexity of problems, and the strong focus on teacher guidance is well taken, especially when the procedures and concepts to be learned are counter-intuitive. However, CLT research has mainly concerned problems that are algorithmic in nature, for which an explicit approach can more efficiently lead to the simple procedural knowledge outcomes involved. 

The short term advantage disappears

Even here, studies have shown that over the long term, the short-term advantage of direct instruction disappears. The real issues involved in supporting learning of complex ideas and practices are deciding when to provide explicit support, and of what type. This is where the teacher’s judgment is required, and it will depend on the nature of the knowledge, and the preparedness of students. To reduce these complex strategies to a single approach is the real offence of the AERO agenda, and of the policy prescriptions in Victoria and NSW. 

It amounts to the de-professionalisation of teachers when such decisions are short-circuited. 

Another aspect of this debate is the claim that a reform of Australian teaching and learning is needed because of the poor performance of students on NAPLAN and on international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS. While it is certainly true that we could do much better in education across all subjects, particularly with respect to the inequities in performance based on socio-economic factors and Indigeneity, our relative performance on international rankings is more complex than claimed

Flies in the face of evidence

To claim this slippage results from overuse of inquiry and problem-solving approaches in science and mathematics flies in the face of evidence. In both subjects, teacher-centred approaches currently dominate. An OECD report providing advice for mathematics teachers based on the 2012 PISA mathematics assessment revealed Australian students ranked ninth globally on self-reporting memorisation strategies, and third-last on elaboration strategies (that is, making links between tasks and finding different ways to solve a problem). The latter strategies indicate the capability to solve the more difficult problems. 

While it may be true some versions of inquiry in school science and mathematics may lack necessary support structures, this corrective of a blanket imposition of explicit teaching is shown by the wider evidence to represent a misguided overreaction. 

How has it happened, that one branch of education research misleadingly characterised as ‘the’ science of learning, together with a narrow and hotly contested view of what constitutes ‘evidence’ in education, has become the one guiding star for our national education research organisation to the exclusion of Australian and international disciplinary education research communities? 

Schools are being framed as businesses

It has been argued AERO ‘encapsulates politics at its heart’ through its embedded links to corporate philanthropy and business relations and a brief to attract funding into education. Indeed, schools are increasingly being bombarded with commercial products. Schools are being framed as businesses. 

The teaching profession over the last decade has suffered concerted attacks from the media and from senior government figures. Are we seeing moves here to systematically de-professionalise teachers and restrict their practice through ‘evidence based’ resources focused on ‘efficient’ learning? Is this what we really want as our key purpose in education? In reality, experienced teachers will not feel restricted by these narrow versions of explicit teaching pedagogies and will engage their students in varied ways. How can they not? 

If the resources now being developed and promoted under the AERO rubric, as with ‘Writing in Science’, follow this barren prescription, we run the danger of a growing erosion of teacher agency and impoverishment of student learning.

We need a richer view of pedagogy

What we need, going forward, is a richer view of pedagogy based on the wider research literature, rather than the narrow base that privileges procedural practices. We need to engage with a more complex and informed discussion of the core purposes of education that is not proscribed by a narrow insistence on NAPLAN and international assessments. We need to value our teaching profession and recognise the complex, relational nature of teaching and learning. Our focus should be on strengthening teachers’ contextual decision making, and not on constraining them in ways that will reduce their professionalism, and ultimately their standing.  

  

Russell Tytler is Deakin Distinguished Professor and Chair of Science Education at Deakin University. He researches student reasoning and learning through the multimodal languages of science, socio scientific issues and reasoning, school-community partnerships, and STEM curriculum policy and practice. Professor Tytler is widely published and has led a range of research projects, including current STEM projects investigating a guided inquiry pedagogy for interdisciplinary mathematics and science. He is a member of the Science Expert Group for PISA 2015 and 2025.

Republish this article for free, online or in print, under Creative Commons licence.

11 thoughts on “Science and writing: Why AERO’s narrow views are a big mistake

  1. George LILLEY says:

    Thanks, Russell. Critical reflections on AERO and CLT are crucial. As a Math teacher, I’ve relied on worked examples for years, but AERO and CLT haven’t provided much guidance on improving my teaching methods. The portrayal of Australian classrooms by CLT advocates as dominated by Pure Discovery is misleading. I’ve had to seek insights elsewhere, aligning with your view on AERO’s narrow focus. Teacher Michael Pershan’s investigations offer hope: “Some of the dullest teaching on the planet comes courtesy of worked example abusers. These are the math classes that consist of a steady march of definitions, explanations, and examples, one after the next… This is not good teaching.” Pershan highlights a broader range of strategies that I find beneficial. Why are our evidence organizations so biased?

  2. Russell Tytler says:

    Thanks George. I find it really surprising that a national organisation, and state governments, could think that one narrow approach could be a solution. I’d be hopeful that just as ‘inquiry’ has many forms and is often misrepresented, ‘explicit teaching’ will in the end be interpreted as much richer than what is coming out of AERO.

  3. Ania Lian says:

    Thank you for your contribution.
    I’m not convinced that Sweller’s model has much to do with neuroscience, no more than I, as a language teacher, have to do with the development of ChatGPT. Sweller, or Geary (on whose concepts CLT is based), suggests that their model of memory rests on the idea that adults are presumed to hold around 7 (± 2) chunks of information in their working memory (Miller, 1956). However, by the 2000s, I would expect that our concept of memory should be updated, especially if an entire teacher education policy is going to be based on it. We wouldn’t want to give rise to another neuromyth, like the idea of “learning styles”, which originated from researchers, not teachers, and sparked at lest 20 years of “evidence” studies.
    There is an insightful article by Thomas et al. (2024) in Mind, Brain, and Education that raises some pertinent questions. One that I particularly like refers to CLT (Sweller et al.) and asks, “In a timed task, a teacher might observe children struggling with the amount of new information they are processing, but how should they interpret this in terms of action?” I presume some might advocate for a perspective “from without”, but doesn’t this warrant the need for more questions—and indeed, some of those questions supported by neuroscience? In my October keynote in Indonesia I proposed an idea about the place of neuroscience in education, which is based on my own experience and research. I might share here: The relationship between education and neuroscience is not simply a matter of education waiting for neuroscience to provide answers to pedagogical practice. Neuroscience offers empirical evidence in response to its own specific research questions. It is the task of educators, therefore, to *creatively* engage with this evidence, integrating it with their conceptual understanding of the curriculum and their imagination.
    Thank you once again
    Ania Lian

  4. Russell Tytler says:

    Thanks Ania,
    I totally agree. A good friend and colleague, Professor David Clarke, commented in a keynote of the science of learning centre, that the methods and constructs of neuroscience, cognitive science, and sociocultural perspectives on education are incommensurate. we can’t assume that everything we understand about complex classrooms can be ‘explained’ by neuroscience (or cog sci studies on memory) – there must be a complex interpretive process where each adds value.

  5. Guy Claxton says:

    The key confusion is this – The evidence shows that Explicit Teaching (ET) works well for relatively short term gains in relative superficial tests of retention. If that is the horizon of your educational ambition, fine. But if you want students ALSO to develop agency, resilience, curiosity, imagination and sophisticated conviviality, then ET is NOT the pedagogy of choice, Then Exploration (by students) has to play as great a role in a dynamic pedagogical mix as Explanation (by teachers).

  6. Russell Tytler says:

    Thanks Guy. Agree. It’s a matter of educational aims. What do we want our next generation to learn? And how much do we want to nurture their agency and habits as distinct from learning to follow conventions. So it’s also about power relations in classrooms.

  7. Russell, from your perspective of educational practice in schools, do you think that the AEROs approach is a symptom of the continual narrowing down thinking that is occurring across all educational systems currently? Is it possibly a result of the overweighted focus on national testing results? Is it due to the lack of understanding of Education ministers or people in power in education systems? Are we heading for a future where young people are less capably prepared for society?

  8. Russell Tytler says:

    Hi Adrian,
    Yes i think you are right. Part of this is the result of this system focus on testing as a proxy measure for health of education systems. It brings a logic that is counter to wider and richer conceptions of educational outcomes, as Guy Claxton pointed out. Part of it also is that this view plays into the hands of those in power who imagine they know education through their own experience – a base level belief in a simplistic knowledge transmission conception. And yes, it must bleed the system of meaning in the end. But what i was also trying to point out was the analysis of powerful interests that seem to be at play, getting the ear of ministers. It’s surprising how thoroughly this narrow conception has become dominant, in the face of so much rhetoric around wider purposes, from OECD and UNESCO for instance but also foci on student voice, collaborative processes …

  9. Fabio D'Agostin says:

    Great set of observations, Russell. Until very recently, the views you have expressed were considered state of our knowledge and understanding in relation to effective teaching. In the current climate of unbridled, even rabid, promotion of DI with the derision of other pedagogies being part of the messaging, your ideas have been shunted to the fringe. A colleague and I are also pushing back against this lunacy in a book to be released in February, 2025. Its title is Creating Schools Where Students and Teachers Want to Be.

  10. Russell Tytler says:

    Thanks Fabio,
    Your own research into rich tasks is evidence supporting more complex views of teaching and learning. Good to hear you are involved in publishing that pushes back.

  11. Jenny Cowburn says:

    From a teachers perspective the role of facilitating learning for 20+ very different small humans is complex, and experienced teachers know that there is no on size fits all.
    The efforts to use explicit teaching strategies, specifically a commercial program are designed to create consistency across classes and gain quick results.
    For teachers the reasoning is that with this ‘sharp a narrow focus’ their role and their professional learning will be simplified. A very short term answer in my view.
    This is not a real learning situation, for teacher or students, and doesn’t nurture the curious, creative humans we need to develop our world.

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