Students across New South Wales will today enter a new era of learning following the rollout of the ‘explicit’ education model across the state.
The model calls for teachers to “show students exactly how to do something step by step” and let them practice over and over until they get it right, rather than letting them “find their own way.”
And according to Australian Education Research Association CEO Dr Jenny Donavan, this is the best way to ensure students don’t emerge from studies with critical knowledge gaps.
The former teacher says it also works ‘for everyone’, unlike the recently ousted ‘research’ method, where children from more privileged backgrounds continue to outperform and outperform their peers.
“The first thing explicit teaching does is check what students already know, and then build on that baseline so no one falls behind,” she said.
It does not rely on parents filling in the gaps at home, which often leads to children from poorer or less educated areas failing.
Despite being used in classrooms in countries known for their academic success – such as Singapore – the method is not welcomed by everyone.
It has even caused some teachers to roll their eyes and call it a new education fad, while progressive parents worried that schools were “going backwards.”.
Dr. Jenny Donavan, the CEO of the Australian Education Research Association, has explained why she is a fan of the explicit education model
‘Nothing is “new” in the education system; everything just gets a new name,” said one teacher about the return of explicit teaching methods.
He added that teachers are often thrown into subjects in which they are not trained – due to shortages – and have to provide ‘lessons of 30’, giving each child less than 90 seconds of one-on-one time per 50 minutes. lesson.
“Explicit instruction is very challenging in mixed-ability classrooms,” he bellowed.
According to a spokesperson for the NSW Education Department, explicit teaching has had a place in the classroom for years, but teachers have not been told to focus on it as their core method.
“It is already in regular use in most public primary and secondary schools in NSW, across many different subjects,” they told FEMAIL ahead of the official rollout.
‘Explicit education does not discriminate. So if you are a student who is struggling, or moving faster than grade level, explicit teaching will help you reach your potential.”
Many have debated the pros and cons of the method on social media.
Many claimed that explicit teaching was just a souped-up version of ‘old-fashioned’ learning, which was slowly replaced by inquiry-based study thirty years ago.
“Here we go, the same merry-go-round that we teachers are supposed to smile and agree with, while most of the elderly have been doing this in the classroom since the beginning,” someone, supposedly a teacher, claimed online.
During the student-free day at the start of the second semester, teachers were ‘taught’ how to apply the new working method at school
While another said: ‘This was the method used previously, before standards started to fall. It was taught universally by teacher training colleges. From about the mid-1960s onwards, a new American craze was gradually adopted, namely child-oriented immersion and osmosis as the best teaching method. We are now where that method would always take us.”
But Dr. Donavan told Daily Mail Australia that people who compare the teaching method to those of the past don’t understand it – especially those who claim older teachers were taught explicitly at university.
‘People describe it as old-fashioned. When I went to college to study teaching in the 1980s, I learned that children are natural learners, which didn’t help,” she said.
Dr. In fact, Donavan said that explicit teaching will have a huge impact on learning outcomes and classroom behavior.
They are taught step by step what is expected and how to do ‘it’, and then they will practice a lot.
The national rollout means the method will be more effective because teachers will have a unified approach to teaching and classroom management.
Dr. Donavan says students won’t fall through the cracks with explicit teaching because “there are no cracks.”
However, she does admit that it will take some time for the results to be reflected in test scores.
This is because teachers have to practice what they learned about the teaching method yesterday on the student-free day.
Parents have added to the fury by claiming that ‘good teachers’ are the answer to classroom problems and poor outcomes – although Dr Donavan and the departments both criticized this as simplistic.
Dr. Donavan said most teachers in NSW are excellent teachers – they just need systems to help.
“Our education system should help our children become analytical and curious lifelong learners. Explicit teaching, immediately followed by explicit testing, may yield higher scores in the short term, but is useless in providing the skills and dispositions needed to prepare children for life in the real world,” one parent argued.
But Dr Donavan disagreed, telling FEMAIL that the solid knowledge base and practical, interactive approach to explicit teaching not only engages children, but also gives them a solid foundation to build on in their own time, as problems arise in everyday life.
“You can’t build knowledge on nothing, but when you’re presented with something new, you can come up with your own ideas based on that information,” she said.
