The confusion between teacher centred and presentation centred teaching I think is well put, with the portrayal often being that of a dry, repetitive, draconian instructor. I suppose it's easy to mistake someone talking at the front for explicit instruction when in reality the defining feature, as you say, is how responsive the teacher is to what the children are actually understanding in the moment.
I'm curious whether you think this misconception has grown because people tend to judge lessons by what they look like on the surface rather than by the decision making that's happening at a deeper level? Would you say observations done by senior leaders and inspectors often fall privy to this kind of superficial assessment?
My opinion is that this misconception has been driven by such a rapid push for this pedagogy here in Australia. And admin and teachers were scrambling for direction/resources. And there were bulk structured lesson slides produced and distributed to schools and teachers so that they could deliver the structure … but without adequate training on how to deliver the lesson or use the slides.
That's a really interesting point. I was reading a piece by Ben Christopher about schools adopting shared booklets yesterday and the message was very similar: resources don't teach, teachers do. Slides, structures and observations can support explicit instruction but they can't replace the constant decision making that sits at the heart of it. This is the piece I am referring to if you're interested: https://benchristophers.substack.com/p/how-booklets-revolutionised-our-curriculum. Thanks for taking the time to get back on this
Always check for understanding first. And if the foundation isn't there yet, we teach it explicitly before asking them to apply it independently or in a problem solving context. If students have the foundations, then we move them along into more rich task learning. It just depends where the students are at.
The confusion between teacher centred and presentation centred teaching I think is well put, with the portrayal often being that of a dry, repetitive, draconian instructor. I suppose it's easy to mistake someone talking at the front for explicit instruction when in reality the defining feature, as you say, is how responsive the teacher is to what the children are actually understanding in the moment.
I'm curious whether you think this misconception has grown because people tend to judge lessons by what they look like on the surface rather than by the decision making that's happening at a deeper level? Would you say observations done by senior leaders and inspectors often fall privy to this kind of superficial assessment?
My opinion is that this misconception has been driven by such a rapid push for this pedagogy here in Australia. And admin and teachers were scrambling for direction/resources. And there were bulk structured lesson slides produced and distributed to schools and teachers so that they could deliver the structure … but without adequate training on how to deliver the lesson or use the slides.
That's a really interesting point. I was reading a piece by Ben Christopher about schools adopting shared booklets yesterday and the message was very similar: resources don't teach, teachers do. Slides, structures and observations can support explicit instruction but they can't replace the constant decision making that sits at the heart of it. This is the piece I am referring to if you're interested: https://benchristophers.substack.com/p/how-booklets-revolutionised-our-curriculum. Thanks for taking the time to get back on this
With the state of explicit teaching in Aus, that’s what it has become.
You make a lot of assumptions that students don’t know a lot going into it - how do you know that?
Always check for understanding first. And if the foundation isn't there yet, we teach it explicitly before asking them to apply it independently or in a problem solving context. If students have the foundations, then we move them along into more rich task learning. It just depends where the students are at.