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Educational Trends Exposed

Posted on: March 2, 2022

What are trends, and what is the Jupiter Metaphor?

 

In Australia, the US and the UK, generations of children will, in future, recall being asked to adopt a growth mindset, practise mindfulness, or increase their belonging. In Australia, the UK and the US, enormous sums of money and thousands of teacher hours have been spent on implementing educational initiatives connected to mindfulness, belonging, synthetic phonics and other trends.

Teachers’ professional learning is often dominated by programs, approaches, or interventions that ask them to apply emerging ideas or practices that are pitched to benefit students’ academic performance or behaviour management. Newspapers, websites, blogs and social media platforms publish daily stories that make claims schools should be transformed by a range of  interventions such as mindfulness, or getting ‘naughty kids’ to behave by better behaviour management.

Trends are everywhere in our education systems. Over the last 20 years, they have appeared in more significant numbers – but deeper discussion about trends and which looks across these phenomena is rare.

Our new book Educational Trends Exposed addresses this critical gap and is designed for Teachers, Educational Leaders, and Parents - specific sections of which can be found below.

One overarching insight is that educational trends are highly complex social phenomena consisting of ideas about learning and associated classroom practices. Trends are also diverse in origin and application in schools, colleges and universities. Mindfulness is based on sacred Buddhist religious practices; neurodiversity emerged from radical ideas in evolutionary biology about human difference; synthetic phonics is an approach to reading promoted by governments and politically conservative think-tanks. As a solid starting point, trends can be defined, as:

“An eclectic group of practices, concepts, programs, cultural movements or educational initiatives has widespread uptake (popularisation) across educational systems and settings. Trends can also be recognised with an identifiable term or terms which signify their main idea or benefit; neurodiversity, mindfulness, inclusion, or behaviour management. Trends have either shaped public policy or have been popularised by public policy, often in conjunction with coverage in the media or marketing promotion by a commercial organisation. As social phenomena, trends can be understood through looking at their lifespan, where they can be categorised as emerging, dominant or in decline”. 

Eighteen influential trends are explained and reviewed, including:

Balanced Literacy, Behaviour Management, Belonging; Brain-based learning & neuroscience; Brain Gym, Class Dojo (scholastic tech), Direct Instruction, Evidence-Based Practice, Growth Mindset; Inclusion, Mindfulness, Synthetic Phonics, School-Based Mental Health, Response to Intervention, and Teacher Quality.

Along the way, it exposes some surprising and disturbing truths about what is driving education right now. Many trends are driven by broader educational policy. They manifest in schools via commercial, not-for-profit and non-commercial educational initiatives or programs: teachers and parents often encounter trends through these classroom-based programs at the grass-root level, but they are just the tip of the iceberg.

Why education systems in Australia, England the US are such a fertile place for education trends is an important question discussed in the introduction to Educational Trends Exposed. To help the reader understand and explain the attraction and popularity of trends we use The Jupiter Metaphor to convey the state of knowledge in education:

Unlike Earth and other inner rocky worlds, gas giants, like Jupiter, do not have solid surfaces. Instead they are chaotic, shifting gaseous forms with low density insubstantial fluffy clouds in the upper atmosphere. Diving down, ever thicker layers of gases, exist at unimaginable pressure and near the core of the planet, the gravitational pressure turns gases, according to theory at least, into a liquid-like state (Armstrong & Armstrong, 2021).

Accepted ‘truths’ in education often lack solid intellectual substance and intellectual confidence, and the knowledge base can be likened to the cloud tops of the upper atmosphere of Jupiter. Deep, deep down toward the core there is some greater certainty and substance, originating in the disciplines of learning science, cognitive psychology and behavioural science, but these substantial densities are buried deep and the upper atmosphere is far from this.

Often what is applied in practice is diluted in the real classrooms due to the shifting cloud top. This distance means that the coherence of initiatives based on solid research is fatally watered down or distorted by the time it reaches the shifting cloud tops of schools. Often, trends arise from a solid nugget of robust research but appear in schools as a distorted sound-bite echo of the original insight from research. (p. 3).

 

Photo of Jupiter

Photo by Planet Volumes on Unsplash

 

Why We Wrote this Book and How it is Structured

 

 


The power of educational trends is an untold truth in education right now - this was the most significant motivator for writing Educational Trends Exposed. We had a personal stake in this endeavour: the authors are teachers and parents – David Armstrong also educates future generations of teachers (Initial Teacher Education) and advises governments on inclusive education. As both parents and teachers, our concern is to expose the narrative around trends, examine them critically and with transparency, and help you do the same.

What motivated the authors to write this book conveys why we think this is an important book and why we humbly suggest you value and enjoy the many ‘lightbulb’ moments in understanding the trends, their origins, and the research base.

Specifically, Educational Trends Exposed:

  • Provides an informative, practical guide to trends . When planning this book, we quickly realised that not a single research-based book had been published over the last 20 years considering, synthetic phonics, mindfulness, brain-based learning (educational neuroscience) and response-to-intervention as trends. This glaring gap exists despite enormous financial investment and teacher energy devoted to these phenomena. Educational Trends will be a uniquely valuable guide for teachers, parents, educational leaders, and all those who want to know more about the 18 prominent educational trends reviewed: a critical companion and guide we hope you refer to often.

 

  • Offers readers critical framework (‘quality control’) for evaluating trends . The book,  Educational Trends Exposed, uses a hierarchy of evidence to help discriminate between populist fads versus research-informed trends that genuinely aid teaching and learning. We refer to the research base for each trend and summarise our view using a traffic light system. We highlight which trends need further research.

 

  • Communicates the growing impact of trends on children, young people, teachers and upon the direction of public education . One critical idea in our book is that trends cluster together in groups when seen at a grand scale. These aggregates reveal more extensive processes operating across the education system and explain what might be driving them. Growing exclusion rates of students with disabilities in Australia, England, and the US are a possible outcome of several trends that frame education settings performatively. These trends tend to exclude students with a disadvantage because such students are perceived as compromising the efficient operation of classrooms. At its core, Educational Trends Exposed is a moral book calling for a compassionate change in public education and suggesting how best to respond to trends in leveraging a progressive, more equitable education system. We argue that adopting a critical attitude to educational trends is essential to this goal and provide a toolkit for change.

 

  • Uncovers the vested interests and other groups involved in promoting educational trends . Public discussion of trends rarely discusses who is promoting an educational practice or program and their commercial or political agenda. This discussion is vital in the interest of transparency and accountability, certainly when schools or universities invest significant sums of money in programs or initiatives connected with trends. Parents and students also have a right to know whether practices and programs promoted in classrooms are worthy of their support and time investment. Educational Trends Exposed examines some of the vested interests connected with synthetic phonics, growth mindset, and scholastic technology. Most important, we provide readers with a new Critical Trend Analysis (CTA), empowering them to consider possible vested interests in trends they encounter that we do not discuss in the book or which appear in the future.

 

  • Advance knowledges about education tends . At heart, Educational Trends Exposed is a profoundly intellectual book that highlights the problem-solution approach to public policy has driven the adoption of trends pitched as easy solutions to complex problems, making them attractive solutions to policymakers, entrepreneurs, and educational leaders alike. The ‘problem-solution’ approach that drives schools to adopt many trends has been criticised as open to manipulation for economic or political gain, mainly when there is no independent scrutiny of intended benefits. Questions not always raised include: are these real problems to solve?

Critical thinkers will ask, “who benefits from the supposed solution?” For instance, the rise of synthetic phonics was built around a simplistic, manufactured ‘reading crisis’ and narrative about teacher failure. Commercial interests and political soundbites worked together to over-promote a single narrow approach to address the complex issue of teaching kids to read.

The problem-solution approach used to promote synthetic phonics was an influential model for developing schools as a commercial market, attracting significant teacher time and budget resources. Large data sets on reading from the US and the OECD are reviewed in Educational Trends Exposed. Reading performance data calls into question the impact of this enormous investment and claims made. Meanwhile, this problem-solution formula is on repeat in an accelerating cycle and rapidly promotes trends across education systems.

 

The Costs and Benefits of Educational Trends: Red, Green and Amber

Trends have a considerable economic impact on educational budgets and significant implications for what teachers spend their valuable time on. On economic terms alone, we suggest that leadership teams should consider trend adoption carefully. The introduction to Educational Trends Exposed considers this vital topic in detail, introducing cost-benefit analysis methodology to advance the reader’s understanding of this aspect of trend adoption.

In Educational Trends Exposed we explore the dark side of trends but also, positively, develop a constructive proactive approach to them that helps protect the education community against the dangers of adopting trends built on fashion or ideology. The gravity of this situation is conveyed by considering that trends currently applied in pre-school are likely to impact children’s wellbeing and academic development for years to come, with flow-on effects into their learning at university and in the workplace as adults.

 

Insights for Teachers
 

 

 

 

Did you hear the grim joke about the teacher who became super stressed after pressure to introduce a mindfulness initiative in their classroom?

Educational trends, including mindfulness, growth mindset, and behaviour management, travel through tens of thousands of classrooms, and influential ideas such as neurodiversity and evidence-based practice promise radical change in educational practice and processes.

Teachers often implement initiatives based on classroom trends but are often not included in ‘quality control’ decisions about which ones are worthwhile and which might be expensive distractions or even ‘snake oil’ based on ideology or fashion. This disempowerment is particularly unfortunate because teacher dedication is a vital ingredient in achieving the benefits promised by many trends.

Educational Trends Exposed places power back in the hands of teaching professionals, providing expert guidance and critical tools to help teachers be discerning consumers. The book bolsters teachers’ resistance to the political agendas and commercial self-interests that drive much of the messaging. Eighteen influential trends are explained and reviewed in this book, including:

Balanced Literacy, Behaviour Management, Belonging; Brain-based learning & neuroscience; Brain Gym, Class Dojo (scholastic tech), Direct Instruction, Evidence-Based Practice, Growth Mindset; Inclusion, Mindfulness, Synthetic Phonics, School-Based Mental Health, Response to Intervention, and Teacher Quality.

A traffic light system is used in the book to categorise trends based on its research evidence and on whether the trend has strong support in research ( green ), mixed support in research ( amber ) or weak/no current support ( red ).

Along the way, this ground-breaking book exposes some surprising and disturbing truths about what is driving education right now. Educational Trends Exposed is designed to empower you as a teacher and help your voice count in shaping the future of education.

 

Insights for Educational Leaders

 

 


As an educational leader, your decisions are often vital in selecting and adopting educational trends. As policymakers, school improvement leads, school/district administrators, principals, deans, centre managers or heads, what you decide makes a difference in whether student receive the expected benefits of educational programs, initiatives or classroom practices. Furthermore, possession of the latest knowledge about emerging trends is often a prized element of your professional role and in meeting key performance indicators.

Educational Trends Exposed supports your informed decision-making, providing structure and expert guidance. Eighteen influential trends are explained and reviewed in this book, including:

Balanced Literacy, Behaviour Management, Belonging; Brain-based learning & neuroscience; Brain Gym, Class Dojo (scholastic tech), Direct Instruction, Evidence-Based Practice, Growth Mindset; Inclusion, Mindfulness, Synthetic Phonics, School-Based Mental Health, Response to Intervention, and Teacher Quality.

The Critical Trends Analysis Tool provided by Educational Trends Exposed offers a simple but effective start to informed considerations, and the book’s introduction accessibly discusses key economic considerations when allocating budgets to emerging or existing trends. We think our book will be indispensable to educational leaders.

A lack of total state funding for applied educational research makes public education systems in Australia, England, and the US underpins the poor state of knowledge in the discipline of education. A take-home point of Educational Trends Exposed is the long-overdue need for comprehensive investment in applied educational research to support public education.

Without this investment in building knowledge, the conditions described by the Jupiter Metaphor will persist. Education systems will be forever vulnerable to trends based on dubious ideas about learning or exploiting classrooms as a commercial opportunity. This situation is a scandal.

 

Insights for Parents

 

 


Educational Trends Exposed is designed to empower parents in a rapidly shifting educational landscape. To illustrate, here is a situation that occurs too often in homes across Australia, the UK and US:

Your child arrives home from school or college and may describe a day far different from your experience. They may mention:

  • Using the latest app to manage their ‘deep learning’, complete with a software subscription that you need to purchase
  • Choreographed dancing which claims to improve attention and academic grades
  • Learning about some new self-help concepts designed to improve student motivation

You wonder what happened today in school or college and whether it helps your child learn and develop. What happens at school can often be a mystery as a parent, discouraging involvement.

One problem for parents is the pace at which they appear and disappear can make it harder for parents to understand what is happening in their child’s education. Indeed, even teachers can scramble to keep up with buzz words and educational initiatives which sweep through schools at a frenetic pace: a situation described as ‘initiative overload’.

This book offers some answers and provides critical tools to help you better understand trends sweeping education across schools in the English-speaking world and beyond. By strengthening understanding of educational trends, this book reduces the gap in understanding between parents and teachers, which in turn promotes engagement.

Furthermore, suppose you want to make your voice heard about the future direction of public education. In that case, this book is a great starting point. Educational Trends Exposed will empower you as a parent and help everyone have a voice in the collective future of public education.

 

Educational Trends Exposed is available now on routledge.com.