Intellectual milquetoast and avoidance
Chris Duncan is a teacher with twenty years' experience leading independent schools. Chris sounds like a real teacher who has large amounts of experience and knowledge, someone who can use critical thinking to sort out the wheat from the chuff. Yet, when it comes to intellectual endeavours and rubbing shoulders with the patched elbows of academia, Chris cannot wait to put his knobbly knees together and obsequiously listen to those academics around him.
It is clear that Chris has set his sights on Cognitive Load Theory, piggy-backing on the ideas of other "real" academics to stake his claim. Chris has drunken from the Kool-Aid, and it has tasted so sweet. So sweet that it’s rotting his teeth and clouding his judgment. Now, he is trying to pass a mixture of others’ ideas and sycophantic feelings onto the rest of the teaching caucus. We will not swallow this unsubstantiated, romanticised spin. I will wait and see if his intellectually milquetoast approach to academia will serve our sectors’ students.
If Chris was a diligent, considered and conscientious researcher, he would realise that the claims he has made have all been addressed! If you look beyond the inaccuracies in Yip’s take on Cognitive Load Theory, you might realise that your own critical thinking skills need sharpening.
Chris has let us down—he has let the independent sector down. Claims such as “CLT offers teachers just one teaching strategy (direct instruction) and denies the value of the broad repertoire of strategies all good teachers draw upon” demonstrates Chris’s impetuous and pusillanimous approach to considering different types of instruction. His claim is both abjectly false and absurd, fueled by naivety. Cognitive Load Theory offers multiple teaching strategies, supported by the highest quality evidence that science has to offer. The burden of proof for cause and effect is extremely high, which not only validates the effectiveness of these strategies but also underscores the significance of each effect generated by Cognitive Load Theory. If Cognitive Load Theory was just Direct Instruction, it wouldn’t exist—it would just be called Direct Instruction, right? Obviously, Chris has shown his deep misunderstanding of Cognitive Load Theory.
Chris’s next claim is such an egregious misunderstanding of Cognitive Load Theory’s position that it borders on irresponsible reporting..Chris claims “Basically a ‘bottleneck’ theory, CLT appropriates the brain as a passive receptor of information: when in fact the brain is predictive, constantly anticipating ‘what comes next’ – something on which life itself depends. In this context CLT is passed its use-by date.” This claim smacks of the outdated, out of touch and straw man king, Guy Claxton. Cognitive Load Theory suggests that working memory is limited, which is not in contention - at all. Actually, there is convergence on this notion from across multiple disciplines, so the straw man that reeks of Claxton’s Old Spice cologne of a “bottleneck” theory does not reflect Cognitive Load Theory accurately. There is a limit to working memory capacity, and cognitive resources deplete over time. I doubt anyone would dispute that well-established fact. Additionally, CLT recognises that the brain can “predict,” but it can only predict what is known from before.
Chris’s final cloak-and-dagger remarks stem from outdated, romanticised educational ideas that reek of unctuousness and kayfabe, straight from the Rousseau and Dewey playbook." He bloviates with this comment “Troubling also is CLT’s image of the learner, robbed of curiosity, agency and spirit who mechanically acquires knowledge via the plough horses of direct instruction.” This quote makes it clear that Chris equates Cognitive Load Theory with Direct Instruction to the point of using the terms interchangeably. At the beginning of his proselytising, he was kicking cognitive load theory into the long grass, but now he is talking about Direct Instruction. I am very, very confused. If Chris looked at the research clearly, he may notice that for learner’s to be creative, to be curious, to be spirited in learning, they need knowledge, and one way of acquiring knowledge is by adhering to the multiple strategies that cognitive load theory has to offer. This way, students can learn more quickly, more independently, and with more curiosity.
What we can take from Chris’ position is that he has looked at the research and formed a view that discouraging Cognitive Load Theory is clearly in the best interests of AIS Schools—so much so that he is willing to go out on a limb to communicate this. However, he is backing the wrong horse. His fallacious and banal claims are unedifying and woefully unconsidered. His intellectual milquetoast combined with impetuous research is leading teachers astray. Clearly, Chris has an exorbitant view of his responsibility with AHISA. It should not be within the purview of the Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Heads of Independent Schools of Australia to push particular pedagogical approaches. His email to the AIS principals was an egregious mistake for a person who should represent a balanced, considered, and complete perspective.
Chris would do well to check the veracity of his claims before grandstanding to the very smart and cogitate Heads of Independent Schools.