Evidence is the greatest weapon we can use to change the world
We all want education in Africa to improve, but it will do so on the basis of great teaching, not wishful thinking
I decided to move to the African continent and work on education technology innovations because I believed that African education was broken, and that the urgency and nature of the problem meant technology could play an important part in the solution.
I have since become concerned about a further barrier to progress that technology appears to aggravate not ameliorate: misconceptions of what works in education and a preference for fad and fashion over evidence based approaches.
There is nothing inherent about technology that means this has to be the case. It is just a tool, a method of delivery for education content or approaches. At its best, technology acts as a delivery mechanism that increases the availability and quality, or lowers the cost, of effective education.
Sometimes however technology replaces an analogue delivery mechanism that was cheaper or more effective. Examples of this would be the policy, sadly common on the African continent as well as elsewhere, of giving all children laptops — even though it seems not to boost reading or Maths scores, and evidence shows they are worse tools for taking notes and if online lead to lower levels of student learning.
Even worse, the adoption of more technology in schools, and advocacy for it, tends to go hand in hand with certain ideas for rethinking education that either are not supported by evidence or entirely contradicted by it. This is far from unique to Africa (I see it at conferences around the world) but it matters more here: on a continent where education is so often a one off shot at a route out of poverty, you cannot afford to ignore what works.
The desire to completely rethink African education is understandable. In South Africa, the continent’s most industrialised economy, 78% of ten year olds cannot read for meaning. In Nigeria, it’s biggest, 10 million children are out of school. Across the continent, tens of millions more attend school but learn little or nothing. Generations of adults are unemployed with no hope of a second chance to gain the functional skills needed to get a steady job. It requires an adamantine heart and mind to not firmly believe and desperately wish that things can and should be done differently.
I do not for one second doubt the intentions of those advancing the arguments I’m criticising — they are acting in good faith and trying to make a terrible situation better. But as the Founder of ResearchEd (an international teacher led education research movement and conference) Tom Bennett put it: Good intentions are worthless in education, because everybody has them. We all want education in Africa to improve, but it will do so on the basis of great teaching, not wishful thinking.
It is time to have a proper debate about the false ideas prominent in African education and the lack of application of the scientific method to debates around them. Below this blog I have therefore listed ten of the most common false ideas (myths), with links to contradictory evidence and arguments.
At Injini we already aim to select companies whose innovations are supported by evidence and do not select those with ideas that are contradicted by it. We have publicly detailed the evidence behind our first cohort, and encourage people to challenge and help them improve their evidence base and impact measurement.
But we also need to up our game. During our second cohort, beginning in July, we will hold a workshop specifically highlighting commonly held but incorrect ideas about education — and we will publish the presentation online. We will emphasise the research led education texts on our reading list. Each cohort member will have to produce an impact measurement plan to receive their direct funding, and we will expose them to more evidence based practice, including several attending the first ever ResearchEd Conference in Africa, in Pretoria in September.
It is because we care that we must vigorously critique ideas on the basis of evidence not intentions. The alternative is to go along with fads and fashions, on the basis of how good they sound or make us feel, not how well they make students learn. Which do we want ?
I know what I want — the children and adults I’ve met inside and outside of classrooms from Cape Town to Marrakesh and Accra to Nairobi get the benefits of a great education. This is not just better employment and earning prospects (though these are important). I want them taught to read using systematic synthetic phonics in order to appreciate authors from Fyodor Dostoevsky or Thomas Hardy to Can Themba or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I want them to study a knowledge rich science curriculum so that they can marvel at their continent’s natural beauty while understanding the geology and biology that caused it. I wish for them to sit in an orderly classroom and memorise the names of stars and planets and learn the laws of physics, in order that they stare at Africa’s incomparably clear night skies with not just man’s ‘infinite capacity for wonder’ but with a knowledge that unveils the mysteries of our universe.
So think twice before nodding along the next time you hear the clamour to urgently spend precious money and teaching time on getting a given technology and new approach into more classrooms. Unless these interventions are supported by evidence, and grounded in what actually works in education, the net result might actually — tragically — be to make things worse.
10 common myths in African education discussions
- Pupils have different learning styles, such as being auditory, visual etc learners
This is false. It has been shown here, here, and here that there is no scientific basis for pupils having different learning styles. Pupils probably mostly learn the same way. Some education researchers have gone as far to criticise the whole concept of differentiated learning, eg Greg Ashman here.
2. Direct instruction (teacher led learning or ‘chalk and talk’) is ineffective or outdated
A recent McKinsey research paper (based on PISA data) showed that the main problem in Europe’s schools was pupils got too little direct instruction. Education Academic Paul Kirschner has explained how Direct Instruction is misunderstood and falsely maligned here.
The latest cognitive science shows that Direct Instruction is a superior approach to inquiry learning — for example here . It’s also effective in the Early Years, as well as with older children.
3. Memorisation is a bad way to learn something
Memorising foundational concepts (yes, including rote learning) is actually extremely useful in education as it allows students to use them on more complex tasks without increasing cognitive load. Cognitive psychologist Dr Helen Abadzi explained why in this article. It is, for example, much harder to undertake algebraic equations in Maths if you’ve not memorised your time tables to the point of automation. Cognitive Load Theory has been described by leading education academic Dylan William as the most important idea in education, yet it gets limited airtime in African education debates I’ve been involved in.
4. You can teach skills like creativity, empathy, or critical thinking
There is no evidence that you can actually teach skills like creativity or critical thinking (psychologist Daniel Willingham explains why here ). There is a good discussion of evidence around this by education researcher David Didau here. Carl Hendrick, Head of Research at one of England’s leading schools, Wellington College, lists the fact “there is no such thing as developing a general skill” as one of the 5 things he wished he knew when he began teaching.
Skills are also probably not transferable from one domain to another. Doing coding or chess will make you better at coding or chess (hopefully), but it won’t make you better at Maths, literacy or science. I’m generally supportive of children learning to code (though NOT in lieu of time on traditional academic subjects), but there is a good counter argument here. The one thing that might make you more creative or think more critically in a given domain is developing knowledge about that domain, and then practicing using it.
We all probably have some inherent ability to think critically or creatively (owing to its usefulness leading to evolution via natural selection) but some do so more than others. Research suggests this is linked to higher intelligence (IQ).
Ken Robinson’s arguments that schools “kill creativity” are not only an insult to hard working teachers, they are also not supported by any evidence. They are debunked by Tom Bennett here
5. Most jobs of the future (that we are training students for) have not been created yet
This nonsense statistic propagated widely was debunked in this BBC radio programme by economist Tim Harford, The jobs of the future will mainly be those we know today — Doctor, accountant, lawyer, corporate manager, teacher, service industry, hairdresser etc — and we should be preparing students for those.
6. Regular testing, especially high stakes, is ineffective or outdated
It is a common argument in education that testing is unnecessarily burdensome on pupils. Finland is commonly cited as a successful education system without frequent or high stakes testing. This is not true (Finland has both regular and high stakes tests) and Tim Oates debunks this and many other myths about Finland’s education system here.
Dylan William explains in this brief video why assessment is so important here.
Greg Ashman wrote a good blog on the importance of testing here
For the importance of providing regular teacher to pupil feedback (including assessment), England’s Education Endowment Foundation has collated the evidence here.
7. Learning knowledge is less important in the 21st century (aka ‘you can just google it’)
The idea you can just google instead of learning knowledge is wrong, and best debunked by former teacher and now Head of Research for a leading EdTech company Daisy Christodoulou here and in her excellent book (which debunks several other myths).
Given the globalised and unpredictable nature of the future world, students will probably need more and broader knowledge, in order to think critically and creatively in more domains. As Daisy points out, while some new knowledge areas will spring up (think coding languages, a discovery in physics, or new ideas in economics or politics) the knowledge that has shown itself to be useful for generations — through radical changes in our daily lives — is probably the best bet to learn for the future.
The most well known arguments for knowledge rich curricula, and their emancipatory affect in particular the poorest students, are those by ED Hirsch eg in this book and covered in this blog
Furthermore, teaching a knowledge rich curriculum benefits poor students more than rich ones, since it gives them access to a cultural heritage they may not get anyway. While I worked for the UK government we argued the case for this with regard to literature here. Michael Gove, then Secretary of State for Education, did so for broader topics in longer form here.
This is explicitly NOT an argument for teaching western curricula in African schools or universities. There is nothing inconsistent about teaching a knowledge rich curricula rooted in African literature, history or science. I believe schools like Future Nation and the African Leadership Academy are doing a good job of creating African knowledge rich curricula and of debunking the patronising nonsense that the core principles of science or Mathematics are “Western constructs” (as if Africans did not understand them when building great cities and civilisations hundreds of years before colonialism).
8. Students make good decisions about what content to learn or approaches to use
The evidence is in fact that they very often don’t. Research by the National University of Singapore has shown that often students prefer methods or content that are actually less effective or important. A lot of this comes down to cognitive load — students often choose things which are too easy, therefore facing insufficient challenge to ensure learning. Cognitive load theory shows us that learning is like Goldilocks’ porridge — too easy, and nothing is learnt, but too hard, and students become overloaded (eg here). A well trained research aware teacher and/or research driven content are the best guides to the optimum cognitive load, not students themselves.
9. Tough behaviour guidelines, silence, and sitting in rows, harm learning (or students)
Some of the best writing on the moral, as well as the scientific or educational, case for tough behaviour policies (often called ‘tough love’) has come from the Head of ResearchEd, Tom Bennett for example here — his review of behaviour policy for the UK government is here
There is actually evidence that sitting children in rows is the most effective way to organise a class for behaviour and for many learning tasks (eg here)
‘No excuses’ Charter Schools in the US, which champion tough behaviour policies alongside high academic standards, have been shown to increase student grades by more than other schools and even other charter schools.
10. Things other than functional literacy and numeracy should be the main focus/priority
No, they should not. Without literacy and numeracy, you cannot hope to aspire to further education, a steady job, or any of the higher order skills people consider to be more important. Most African education systems are facing a literacy and numeracy crisis, yet none are devoting resources and focus towards what should be a national state of emergency. Meanwhile, even richer countries are focusing on functional literacy and numeracy and implementing evidence backed policies (such as the emphasis on systematic synthetic phonics to teach reading in England, which led to a large rise in its PIRLS scores). Recent evidence has suggested that phonics based literacy interventions are effective in South Africa (but phonics based teaching of reading is absent). Nic Spaull of the University of Stellenbosch (who gives great research based presentations at many conferences) has a good evidence driven blog that often focuses on literacy and numeracy problems in South Africa.
Jamie Martin is Founder and CEO of Injini (www.injini.africa) , the first education technology dedicated incubator programme on the African continent. He is a former Special Adviser to the Secretary of State for Education in the UK.
ResearchEd Pretoria is on 15 September. Sign up to attend here