Science of Learning in Action

Announcer (00:01): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:05): Happy Thought Leader Thursday. For Episode 1009, we’re spotlighting Ross McGill as we talk about the science of learning and the myths we need to jettison so we can be better teachers.

Announcer (00:20): This is the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast with your host, Vicki Davis.

Vicki Davis (00:25): Our guest today is one of the most influential educators in Britain. In 2015, the Sunday Times named Ross McGill one of the 500 most influential people in Britain. And he is, to this day, the only classroom teacher ever to make that list. He’s a former deputy head teacher who spent his career in some of the toughest secondary schools in London. He created the five-minute lesson plan, which the UK Department for Education named a best practice.

His current book is The Teacher Toolkit Guide to the Science of Learning. Ross, thanks for coming back on the show.

Ross McGill (01:01): It’s my pleasure, Vicki. It’s lovely to chat with you again.

Vicki Davis (01:04): Okay, so the science of learning. Now, in our pre-show conversation, you said you’ve been looking at MRI scans. This sounds so intriguing.

How does learning actually happen, and can most teachers explain it?

Ross McGill (01:14): A few years ago, I published a book called Guide to Memory, and that was me getting to grips with the simple question, how does learning happen? What I’ve learned, myself included, is many teachers can’t answer that question. I’ve started as we’ve become a little bit more research literate as a profession, easier access to academic research through social media, started to understand working memory, cognitive load theory, looking at brain anatomy, all the myths about the brain.

And that’s what I’ve documented in my journey to understand that in my book, Guide to Memory, answering that single question, how does learning happen? Playing around with that on my travels to schools all around the country, taking it one step further. What if I looked at MRI scans? So you get two types. There’s an MRI scan, which looks at the brain snapshot, so a picture of your topology.

And then you have an fMRI scan. So the f is a functional. So it looks at how your blood works. Oxygen levels change inside your brain. But if I give you a fidget spinner or a piece of chewing gum or I wag my finger at you in the classroom, my question was how does that influence your attention span? So in a world of AI and we want students to be attentive and not everything I say you’ll remember or not everything that your listeners hear me say will stick in their head.

As a teacher trying to support retention and develop a love of learning. I wanted to delve deeper into some more brain evidence to understand are there things that we do in the classroom that hinder learning or things that we do, or might not consider that support the learning process. So that’s what I’ve done for the last 18 months.

Vicki Davis (02:47): Could you explain cognitive load to us and how does that relate to what you’ve just shared?

What is cognitive load theory in plain language for teachers?

Ross McGill (02:53): Cognitive load, it’s a theory, a piece of research by John Sweller, that’s been around for a good 40 plus years, I think 1988, I think it was 88 when it was first published you can see I mean the English profession here only recently started to talk about it maybe 10 years ago, most teachers have heard of it, can maybe define it but then what does it look like in practice and things like that when you look at Sweller’s original research it tackles kind of maths and science and talks about chess so it doesn’t talk about drama or art or early year students or further education students, so every research is contextual Sweller himself says it’s not a theory for everything and, some people like to say that it is.

I guess it’s a good piece of research for teachers just to understand that sometimes we suffer from. Our working memory being overloaded, Ross is speaking too quickly, not giving me time to process, or what we can do to support the learning process by simply pausing. I give you time to process what I’ve said, it adds a degree of importance, or I might show some visuals on the screen as we do the podcast to kind of help you process some more information.

It’s an interesting theory, breaks it down into intrinsic load, extrinsic load, germane load, and it talks about different types and what teachers can potentially do to, support the learning process I guess for teachers when a student says miss what did you say that that’s just a simple example of, they’ve suffered cognitive load because something’s not been processed it’s the knowledge has not been attached to something they already know or I’ve not been very clear.

Or there’s lots of external distractions getting in the way of me processing what you’re what you’re saying or what you’re doing in that moment.

Vicki Davis (04:36): So when you look at the learning science with the book that you have, what do you think some of the biggest mistakes that we as teachers inadvertently make, not intentionally, you know, when I ask this question, it’s always like, it’s never to put guilt on us because everybody’s putting guilt. But like, we do need to talk about, okay, these are common things that people say, hey, maybe a teacher should do. And really, they’re not backed up with a learning cycle.

Is teaching to learning styles a myth?

Ross McGill (05:01): The easiest one to default is learning styles. A lot of people still believe that they are a thing, audio, visual, kinesthetic, but there’s conclusive evidence that it doesn’t match your preferred learning style. That’s a myth. So a lot of people, you know, England and in the US still believe that’s a thing. I think also academically, there’s lots of unpublished or not peer reviewed papers that kind of promote. Those things.

And I remember as a younger teacher having to document which students in my class had a preferred learning style and plan my lessons accordingly.

What is dual coding, and how is it different from learning styles?

Ross McGill (05:34): There’s a theory called dual coding where you can process information through text and images. It’s not learning styles, it’s how we might process some information in a classroom. There’s certain recommendations you can use. It’s following academic research. It’s a more effective way to teach. It’s easy as a theory to understand it’s also easy to implement and it’s kind of robust in its evidence base as teachers we should be trying to be an evidence-based profession, not not kind of us follow lots of these brain myths that we still see existing across the world so in an AI world where these things might be perpetuated further, I guess it’s even more important to be a little neuro literate so,

What neuromyths do teachers still believe?

Ross McGill (06:16): One of the toughest chapters writing in my book was about neuromyths you know left and right brain boys versus girls you know all that kind of stuff and just trying to tackle some kind of common misconceptions that are sometimes spread by the media sometimes spread on the internet people, claiming things that sound excited or sexy but not really backed by any evidence and I think in a world where as as teachers have to buy all those misconceptions and do the right thing in the classroom like you said being battered by the media and anyone else I think it’s important that we try our best to follow the evidence rather than our beliefs.

Vicki Davis (06:52): I’m the mom of three and one of mine is dyslexic. I kept coming back to dual encoding works. Like that’s how he learned to read. He listened to it. He read the book. We read it out loud, but it helped him. So there’s always been that tension of saying, okay, that like we all learn with multiple methods. There is no quote learning style, but yet dual encoding works.

Because while you have learning styles over here, let’s don’t throw out what works, which is dual encoding, because my heart hurts for the dyslexics who might not get that opportunity because somebody thinks it’s learning styles and it’s really not. And did you find it difficult to unwind those in your neuromyths chapter?

Why is it so hard to write about neuromyths?

Ross McGill (07:40): It was very tough. It was probably the most frightening page in the entire book, I’m fearful of publishing, because it depends on your evidence base, your sources, what it says today versus what it says in five years time or 10 years time when my book is outdated. So you’re always going to get conflicting research. You’re always influenced by your bias, what you want to see or hear versus the truth.

Where I’ve said it’s a hung jury and I’m not so sure that evidence is mixed, I’ve tried to say what I can. I’ve based it on the research that I’ve read and cited that throughout the whole book. I think there’s a good 150 academic sources. It’s not a PhD thesis. It’s a book. The danger of writing a book is I can’t delete it, whereas a blog, I can edit it at least.

Vicki Davis (08:24): Was there another neuromyth that really makes you nervous, but you just felt like you had to include it?

Does highlighting and rereading actually help students study?

Ross McGill (08:30): Something like study skills, you know, highlighting and rereading, for example. A lot of students, when they revise, they think they’re being busy. So they’re reading the book and highlighting it and hoping it sticks. So when you look at the available evidence on a mixture of study skills, often highlighting or re-reading material, although they can work, they’re the least impactful. So a student comes to your class tomorrow and says, hey, miss, I have been really busy. Look, I’ve read all my notes. I’ve highlighted everything.

Essentially, it’s misdirected effort, whereas things like retrieval practice, spaced, interleaved, elaboration, which is a great metacognitive hack, or self-explanation, tell me in your own words, these are good evidence-based, high-impactful techniques that students can use. A lot of schools don’t really think about how to introduce them explicitly inside their curriculum.

How can a school teach study skills across the whole year?

Ross McGill (09:23): In Guide to Memory, I published a few years ago, I was trying to introduce maybe a curriculum plan of study skills that could be taught alongside the material that you’re teaching in schools. So while I teach you geography, we’re learning about volcanoes. I’ll give you a green, yellow, and blue highlighter. Green’s for terminology. Yellow might be for misconceptions and what have you and it’s a technique I’ll teach you from the first month of the school year and we’ll repeat it all year until you are really secure in that method.

In month two I introduce another study skill so now let’s summarize your. Yellow highlights your green into eight bullet points three or four so each technique is explicitly introduced while we teach the curriculum so, the logic is by the end of the school year students are familiar with a range of techniques they know which ones to select for different problems and they can apply that in their kind of lifelong, you know approach to learning so to speak in the future uh and that and that’s as equipping students with those metacognitive skills to be able to select the technique for any given problem to you know to use in the future so, I think that’s something that all schools, should consider they don’t always and it’s not as difficult as it sounds

What is Think, Pair, Share, Show Me?

Ross McGill (10:37): One tip for listeners is you know we all familiar with think-pair-share methodology. And when we look at retrieval practice, a good recommendation is to pull it out of your student’s head. And the best way to do that is to write it down, how to spell the word Mercury, the first planet in the solar system, or say it out aloud. How do you say this difficult word?

And if I do the think-pair-share, when I say what’s the first planet in the solar system, think about it, pair with your friend. I don’t know if you’ve thought about it, Vicki. I don’t know if you’ve talked to your friend about it because the classroom is a busy place. So I flip the model slightly or tweak it and call it think pair share show me, think about the question, pair with a friend now write it on your mini whiteboard or if I don’t have a mini whiteboard thumbs up thumbs down show me that you’ve thought about the question so I’m pulling it out of your head

How can a teacher check every student’s answer without grading anything?

Ross McGill (11:25): Now of course I might do this with one person which is okay but I’ll have 30 students in the class, so to improve my effectiveness manage my workload efficiency see. I want all 30 students to reply with the word Mercury on the mini whiteboards. I do a quick visual check and I move on with the lesson. And at the corner of my eye, I spot Vicki wrote Mars, not Mercury.

So five minutes later, I say the question again and everyone shows Mercury and I can see I’ve got 100% in-class participation and that retrieval practice. So I’m not marking the work. It’s a quick learning check. And that assessment methodology allows me to move on with a lesson quickly. So think, pair, share, show me is a much more effective way of pulling it out of your head and keeping that retrieval low stakes.

Vicki Davis (12:10): We’ve been talking with Ross McGill. He had his newest book, The Teacher Toolkit Guide to the Science of Learning. I do recommend the five-minute lesson plan. I think it’s more relevant than ever in an AI world. Ross, you’re a fantastic resource. Thank you for coming on the show again. And I look forward to seeing and what else you do in the future to help us teachers.

Ross McGill (12:31): Thank you, Vicki.

Announcer (12:33): Thanks for tuning in to the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast.