“Effective teaching is neither mysterious nor magical”, wrote Steven Farr in his book Teaching as Leadership; adding his voice to a rousing chorus advocating the systematic identification and application of teaching methods leading to improved test results.

The work of Farr, Doug Lemov, Robert J Marzano, John Hattie, Geoff Petty and others demolished the “teaching as mystery” mantra, by which attempts to identify causal relationships in education were rejected as reductionist and self-defeating. Rightly, too, because the mystic view can act as a shield for incompetence.

The consensus is that teachers should engage in evidence-based practice, using what we know from research, experience, data and the views of stakeholders.

This resonates, but we should avoid inadvertently admitting assumptions that items in an equation necessarily add up to effective teaching.

This diminishes the professionalism of practitioners, and ignores the fact that the outcomes of education, while not a complete mystery, do nevertheless issue out of a “black box”, with complex causal connections.

Competence without comprehension

The philosopher Daniel Dennett claims that most of what we and other organisms do to stay alive and cope with the world and one another, is not understood, by us or by them. It amounts, says Thomas Nagel in reviewing Professor Dennett’s new book, to “competence without comprehension”.

Professor Dennett was talking about basic functions like respiration and reproduction; but the competence/comprehension dyad begs the question: can teachers possess one without the other?

It is perfectly possible to imagine a teacher who is fully apprised of current thinking on what works, but who is a disaster in the classroom. The converse is more interesting: can a teacher get results (however defined) in a conceptual vacuum?

Evidence-based practice improves outcomes, but requires reflection on the part of the teacher. What exactly does it mean to be “reflective”?

If this involves trying something out in the classroom, evaluating its success, and altering practice accordingly, then this risks remaining reactive and reductive, because it focuses on relatively simple cause-effect associations at the operational level.

Challenging assumptions

In a new edition of his book, Becoming a Critically Reflective Teacher, Stephen Brookfield argues the need to identify and scrutinise not just the methods, but the assumptions that shape our practice.

The “what works” approach focuses on what Dr Brookfield calls “causal” assumptions. We should supplement this by a willingness to interrogate the deep-rooted assumptions that lie behind them.

Tellingly, the tools he prescribes are the same as those underlying evidence-based practice - students’ views, colleagues’ perspectives, personal experiences, and research.

Dr Brookfield’s logic offers an explanation as to why debates about, for example, the impact of ICT or gender differences in learning, will not be resolved by straightforward appeal to evidence or experience.

This is not because education is accidental, but because the lessons of evidence and experience are mediated through our deep-seated, possibly unacknowledged assumptions, and it is these that need to be brought to the surface.

Dr Kevin Stannard is the director of innovation and learning at the Girls’ Day School Trust. He tweets as @KevinStannard1

For more columns by Kevin, visit his back catalogue

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