Well, the results are in. We have some concrete evidence from a sample of schools who used the EMP in 2025… and it’s very encouraging!

Late last year I emailed all schools who used the Explicit Mathematics Program in our first year (2025) asking if any were willing to share de-identified PAT data for analysis. We heard back from from approximately 5% of participating schools, and we have since combined these data to generate an impact report.

Here’s the headline result:

Summarising the above…

We found that the average Year 2 student who undertook the EMP in 2025 (from this sample) achieved 23.4 months equivalent annualised growth. This represents the equivalent of 1.95 years of learning in a single calendar year, or almost twice the expected growth rate. 

Further, an EMP student below the 25th percentile (from this sample) achieved an average of 29.7 months of equivalent annualised growth. This represents the equivalent of 2.475 years of growth in a single calendar year, or almost 2.5 times the expected growth rate.

When we did this analysis, we were pretty blown away!

However, there are no guarantees in life, and especially in education. It’s important to note that the positive results reported above were not universally distributed amongst schools. As an illustrative example, below we share the variation in achievement across the 8 schools in the sample for those students below the 25th percentile:

As can be seen, one school, School A, recorded growth for students below the 25th percentile which didn’t even constitute 12 months equivalent growth. In contrast, School H achieved over 3 years equivalent growth from their students under the 25th percentile. This is some serious variation.

As with any instructional program, outcomes will vary across schools. Factors such as school context, implementation fidelity, teacher experience, and much more, all influence the impact of a teaching program, and the EMP is no exception. These results are shared transparently to make clear that the program-wide averages - approximately twice the national growth rate for the typical student, and 2.5 times for students entering in the lowest quartile - are not a guaranteed outcome. Student success is always the product of many interacting factors, and no program delivers uniform results across every context.

These are early results, and only come from a small sample of schools, but they are very encouraging to us and suggest that we’re onto something that has the potential to, we believe, change the achievement of primary mathematics students at a national scale!

To read about all of the limitations we could think of, and some more info around the above reported results and the report’s methodology, you can view the full report here. I would encourage you to have a look in more detail if you have the time.

As always, I invite and encourage any thoughts or critique on this report, we’re always looking to improve every facet of the EMP (including our data analysis).

This year we hope to analyse NAPLAN data of all schools who undertook EMP in 2025. But the real data were looking to is 2028 NAPLAN data, which will represent the impact of the EMP on a whole cohort of students from Foundation (in 2025) through to the commencement of Year 3. Watch this space…

Announcements & Opportunities

A few quick ones today:

• EMP Training in Tassie next week, April 1st (Wed). Would be great to see you there!

• Josh Goodrich is coming to Australia in May! Come and learn what it truly takes to move teaching forward with our Teacher Development Masterclass! (Melb, Syd, and Perth)

• Recently released a very popular episode of the Education Research Reading Room podcast with Chris Such on Teaching Reading and Comprehension

What was your New Year’s resolution last year?

For most of us, the answer is, ‘I can’t remember.’ This is often for one of two reasons, one good, one not so:

• Good: Whatever you aimed to change has now become an unconscious habit and you complete it without thinking

• Not so good: Last year’s resolution lasted till about this time (end-ish of Jan), then faded into oblivion.

As it’s currently the end of Jan, that time when our resolutions often begin to fade away, I thought I’d send out a little ‘resolution reminder’. Here are a few strategies that might help to nudge the ambitious but overloaded back on track.

My approach to making the most of 2026 is built on three principles, each of which I’ve tried to put into practice through one unified strategy.

Principle 1: Balance process goals and outcome goals. This is something I wrote about back in 2024, and which Peps put a good article out about earlier this year.

Principle 2: Leverage implementation intentions and action triggers. I first blogged about this back in 2018 and again in a slightly different guise in 2023.

Principle 3: Do fewer things better. This is something I’ve been working towards since the start of last year. It’s an attempt to counteract my penchant for novelty and tendency to spread myself too thin.

I won’t go into further detail about any of the above, other than to detail how they fit into the below strategy. But I would encourage you to explore all three principles more deeply if these concepts are new. So, here’s how I’m combining them in 2026.

I have three main things I want to achieve this year, which are:

• Do a modest workout every day

• Start getting ready for bed at 9:30pm every night (lights out at 10:30pm)

• Say my mantra every day

These may seem very simple, but I’ve found over time that sleep, exercise, and diet are the three main drivers of my productivity. I feel like I built some good diet habits in 2025, but I wasn’t as good with sleep or exercise.

However, the mantra (goal 3) is what I really want to talk about today. Here’s how a Mantra can leverage each of the three principles above and why I feel it’s the lynchpin for this year.

Balance process and outcome goals: About ¾ of the statements in my mantra are a recipe for something I do each day. I actually only have one outcome goal for the whole year, and it’s more of a bucket list item. Over the years I’ve moved more and more towards focussing on what I do each day, and letting the outcomes take care of themselves as a result. A mantra is a way to continually focus me on my process goals.

Leverage implementation intentions and action triggers: Almost every line of my mantra follows this format: ‘Situation – action – reason’. Here’s an example:

• ‘When spending time with [Daughter], I commit 100%, because great fathers dive into the world of their children.’

I’ve found this formula extremely powerful and, because I’ve now memorised my mantra, these lines pop into my mind, in the moment, as a real-time reminder of how I want to live my life. It’s just crazy how huge this simple structure has been. In short, a mantra can neatly encapsulate both implementation intentions and action triggers, each and every sentence.

Do fewer things better: I first started with the mantra idea last year. I had the per-line formula right (situation – action – reason), but not the overall structure. Last year, my mantra contained 24 lines and, being wordy and long, I never committed it to memory. As a result, it wasn’t ‘in me’, and it never got to the point where those lines would naturally spring to mind as I was going about my daily business. This year, my mantra contains 8 core lines which represent how I want to show up in the most important areas of my life.

And that’s it!

It’s the end of Jan and saying my mantra each day feels like it’s becoming a habit. It’s in long-term memory and moving towards automation. Most excitingly, I can already see the benefit, and I feel it influencing me multiple times each day.

Let me know if you come up with (and memorise) a mantra. The memorisation is really where the rubber hits the road. Whichever route you take, good luck for the year ahead!

Announcements and Opportunities

International Classroom Management/Behaviour Management Workshops

I’m delighted to share that my co-author of the Classroom Management Handbook (which has become my highest rated book on Amazon), Dr Mark Dowley, is doing a 2026 World Tour! Mark will be delivering the classroom managemennnt workshop which we co-designed, and has the capacity to potentially add a few more locations.

Mark is a fantastic presenter and facilitator and has refined this high-impact presentation over multiple iterations. If you’re looking for an opportunity to motivate and educate your staff to bette behaviour management, this is a phenomenal opportunity.

Contact Mark via the classroommanagementhandbook.com website

Dates so far:

• 2nd Feb – 23rd Feb (Johannesburg/Cape Town)

• 7- 26th April (Dubai & Shanghai)

• 1st – 15th June (Amsterdam and Barcelona)

• 16th June -10th July (UK)

• 15th August - 20th Sept (UK)

• 20 Oct – 20th Nov (USA/Canada)

If you can’t make one of these workshops in person, our online course on classroom management is an excellent option too and has been enormously popular. With 500 people signing on to take their classroom management to the next level, Mark and I have received countless emails expressing how much this course has helped them to improve the behaviour in their classrooms.

Upcoming Instructional Coaching Trainings with Steplab

If you’re interested in world-class instructional coaching and PD, or you’ve heard about Steplab and you’d like to find out more. The following trainings are an excellent opportunity to do so:

• Steplab Intensive Gippsland, Feb 9th

• Steplab Intensive Sunshine Coast, Mar 9th

• Steplab Intensive Melbourne, Mar 23rd

• Steplab Intensive Darwin, Jul 13th

• Steplab Intensive Adelaide, Sep 1st

Upcoming Explicit Mathematics Program Trainings

The Explicit Mathematics Program is absolutely taking off. Orders for the 2026 school year have more than doubled compared to 2025 and we have more schools than ever using and loving the program.

See some initial growth data and videos of classroom practice through our 2025 EMP Awards video here.

If you’re an EMP school and want to up your game, or just a school interested in the program, these upcoming trainings would be a great fit:

• EMP School Open Day – Rivergums (WA), Feb 24th

• EMP Intensive Brisbane, Feb 25th

• EMP Intensive Sydney, Feb 26th

• EMP Intensive Perth, Feb 27th

• EMP Intensive Melbourne, Mar 3rd

• EMP Intensive Adelaide, Mar 4th

If you had have asked me 8 years ago about my opinion of scripted programs, I would have argued against them. My view was that we should instead focus on developing every teacher to the point where they can write high-quality lessons.

I’ve since changed my mind.

This post highlights an analogy which has helped me come to this realisation…

A developing violinist walks into the studio of their new instructor.

‘What would you like to focus on today?’ the instructor asks.

‘Umm… I thought we could keep working on my part in Vivaldi’s Spring,’ the student replies.

‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ the instructor says. ‘I actually think it’s really important that you come up with your own piece. I feel that always playing music written by others undermines your autonomy—and, frankly, your professionalism.’

‘Okay… but I’m not sure how it reduces my autonomy. I want to play it. And as for professionalism, Vivaldi…’

‘Plus,’ the instructor interjects, ‘sheet music oversimplifies the complexity of music. All the subtle decisions a musician makes—their flair, their feel, their interaction with the audience —none of that can be captured in little black marks on a page.’

‘I don’t feel like the score oversimplifies the music. It’s just a basis from which I as the musician can begin to communicate…’

‘Look,’ the instructor interrupts again. ‘If you keep playing other people’s music, how will you develop as a musician? You’ll only really learn by writing your own pieces, trying them with different audiences, and working out what fits for you.’

‘I feel like I’ve come in leaps and bounds by playing the best work of those who came before…’

‘I’m losing patience,’ states the instructor flatly. ‘When you play other people’s music, you sound robotic and unnatural. The audience will be able to tell you don’t know what you’re doing if you didn’t write it yourself.’

The violinist tries to argue that having sheet music allows them to focus on nailing timing, dynamics, and emotion—but it’s futile. The instructor can’t be convinced.

This vignette seems absurd because, when it comes to developing musicians, we all accept that the best scaffold for novices is to begin by playing pieces written by experts.

We know that we need to give novice musicians a music script—sheet music penned by experts—and have them work hard to experience what it feels like to play a masterpiece. Some musicians will later write their own works; some won’t. Both paths are fine. The goal is to play beautiful music that delights audiences. Who wrote the score matters far less than how that piece is experienced by the audience.

Sheet music doesn’t undermine a musician’s autonomy or professionalism. It provides productive constraints within which they can shape their own expression. In some genres (e.g., jazz) that foundation may be looser, and improvisation becomes more and more prominent as expertise grows. In other genres, strict adherence to the score is expected—and the artistry lies in what the musician does with it.

Sheet music doesn’t oversimplify musicianship. It provides the essential foundation on which complexity and mastery are built.

Sheet music doesn’t inhibit learning. It exposes musicians to combinations of tones, melodies, and rhythms that work well together, offering worked examples that can be built upon later.

And sheet music doesn’t make performance robotic or unnatural. Certainly, some players may play in this way—but the whole point of the art is to infuse the score with one’s own expression.

And every year, tens of millions of people pay good money to hear musicians perform music written by others.

Yet many educators carry a bias: the belief that teachers should write their own lesson plans. The same arguments emerge—autonomy, professionalism, teacher learning, oversimplification of complexity, fears of rigid delivery.

The truth is that teaching from scripts are one of the most efficient ways for teachers to reach classroom virtuosity. They can support the kinds of lessons that help students learn faster than ever while rapidly developing teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge.

But don’t take my word for it. Chat with (or listen to) teachers who’ve used high-quality scripted programs. I speak to schools every week who sing the praises of scripted programs, from the literacy space to now mathematics.

If we want virtuosos in the classroom, we shouldn’t hesitate to hand them masterpieces.

Announcements & Opportunities

Challis is Hiring!

For those who have listened to my podcast discussion with the team from Challis Community Primary School, you’ll know what a phenomenal school this is. Well, Challis is hiring! If I was a teacher on the lookout for a job in WA, I’d be seriously considering this one! See more details in this flyer and pay them a visit at their next recruitment session from 4:30-6pm on Dec 2nd (details in flyer).

The Explicit Mathematics Podcast?

That’s right, the Explicit Mathematics Program now has a Podcast! We have 4 episodes out now which span a chat with Lead Author David Morkunas to a recent round table on how to make EMP work in small schools. Check it out here.

Upcoming Steplab Trainings

Come learn about high quality Instructional Coaching at one of these events:

Gippsland, Vic on Feb 9th 2026

Sunshine Coast, QLD, on March 9th, 2026

In my last post, Why Scripts are Beneficial for Novice Teachers, I argued that because worked examples are the ideal scaffold to support learning for a novice student, worked examples of lessons are the best scaffolds to support the learning for novice teachers.

By worked examples of lessons, I mean providing the teacher with the exact instructions, and the exact representations, that they can use to move student understanding forwards. In its most direct form, this will be a script of what the teacher should say (instruction), inclusive of exactly what they should show students (representations) and when and how to show them.

In this post, I want to add nuance to our understanding of the terms ‘expert’ vs. ‘novice’ so that we can better generalise this finding about the importance and the value of teaching scripts.

Teachers: Who Is a Novice? Who Is an Expert?

A reasonable but incorrect interpretation of the terms ‘novice’ and ‘expert’ when it comes to teaching and scripted lessons would be to assume that it relates to years of teaching experience. The longer the teacher has been teaching, the more expert they are.

This would be a mistaken interpretation for at least two reasons, one obvious, one less so.

The obvious reason is that all teachers with 20 years experience are not of the same of expertise level. Some teachers have incredibly supportive environments, fantastic PD opportunities, and dispositions or guidance that prompt them to continuously test, learn, and adapt throughout these careers, accelerating their expertise. Other teachers may have unsupportive environments, little or misguiding PD opportunities, and/or attitudes and mindsets that restrict their learning and development.

The less obvious reason, and the much more crucial one for today’s argument, is that, when it comes to Cognitive Load Theory, when we are talking about ‘novice’ or ‘expert’, we are not talking about a generalised trait. It is not accurate for us to categorically refer to a specific teacher as ‘expert’ or ‘novice’. Instead, teachers (like students) are expert or novice in relation to a specific target skill.

For example, a teacher who has taught year 12 Mathematics for 20 years is unlikely to know anything about how to teach a struggling Year 2 students to read.

In fact, a teacher who has taught Year 12, or even Year 7 English for 20 years may still not know how to teach a struggling Year 2 student to read.

In fact, a teacher who has taught Year 2 for 20 years still may not know how to teach a struggling Year 2 student to read. If that teacher hasn’t had the support and guidance required to develop these skills and knowledge (or has been misguided with respect to it, which has been incredibly widespread), and they simply haven’t accessed the required quality examples of how to teach reading to such a student, it’s near to impossible for them to have acquired this knowledge.

This brings us to the answer to our headline question: When we talk of an ‘expert teacher’, we most usefully do so in relation to their skills and knowledge to teach students a specific concept. Any given teacher may be completely expert at teaching one thing, but a complete novice at another. All expertise is content (and often context) dependent.

Here I am speaking primarily about what we could call ‘curriculum expertise’, which is the expertise required to develop students’ understanding of a specific curriculum dot point. I will touch upon pedagogical expertise at the end of this post.

Why it’s important to think of expertise as content-dependent

There are three key reasons why seeing expertise as content-dependent.

The first is that it promotes a mindset of collaboration. If we stop categorising ourselves as generally ‘expert’ or ‘novice’ teacher, we realise that the teacher of four decades could very easily learn something of high value from their prac teacher on placement. If that prac teacher just happens to have come across better information or models on how to teach mixed numbers than has the veteran, the veteran can clearly learn from them in respect to this skill.

The second benefit of seeing expertise as content dependent is that it empowers us to make the most of highly scaffolded and even scripted programs. Even a teacher who has taken a keen interest in, and has taught Year 3 maths for a number of decades, is unlikely to be aware of the/an optimum way to teach every mathematical concept covered in Year 3. This means that, regardless of their level of experience, they will always be closer to the novice end of the spectrum when it comes to teaching some concepts. In such cases, they can learn a lot from a clear worked example.

The third benefit of seeing expertise as content dependent is that it takes the pressure off. It sends a clear message that, ‘Just because you have been teaching high school maths, or Year 2, or whatever it may be for over a decade, you’re not expected to know how to teach all of it perfectly.’ This promotes the kind of mindset of continual growth and development required for any teacher to continuously move from novice, to more expert, across the often overwhelming multitude of teaching spectrums that they’re required to master.

Generalised Curriculum vs. Generalised Pedagogical Teacher Expertise

In this post I have made a strong case for the fact that expertise is content-dependent and there is no such thing as generalised expertise when it comes to teaching. However, as with most things, there is of course a little more grey to it than that.

There are a number of vastly more transferable skills and knowledge within teaching and, when we consider these, it probably is fair to categorise teachers along some sort of more generalised novice-expert spectrum.

The first is knowledge of how learning happens. Once a teacher deeply understands the most generalised principles of learning, especially those outlined within Cognitive Load Theory (worked example effect, expertise-reversal effect, redundancy, split-attention effect, modality effect, etc, etc), as well as more generalised Science of Learning principles such as spacing, retrieval, and interleaving, they are exceptionally well placed to apply those principles to the teaching of any topic at and year level. We could call these principles of curriculum design(and they go deeper than CLT too as outlined by Engelmann in his Theory of Instruction).

The second type of more generalisable and transferable teacher knowledge is what we could refer to as knowledge of the learning cycle. It is crucial for teachers to understand that learning occurs not both in time but perhaps more importantly over time. And they must see themselves as not only the deliverers of knowledge but also as experimenters with respect to it. ALL effective teachers follow a cycle of instruct→test→adapt, in which they provide some instruction, check for student understanding, then adapt instruction based upon what students have and haven’t successfully performed. Seeing teaching as this somewhat scientific process of instruct→test→adapt is the basis of ‘responsive teaching’, and is perhaps the most important principle for teachers to grasp. This is because, from this principle, all other principles - such as the principles of curriculum design above - can be derived (it would just take a long time if you were trying to derive them all yourself!)

A third type of generalisable or transferable teacher knowledge relates to the habits of effective classroom direction. Managing student attention, student movement, instructions to students, and much more requires multiple sets of coordinated actions from the teacher that can be enormously cognitively demanding for those in our profession. Learning what to do at these crucial instructional points, and building the habits to do so automatically and effectively, is truly a lifetime journey.

Note: Supporting the development of this more generalised pedagogical teacher expertise is the focus of much teacher PD, including the work that I do at Steplab.

In Sum

Whilst there are some generalised skills and knowledge that teachers can gain that will help them to be more ‘expert’ in a generalised sense, when it comes to expertise in relation to delivery of key learning outcomes, it is best for us to consider teacher expertise as content-dependent. When it comes to teaching concepts to students, no teacher is wholly expert, or wholly novice, they can only be categorised as such in relation to particular learning outcomes.

Because of this, all teachers can learn from lesson scripts. Novices will benefit greatly from the structure that a script provides, experts will adjust and adapt in line with their greater knowledge of both concepts, and their own students.

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This post is part of a series on the role of scripts in high quality teaching. Subscribe to receive all future posts

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Announcements & Opportunities

Webinar on October 21st: An Introduction on the Explicit Mathematics Program for New Schools

The Explicit Mathematics Program is a primary mathematics program which provides teachers and schools with everything needed to run a high quality, rigorous, and evidence informed mathematics instruction. From lessons to assessments, daily reviews to student workbooks, we’ve got you covered.

If you’re curious, and you want to find out more, join Toni Hatten-Roberts and yours truly next Tuesday evening for an introduction to the program, and to hear from a number of schools about their experiences implementing EMP in 2025.

Webinar booking link and all other upcoming EMP PD can be found here.

There are many things we know about paving the journey from novice to expert, but perhaps the most robust and general finding that we have is as follows:

Novices benefit from more structure and scaffolding, experts from less

In Cognitive Load Theory, this principle reveals itself in two ways, the worked example effect, and the expertise-reversal effect.

The worked example effect tells us that for novices, the most effective way to scaffold their learning is to provide them with high quality models, worked examples of the product which they are learning to produce.

The expertise-reversal effect tells us the opposite. Worked examples can be redundant as someone approaches expertise in that particular problem’s domain, as this person already understand how the problem should be solved. The expert therefore benefits more from practice rather than examples.

The Ideal Worked Example for a Novice Teacher

Imagine a novice teacher on a Sunday night. On Monday morning they need to deliver a lesson on fractions. They know that they need to introduce students to mixed numbers for the first time (e.g., 2 and 1/3 is the mixed number version of the improper fraction 7/3), but they really don’t know how to do this.

From Cognitive Load Theory, we know that the most useful scaffold for them at this point would be a worked example, but how ‘worked’ should that worked example be?

To understand the ideal worked example, we first need to understand the product that this novice teacher will be trying to produce.

At the most essential level, what this teacher will need to do to support their students’ learning of this (or any) concept is to present them with a sequence of instructions (words the teacher will say) and representations (concrete, pictorial, and/or abstract) representations that they’ll show students. These instructions and representations will combine to ideally move students from their current level of knowledge to the new, targeted understanding.

So, what does this mean for the ideal worked example?

The ideal worked example will provide the teacher with the exact instructions, and the exact representations, that they can use to move students forwards. In its most direct form, this will be a script of what the teacher should say (instruction), inclusive of exactly what they should show students (representations) and when and how to show them.

For time poor teachers developing their understanding, anything short of this leaves more to chance than is either necessary, or ideal.

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This is why scripts are beneficial for novice teachers, they provide the ideal worked example to both move their students’ learning forward from the get-go, and to provide them with the instructional language and representations needed to attain greater expertise.

In the next post I’ll unpack the idea of ‘novice’ and ‘expert’ to put the implications of today’s post into greater context.

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This post is part of a series on the role of scripts in high quality teaching. The full series covers will be released in coming weeks.

Announcements & Opportunities

Work with the Explicit Mathematics Program

You’ve likely seen this already, but just in case. This is your (probably) once in a lifetime opportunity to join the EMP team! Applications close Sunday October 5th @ 10pm.

Contribute to Australia’s first public system multi-school organisation!

From my podcast on MSOs and the broader work of Grattan and others, many of you will likely have heard about the power that multi-school organisations hold.

Well, Aus is about to have their first in the public system, and it’s in my home state of Tassie!

There are two jobs up for grabs. Check them out below:

• Head of Operations

• Chief Executive Officer

It’s a few years ago now that I first travelled to the UK to see teaching in action. Aside from the transformative experience of seeing world-class practice in action, the other thing which I was really struck by is the power of multi-school organisations.

As discussed on my podcast with Grattan on MSOs, it’s hard to beat the power of schools working together to develop and disseminate high-quality instructional materials, practices, and systems to raise student achievement.

What’s super exciting is that the MSO movement in Australia is really growing!

To date, Catholic Education systems have been a the pioneers in this space. First movers were Catholic Ed Canberra Goulburn with their phenomenal Catalyst program. Since then, similar movements have occurred in MACs (Melbourne) and in Tasmania too. These are all phenomenal examples and very exciting initiatives.

The MSO project that I’ve been most heavily involved with in Aus is the Magnify project within Catholic Education Sandhurst (CES). In my role as Director of Steplab Aus, I’ve been working closely with CES executive, leaders, and teachers to begin to develop a culture of coaching to enhance high quality instruction right throughout the Diocese.

Making change at the scale of 50 or more schools is no mean feat, and it starts with vision.

I was delighted to see that vision further solidified in CES recently through their Learning and Teaching Instructional Model. I think this document is such a great high-level summary of great teaching and learning principles, that some EdThreads readers might like to check it out!

To me, the MSO movement is one of the most exciting things happening in Aus education at present. Watch this space, I know there are many more exciting things to come!

Explicit Mathematics Program making waves!

The Explicit Mathematics Program is a F-2 (F-3 in 2026) mathematics program that gives schools everything they need to run high-quality mathematics instruction and assessment for their students.

I was blown away to open LinkedIn recently and see this post about the Explicit Mathematics Program from Steph Le Lievre from Serpentine Primary school!

I couldn’t be more proud of the impact that the EMP is having in hundreds of schools around Australia, just in its first year of release!

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spoken to many of our EMP early adopters and Steph’s feedback has been echoed across the board! The last Prin I spoke to said, ‘My teachers have told me that if I don’t get them EMP again next year, they’re all leaving’ : P

If you haven’t explored the EMP as yet, I’d love for you to head over to our website and check it out. You might even like to come to the upcoming Think Forward Educators webinar in which I’ll be talking about key instructional routines for the Primary Mathematics Classroom and touching upon the EMP too : )

Announcements and Opportunities

Primary Mathematics PD

I’ll be running the following PD alongside Toni Hatten-Roberts and David Morkunas…

Think Forward Educators webinar on Key Instructional Routines for the Primary Mathematics Classroom, October 14th in the evening

Instructional Coaching PD

If you’re keen for some coaching training, I’ll be running full-day Steplab Intensives at the following times.

• Syd, Oct 23rd, 2025

• Gold Coast, Oct 30th, 2025

• Melb, Nov 6th, 2025

• Gippsland, Feb 9th, 2026

• Sunshine coast, Mar 9th, 2026

Hope to see you at one of the above!

It is a momentous day. I’m delighted to share, that I’ve just released the 100th episode of the Education Research Reading Room Podcast!

ERRR #100. Steve Biddulph on the Roots of Anxiety

I really can’t believe that we’ve made it this far. I started this podcast now over 8 years ago and it’s been the source of so much richness, fulfilment, and opportunity for me—both in my personal and professional life. I really couldn’t be more grateful.

I’ve also been blown away by the response from listeners. This podcast now has over 2 million downloads across the prior 99 episodes, and I literally have teachers coming up to me around the country, and even overseas, expressing their gratitude for the podcast, our generous guests, and the impact that these conversations have had on teaching practice around the world.

I also wanted to thank all of the Patreons of the ERRR Podcast. There are now over 600 people who support this podcast every month, a number that’s been steadily growing over the years. And this support, more than anything, is what enables me to continue to do this work. There is a whole heap of software, equipment, subscriptions, books, and more that I need to pay for each month to keep the ERRR going—not to mention my time—and it’s the generous support of all ERRR Patrons that has made this a sustainable project for me.

So if you’re a Patron, thank you. Your support means the world to me.

If you’ve enjoyed the ERRR Podcast over the years, I ask only one thing. Please share it. Please forward this email to three people who you think may not have heard the podcast before, and who may enjoy it. Please help this podcast, and the important conversations within it, reach more people.

Thanks for listening, thanks for your engagement, and here’s to another 100 episodes!

Ollie.  

Announcements and Opportunities

Craig Barton’s ‘Becoming a Better Maths Teacher’ Aussie Tour!

I couldn’t be more excited about these four Aussie workshops with Craig Barton! We’d absolutely love to see you at one of these four dates in June 😊 Find out more and book here.

Instructional Coaching Intensive: Melbourne on March 24th!

This Monday just gone, Rory McCaughey and I ran a well attended Instructional Coaching Intensive in Brisbane, here are comments from some of the participants:

• ‘A game changer for schools committed to developing teacher expertise!’

• ‘Extremely helpful and practical. I feel confident to take this learning back to my school and implement.’

• ‘The steplab intensive gave me the skills, knowledge and platform to be an effective, high quality coach. Very grateful I was able to spend the day learning so much!’

• ‘Highly recommend this workshop to anyone who wants the knowledge and structure to improve their coaching in an educational context. ‘

• ‘I only wish I did this PD sooner.’

If you’re keen for a similar experience, Steplab founder Josh Goodrich is flying over from the UK to collaborate with Rory and me on a Melbourne intensive at Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School on March 24th. We’d love to see you there!

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If you are interested in Steplab, you can also book directly into a personal Steplab demo with me via this booking link. I run them every Wed and Friday arvo.

“Shall I tell you the secret of the true scholar? It is this: every man I meet is my master in some point, and in that I learn of him.”

― Ralph Waldo Emerson

This is one of my favourite quotes, and it’s one I try to live by in all aspects of my life. I couldn’t agree more that wisdom is built through seeing every interaction as a learning opportunity.

Today, though, I’d like to advocate for us expanding upon this concept a bit. To become ‘wise’ — or a ‘true scholar’, as Emerson puts it — it’s my view that we don’t only need to learn from every man (person) we meet.

In a world rife with groupthink and bubbles of confirmation bias, we actually need to actively search out our ‘adversaries’ (those from different camps, or those who we may know or expect to disagree with), and learn from them. We need to open ourselves up to conflicting views in order to enhance our own.

Some time ago, I published an EdThread on The book that changed how I think about the world, and education. Within it, I sketched out Kieran Egan’s ‘Kinds of Knowledge’. These kinds of knowledge represent a possible evolution of wisdom throughout the human lifespan. Here’s a recap of the top four levels, which are the more cognitive ones. After each, I’ll give a brief (and simplified/exaggerated) descriptor of how someone approaching education through that viewpoint may consider the field:

• Mythic understanding: An understanding of the world through binaries. E.g., good vs. bad, tall vs. short, big vs. small, etc.

  • Mythic educator: ‘Explicit instruction is the only way to go; inquiry is a waste of time’

• Romantic understanding: An understanding of the world through, amongst other things, heroic personalities and ‘great people’ of history.

  • Romantic educator: ‘John Sweller, the founder of Cognitive Load Theory, is the infallible oracle of education. He tells us that explicit vs. inquiry is actually an instructional spectrum that applies to novice vs. expert learners. John has figured it all out.’

• Philosophic understanding: People at this stage begin to see the world through ‘-isms’: capitalism, consumerism, communism, nationalism, colonialism. Think passionate uni students here. Or, from the educational context: Traditionalism vs. Progressivism

  • Philosophic understanding: ‘Cognitive Load Theory answers any question we may have in education, as it sits at the very heart of how learning happens, and can be used to explain all learning processes. If we understand CLT, we have all the answers we need to solve the problems of education.

• Ironic understanding: Ironic understanding is characterised by a mental flexibility that enables an individual to recognise the benefit of different philosophical approaches and identify their varying applicability in different contexts.

  • Ironic educator: ‘CLT is one of a set of tools (mental models) that helps us more fully understand the learning process, and education. It can be applied in a number of contexts and transferred from the teaching of students to the teaching of adults. It has notable exceptions and caveats. For example, usually higher prior knowledge makes task easier, but there are some cases in which higher prior knowledge actually increases task complexity! Usually it’s redundant to read out text aloud whilst your audience reads that same text, but sometimes it isn’t. Further, CLT doesn’t capture all important aspects of education including relational factors, self-regulation, self-determination, and much more.’

As can be seen, the first three levels* can be attained through engagement within bubbles or with a very limited number of individuals or sources. However, to expand into the ironic realm, we need to purposefully go wider, searching out exceptions to the rule and caveats.

The best people to point out these exceptions to us are our adversaries.

When did you last read a book that you commenced expecting you’d disagree with? When did you last enter a conversation with someone you knew you disagreed with on something you hold dear? More importantly, when did you last do it with a truly open heart? Entering the fray is, after all, only the first step.

And if you have recently had your mind changed through such an interaction, I’d love to hear about it!

*see the original blog post to avoid viewing these levels on an overly simplistic scale of ‘worse, better, bettera, best’.

Announcements and Opportunities

Craig Barton’s ‘Becoming a Better Maths Teacher’ Aussie Tour!

I’m super pumped about Craig’s upcoming trip to Aus for the four sessions we’re running together in late June. This is going to be a fantastic day for any upper primary or secondary maths teachers keen to network with other like minded and passionate maths educators. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity - who knows when Craig will be in Aus again. Find out more and book here.

Instructional Coaching: Brisbane on March 3rd, Melbourne on March 24th!

That’s right, it’s time for some more Instructional Coaching Intensives in Aus!

On March 3rd Rory McCaughey and yours truly are coming up to The Gap High School in Brisbane for a one day intensive. Then on March 24th, Steplab founder Josh Goodrich is flying over from the UK to collaborate with Rory and me on a Melbourne intensive at Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School.

If you’ve been thinking about upping your coaching game for a while, this is a phenomenal opportunity - whether you’re a Steplab school or not. This training is relevant even if you don’t, and never plan to, use the Steplab platform.

• Brisbane booking link

• Melbourne booking link

If you are interested in Steplab, you can also book directly into a personal Steplab demo with me via this booking link. I run them every Wed and Friday arvo.

Earlier this week I received an email from a reader, let’s call her Annalisa. It went something like this:

Our team at [organisation X] are diving deeply into the practices around student engagement and TAPPLE. The engagement norms, track with me' and 'read with me'* are used widely in our classrooms. A close reading of your book, Cognitive Load Theory in Action, appears to debunk this as a learning strategy (page 62) as it states that hearing spoken words at the same time as seeing them inhibits learning due to the processing of both modes in working memory. "When information is presented simultaneously in written and spoken form, both sources of information are vying for the same working memory resources, and therefore interfering with each other."

Have you any insights to this please?  Thanks so much.

This was an excellent question, and it demonstrates a fantastic understanding on Annalisa’s part of the ideas covered in this chapter on Redundancy.

In the following, I’ll give a brief overview of the redundancy effect as it pertains to text and spoken word, then we’ll return to Annalisa’s question.

*’track with me’ and ‘read with me’ are both teaching techniques from Explicit Direct Instruction. I discuss them at length with the co-creator of EDI, John Hollingsworth, here.

The Redundancy Effect with text and spoken word

This section is a modified excerpt from Cognitive Load Theory in Action

‘The most common form of redundancy occurs when the same information is presented in different modalities’ (Sweller et al., 2011). One example of this is when information is presented in both spoken and written forms simultaneously.

It’s a common practice for presenters to provide written information on their slides and then to read out that information during the presentation. To conventional audiences, this represents an example of the presentation of redundant information. Only one presentation format is needed: either the written words or the spoken words.

Why does hearing spoken words at the same time as seeing them written inhibit learning? To answer this question, we must first gain a deeper understanding of human cognitive architecture.

All language is processed within a dedicated portion of working memory that deals with language (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Whether the language enters this portion of working memory through the ears (spoken words) or the eyes (written words), it is still processed in the same place. This means that when information is presented simultaneously in written and spoken form, both sources of information are vying for the same working memory resources, and therefore interfering with each other.

By way of example, imagine a fish and chip shop that is able to take orders via phone or online. The chip shop is the central processor of fish and chips (representing ideas, because fish and chips are always a good idea), and phone and internet represent two information channels (written text and spoken words). Regardless of whether the order comes via the phone or online, it is still processed by the fish and chip shop. As such, it’s redundant (and annoying, and confusing) if a customer were to phone up to make an order at the same time as putting through that same order online. This would impose significant cognitive load on the worker in the shop, because they would spend time trying to work out which order to pay attention to, and determine whether it was a duplicate and if any differences exist.

This is exactly what happens when we present written text and spoken words to a learner at the same time. Both signals are processed in the same place (central executive within working memory), and so sending the same info via two channels is redundant and unnecessarily confusing.

The bottom line. As teachers, we should only send one message at a time. Don’t call up the chip shop and order online at the same time. Don’t read out our slides!

Is it redundant for students to read or track with the teacher?

Back to Annalisa’s question.

In short, redundancy occurs when the same info is presented via both channels simultaneously. It's redundancy if the simultaneous listening and viewing confers no additional benefit than doing either one alone.

In the case of ‘read with me’ and ‘track with me’, there are (or at least can be) additional benefits.

With ‘read with me’, the children are also verbalising the content along with the teacher. This can be helpful if there are tricky vocab words where practicing the pronunciation is helpful for students. Therefore, there can be a benefit to students hearing these words pronounced by the teacher and verbalising them themselves (though I think there is an argument to be made for call and response of the specific target words in addition to, or instead of, ‘read with me’ too).

With ‘track with me’ (as with any 'read along with me' kind of activities), this can be helpful if student's don't have 100% fluency with decoding already. If students aren’t fluent decoders yet, track with me ensures that all students know what the words on the page say, rather than being stuck not being able to decode them (though it will lead to some redundancy for the more fluent readers). If, however, all students are 100% fluent with decoding the text on the screen or board, then ‘track with me’ is redundant from a learning point of view.

But the above misses one more important point, that ‘read with me’ and ‘track with me’ are both engagement norms, meaning they’re designed to drive engagement. I see benefit gained from both of these strategies as a routine to tune all students into key content at specific times in the lesson, to ensure that there is nothing in their hands (as they track with their finger) and that they’re not whispering to mates (as they read aloud). Engagement norms are just that, and they’re often highly valuable in their own right for simply that end.

As with everything in education, it’s all about trade-offs. Understanding the why behind the techniques you’re using places you well to decide when to use which instructional strategy!

Announcements and Opportunities

Craig Barton’s ‘Becoming a Better Maths Teacher’ Aussie Tour!

I’m super pumped about Craig’s upcoming trip to Aus for the four sessions we’re running together in late June. This is going to be a fantastic day for any upper primary or secondary maths teachers keen to network with other like minded and passionate maths educators. Don’t miss out on this amazing opportunity - who knows when Craig will be in Aus again. Find out more and book here.

Instructional Coaching: Brisbane on March 3rd, Melbourne on March 24th!

That’s right, it’s time for some more Instructional Coaching Intensives in Aus!

On March 3rd Rory McCaughey and yours truly are coming up to The Gap High School in Brisbane for a one day intensive. Then on March 24th, Steplab founder Josh Goodrich is flying over from the UK to collaborate with Rory and me on a Melbourne intensive at Lowther Hall Anglican Grammar School.

If you’ve been thinking about upping your coaching game for a while, this is a phenomenal opportunity - whether you’re a Steplab school or not. This training is relevant even if you don’t, and never plan to, use the Steplab platform.

• Brisbane booking link

• Melbourne booking link

If you are interested in Steplab, you can also book directly into a personal Steplab demo with me via this booking link. I run them every Wed and Friday arvo.

In 2022, I travelled to England to visit some of the best classrooms in the country.

The trip blew me away.

Until then, I had no idea how good teaching could be. The attentiveness of students, the pace of teaching, the focus, the engagement, and the learning all far surpassed what I thought was possible.

It set the standard that I have since aspired to.

When I returned from that trip, I thought to myself, ‘Every teacher deserves to be able to see inside these classrooms’.

Well, that day has now come—and now you can.

I couldn’t be more delighted to share that Steplab has spent the past year with a film crew in the classrooms of some of the best teachers in England. Today, we’ve released that footage in a 4-part documentary, entirely for free.

I think that this footage is going to change the face of education!

Even better, each docco comes with a set of resources designed to be used by teachers and school leaders to turn these documentaries from a learning experience into a transformative one.

This is your chance to visit the best classrooms in the UK.

Simply visit www.steplab.co/watch

Your portal awaits!

Announcements and Opportunities

Last chance to join the Certificate in Coaching Leadership 2025. This is your opportunity for a year-long professional development opportunity with yours truly with our first Webinar on Feb 6th.

2025 is cohort 2. The course is more refined, bigger, and better than ever!

If you’re keen to hear from the pioneering participants from Cohort 1 about how they’ve found the course, we’ve just uploaded 10 testimonials to the course info page.

I’m actually writing this email to you from London, where I’m on a trip with 15 of the participants from Cohort 1. It’s been fantastic! (see pic below)

If you have any questions about the CCL, just hit reply and ask. I’ll get right back to you.

Hope to meet you on the CCL!

Ollie.

Some of the CCL 2024 crew on our Jan 2025 UK study tour. Yesterday we were at Marine Academy Plymouth, which was runner up for best primary school in the Country in 2024. PHENOMENAL teaching seen by all : )

How often do we beat ourselves up for doing things that we know we shouldn’t, or for not doing things we know we should?

From eating more biscuits from the packet than we’d planned, to getting sucked down a social media hole when we should be working on that lesson plan or report, it’s all too tempting to take the easy road now, even though the easy road often doesn’t align with our long-term goals.

Olympic weightlifter Jerzy Gregorek sums up this tension between short-term pain and long-term gain quite nicely: ‘Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life’.

Whilst this is true in most contexts, there is at least one way we can begin to work towards a tantalising alteration to Gregorek’s adage—a way to create a situation of ‘easy choices, easy life.’ The way we can pursue both short-term gain and long-term gain is simple: environmental design.

Environmental design simply means changing the options readily available to us so that the easy option also aligns with our long-term goals.

Because I’m constantly finding myself not quite living up to my own expectations of myself, I’m also constantly trying to find ways to make it easier for me to do ‘the right thing’. Environmental design isn’t an event; it’s a mindset.

Here are three examples…

I was finding that I would often jump into my email to send a specific message, see some of the messages that were in there, get distracted replying to them, and forget why I was there in the first place. Environmental design? Yes, please! I managed to track down a software called ‘inbox when ready’. It basically means that when you open your inbox, you don’t open your inbox, instead, you just see a blank screen with a button that says ‘Show Inbox’, and until I press it, I don’t see anything in there. This means that I can go into my emails, and send an email, without getting distracted.

Similarly, I have recently been trying to do some PhD work at the very start of each morning. As in, I wake up, open my laptop, and do it right there in bed (the same place I wrote the majority of each of my three books - there’s a fun fact for you!). However, as I have so much on at the moment, I was finding that I would open my laptop to do PhD work, and get pulled into other things that seemed more pressing. Environmental design? Yes, please! At the end of each day, I now close everything on my laptop apart from the three apps related to my PhD - Zotero, Word, and Chrome - and I ensure that the only document open in Word is my current paper, and that Chrome has a single tab open, Google Scholar. I’ve found this really helps me get off to a good start in the mornings.

A more personal challenge I was having is finding myself at the park, the shopping centre, or somewhere else with my family, distracted by some message or ping from my phone. Environmental design? Yes, please! The only thing I really needed on my phone when I’m with my family is the camera, so I bought a second hand handheld camera. Now simply leave my phone at home, or in the car, and can be fully present with my family when we’re on an outing!

Environmental design occurs at the societal level too, when we invite gamblers to place betting limits or impose a social media ban for those under 16,* we say as a society, ‘Let’s try to make the healthy option easier for people.’ As with all environmental design, it is never going to 100% solve the problem, but changing the default is extremely likely to change the outcome for many people.

*This book/website convinced me that social media before 16 is a bad idea.

There are also smaller tweaks we can make. Moving less ‘healthy’ apps from our home screen, or using an app like ‘One Sec’ (scroll to the bottom for iOS and Android options) can also help to create just enough friction to nudge us in the right direction.

Which areas of your life are you finding where willpower isn’t providing a sustainable solution? What tweaks or significant changes could you make to design your environment to support you in living more in line with your long-term goals?

If you have any breakthroughs, please do reply and let me know!

Announcements and Opportunities

The most transformative PD I’ve ever run!

Last night Rory McCaughey and I ran the final webinar for the Foundation Cohort of the Australian Certificate in Coaching Leadership.

Part of the evening was sharing gratitude and appreciations with each other.

When I shared mine, I shared how much I was grateful for the opportunity to run the CCL, which is without a doubt the most transformative PD I’ve ever run (both for participants, and for myself!), and for the opportunity to take what was a phenomenal course built by the Steplab UK team (course design led by Harry Fletcher-Wood), and to improve it even further for the Aussie context, and with the benefit of everything that I’ve learnt about effective teaching and learning over the years.

I also expressed appreciation for the phenomenal generosity of spirit brought by the cohort. I really felt like we were all learning together along the way, and it was like ‘teaching’ the dream class - motivated, engaged, hard working - for the whole year!

Each participant then shared their appreciation with their small groups during breakout rooms. When people popped back into the main room, they shared that quite a few tears were shed in these appreciation sessions. It was a pretty emotional final webinar!

I was genuinely sad to say bye to everyone for the last time. But I know we’ll have lots of opportunities to continue to work together as each one of them continues to build their personal Instructional Coaching skills, as well as the coaching programs in each of their contexts.

I’m so excited for Cohort 2, which begins in early Feb 2025. If you’d like to find out more, all info is here.

Here are all the beautiful people from the founding cohort of the Aussie CCL, both our West and East coast cohorts. Thanks team, it was amazing!

The Explicit Mathematics Program is hiring: We’re looking for a Bookkeeper/Admin/Operations person

Toni, Wendy, Mork, Michael, and I have been absolutely overwhelmed by the interest in the EMP so far, and enough schools have now signed on that we’re in a position where we can (and need to) hire a Bookkeeper/Admin/Operations person!

If you know anyone who might like to contribute changing maths education in Australia (and globally!) through their relevant skills in these administrative areas, we’d love for you to pass on the job opportunity to them. Applications close this Sunday at 9 p.m.

Looking for gifts this Christmas? Why not an Ollie Lovell book (and before postage price change in the new year)?

I’m amazed by the constant stream of people who generously support my work by purchasing copies of my three books: Cognitive Load Theory in Action, Tools for Teachers, and The Classroom Management Handbook directly from my website.

I thought that some people may like a reminder that the books are there, and that you might like one for yourself, or for a friend or colleague this Christmas.

It’s also the case that AusPost has raised postage prices (by almost 40% in total) since I set the postage prices on my site, back in 2020, so I’ll need to raise these in the new year so I don’t continue to make a loss on postage.

So, if you’d like to get in before Christmas*, and before I bring postage prices in line with AusPost’s changes, now is a great time!

*If you order by Dec 10th, I’ll post on the 11th, meaning that you should get all books by Christmas (AusPost cutoff dates for reference)

The following is a guest post by Craig Barton, originally published in the Eedi Newsletter. I’m cross-posting this excellent article by Craig because…

Reason 1: Craig and I are currently doing a podcast series together on lesson structure topics like the one addressed in this blog post. It’s already been exceedingly popular, you can check it out here (from ep. #195 onwards).

Reason 2: CRAIG BARTON IS COMING TO AUSTRALIA!!! That’s right, it’s official. Craig and I met last night and locked in dates for our Aus tour in 2025. Here they are

• Friday June 20th, 2025 - Perth

• Monday June 23rd, 2025 - Melbourne

• Wednesday June 25th, 2025 - Sydney

• Friday June 27th, 2025 - Adelaide

Would your school like to host one of these events? Submit your expression of interest before Friday Nov 15th 2024 here (just an EOI at this point, no commitment).

Block the date out, booking links to come in the next few weeks : )

For those who can’t make it in person to one of these super exciting events, we will be producing a recording of the full day’s activities which people will be able to get their hands on after the event.

We really hope to see you there!

Ollie.

Begin Craig’s article…

Part 1: Once upon a time

I am going to start with a story.

As part of the support I was giving a maths department recently, I was asked to take part in a departmental book scrutiny. It was me, the head of department, the Senior Leadership Team's line-manager for maths (a non-mathematician), and a big stack of Year 9 maths exercise books.

About 10 minutes into the book scrutiny, I could see the member of SLT shaking his head. Next came the sighing and tutting, before finally he announced:

Lucy's (not her real name) exercise books are simply not good enough. There are no learning objectives copied down, hardly any notes or worked examples, and students have simply marked things they got wrong with a cross instead of correcting them in purple pen. Heck, there is barely anything in these books!

Usually, I would have kept quiet, but this had been on my mind for some time. So I asked the member of SLT what Lucy's students’ maths results were like.

"Oh, they are great", came the reply, "But she is going to have to improve her students' books".

Part 2: Three questions

At this point, let me ask you three questions:

1. If you were this member of SLT, would you have had the same reaction?

2. In terms of your own teaching, what sorts of things do you ask your students to copy down into their exercise books?

3. Why do you ask them to do this?

Up until a few years ago, my answer to these three questions would have been:

1. Yep

2. Learning objectives, notes, worked examples, and corrections

3. So they understand and remember them, of course!

Part 3: What I often see in classrooms

These days, I am in the incredibly fortunate position of watching lots of maths lessons every week. Here are three things I often see:

1. Students copy down learning objectives laboriously at the start of the lesson - which are often written in language that makes little sense to them - and then the learning objectives are never referred to again

2. Students copy down notes and then a worked example from the board, then get stuck immediately on the first practice question even though it is very similar to the example they have just written down

3. Students copy down the correct way to do a question they have got wrong (often in a purple or green pen), and then when I ask them to talk me through what they have written, they clearly have no comprehension of the correct solution

Can you relate to any of these? If so, what is going on?

Part 4: The myth

These are all examples of what I call The Myth of Copying things Down.

The myth is two-fold:

1. Copying something down helps it make sense

2. Once you have copied something down, you will remember it in the future

I don't think either of these things is true.

Nothing magical happens in the process of transferring something that makes little or no sense from the board to a book. And if it does not make sense now, it feels like a pretty big gamble to hope it will make sense and stick in the future.

And yet - as I described at the start - many school accountability systems are geared up to encourage this practice. Because what do lesson objectives, notes, worked examples, and corrections look like in books? In short: they look great (especially when coloured pens are involved). More specifically, books filled with lesson objectives, notes, worked examples, and corrections are regarded as proxies for effort, understanding, and retention. But I think they are poor proxies.

Part 5: The negative effects of copying things down on learning

In fact, I am going to go further. I think there is a danger that an insistence upon copying down lesson objectives, notes, worked examples, and corrections is detrimental to learning. Why?

First, there is the time the copying down takes. Lesson objectives are particularly problematic here. When put up on the board alongside the Do Now, many students spend all their time copying them down instead of engaging with a retrieval opportunity. When lesson objectives are put up after the Do Now, they either eat into lesson time or the teacher begins crucial exposition whilst the students are still copying meaning students are unable to pay attention to what the teacher is saying.

Far more serious is the effect on thinking. I have a hypothesis: the reason students often do not understand what they copy down is there is no incentive for them to think. The way worked examples and corrections play out in many classrooms is the teacher explains and the students sit there patiently waiting for the teacher to finish. An unlucky few might be asked a question, but most can zone out until they are asked to pick up their pens and copy whatever is on the board into their books. The fact that students end up with something in their book that looks like thinking is the very reason they can get away without doing any thinking.

Part 6: Four possible solutions

So, what is the solution? I have four suggestions, with the fourth one perhaps a little controversial.

First, it is a bad idea to have students copy things down when you are explaining. Whether it is a lesson objective, notes, a worked example or a correction, you want your students’ eyes and attention on you. Often I see good students attempting to copy things the teacher is saying, and they miss a key visual gesture from the teacher as their eyes are on their books. Or students are wrestling to deal with the split attention caused by processing the words they are hearing with the notes they are reading and writing. I am convinced that the actions of listening and watching should be separated from the act of copying.

Second, we can make copying things down a more active experience. We can hide all but the first line of the worked example or correction we have just gone through and see what the students can remember and figure out themselves. Or we can ask students to add notes and annotations to help their future forgetful selves make sense of what they have written, or write journal entries summarising key concepts - although I have found students need a lot of support to get good at these approaches.

Third, we can change the point of the lesson where we ask students to copy things down. Lesson objectives, notes, worked examples and corrections are likely to make little sense at the point most teachers ask students to write them down. At the start of the lesson, the lesson objectives are often meaningless. Notes and a worked example often only make sense after students have some experience and practice with the idea under their belts. And students only really know if they have understood a correction once they have tried a similar question to the one they got wrong. Shifting the time we ask students to copy down lesson objectives, notes, worked examples and corrections to later in the lesson will allow students to attach more meaning to them. Returning to my second suggestion, shifting the time also gives students the best chance to add notes and annotations that make sense to them now and in the future.

Fourth, we can be bold. I think there is a good case to be made for not using any classroom time to copy down lesson objectives, notes, worked examples, and corrections. Lesson objectives, notes and worked examples may be useful in the lesson so students have something to refer to, but the teacher could simply leave the original versions visible on their board. They may be useful in the future if students use their notes to revise, but I am not convinced that many students actually do this, preferring instead to use revision guides, videos and online platforms. I am even less convinced by corrections. Maybe students will find these useful when revising, but only if they can find the correction, and only if the correction makes sense. And remember, copying each of these things down has a cost, both in the lesson time they take and the way they reduce the need to think. Here is a key question to ask yourself: if your students did not have to copy down lesson objectives, worked examples, and corrections, how else could you use that time?

Part 7: The most important thing

This brings me to the most important thing we could do. Instead of asking students to copy down lesson objectives, notes, worked examples, and corrections, we could instead spend the time we have saved checking students understanding.

Consider these two scenarios:

Scenario 1: The teacher goes through a worked example, the students watch, and then copy it down.

Scenario 2: The teacher announces that they are going to model a worked example, give students an opportunity to ask questions after it, and then immediately check their understanding by asking them to complete a similar worked example on their mini-whiteboards, which they will all hold up so she can see.

Both scenarios will take roughly the same time, but the second is surely more beneficial to learning than the first. The incentives to pay attention are there, as is evidence that students have followed the key points so far - and if not, the teacher can respond immediately. The mini-whiteboards are there to facilitate mass participation instead of hearing from just one or two students.

The same approach can be applied to corrections: I will show you how to do this one, you can ask me any questions, and then I am going to test whether you have been paying attention by getting you to complete a similar problem.

And also to lesson objectives: Okay, it is the end of the lesson, please write down three bullet points on your mini-whiteboards to tell me what this lesson has been about.

Part 8: But, but, but...

You may have objections to this approach. So too might your students and your leadership teams. There is something comforting in an exercise book full of lesson objectives, notes, worked examples and corrections. I am not suggesting you change your practice. I also have no idea if this is true in subjects other than maths. I just want you to consider whether books full of such things really are the proxy for learning we hope they are, and if there is anything better we could do with our classroom time.

What our community says

Since this post went live there have been some great comments both on Substack and Twitter. Below are some of my favourites.

In the Substack comments, Lee made this point:

I would really hope that your fourth suggestion isn't controversial. I would also hope that adults realise how easy it is to copy text without reading it, let alone engaging with it in any meaningful way.

Andrea shared a perspective from New Zealand:

I emigrated to New Zealand in 2020 after 20 years working in the UK education system, Over here we still have to share learning goals and success criteria but the SLT don't do book checks and so long as we can show we have shares goals and criteria with students that is enough for any observation that may be done.. I know some teachers get students to copy them, I don't as I have them on my lesson slides which the students can access from classroom should they wish, and I'd rather students spent their time doing the maths. I think your suggestion of using whiteboards to try a similar question to the worked example is a good one, and i'll be trying that next term.

Marcmaths started a great thread on Twitter where he asked:

Follow up from @mrbartonmaths newsletter yesterday. Worked example - Model and students don't copy. Your Turn - Completed on whiteboard. Does anyone do this? Do we need exemplars in books? Do students need something to refer to during practice?

Jemma Sherwood replied:

I don’t think we need exemplars in books at all. We have revision guides and myriad websites with practice questions (which is the only way to revise maths) so books aren’t needed past the lesson. Their point is to help the student think and to practise writing maths

MrHawesMaths added:

I do a lot of my teaching on OneNote which is then distributed to the students. They then have copies of all of the worked examples gone through and can use them to refresh/revise from later at any time they want to

And then MissB followed up with:

I model using "I do, we do, you do" on whiteboards religiously with all my classes - I do always explicit, we do more challenging, you do with simple numbers to focus on method... never ask pupils to copy things down in their books, keep the 3 examples on the board

Finally, FantasticMaths had an alternative take:

Going to go opposite. I think we should copy down the worked example. But this is about structure. Novice learners benefit from very precisely copying a structure and layout. This first step of copying gives them the overall structure of the question. Without the cognitive load. If they are proficient at using worked examples they can then use this as a model to work from. By having it in their books they then avoid split attention of having it up in the board. Once copied I would have them work on MWBs

Announcements and Opportunities

Well, clearly, the biggest opportunity mentioned in this article already is the opportunity to host Craig and yours truly for Craig’s Aussie tour in 2025 (Expressions of interest here).

But aside from that, there are still spots available for my full day Instructional Coaching Training on Nov 11th in Adelaide, and Nov 13th in Melbourne, if you’re keen to join. It would be great to see you there : )

When I was in the first year of my Masters of Teaching, my lecturer Dr Catherine Scott recommended a book to me. The book was Kieran Egan’s The Educated Mind.

This book fundamentally changed how I think about the world, and about education.

Foreshadowing Cognitive Tools

The central tenet of The Educated Mind is that humans use ‘cognitive tools’ to think with, and that education should be focussed on furnishing students with these cognitive tools.

Cognitive tools? That sounds complicated! I agree, and it took me a really long time to work out what Egan meant by ‘cognitive tools’. So I want you to hold that thought, whilst I share with you why Egan’s book changed my mind. Then we’ll come back to cognitive tools more broadly.

Why my mind was changed

My mind was changed by Egan’s book because, within it, he outlines 5 different kinds of ‘understandings’. Egan argues that humans move through these kinds of understandings as life progresses, if they meet the right learning opportunities to do so. More importantly, each of the kinds of understandings unlocks a new realm of possibility for us.

Here’s a brief overview of these kinds of understandings (as I remember them).

Somatic understanding: Somatic understanding is when your primary way of comprehending the world is through physical interaction with it. Think of a baby putting things in their mouth to try to work out what things are.

Mythic understanding: When young kids start to try to make more cognitive sense of the world, they do this through considering binaries. E.g., good vs. bad. tall vs. short, big vs. small, etc.

Romantic understanding: As young people grow, they begin to move beyond binaries, and are particularly interested in limits of reality (think ‘Guinness World Records’), as well as stories of inspiring individuals (e.g., getting obsessed with Taylor Swift).

Philosophic understanding: People at this stage begin to see the world through ‘-isms’: capitalism, consumerism, communism, nationalism, colonialism. Think passionate uni students here. Or, form the educational context: Traditionalism vs. Progressivism!

Ironic understanding: Ironic understanding is characterised by a mental flexibility that enables an individual to recognise the benefit of different philosophical approaches and identify their varying applicability in different contexts.

Note: These ‘understandings’ aren’t binary categories that statically progress through. Rather, they’re categories that you move flexibly in and out of throughout life, and even from moment to moment. I encourage you to read Egan’s text in more detail for a much fuller and more nuanced understanding than the extremely brief summary above.

The reason why this book changed my mind is that, as I read it, I realised that I was firmly stuck within a philosophic understanding. I was focussed on ‘-isms’, and was living my life trying to identify which ‘-ism’ I wanted to tie myself to, all the while getting confused and frustrated as none of the ‘-isms’ I was trying out seemed to have all the answers.

Knowing that there was a mindset sitting beyond the world of the ‘-isms’, a flexible ‘ironic’ approach, allowed me to move beyond ‘-isms’, and begin to ask more complex and nuanced questions and approach different areas of education, and life, with a more open mind.

This is the basis of what I know strive for in my interviewing style with all ERRR Podcast guests. My ultimate goal is to approach each conversation with an open mind, free of ‘-isms’, and with a hunger to, rather than argue, get to the heart of what works, for whom, under what circumstances, for what purpose, and compared to what (to paraphrase Adrian Simpson).

A reminder of Egan’s work

I was reminded of the impact of Egan’s book this week when listening to an excellent EconTalk episode with Arnold Kling on his Three Languages of Politics.

In a similar framework to Egan’s Kinds of Understanding, Kling offers a framework for understanding how liberals, conservatives, and libertarians view the world. Here’s a brief overview:

• Liberals see the world as a battle between oppressors and the oppressed

• Conservatives see the world as a battle between civilisation and barbarism

• Libertarians see the world as a battle between individual choice and coercion

This framework rang so true to me that I literally stopped walking and just stood there, dumbstruck at how such a simple set of three distinctions could so comprehensively capture the basis of many of the disagreements we see in the world.

I personally realised that I had been unconsciously applying a liberal perspective to most of what I see on both the national, and international stage, and that this was limiting me to a philosophical (liberal-ism) understanding in many arenas, and preventing me from benefitting from the richness of multiple perspectives.

Needless to say, I started digging deeper into different international issues, seeking out a variety of viewpoints, and I feel all the better for it!

A return to Cognitive Tools…

So, what’s all this got to do with Cognitive Tools?

Well, it turns out that both of the examples just shared, Egan’s Kinds of Understanding, and Kling’s Languages of Politics, are both cognitive tools. They’re lenses that we can apply to different problems or scenarios, to help us to gain different perspectives of them.

Cognitive tools exist in almost all domains, here are some examples:

• Mathematics: Exponential growth

• Chemistry: Catalysts

• Biology: Natural Selection

• Physics: Leverage

• Economics: Opportunity cost

• Cognitive Science: Limited working memory

• Systems thinking: Feedback loops

Each of these ideas, once grasped, provides the holder with a new and powerful way to see the world.

Egan’s argument within The Educated Mind was that it is these cognitive tools are what we should centre our education systems around, and that each learning experience should drive towards, or relate to, helping students to understand one of these cognitive tools more deeply.

I must say, I haven’t quite worked out how this is best done in an educational context as yet. It’s really quite a tricky problem. But I always try to keep it as a thought, and a valuable framework, in the back of my mind.

When it comes to deep learning, it’s cognitive tools, all the way down!

Postscript: Cognitive Tools = Mental Models

Another phrase for ‘cognitive tools’ that some readers may be more familiar with is ‘mental models’, Mental models themselves are a bit confusing, because they also sound a bit like ‘schemas’, which are a related but not entirely overlapping concept related to cognition and understanding.

Aside from make this cognitive tool to mental model connection, I thought that some people might be interested in exploring the most comprehensive list of cognitive tools that I’ve found online here. Big props to Shane Parrish for collating this excellent list.

Announcements and Opportunities

Upcoming Instructional Coaching Intensives

Don’t miss out, final opportunities before the end of the year!

• Perth, October 21st

• Sydney, October 28th

• Adelaide, November 11th

• Melbourne, November 13th

The Explicit Mathematics Program now mapped to the NSW and Australian Curriculums! (5% off till Nov 1st)

Due to popular demand (and because it’s a great idea!) we’ve now mapped the Explicit Mathematics program to the NSW and Australian Curriculums, with all other relevant states curriculums coming soon. You can see the curriculum mapping here, and they’ll also be on our programs page soon. Example pictured below.

Also, Use the code earlyish5 at checkout and before November 1st, 2024, for 5% off your entire order if you are keen to give the EMP a go!

Are you the kind of person who leaves things to the last minute?

I love leaving some things to the last minute. Packing* is a great example. I feel that if I have 1 hour to pack the car for a weekend camping trip, then I’ll only take an hour. If I start packing three days before… it’ll take three days. 

I often do this with work too. My wife thinks I’m crazy leaving large tasks to two or three hours before the deadline. For her, that would cause extreme stress. For me, it causes eustress. That is, just the right amount of pressure to get me hyper focussed and power it out. 

But wait, isn’t leaving things to the last minute just procrastination? And isn’t procrastination bad?

Well, it turns out that procrastination isn’t all bad. As with many things, it depends how you do it. 

An excellent paper by Fred Paas and colleagues highlights the difference between two types of procrastination, passive procrastination and active procrastination. 

Passive procrastination results from an indecision to act; it’s the unconscious delay of a task. In contrast, active procrastination is making the deliberate decision to delay the start of a task to create work pressure. 

Here’s an excerpt from the paper:

'The analysis includes 96 articles with 176 coefficients, including a combined average of 55,477 participants related to the correlation between academic performance and procrastination. The analysis uncovered a modest negative correlation between academic performance and procrastination overall. Importantly, the type of procrastination exerted a substantial impact on the strength of this correlation: active procrastination demonstrated a small positive effect size, whereas passive procrastination registered a small negative effect size'

So if you’ve been beating yourself up by leaving things to the last minute, maybe you don’t have to. Maybe you should just own it and tell yourself that you’re actively procrastinating, which is associated with increased performance!

Don’t forget to leave it to the last minute!

*Tasks come in different categories. If I’m packing for a weekend away, it’s low stakes if I forget something, so I do it quickly and I have a list of the 10 or so things that it really matters if I forget. If I’m packing for a week-long trip in the wilderness where I need to be completely self-sustaining, that isn’t a last minute job. User discretion advised. Consider the stakes of your task prior to pursuing active procrastination!

Announcements and Opportunities: Four things from Steplab

It's action stations at Steplab. Here are four ways to be part of the evidence informed Instructional Coaching movement in Australia!

Intensives: We're running four different full-day Instructional Coaching Intensives between now and the end of 2024. They'll be in Perth (Oct 21st), Sydney (Oct 28th), Adelaide (Nov 11th), and Melbourne (Nov 13th) . Come along for an unforgettable crash course in Instructional Coaching with yours truly and Rory McCaughey!

Certificate in Coaching Leadership: Following a hugely successful cohort 1, we've just opened applications for cohort 2 of our year-long CCL program. Watch the video then find out more about this transformative opportunity and apply here. Here’s the vid again, for your convenience:

Teach Like a Champion now on Steplab: You heard it right, Steplab has partnered with Doug Lemov and the Teach Like a Champion team! Now you can find all the Teach Like a Champion content converted into bite-sized action Steps for use in your coaching program in your school. Find out more.

Come work at Steplab! Steplab Aus is growing fast, so we're hiring for an operations and admin team member :) Apply here (applications close midnight Monday Sep 23rd), or send any questions to ollie@steplab.co

I hope to see you at one of our events soon.

In his book, Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less, author Greg McKeown highlights a paradox that people often encounter as they progress through their careers. Here’s how it goes:

• Phase 1. We have clarity of purpose and we do great work that aligns with out strengths

• Phase 2: We have success in our work and this leads to increased options and opportunities.

• Phase 3: When we have increased options and opportunities—aka: demands on our time and energy—it leads to diffused efforts, spreading us thinner and thinner

• Phase 4: We become distracted from what would otherwise be our highest level of contribution. The effect of our initial impact has been to undermine the very clarity that led to our impact in the first place.

When I read this message at the start of 2024, it really resonated for me. But I didn’t act on it at the start of the year. Unfortunately, this inaction hasn’t helped me.

Considering Phase 1… if there’s anything that I’m good at, it would have to be this: Clarify, Codify, Communicate.

I go down deep and complex rabbit holes of educational research and practice and I try to sift the wheat from the chaff, clarifying what it is that really makes the difference for students. I then try to consolidate these findings into frameworks that are both understandable and memorable. That is, I codify them. And finally, I communicate this information to others, through writing, podcasts, and more.

This is what I have done with Cognitive Load Theory, distilling it into the ABCDE of CLT. It’s what I did in Tools for Teachers, summarising tens of discussions with world leaders into things such as the P.I.C model of explicit instruction and the Three M’s of leadership. It’s what I do at Steplab through continually refining both our resources that outline quality teaching, and our frameworks for quality coaching. And it’s what I’ve been doing recently at the Explicit Mathematics Program, working with the team to refine the effective teaching of mathematics down to its essence and capture it in an easy to use format for both teachers and students. It’s also what I try to do each month through the Education Research Reading Room Podcast, deeply reading edu texts then quizzing the authors both for my own understanding, and for the benefit of listeners.

This process of clarification, codification, and communication is what I feel I’m good at. It’s also what I find fundamentally rewarding, I simply love reading and thinking deeply, and trying to boil down complex ideas to their fundamental mechanisms in interesting and accessible ways. For me, this is a truly enriching experience.

But as time has gone on, I have found myself pushed from phase 1, to 2, to 3, and now to phase 4. I have found myself contributing to many, many projects, to the point that in 2024, I have barely had time to do any clarification and codification, instead simply communicating to different audiences and in many different forums. An example of this is that I have been trying to write a coaching book all year, but have only managed about 10 pages on it! This is in stark contrast to 2020, 2021, and 2022, in which I managed to put together a book each year.

Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion that, for 2025, I need to be really conscious about where I spend my time, and what I do and don’t make space for. I need to focus on the projects that I truly believe are going to have impact for the long term. The three projects that I feel I must allocate time to in 2025, and that will have commpounding positive educational benefits for years to come, are Steplab, the Explicit Mathematics Program (EMP), and the Education Research Reading Room Podcast.

This will also mean saying ‘no’ to a number of things. For example, whilst there are many ways that schools and individuals will still be able to engage with me both asynchronously and virtually, I don’t plan on taking on any additional in person speaking or presentation opportunities in 2025. This has been a really hard decision for me, as I recognise that appearing at conferences and events is a valuable way to contribute to the profession. But ultimately, to continue to do my best work, I need to begin to protect the time needed to do my best work.

Whilst not taking on any additional engagements, I will still be doing a lot of talks and presentations. I will be running a large number of intensives with Steplab, as well as the Certificate in Coaching Leadership. I’ll also be doing a mini Aus tour with Craig Barton in June or July on Maths teaching (details to come), as well as probably running some PD around the EMP.

I wanted to publicly share this commitment to help me to stick to it. This has been a super hard decision for me, but I think it’s ultimately one that will allow me to have an even greater impact in the long term, and to play to my strengths in doing so.

As we enter the final few months of the year, it’s a good time for all of us to pause and think: ‘What am I really good at? What is it that really fulfils me? How can I make time for more of this in the year to come?’

The decision to cut, slash, and restrict is hard, but it’s the only way we can make space for what truly matters. Good luck!

Announcements and Opportunities: Four things from Steplab

It's action stations at Steplab. Here are four ways to be part of the evidence informed Instructional Coaching movement in Australia!

Intensives: We're running four different full-day Instructional Coaching Intensives between now and the end of 2024. They'll be in Perth (Oct 21st), Sydney (Oct 28th), Adelaide (Nov 11th), and Melbourne (Nov 13th) . Come along for an unforgettable crash course in Instructional Coaching with yours truly and Rory McCaughey!

Certificate in Coaching Leadership: Following a hugely successful cohort 1, we've just opened applications for cohort 2 of our year-long CCL program. Watch the video then find out more about this transformative opportunity and apply here. Here’s the vid again, for your convenience:

Teach Like a Champion now on Steplab: You heard it right, Steplab has partnered with Doug Lemov and the Teach Like a Champion team! Now you can find all the Teach Like a Champion Content converted into bite-sized action Steps for use in your coaching program, in your school. Find out more.

Come work at Steplab! Steplab Aus is growing fast, so we're hiring for an operations and admin team member :) Apply here, or send any questions to ollie@steplab.co

I hope to see you at one of our events soon.

Neither novices nor experts are overwhelmed by choice.

A true novice doesn’t understand enough to be overwhelmed by choice because they aren’t aware of the multitude of options out there. This was me when I started out in teaching. I only knew a very small number of instructional strategies, I could probably list those strategies on one hand, so I dutifully did my best to adhere to them. It was a pleasantly simple time.

The intermediate teacher, on the other hand, is prone to becoming completely overwhelmed. As they learn more and more about effective instruction, the list of things they feel they should be doing in the classroom expands at a rapid rate. As their knowledge grows, and their skills struggle to keep up, they enter a phase of more conscious incompetence and can overwhelmed by sense that there’s just too much to improve, how will they ever get there?

As the intermediate teacher moves towards greater expertise, two key things happen. Firstly, much of what’s important becomes chunked and automated for them, so they can easily perform many of the key tasks of teaching on autopilot. Secondly, of the thousands of theories and techniques that they have encountered throughout their careers, they begin to both see patterns and see which things are superfluous. The patterns help them to consolidate and categorise multiple, seemingly disparate ideas into a smaller number of groups. Knowledge of he superfluity of many strategies helps them to comfortably ignore the things that do not matter.

For the expert, the result of this automation and categorisation is the easing of choice overwhelm. What is left in its place is the knowledge that there is a small number of key things that truly matter, a sense that they are competent in many of them, and a renewed resolve to get better at the rest.

Neither novices nor experts feel overwhelmed by choice, so the intermediates are left to eat the lemon.

The Lemon of Choice: Small at both ends, big in the middle!

The silver lining? If you’re feeling overwhelmed by choice, you’ve moved beyond and you’re likely far past the novice stage! The more you teach, the more you automate. The more you read and learn, the more patterns you’ll see, and the more you’ll know what you can ignore.

And there you have it, the lemon of choice. Where are you at in the journey?

The Explicit Mathematics Program is Live!!! (Announcements and Opportunities)

The day is finally here! I’m so excited to be able to announce the official opening of orders for the Explicit Mathematics Program (EMP). Dr. Wendy Taylor, Toni Hatten-Roberts, David Morkunas, Michael Roberts, and yours truly have been working on this project for the past 2 years and finally we’re able to launch, ready for the 2025 school year!

The Explicit Mathematics Program spans Foundation to Year 2 and provides teachers and schools with everything needed to run a high quality, rigorous, and evidence informed mathematics program. From lessons to assessments, daily reviews to student workbooks, we’ve got you covered ; )

If you haven’t seen it yet, you might like to check out our webinar for Think Forward Educators, in which we outline six ingredients to high quality primary mathematics instruction, and connect these six ideas to the EMP.

Please do check out the EMP website, as well as our newly created Frequently Asked Questions page, and share the EMP with anyone you know who works in a primary school who might be interested!

Ollie.