Research School Network: Effective Explanations Back in the Classroom – reflections on our webinar

Last week, we hosted our fifth and final webinar from our ​‘Back in the Classroom’ series. The webinar focussed on Effective Explanations, a topic brought into sharp focus during lockdown. Teachers across the country found themselves delivering remote learning to their students and without the usual classroom cues; we all had to think more carefully about the ways in which we introduced and explained new topics in order for them to stick. At Sandringham Research School, this provided us with a prompt to reconsider the evidence around what effective explanations look like so that we were ready to return to the classroom with these principles in mind.

In this webinar, we referenced the general evidence base that had been useful to use before focusing on four key areas: linking topics to what we already know, including models, analogies, representations and examples, addressing common misconceptions, and being mindful of pace. This blog will just give you a brief flavour of the themes and ideas discussed at the event. A video of the webinar is available below.

Linking

Learning depends on the connections that learners make between new ideas and what they already know. Prior knowledge is structured in schemas so when explaining a new idea, teachers will activate that prior knowledge and connect new ideas to it so that new knowledge is accommodated into and extend existing schemas. In linking new ideas to old ones, teachers may compare, contrast and categorise to help students’ understanding. This section of the webinar provided examples of how to do this and covered curriculum sequencing, making connections old and new topics explicit and how to elaborate on them.

Models

We then moved onto the role of models, analogies, representations and examples. Explanations that include models, analogies, representations and examples help explain and convey hard ideas. Teachers commonly use analogies in their explanations to compare a new idea to one that is already known by students. Models and representations help learners visualise abstract concepts and help make them concrete. These devices are effective only if teachers elaborate on them, and direct student attention to the crucial similarities and differences between the analogies, models and representations and what is to be learned. Examples are helpful to use in any explanation and equally helpful are non-examples and borderline cases: the exceptions and hard cases that define the boundaries of a rule or definition. Even with the best explanation, some students still may not get it and so teachers need to have more than one way of explaining or presenting the idea, and multiple examples so that they can keep going until the student does get it. A particular reference was made to this blog from Sandringham science teacher Laura Maberly who has been reflecting on her use of models in teaching electricity.

Misconceptions

The webinar then moved onto misconceptions. Explanations address common misconceptions and sticking points that students should be aware of. For experienced teachers, student misconceptions can be predictable and inevitable. In their explanations, teachers will anticipate and address these misconceptions directly and explicitly, both by exposing and challenging the misconception and by presenting the correct conception clearly and directly. Strategies such as creating a cognitive conflict, class discussions and revisiting misconceptions were recommended. In addition, teachers’ sharing their knowledge of common misconceptions with subject colleagues was discussed.

Pace

Lastly, the webinar’s focus turned to pace. Understanding new ideas can be impeded if students are confronted with too much information at once. In presenting material, teachers should pay attention to the issue of cognitive load by limiting the number and complexity of new elements, breaking complex ideas or procedures into smaller steps, helping students to assimilate concepts into and extend existing schemas and minimising extraneous, irrelevant or distracting input, from either content or environment. Strategies including chunking, being careful to avoid split attention, cutting out unnecessary information and repeating key messages were recommended.

The evidence

The Research School team found the following research summaries and books particularly useful:

• Evidence Based Education’s Great Teaching Toolkit Evidence Review
• Deans for Impact Science of Learning
• EEF’s Metacognition Guidance Report
• EEF’s Improving Secondary Science Guidance Report
• Tom Sherrington’s Rosenshine’s Principles in Action
• Oliver Lowell’s Sweller’s Cognitive Load Theory in Action
• Andy Tharby’s book on explanations

Click on the image below to view the webinar