Despite the perennial debate on whether teachers should “just tell” or not, both sides of the discussion tend to accept constructivism. Constructivism is a stance on learning which broadly says that students construct meaning in…
When Engelmann developed his popular Direct Instruction1, his principle was that students were capable of learning anything. This seems like a good rule to follow; it removes blame from the student. If they didn’t manage…
Claude Shannon’s groundbreaking information theory focused on getting a message from A to B. It’s now one the major underlying theories of the computers we use every day. Its principles also tell us something fascinating…
Recently, a claim has emerged: if leaders are frustrated with teaching outcomes, the fault isn’t the teacher, but the specific techniques (like turn and talk) they’ve been trained to use. And the proposed solution? Swap…
Around 2012ish, a new movement rode into the UK (school) educational scene. It came with the banner of “evidence-based”, to counter the previous movement. I’m not writing to contend whether the movement was right or…
Stafford Beer, a systems theorist, regularly claimed that a system’s purpose is what it does. There was no point claiming, he thought, that its purpose was what it consistently failed to do. In this post,…
Cognitive Science and Teaching (2026) Trevor and I discuss how the cogsci revolution in teaching and the problems with a handful of concepts from cognitive psychology being treated like they are the science of learning,…
Variation theory isn’t a theory of how memories are stored. Nor is it a theory of how learning can be impeded (like cognitive load theory); it doesn’t tell you what to avoid doing. Crucially, it…