> the head of languages telling me that a good teacher can teach any subject.

Tell me this wasn't foreign languages? :face_palm:

Okay, I was totally with you until this,

> but I think we've got everything we can out of the subject-agnostic approach to improvement, and we need to start engaging with the detail of what's being taught to further improve

I think if you walk into the bottom 80% of classrooms you would not see, interleaving, spaced repetition, recall-over-reread, or topic shuffling to avoid interference.

There's a load of understanding we've gained in pedagogy and human learning that has not affected how we structure formal education yet.

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cjs_ac 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

> I think if you walk into the bottom 80% of classrooms you would not see, interleaving, spaced repetition, recall-over-reread, or topic shuffling to avoid interference.

Where have you taught? I taught in Australia and the United Kingdom, where many of these things were mandated by the promulgation of spiral curricula by the relevant government departments. I'm aware in the US that, for example, algebra is taught as one or two block courses, but in the school systems I've taught in, algebra is taught as a few 'topics' of about a month in duration each, sprinkled throughout the whole four or five years in which mathematics is mandatory in secondary school. For Year 7 to 10 in Australia, there would be one or two topics for each of physics, chemistry, biology and earth sciences, covered across each year, building up from year to year. None of this was a choice by individual teachers or even schools; it was an artefact of the way the curricula are structured.

	▲	all2 4 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I'd be curious to see how this is laid out in plan view. Are there any resources you can recommend on this topic?
	▲	SJMG 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Right, that specific claim should be understood with US high schools and higher education in mind. There the massed approach rules the day. Since these things I mentioned are well demonstrated to be effective and you don't think there's anything left to be had with a subject-agnostic approach, I infer you have a high opinion of how well these countries have implemented these "tactics". Is that right?

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apsurd 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

You may not be wrong that tactics aren't sufficiently widespread, but that's the thing they're just tactics.

Spaced-repetition is a good example. It's so objectively better than other forms of memorization, but it's just one tactic for learning.

In this sense "teaching well requires a specific set of tools and tactics" is exactly how "a good teacher can teach anything" would make sense.

The problem is it doesn't make sense.

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SJMG 4 days ago | parent [-]

Yeah there seems to be some confusion. I agreed with the comment I replied to in the sense that teaching well requires specific domain knowledge and some specific pedagogy. Where I disagree is the assertion that the "tactics", to use your term, have been perfused through the system and there's nothing left to gain here.

He specifically says, "I think we've got everything we can out of the subject-agnostic approach to improvement"

So we all agree that subjects would benefit from specific interventions. The difference is he's going further and saying this is the only way forward; there are no general gains left to be had.

From the strength of the claim alone, this is hard to believe. Where do you stand on this?

	▲	apsurd 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		Agree, it's unnecessarily limiting to say the well is entirely dried up re: improving status quo tools. Charitable pov though, i'd say it's about leverage. Learning outcomes globally suffer steep steep cliffs and it's inevitably due to socioeconomic factors. It's hard to argue that more chromebooks, spaced repetition, and catering to learning styles are the missing pieces johnny needs to get out of the hood. as a person in tech i believed for a long time that if only we had better learning materials, people could orient and better self motivate around subjects. (learning needs to be hard. it's biology. brain takes notice and retains new and challenging stimuli. so "making learning easier" is a misnomer. the insight becomes how do we get people to self-motivate into hard things?) I still think that's true, to your point, but all these takes are one of many many problems, and they aren't equal in leverage and i think that's where OP is coming from. there's outsized leverage in domain specific pedagogy.