Status Updates From The Truth about Teaching: A...

“The relative lack of evidence for basing learning in implicit approaches is not because they involve complex tasks but because they omit explicit ones.”

“the ‘first principle of educational psychology’: students tend to learn the things you teach them and don’t tend to learn the things you don’t teach them.”

“Knowledge is literally what we think with. Critical thinking, something that all teachers wish to develop in their students, rests upon knowledge of the matter that you wish them to think critically about. In the right contexts, small children can think critically and trained scientists can fail to do so (Willingham, 2007).”

“Does the benefit of more targeted teaching outweigh the cost of less direct teacher input per student per hour of teaching? Probably not.”

“The answer to the question ‘When will I ever need this?’ is mostly, ‘You won’t’.”

“There is nothing motivating about incomprehension.”

“We can ask students about their level of motivation and this will provide some useful data but we also have to bear in mind that people don’t always tell the truth.”

“When I read a book, I sit quite still with a frown on my face.”

lol yeah same

“Many people have a folk theory of motivation that goes something like this: make lessons fun and interesting and students will become motivated about the subject and achieve.”

“Dewey painted a picture of a unicorn that generations of teachers have been hunting.”