Are We Buying The Science of Learning?
When Nature Play SA CEO Jason Tyndall praised it as ‘the best book I’ve ever read,’ I was intrigued. With such high acclaim, I couldn’t resist diving into its pages.
What was the book? Interpreting Our Heritage by Freeman Tilden. First published in 1957, it explores how to craft meaningful natural, historical, and cultural interpretations that engage, educate, and inspire visitors, fostering a deeper connection to the past and an appreciation of the world.
Now that my classroom has become national parks, beaches, and green spaces, I connected with the provocation that ‘interpretation isn’t information, it’s revelation’. Good interpretation places the visitor and their needs and interests before facts and information in the hope of eliciting a meaningful connection.
When discussing the importance of storytelling as a tool of interpretation, Tillman also suggested, “Sooner or later the interpreter must face the question of whether he is dealing with a science or an art.”
So too, should the educator, I thought.
At a time when some politicians, consultants and ideologues are hard-selling the science of reading, Cognitive Load Theory, retrieval practice, and other sciences of learning, educators might do well to pause and consider whether they believe teaching is a science or an art because as Tillman points out, like interpretation, it can’t be both.
To reduce teaching to a science is to say it’s merely complicated. That, like launching a satellite into space, following a precise set of instructions will result in successful and repeatable outcomes. To believe teaching is an art is to embrace complexity and reject the idea that there is a single script, program, or set of instructions for educating children.
Another way to think about this is to ask whether we should teach the curriculum to children or teach children with the curriculum. While this may seem like semantics, the difference is significant. If it’s the former, the curriculum and content are paramount, and the learners and their needs are secondary. If it’s the latter, children and their jagged profile of knowledge, skills, competencies, and capabilities guide how the curriculum is accessed and shared.
I am all for evidence-based practice, but anyone who suggests there is one best way to teach or learn is at best, misguided, and at worst, dangerous. Surely this isn’t the way to equity and excellence?
The best teachers I know expertly navigate across a continuum of explicit and inquiry teaching every day. They honour student agency, support collaboration and interdependence, and foster creativity and curiosity as part of the complex web that is day-to-day teaching and learning.
As Guy Claxton says, “…the craft of teaching mostly involves a judicious and dynamic mixture of both explanation and exploration, depending on a whole variety of factors (prior knowledge, subject, purpose, age, aptitude, mood, etc.) to which good teachers are sensitive and responsive”.
Can teaching be successfully approached as a science? Absolutely. Should it be? That’s for you to decide, but I think not.
To close, I will draw from Freeman Tilden’s thoughts on interpretation to say that if education is an art, it can draw from all sciences. But if it’s a science, it has no time for artistry or imagination. So what do you think, science or art? Because, as Tillman points out, like interpretation, it can’t be both.
For further reading, consider:
- The Sciences of Learning and the Practice of Teaching by Guy Claxton
- What Works May Hurt by Yong Zhao
- Success At Any Cost by Chris McNutt
