There’s been a
great deal written and debated in recent times about the importance of teacher
quality and the role this plays in improving learner outcomes. Few would disagree, I think that teacher
quality plays an important part in the overall mix with respect to student
engagement and learning, though how much, of course is difficult to define and
measure.
I had pause for
thought this week, though, about the importance of “teacher quality” when
so-called experts, be they academics (like me) or practitioners, are invited to
take the podium at a conference and address an audience of teachers about
current scientific understandings and so-called “best-practice”.
As an academic
who is a former practitioner, I always value opportunities to talk to people
who are at the coalface, whether in education, justice, health, welfare, or
policy. When your work requires you to deal with the messy business of people’s
everyday real concerns and distress, you gain knowledge, insight, and humility
that no amount of data trawling and analysis could ever confer. When presenting to such audiences, I always try
to be conscious, therefore, of using language that is somewhat conditional and
qualified. As an academic, part of my role is to “channel evidence” to people
who don’t have the same access to primary research sources as I do, and are in
many cases not equipped to critique its quality. As other academics will know, “knowledge”
is fluid, testable, debatable, and modifiable. It needs to be handled with
great care.
When my father
told me (when I was about 10) that “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing” I
remember being perplexed about the notion that there could be any danger in knowledge. Older and wiser,
I now understand the truth of these words and am reminded of them when I listen
to (some) education “experts” present as facts, their particular dogma,
ideology, or anecdotal experience.
I witnessed this
earlier this week, when listening to a fellow invited speaker at an education
conference attended by about 150 teachers and other practitioners who work with
young people who are either disengaged from education or are at risk of such
disengagement. These teachers all appeared to be highly motivated and eager to
improve their knowledge and skills. They listened with what seemed like great
focus and engagement to a speaker who told them that
- MRI studies show that “dyslexics[1]” use the right side of their brain when attempting to read, not the left
- It’s important to understand the “learning style” of a “dyslexic”
- Many dyslexics have so-called “Irlen Syndrome” and benefit from the use of coloured overlays.
I seemed to be
the only academic in the room, which meant I felt like the proverbial
wet-blanket at question time when I pointed out (politely!) that there is no scientific basis for the notion of
learning styles, and nor for the use
of coloured overlays. I mentioned
that teachers in the audience might find the MUSEC Briefings a useful resource for
evaluating the claims made by proponents of such approaches but was met with
only a very lukewarm response. I didn’t know where to start on the MRI issue so
left that one right alone. I also have an intense dislike of disability-based
descriptors for people – I doubt that anyone who has a reading problem would be
happy to be defined in such a mono-dimensional way as “a dyslexic”- as if the
term conveys all we would ever need to know about them. It’s about as unifying
a term as calling someone “an asthmatic”.
I am sure you can see the
problem – an engaging speaker has over-simplified a complex construct and
offered charmingly straight-forward and accessible responses that seem to have
good face validity, so of course well-intentioned teachers are keen to “buy”.
However, just as
we expect teachers in classrooms to be accountable for what and how they teach,
we need to hold “experts” at conferences accountable for what they present as
facts to those who operate at the coalface. I often say to audiences of
teachers that I think what they do is no less significant for society than what
medical practitioners do (in fact, in some respects……..yes, you know what I’m
thinking….). As a community, though, we expect medical practitioners to think
and behave according to scientific principles, not according to their
particular belief-system, regardless of how well they seem to be able to package
and present it to an audience.
My dad was right
– a little knowledge is most certainly a dangerous thing.
[1] I
have blogged on the problems with this term previously - http://pamelasnow.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/dyselxia-we-need-to-talk-its-not-me-its.html
