Are we in danger of making learning too simple?

When it comes to students in the classroom, we can simplify an explanation of a concept into PPT where complex phrases become glossy icons. Books can become short booklets. Subjects become revision guides.

Tricky topics can get distilled into knowledge organisers without students actually engaging in the hard thinking necessary to produce such a distillation.

There are obvious reasons for distilling complexity into something more palatable for students, however, there are attendant dangers too.

The concept of 'deliberate difficulty' has always struck me as integral to what good teachers do. A teacher may have students grapple with word problem in maths without quickly posing the most effective solution. Students may sometimes have to linger with the ambiguity of a poem in English before the symbolism is explained to them in plain terms. In doing so, they think harder which can elicit more learning.

For example, I am a big advocate of vocabulary instruction to unlock the complexity of a topic as an entry point that reduces the initial difficulty. But teaching vocabulary and eliciting curiosity and interest is valuable, but teaching key words should not be a substitute for actually reading or going on to grapple with difficult concepts.

We know that students can have their attention robbed by the easy scrolling on screens. The experience of TikTok videos or short, simple messaging that makes up our students' world is quick and designed to be easy. But most learning is the opposite. It is usually difficult and it elicits struggle and hard thinking (or it should).

A common misconception I detect when I talk about 'cognitive load theory' is that it is fundamentally a message to make learning easier. The more subtle reality it conveys is that we need to make learning difficult, but not too difficult. It is about the tricky management of difficulty that defines successful teaching and learning.

Tesler's law (also known as the 'Law of conservation of complexity') describes how for any given task, there is a certain amount of complexity that cannot be removed or eliminated. Instead, we simply shift the complexity somewhere else. This law is instruction for learning complex knowledge and skills.

Take the example of the aforementioned knowledge organiser as a learning tool. For many students, it distils just enough difficulty so that they can learn and succeed. But it also shifts the complexity students need to know just out of sight.

You don't need to read too much extended texts about photosynthesis or 'A Christmas Carol' if you can simplify it to a knowledge organiser. You just need to remember the diagram, the word list, or the quotes on the knowledge organiser. It is expedient and gets students through the lesson, but it commonly doesn't stick.

Instead of focusing on simplification, teaching and learning should instead be intent on scaffolding learning so that students can productively experience more complexity and difficulty but with success.

Are we oversimplifying teacher learning too?

You wouldn't expect a fighter pilot's cockpit to only feature an on-off switch and little else. Their job and their equipment is simply far too complex.

Similarly, handing a teacher a booklet or a poster is going to be an inadequate tool to capture the necessary complexity of teaching and learning.

"... handing a teacher a booklet or a poster is going to be an inadequate tool to capture the necessary complexity of teaching and learning."

It is understandable that busy teachers need manageable access points for their professional learning, but there are equivalent dangers to students' learning in classrooms if we oversimplify adult learning.

Teachers are commonly expected to engage with research evidence. Indeed, my day job is to lead the creation of resources that do just that. It makes sense to produce accessible posters that summarise evidence. However, if we don't walk teachers into the complexity of engaging with the actual research evidence in some depth and complexity, actual professional knowledge building is unlikely to happen (never mind teaching habits shifting).

Teachers need to think hard too. Given the sheer complexity and diversity of the classroom environment, successful teaching realistically requires a diverse and complex array of possible solutions.

Yes - experts can do the simple things well - but teacher professional learning must aspire to properly explore complexity and difficulty. A glossy poster will not be enough.

We must avoid the oversimplification trap as must as seek to make learning manageable and not too difficult. It may be a little more time-consuming. It may be a little harder to sustain. But it will be necessary to achieve successful teaching and student learning.

  • Daisy Christodoulou has written an article about the dangers of using AI and more so that we become a 'stupidogenic society', where offload our most important thinking to technology. READ MORE HERE.