Explicit Instruction.

The teacher, quickly and quietly, walks the halls of school with gravitas, passing loquacious school students who are also moving to their next class. As the teacher patiently waits for all their students to arrive to class, those who have arrived momentarily are standing in two lines listening for instruction to enter and to start learning.  Upon entry to the classroom, the teacher greets their students with a firm tone and a smile, communicating in an exchange of looks and unspoken words that beyond this point is precious learning time. The punctilious students crave learning during this time and will not accept anything less than learning for the full 50 minutes of class. Through explicit teaching and a coherent school system, which has developed these sedulous skills, it can only be concluded that explicit teaching, consistent implementation of rules and care driven relationships enable these students to continuously perform at their peak, despite their personal circumstances.

Some say that explicit teaching is boring, monotonous, rigid, scripted, or even oppressive! Let children explore they say, they can create their own meaning from learning. Let them figure it out, they will learn more. Fatuous and vexing claims, completely unsubstantiated by the research. Enough is enough. This has gone too far. The overlords of constructivism have been deceitful, cherry-picking evidence to suit their personal ideologies and experiences. First, they claim that discovery learning is better for latent learning. Debunked. Then they claim it is better for transfer learning. Debunked. Then they claim it is better for emotional learning. Debunked. When will this hydra of ineffective teaching die. The evidence is clear. Explicit teaching is better. It doesn’t matter how much praise constructivist shills lavish on top of each other in their echo chambers of false righteousness. The evidence is clear. Explicit teaching is more effective.

As explicit teaching marches forward, the constructivist shills lack confidence in their own position, now retreating to the principles of explicit instruction like a parasite planning to take control of its host body. However, explicit instruction activists have recognised this excrescence growing on its body, shining a light on the absurdity of its claims. It’s time to look at the data, the evidence and the mirror, and accept that explicit instruction is the better way to take care of our students. The explicit instruction army is rallying and has unleashed a zombie of its own.

Project Follow Through has been gagged, chained and tossed into the depths of the educational abyss. Project Follow Through has been stood on, pushed aside and kicked to the ground, yet it is time to elevate this study to aggressively fight the constructivist hydra. Alongside Project Follow Through, Cognitive Load Theory wields its almighty power like Excalibur, restoring teaching to its rightful path. It is time to elevate Randomised Control Trials in education, which have ignominiously been disregarded as “too clinical” and not “good enough” for education, with its opponents crying it does not hold ecological validity, despite the RCT being conducted in schools and with school students! What an outrageous and uniformed stance to take. The facts are the facts. And they belong to everyone. Only once we teach those in our care the facts, then they can wonder to the edge of knowledge and peer over the edge into the unknown.