Shining a Light on the Science of Learning

The ‘Science of Learning’ is a term that is currently being used as a ‘new’ anchor for curriculum design. It is a bit of new branding on pedagogy that makes it seem more palatable than ‘pedagogy’. The Science of Learning is, in fact, a synthesis of pedagogical theory and (a bit like a hearty stew) it is always good to know what is actually in it so that we can appreciate the ingredients we are being served a bit more.

Here are some of the key ingredients I’ve spotted that are worthwhile to know about.

1. Constructivism

Key Idea: Learning is an active, constructive process where learners build knowledge by connecting new information to their existing understanding.

Unpacking: Aligns with Vygotsky’s Sociocultural Theory (social interactions build knowledge). Drives the emphasis on student-centred, inquiry-based learning and encourages discussing learning to form deeper connections with new knowledge. Key players are Bruner, Piaget and Vygotsky.

What it looks like: We shouldn’t tell students what to think or what to write down. Instead, we can engineer social interactions and activities where they figure things out and make notes for themselves. It could be summarised by the difference between taking notes and making notes.

2. Cognitive Load Theory

Key Idea: Human working memory has limited capacity, and learning is more effective when the way that learning is delivered reduces extraneous cognitive load.

Unpacking: It is important to use strategies like chunking and worked examples to break content down. This also supports Dual Coding by encouraging simplification of visual and verbal information and the importance of presenting one thing in several different ways. Cognitive Load Theory makes sense when we think about how we remember phone numbers or shopping lists in categories or chunks.

What it looks like: If you fill someone’s brain with a lot of new information then their ‘brain bucket’ is too full - and it even starts leaking. It is hard to process new information if the bucket is full - so information needs to be chunked and iterated so that it can be gradually filled and the knowledge is more likely to be retained. It might look like providing a hand out before the workshop, going over it briefly in the workshop and then extending thinking beyond the workshop rather than skipping to the ‘how to apply’ in the first workshop which might overload the brain.

Chunking - maybe because if you ate the whole block at once you would feel sick! Chunking learning is similar.

3. Distributed Practice

Key Idea: Spacing learning over time (rather than massing it in one session) improves retention and retrieval. Like a well-constructed brick wall, we build on previous layers by overlapping bricks and we can build big walls one layer at a time. Another easy way to imagine this is teaching like a spiral that loops back on itself to go forward a little and then loop back to reinforce prior learning. Bruner even calls this a spiral curriculum. (I wrote a blog expanding this to a crochet analogy).

Unpacking: Distributed Practice links to Cognitive Load Theory by avoiding overload through spaced intervals and incremental knowledge and skill acquisition and it encourages revisiting prior content by applying it to new contexts.

What it looks like: One workshop might cover ‘A’. The second workshop might cover ‘B’. A better solution is to build slowly so that ‘A’ is not forgotten. So workshop 1 covers ‘A’ and workshop 2 covers and workshop 3 covers ‘ABC’. So retention and iteration and cognitive load are all catered to.

4. Schema Theory

Key Idea: Knowledge is stored in mental frameworks that are individual and different for all of us based on prior experience (schemas). Learning involves organising new information into these structures or creating new structures into which we can insert new learning effectively.

Unpacking: Well-designed schemas can limit cognitive load. Ways of presenting new information matters and might be different for every learner depending on their prior knowledge and understanding or existing schemas.

What it looks like: This might look like finding a drawing or metaphor to anchor new learning to. Like a seahorse, they fare better when they can hook their tail into something known to keep them from floating away….

5. Dual Coding

Key Idea: Combining verbal and visual representations improves understanding and memory.

Unpacking: Some learners need diagrammatic summaries or visual versions of content in order to be able to process the information most effectively. Others need information verbally and aurally - presenting information in multiple ways means that more learners can access the ‘hook’. This supports the idea that 'lecturing’ is not effective unless it is partnered with additionally and differently coded content.

What it looks like: Have you ever played Pictionary? Words go with pictures like peas and carrots. Don’t deliver with just words and don’t deliver with just pictures. Consider both to increase your chances of a ‘true hook’.

6. Visible Learning

Key Idea: Focuses on high-impact, evidence-based practices that maximise student learning, such as feedback, metacognition (thinking about thinking), and direct instruction. Visible learning is like ‘chemistry in the classroom’ where you are watching for changes in states and supports evidence-based interventions with regular data gathering. Teachers do things because they have measurable effect on learner achivement.

Here is a great infographic from the Visible Learning website.

Unpacking: Teaching strategies need to be explicit and reflective. Learners should be able to talk about what they are learning and how they are learning it so that learning methodology and outcomes are all visible. The key player to find out more about Visible Learning from is John Hattie.

What it looks like: Success and the steps needed to reach success are clearly outlined so that students or participants can see what they are doing and know where they are at on a clear scale, rubric or success descriptor framework.

7. High-Impact Teaching Strategies (HITS)

Key Idea: Deliberate and reflective practices (e.g., questioning, feedback, explicit teaching) have been shown to be highly effective in improving student outcomes.

Unpacking: Draws from Cognitive Load Theory (e.g., worked examples) and Distributed Practice. Encourages Constructivist engagement via collaborative and inquiry-based methods.

What it looks like: Designing activities to be data-driven. Similar to visible learning, HITS are measurable and the impact is data-informed. HITS is all about measuring the impact in ways that are proven to be effective.

8. Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

Key Idea: Designing flexible learning environments to accommodate diverse learner needs from the outset means that no student is left behind. Learning is designed to cater to all rather than the normal few.

Unpacking: Applies principles of Dual Coding in ways students access, process and show their understanding of learning.

What is looks like: Predicting needs and learning interventions before they happen - providing clear text, enlarged text, alt text, dual coding, iconographic summaries in more with the needs to diverse learners in mind. Remember, not accommodating known learning needs is akin to hosting a workshop on the third floor and not providing a ramp or elevator to wheelchair users. Once you know better - you do better, right?

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It seems like a lot, doesn’t it? Yes, great learning has a lot of lenses applied to it for sure!

Of course there are more - but 8 quick-fire theories seemed like a digestible chunk for now.

What should we do with the science of learning?

Well, like a good stew - a balance of ingredients will make it rich and tasty. The science of learning calls for a mix of explicit instruction and constructivist methodology to enrich teaching and learning experiences. It is never one theory - and it always needs to be a special blend crafted for the people in front of you.

And, of couse, if you need support - I can help you with all of the above and more!

Lastly, just in case you fancy some more reading - here’s a small recommended list:

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, & McDaniel

Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Agarwal & Bain

The Case for Constructivist Classrooms by Brooks & Brooks

Visible Learning: The Sequel: A Synthesis of Over 2,100 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement, Hattie.

How People Learn by Bransford, Brown, & Cocking.

Working Memory and Learning by Gathercole & Alloway

Cognitive Load Theory in Action by Ayres, Kalyuga, & Sweller.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink.

Principles of Instruction by Barak Rosenshine.

CAST Framework for UDL.

Finding your position on AI in education

OpenAI has recently produced a course called ‘Chat GPT Foundations for Educators’ which is designed to be a silver bullet to teach educators how to use AI. The course is the product of a partnership with Common Sense Media which is (usually) a reliable source of ‘common sense’ reviews. What they seem to be missing is how teachers can use AI effectively and purposefully. They are not really encouraging teachers to be co-designers, critical evaluators and engineers of content.

It basically falls short of practical (and not contradictory) use case scenarios and has omitted a lot of big picture questioning about the ‘why’ behind the use of AI. The current debate appears to be an assumption that teachers should choose between AI or the highway. But maybe this yes/no binary thinking is the real problem.

AI shouldn’t be an ‘all in’ or ‘all out’ or Yes/No debate. It is much more complicated than that.

If there were a fork in the road that was ‘AI or the highway’, choosing the highway (non AI) is (still) just fine. If you haven’t read about the OpenAI foundation course you can find a useful critique of it here: How does OpenAI Imagine K-12 Education by Erik Salvaggio.

Here are some of the key points of critique:

• it assumes that teachers are passive producers of content

• it posits that productivity is more important than effective pedagogy

• it does not teach critical AI literacy

• it does not target pedagogy

• it is not a best practice example of UDL in action (no closed captioning)

• it assumes that administrative tasks can all be automated

• it does not seem to value the agency of teacher-owned creative processes in course design

• it overstates the predictive capabilities of AI

  and my addition:

• it assumes that teachers need to be ‘all or nothing’ consumers

OpenAI seems to champion itself as a heroic solution to all of the problems that teachers have. It does not really dig into any additional problems that using AI blindly also produce.

If you stand with AI - then you obviously must use it for everything and save so much time and create so many more resources and power up your productivity to the point that even writing your own meeting agenda can be outsourced. But - quantity does not beat quality. And producing does not equate to creating.

When I was at Elam School of Fine Arts, my professor said to me (when I was churning out bad art at a rate of knots): ‘There’s enough sh*t in the world. Why contribute to it?” And I think this is golden advice that can be applied to finding your own position on AI in education.

An easy ‘out’ is to stand on the opposite road with those who say No. You might stand in solidarity with teachers who see AI as a flash in the pan that is best avoided. These teachers might be summed up as the ‘pen and paper warriors’ who want to make sure that text books are used instead of laptops. If you avoid technology, then you also do avoid a lot of the ‘bad’ things - but you also run the risk of stealing learning opportunities away from students who also need to learn critical AI literacy. Teachers have a duty to empower students to understand, question, and navigate AI responsibly. This isn't just about using the tools to enhance their own productivity but helping students to critique and control their own uses to be critical creators of the future.

If you want to start using AI in the classroom it is ok to do so cautiously. In fact, it is best to use any tool with your pedagogue hat on and ask all of the questions like ‘where is the science’, ‘how does this enhance learner experience’, ‘how does this increase critical thinking’, ‘how might this offer more agency’, ‘how might this remove barriers to learning’ etc. And if it doesn’t align to your lens of what education should be and needs to be in the future, then don’t use it. Or more simply put, if you are adding to the sh*t in the world, don’t.

AI, when used purposefully, has the power to enhance, augment and improve learning - but you have to become an active architect of learning and do so.

So what next? Thinking and Linking:

1. Prioritise Critical Literacy: Read up on AI’s limitations, biases, and ethical implications. Foster a culture of inquiry rather than blind adoption. Read widely or at least dip your toes in: 12 Best Blogs on AI

2. Focus on Inclusivity: Accessibility should be a baseline, not an afterthought. All training materials must meet diverse needs to ensure equitable learning and expand rather than restrict learning accessibility. Use AI to expand not restrict.

3. Balance Efficiency with Depth: Productivity should not come at the expense of the thoughtful, creative processes integral to teaching. AI should enhance, not overshadow, pedagogical engagement.

4. Collaborate and Innovate: Join a community of practice to join in the critical conversation (this AI Forum is really worthwhile. It has fortnightly recorded webinars and emailed transcripts for an easy win for those of us who might be time poor). Even if you don’t join a community of practice, you might share innovations, successes, and challenges with AI in education with your colleagues in-house.

5. Critique your Use: Think about process over product, learner agency and the experience for the learners above all. How is augmenting and enhancing learner experience? How is it supporting more critical thinking? Ask ethical questions: How does this tool support diverse learners in my classroom? What biases might the AI outputs carry, and how can I address them? Are the benefits worth the potential trade-offs in creativity or critical thinking? My work-in-progress rubric is below.

6. Become an engineer not a consumer: There are SO MANY new AI tools on the market right now with Chat GPT being just one drop in a vast ocean. Popular educational solutions like MagicSchool.AI can create educational consumables in seconds, but the outputs might not be of true benefit to students’ experience. Consider how you might engineer your own more purposeful solutions rather than accepting ready-made products that might push passivity or feed another tech company’s coffers.

7. Explore Innovation: For some interesting use cases for how to innovate with AI in the classroom check out Harvards’s AI Pedagogy Project (this was also mentioned in the first blog link).

8. Put Pedagogy over Product: AI tools are only as effective as the intentionality behind their use. Targeting strategies like flipped classrooms, differentiation, UDL or gamified learning means that you can apply AI to pedagogical frameworks purposefully.
   

I created this rubric (work in progress) based on the ITL Microsoft Partners in learning rubrics. There are more categories in the rubric - but this is the first page as an example.

AI might not be a silver bullet or a magic solution, but neither is it a storm to be feared.

It’s not really an “AI or the highway” scenario, forcing a binary choice of ‘this or that.’ AI is simply a tool, and like any tool, its value lies entirely in how we use it. By asking critical questions, exploring practical use cases, and fostering collaboration, we can move beyond the ‘yes or no’ debate. Instead, we can become thoughtful, critical users who forge our own purposeful path forward—together.

I added this as a provocation - does the SAMR rubric work when considering AI? SAMR rubric by Puentedura adapted for AI use.

Thoughts? Questions? Leave a comment to share your thoughts.

What is 'make the pie' learning?

Have you ever been to a workshop or presentation and been given a handout while they present a slide show but you’ve spent the time daydreaming about all the things you’d rather be doing? Or have you ever been asked to write something down that was dictated to you only to promptly forget what you had written?

This kind of learning is like being served a pie. The analogy of a ‘pie’ is helpful because pies come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors—sweet and savory—and we can all imagine being handed a pie. In this learning approach, the pie is served to a passive recipient. The recipient of the pie has no active role in making or even cutting the pie. They might eat it, but they don’t gain any understanding of how it was made. Even if it’s delicious, it’s entirely forgettable—it’s not their pie.

Let’s think about what ‘make the pie’ learning might feel like. Traditional learning experiences are more about serving the pie – and handing out the answers – rather than letting learners dig in and make the pie themselves.

In a well-designed learning environment, no two ‘pies’ should be the same and everyone should have their own pie that they have proudly designed and made for themselves.

My ‘make the pie’ philosophy, is encouraging a hands-on and interactive approach to learning. My ‘make the pie’ philosophy is all about getting people to mix, blend and bake the ingredients themselves. In a well-designed learning experience, people should feel like they have been elbow-deep in the recipe of acquiring new skills, feel confident to combine their own ‘ingredients’ of ideas and leave with an experiential understanding of how things come together.

“She really makes us think for ourselves. I am getting more confident at problem-solving and I like how she doesn’t tell us the answers.”

What’s in the Batter?

I’m not making up this whole pie thing. It’s just my way of explaining pedagogy (teaching-science geekery) to people who don’t love jargon as much as me. The ‘make the pie’ philosophy is a way to re-imagine a workshop session as a pie-making extravaganza. Instead of handing everyone a finished pie (complete with crust and all), participants might get a basket of ingredients – flour, butter, fruit, maybe a pinch of sugar. Then it’s their job to mix, knead, and taste-test as they go. This is active learning that fosters trial and error, fast-failing and iteration, collaboration and communication and a lot more too… And the making of the pie is backed up with a solid lineup of learning theories:

• Constructionist Theory: Inspired by Seymour Papert, this approach invites learners to build their own understanding. Just as they’d experiment with different amounts of sugar or spices, they’re encouraged to “construct” knowledge by trying things out and learning from what doesn’t go as planned just as they also learn from what does go as planned. Applying this theory also builds resilience and critical thinking skills.

• Constructivist Theory: Constructivism embraces the idea that learning is a social recipe – we all bring different ingredients, and when we mix with others and talk about what we are doing and why we are doing it, we can create something unique. This means collaboration, discussion, and the freedom to add a little ‘seasoning’ of one’s own ideas on the table is encouraged. This also fosters creativity, community, agency and a sense of ownership of the learning AND encourages people to bring prior knowledge and experience as a valued foundation to any new learning. Key players in constructivist theory are Bruner and Vygotsky.

• Experiential Learning: If you can imagine each step of designing a recipe as a hands-on experience then this is experiential learning. In my ‘make the pie’ learning experiences, learners are constantly doing, making, and problem-solving with me as an expert guide on the side. This isn’t about a teacher telling students what to think or do but about them figuring it out and arriving at a new understanding with expert guidance.

Why Mixing Matters More Than Memorising

In a lot of learning experiences, we’re too focused on presenting the perfect pie – giving answers and ticking boxes – that we skip the mixing stage altogether. But here’s the secret: it’s in the mixing, kneading, and experimenting where the real learning magic happens. Research shows that active learning is what makes concepts stick. When people have a chance to build their understanding, they’re far more likely to remember it. When they make the pie, they’ll talk about what they made AND want to make more pies too.

Letting learners “make the pie” empowers them to feel like they own the final product because, in a very real way, they do. They’ve rolled up their sleeves and tried out the skills in a controlled, playful setting, so they’re prepared to replicate it in real life.

What Does a ‘Make the Pie’ Workshop Look Like?

When you come to one of my sessions, you’re not sitting and waiting for the ‘perfect recipe’ to appear on a slide. You’re gathering ingredients, mixing things up, and working with a team to see how it all comes together. You might start with a challenge and work out how to fix it – just like you would in a real world situation. You’ll leave not only with new knowledge but with the know-how to apply it.

1. Choose Your Ingredients: Participants can select the skills or concepts they want to explore with different options that are differentiated and designed to meet different skill levels.

2. Mix It Up: Everyone has the chance to try new approaches, exchange ideas, and learn by doing in their own time and way – like everyone adding sprinkles and tweaks to a given recipe.

3. Bake Together: There will also be opportunities for collective problem-solving and sparking and capturing ideas.

4. Eat and Reflect Together: While the catering is usually up to you, great learning experiences require some critical reflection. We’ll talk about what was most valuable, most effective, most engaging and most impactful so that we can champion these ingredients again in the next workshop.

Making the Pie means that learning is a process of experimenting, ‘tasting’, mixing up solutions and seeing what works. The ‘Make the Pie’ philosophy promotes a ‘can-do’ mindset – because participants were not handed the answers. The answers were made by them.

Ready to Start Mixing?

So next time you’re looking at a workshop or training session and you see a slide deck and a handout with readymade answers, rethink it and try a ‘make the pie’ recipe for success that’s interactive, memorable, and customised.

Because the best learning isn’t served – it’s stirred, seasoned, and baked with everyone’s minds doing the mixing. Like the sound of this kind of pie? You know where to find me.

Best Practice and Burnout

I have recently returned to the classroom after working as a consultant and advisor for the last three years. Working in the private sector and working for the Ministry of Education more recently has offered me some fantastic opportunities to refine my understanding of what ‘best practice’ looks like. The ‘ideal state’ of optimal curriculum linking, deliberate use of data, systematic planning, agentic learning experiences, literacy/numeracy rich task design, critical thinking and 21st Century ‘make the pie’ pedagogy is my goal and this has been my active lens for advising teachers with ways to be better practitioners. Of course the ideal state is the goal - but there is a big but… let me explain.

Smilingly teaching on the outside, but on the inside, teachers are overloaded and suffering from incentivitis.

Being in the classroom is a humbling reality check. No change is a quick change and there are no ‘quick fixes’ for embedded teacher, learner (and leader) habits.

On the ground and knowing the ideal state lends itself to a bit of a panicked scramble. Where are the systems? What is the pedagogy? Where is the agency? Why is this not aligned to the curriculum? Where is the literacy? Where is the digital fluency? Where is the culture of collaboration? (So many questions!) When you know what best practice looks like (in the classroom and beyond the classroom, in management systems, in school-wide systems, in leadership styles etc), it can feel like a veritable swamp. We come home exhausted trying to fix so many things. So this is where a reality check needs to come into play.

Because best practice can be a perfectionist pedagogist’s undoing.

For me (on a personal level), I can see so many things that need to change - yet I need to remember that all change needs time and consistency to be effective. Also, I am one human. Further, I am one human who also has a family life and a ‘parent hat’ to put on as well as ‘partner hat’ and a ‘friend hat’ etc. To dedicate ALL of my time to the pursuit of excellence in all areas is commendable - but realistically not possible. I have to admit my human fallibility.

The first step is to take stock of the things we can change. We can add some systems to our classrooms. We can schedule student interviews. We can target specific data with our planning. We can reflect on our lesson sequences and look for ways to tweak them to be better for next time. We can give our students more opportunities to be critical thinkers and agentic learners. We can give them more opportunities to create with technology. Most importantly, We CAN strive for best practice - but we need to do it incrementally.

One thing that I have found particularly useful is using padlet as a kanban for next steps. Breaking down my big picture ideas into smaller chunks is a sanity saver. I still have my ideal state in mind and I can add small tasks to my kanban that will allow me to make incremental steps towards the end goal. (Check out my previous blog post about ‘The Kaizen Classroom’).

An example: For scaffolding the skills the students need for making good learning decisions daily is: Create a visual map of the lesson, print as a poster, get button magnets for showing where we are up to, design reflection activities for decision-making, create opportunities for decision-making, design survey for student voice, track engagement using Schoolytics (a handy plugin you can use with Google Classroom), trial, reflect, tweak.

An example of my ‘making good decision’ classroom road map. It is a useful way to chunk a lesson into clear sections and students have a ‘pick a path’ opportunity to explore different activities to anchor or apply their learning.

The burnout phenomenon among teachers is very real indeed. Teachers have ‘incentivitis’ and are constantly shifting and adapting to meet the requirements of new incentives. PLD funding is limited, effective PLD is hard to find (I can help with this) and time to implement actionable steps post-PLD is rarer still. It is no wonder that New Zealand’s education system is in a state of crisis.

So what is the solution?

Best practice needn’t be a pie in the sky that is unachievable. The truth is that if you are making small steps towards ‘better’ practice then this is something that should be noticed and rewarded. The solution is that we need to maintain a best practice vision and keep stepping towards it.

• Keep a diary of ‘small steps’ that you can take in order to inch closer to the best practice model that you have in mind.

• Determine what best practice actually looks like for you - what is most important?

• Notice what key actions you have tried and keep a record of the steps

• Use a Kanban to track your progress (‘Doing’ cards can be shifted to the ‘Done’ pile)

• Share the load with others - collaboration is a great way to reduce your workload

• Share failures as well as successes - what not to do is sometimes just as useful to know as what to do OR you might be able to troubleshoot better strategies together

• Don’t give up on what best practice can be

• Connect with others with a similarly optimistic vision for education (There are so many naysayers and fixed mindset people who cloud the vision for change. Avoid them.)

If you know what best practice looks like and then look around and feel like it ‘too far a star’ then look for a ‘near star’ marker to head to first. If you feel overwhelmed, swamped and depressed about the status quo, you need to remember that striving for better is possible - but also that it will take time.

Assess where you are at. Make a mark. Point to your far star and start marching there one step at a time. Don’t give up.

• If you have a ‘far star’ in mind as a teacher or as a leader, let’s connect to formulate an achievable action plan together.

The Kaizen Classroom - Teach, Tweak, Repeat.

One small tweak here, one small tweak there - imagine the difference that you might make over the course of a day, a week, a term… a year?

While designing some ‘stacking starter’ activities this year, I have been thinking about how the first five minutes of a class are the ‘golden moment’ to set the tone of the class, invite them into the learning and engage with the content. If you think about our students as users and apply some UX (user experience design), we need to be mindful that they have been tuned in to different teachers and different environments in a fairly relentless cycle before they get to us. So what can we do to make it welcoming, engaging, and exciting? I have been thinking about this a lot - and beyond the first five minutes and the great power of an effective starter - the answer can be found in Kaizen.

Kaizen is the Japanese art of continuous improvement. James Clear talks about a version of it through a different lens when he writes about habit stacking (stacking a new habit onto another once the previous one is ingrained) in Atomic Habits and I think that habit stacking AND constant tweaking to seek continuous improvement has enormous potential in the classroom.

This term my focus has been on the ‘first five’ of classroom culture. Embracing the ‘DO NOW’, I have been playing with this space as a place to explore literacy (word games), ignite problem-solving and critical thinking (puzzles or problems to figure out as they come in), retention strategies (list five key words from last lesson), Agency (choose from the choice board) and journaling opportunities. I have used it as a space for agency with ‘This or That’ frames and as a place to specifically target 21st Century Skills and learning dispositions that sit ‘beside’ current learning objectives. So what does Kaizen have to do with it?

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, finding effective ways to enhance teaching methods and empower students is a perpetual goal. And as a perpetual goal, we need to be agile and constantly shifting in order to meet it effectively. Kaizen - the Japanese term that translates to "continuous improvement," is a way to think about what we are doing as a process and not a product. It is a useful way to think about how we can constantly tweak the dynamics of our learning environments. Teach. Tweak. Repeat. It even has a fun ring to it.

At the heart, Kaizen is the belief that small, incremental changes can lead to significant improvements over time. Similar to habit stacking (This is adding a new habit to an existing habit - like listening to a podcast while driving to work since driving to work is an existing habit and listening to a podcast is the new desired habit we ‘stack’ onto it), tiny wins can result in large victories over time. In the context of education, this means continually seeking ways to refine the way we deliver, present, and reflect on the ‘glorious messiness’ of teaching and learning.

The Kaizen Classroom - Key Steps:

1. Embrace a Growth Mindset:

   • If you try something once and fail that does not mean that it will never work. A growth mindset helps us to think about what the students were carrying with them into the lesson, what we (we are not devoid of our own baggage) were carrying into the lesson, and realising that a single attempt is not a finite attempt nor is it the end product. As teachers, we need to have a growth mindset and model as well as encourage the belief that intelligence and abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work and, in this case, reflective iteration.

2. Continuous Self-Reflection:

   • I have a ‘plus-minus interesting’ reflection log that I have been keeping in my planning book. I jokingly refer to it as ‘Tragedy/Comedy’ sometimes (Have you seen that Will Ferrel film Stranger than Fiction? It is one of my favourite films). I regularly reflect on what worked and didn’t work and look for ways to shift and change my delivery. Was it too hard? Was it too easy? Were the instructions unclear? Was my technology choice fit for purpose? I am never afraid to ask the students what they need more of or less of and to really tune in to what they tell me. Regular reflection on teaching methods and outcomes allows us to figure out small things we might change when we try again. (Notice - we - not me). We can identify areas to refine and improve, and be open to growing - even if it still doesn’t work in round two.

3. Small, Gradual Changes:

   • It takes a long time to turn a large ship. If we think about how students have experienced school, how they have experienced the world and what their expectations are for what learning should ‘look like’ - we would be unwise to give them too much to chew on for fear they might choke. Having said that, they can eat larger and larger pieces gradually. In a year 10 class (over a term) we have gone from the students ‘doing nothing’ when coming in to jumping straight in, knowing what they are learning and where they are up to, following a weekly quest (a map I make for them each week) and working collaboratively to find out about questions as they come up. This is a big win - but it wouldn’t be there without nine weeks of incremental baby steps. Over these nine weeks I have gradually released their expectation of me as ‘sage on stage’ and taught them the skills they need to navigate ‘trickier’ and ‘unchartered’ learning experiences. If we avoid drastic overhauls and instead focus on small, manageable adjustments, we can make meaningful change happen. Incremental changes applied carefully can lead to lasting improvements.

4. Student-Centric Approach:

   • An exit ticket that requires a bit of bravery to administer is, ‘What do you want less of?’ Asking students how learning has been/is going for them is vital for successful iteration. Is this map working for you? Do you think these instructions could be clearer? Would you prefer to be quizzed at the beginning or end of the week? Students are the end users of our learning design and we can tailor our teaching strategies to meet the diverse needs and learning styles of all students - even if it is just one baby step at a time. Kaizen helps us to deliver tiny improvements for every student.

5. Data-Driven Decision-Making:

   • Iterations can also target success criteria. Recently, a student told me that he couldn’t prepare for the Current Affairs Quiz each week because he didn’t have time to read the news. A tiny tweak to my planning now includes ‘news time’ to read the headlines as a starter activity (that golden first five). To top it off, this tiny tweak has prompted me to think about how I can offer a ‘media smorgasbord’ to gently push students to consider different sources of news. I am looking forward to sharing Future Crunch with them (an optimist’s news feed) and slipping in some lateral research skills. My next ‘This or That’ for them may now be ‘read the headlines’ but with the choices of two different global news websites or obviously biased sources. We can utilise data (like a student underperforming in a current affairs quiz) to inform the next incremental tweak to our teaching practice. Tiny weeny eeny meeny adjustments every day can lead to improved outcomes over time. Just because we plan something one way doesn’t mean it can’t be tweaked in the process of delivery in order to be more responsive.

6. Culture of Collaboration:

   • For Kaizen to have the most Bang for Buck, we should all be talking about what we are trying, what we are tweaking and what we are failing at. I love sharing ideas in the classroom and love the stories of things that haven’t worked as much just as much as I love hearing about techniques that have worked. Teach, tweak, repeat - imagine if we all shared our wins and losses with each other and how much faster our strength as a collective might grow. Effective communication and a culture of collaboration amongst staff can amplify the impact of Kaizen in the classroom to become a genuine culture of learning and innovation beyond single cell iterations.

Most measuring sticks are divided by little steps. We can learn from them too. Inch by inch…

Here are some ways that Kaizen can be used in teaching:

1. Lesson Planning: We can add tiny updates to incorporate new ideas, technologies, and teaching methods. What if we tried ‘one new thing’ each week?

2. Feedback Loops: How are we getting student voice regularly? We might tweak how we get feedback so that we can be more responsive to students’ experiences.

3. Professional Development: Kaizen also applies to professional development. Though perhaps not daily, - monthly, termly or annual reviews of practice can promote a culture of continuous improvement. Need someone? (Hello! Pick me!)

4. Classroom Environment: Make a tweak to the classroom environment or staff room each week. It could be a new quote for the wall, a new display or a new way of sharing learning outcomes. Small wins add up.

5. Target the first five: Like my examples above, maybe the first five minutes is a worthy space to focus your energy.

I have touched on the benefits of a Kaizen Classroom - and in a nutshell - the Kaizen Classroom is the belief that small wins can lead to big victories over time. Whether it is improved engagement, streamlined ‘openers’, less time wasted in transitions, more engagement and buy-in with assessments or better relationships - Kaizen is being responsive, adaptive and reflective in the pursuit of doing things better.

The journey of education is just as important as the destination. If it doesn’t work the first time, tweak it. Try again. Tweak it. Try again. Twerk it. Work it. Repeat. (Deliberate typo for fun). If we apply Kaizen principles to teaching, we are never settling for ‘this is how it is because it has always been like this’. No. We can do better. We can not only transform our classrooms one baby step at a time but we can also shape a brighter, bolder, braver future. What little thing might you do differently?

The Teaching Tree - Dive into the Archive

I have been happily blogging on my Wordpress ‘Teaching Tree’ Blog for years and, even though Squarespace says that I can import all of my content across to this website, I am yet to figure it out.

In the interim, this is a ‘satisficing’ measure - this blog can be window to all of the blogging and writing I have been doing over on my theteachingtree.blog

On my blog, you can find teaching tips and tricks, reflections on what works or why we need to try harder to make things work, general musings on pedagogy, poetry, an education manifesto and more.

This content is in the magic portal on its way over to this website but the time-space-time-life-reality continuum may cause some delays.