Will Mac

As we get ready for a new school year, I hope @AddvanceMaths can support your students. We 100s of free resources to help students revise. 😊👍

@dperkinsed The phrase ‘cognitive underload’ would be helpful. Optimum learning involves some cognitive load.

Is this always the best way to think about learning? "So the answer is yes: cognitive overload is always detrimental to learning. When working memory is overloaded, students are unable to effectively process, organize, and integrate new information into long-term memory."

@tombennett71 @irish_news @hannahpattJ ‘weapons of mass distraction’ nice

My interview yesterday with @irish_news. Good to talk to @hannahpattJ (nb: sadly I'm still not a Tsar, no matter how hard people try to make it true !) Northern Ireland school behaviour Tsar labels mobile phones ‘weapons of mass distraction’ irishnews.com/news/northern-…

@dperkinsed @MistypeaTam (I’m not saying it’s a perfect definition, but it’s best I’ve seen and easy to define)

@dperkinsed @MistypeaTam If we all defined acedemic outcomes as test results (British curriculum tests are good), then that agreed educational outcome would avoid a lot of misguided decision making in Ed. ‘21st century skills’ for one

Can "cognitive overload" actually be good for learning? "This chart is great, even if it takes a while to grasp." That quote from a news piece got me thinking: CLT says to avoid it, but is there value in having students do the task of deconstructing something really complex?

@dperkinsed @MistypeaTam ‘All teachers’ is 140 character speak. Nuance needed. But if we just clicked our fingers and every teacher worldwide suddenly followed that framework, education as a sector would be massively more effective.

@MrMac_Math @MistypeaTam You lost me at "all teachers". What about a teacher that gets as good or better results without using all of those guru's methods?

@MistypeaTam @dperkinsed I’m also more than happy to conjecture and theorise about how the human brain responds to instruction. But I must caveat this as all theory, and all teachers should just do exactly what Rosenshine, Engelmann and Lemov tell us - teach clearly and directly.

@MistypeaTam @dperkinsed Yes. This is my position. As a highly simplified heuristic: Focus on teaching it really well - this will engage, motivate and lead to more success than trying to appeal to the interests of a class full of individuals.

Like, I try to explain the rules to someone, and they say woah slow down and I’m like ‘yeh don’t worry, working memory issue’ (I don’t say this anymore since I stopped getting invited to diner parties)

One of the most practical and relatable examples of SoL principles is learning a new board game. Novice to expert Building schemas from no concept of rules to extended strategical thinking Explicit explanations and modelling support understanding rules Spacing: easier next time

@dperkinsed Yes, apologies if I didn’t catch you alluding to this amongst all the noise. It seems incontrovertible that extended effortful cognition would be motivated by intrinsic interest in the problem / concept. In that sense motivation causes learning. Hard to force in a classroom.

@MrMac_Math This is kind of what I was trying to get at in my conversation with Sweller and relate to the recent Twitter kerfuffle re: motivation. It seems intuitively true that there are ways in which we can reduce the friction, or gravitational pull through if you will, of cognitive load.

@Eliana_Goldin @helenrey Problem is it should also have a community note when someone spreads misinformation about something as important as education for financial gain. It’s like alternative medicine snake oil salespeople spreading nonsense conspiracies about doctors.

@helenrey Everything is an ad when you think about it. True ads though are directly meant to sell, which this is not

With AI, teaching will become unnecessary. But the role of teacher will become ever more irreplaceable. In the past, teachers stood at the front of the classroom and they taught. They explained things and then answered questions. Sometimes they were extra special, and they cracked jokes. Today, AI is indisputably a better teacher than human beings. It recognizes how you're thinking about a problem and addresses your particular gap immediately. It uses the Socratic Method and Scaffolded Hints without fail and never resorts to over-explaining. It speaks to you in your language, with your learning style, at your pace. And yes, it can even crack jokes. The days of frontal teaching are over. But what is not over is the need for teachers. With AI teaching the technical information, the human teacher is free to tend to the human being. This is best illustrated by example. I've worked with many kids who struggle with math. I'll give my company a quick shoutout -- we raised our students' test scores 2 standard deviations well above the mean, and in an absurdly quick amount of time. Our AI did nearly all of the math, but our tutors did something else: They broke through the emotional walls that prevent learning from happening in the first place. Our tutors noticed when math was making kids beat up on themselves. Our tutors noticed when math was no longer really about math. And that's what they spent their time on: Confidence. When @Josiah was working with his student testing in the 29th percentile, the kid would often burst into tears. Each time, Josiah would gently remind his student that he is capable, math is hard, and that if he takes it step-by-step, he can figure it out and do anything he sets his mind to. They practiced this over and over over, and one season later, the kid placed in the 65th percentile. Together, our AI Rocky optimized the curriculum and Josiah, our human tutor, healed the relationship with failure.

There is a valuable point here about teachers doing far more than explaining content. But AI is not “indisputably a better teacher” than a human being. It cannot reliably diagnose understanding, judge when to explain, model, question or intervene, or take responsibility for what a pupil actually learns. The learning styles claim is also a problem. The idea that pupils learn better when teaching is matched to a preferred style has been repeatedly tested and found wanting. People may have preferences, but matching instruction to those preferences does not reliably improve learning. AI may become a powerful instructional tool. But teaching is not simply delivering technical information before moving on to the human work. Choosing what to teach, how to sequence it, when to intervene and whether learning has actually occurred are themselves deeply human acts.

When someone claiming to know about educational theory says learning styles:

@mathillustrated @MrAleoSays We do have to optimise instructional time, and this involves choosing consistently highly effective things over risky / less effective things

@MrMac_Math @MrAleoSays Incredibly, we don’t have to make such a choice

Too true! Observing stuff, asking questions, and doing experiments is a waste of time that bears no resemblance to science. Much better for children to work on changing their long term memory through mini-whiteboard quizzes.

@MrAleoSays Don’t worry! I’m well read about research and general issues across education, psychology and other related fields but thank you for your suggestion.

@MrMac_Math If this is your sincere take then I recommend reading & researching outside the incredibly narrow scope of cognitive psychology that a handful of influencers have convinced you is the totality of the field. It’s not. It’s not even an accurate depiction of cognitive science.

(gamified attention destroying slop undermines the mindset one actually needs to do serious cognitive processing of complex grammar)

Duolingo actively harms your chances of mastering a language

@21luckyforsome Grossly unfair that you posted this with the teacher’s name visible. Horrible conduct.