This episode of the Tips for Teachers podcast is proudly supported by Arc Maths
You can download an mp3 of the podcast here.
Bradley Busch’s tips:
- Consider lengthening wait times to maximise retrieval (03:16)
- To develop resilience you need both high challenge and high support (13:22)
- Challenge students on what they like versus what’s best for them (21:56)
- Ban mobile phones (29:05)
- Ask yourself “what evidence would change your mind?” (39:11)
Links and resources
- On Twitter, Bradley is: @BradleyKBusch
- Bradley’s company, Inner Drive, is here
- Inner Drive’s excellent free posters are here
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Watch the videos of Bradley’s tips
Podcast transcript
Craig Barton 0:00
Hello, my name is Craig Barton and welcome to the tips for teachers podcast. The show that helps you supercharge your teaching one idea at a time. This episode I have the pleasure of speaking to psychologist and former teacher Bradley bush and I tell you all this is a great one. Now just before we get going a quick word of quotes from our lovely sponsors because this episode of the tips for teachers podcast is once again I’m so grateful for proudly supported by our motto is a fantastic app designed to help your students remember all the math content at key stages three and four is built around research into how memory works. Specifically York’s work on the power of retrieval practice on the Spacing Effect, ensuring students don’t just practice what they’ve just studied, and are regularly exposed to content within two days. You want to find out more just search our Matt mentioned my name. And remember, that’s the seat not. Now, two things to remind you about before we get cracking with today’s episode. Firstly, you can view all the videos of Bradley’s tips, plus the tips of all my other podcast guests. Plus over 20 exclusive video tips from me on the typical teacher website. The short videos are great to share in a department meeting or a training session. And secondly, you can sign up if you haven’t already to the tips of the teachers newsletter to receive a tip in your inbox every Monday morning to try out with your classes. Please tell your colleagues about this newsletter. excitable the tips for teachers. Oh, by the way, this is a bit of a cheat request. But if you find this podcast useful, please, please could you take a moment just to review it on your podcast player. It only takes a few seconds. Like so. Okay, back to the show. Let’s get learning with today’s guest the wonderful Bradley Bosch spoiler alert here are Bradley’s five tips. Tip number one, consider lengthening wait times to maximise retrieval. Number two, to develop resilience you need both high challenge and high support. Tip three challenge students on what they like versus what’s best for them. That’s a good one. Step four, BAM mobile phones. And Tip Five, ask yourself what evidence would change your mind? If you look at the episode description on your podcast player or visit the episode page on tips for teachers dot code at UK you’ll see I’ve timestamp teacher the tip so you can jump straight to anyone you want to listen to first or real listen. Enjoy the show.
Well, it gives me great pleasure to welcome Bradley bush to the tips for teachers podcast. Hello,
Bradley Busch 2:45
Bradley. How are you? I’m doing good. Thanks. How you keeping?
Craig Barton 2:48
Very, very good. Thank you. Right Bradley for the benefit of listeners. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself ideally in a sentence? Yeah.
Bradley Busch 2:55
So I am a psychologist at inner drive. I mainly focus on helping the staff CPD. So using psych research help improve teaching and learning. And we also do students stuff to help them revise and cope with pressure and stress better.
Craig Barton 3:13
Fantastic, lovely summary. Right? Well, let’s dive straight in. What’s the first tip you’ve got for us today?
Bradley Busch 3:20
So my first tip, which is now I’m getting really interested at the moment about is around being open to increasing wait times. After you ask a question. I look back on my early practice. I think that’s probably why I find it a bit interesting is I hated awkward silences. Whenever I was observed, I always thought good practice looked really dynamic back and forth. And partly, I think like a lot, I guess notation got involved to try and help students. So therefore rush to help them when they were struggling when there was a long silence. And yet the research that I’ve been reading around wait times, I think, is really fascinating. And I think the reason this is kind of my first tip is to consider increasing the wait times is I feel like as a community, we’re getting really good at understanding the benefits of retrieval practice. And these are to convince people about what retrieval practice is or why it helps. We’re now getting into the nuance of how do we maximise it. And I think wait times is going to be very closely linked to that because we don’t want to short circuit that retrieval practice process.
Craig Barton 4:30
Well, this is fascinating. I love this and exactly the same as you I was terrible in my early teaching career at that wait time just diving in straightaway, I was scared of silence as well. What have you been reading on this? Bradley? Well, what’s the research on this? I’ve certainly not come across this myself.
Bradley Busch 4:46
Well, there’s actually quite a bit of research but quite weirdly, and I don’t know if it’s going to change. It seems to be fairly old research, which I don’t necessarily think there’s a problem, but there haven’t been an abundance of recent studies. So one basically I spent about Three days just trying to find a paper that could give me the answer of what is the perfect wait time. So then I could just go and say, it’s simply three seconds, and we’ll all be happy. Yeah, my research paper exists, I think it depends on too many factors. What they did find was the average wait time that teachers tend to wait after the last question. And it seems to be between about naught point seven and 1.4 seconds is the benchmark. They said a number of teachers and we’ve hired teachers tell us this, wait, like more point two or no point three seconds when you actually time it? And read I love that, because I kind of come from a sport background is you said both reaction time the 100 metres is naught point two seconds. So it kind of goes indication of if we really wanted us to retrieve hard, you know, is naught point two seconds going to be their best answer or just the first answer. And then I found one study that didn’t, I should kind of make clear wasn’t saying this is the optimal, but they looked at a threshold of three seconds. And what they found is after three seconds, both the quality and quantity of answers increased. And I think sometimes looking back in my career, and what we’ve had other teachers say is, we don’t want to increase wait times too much. Because you don’t want the quickest to get bored is sometimes what you hear. But I don’t think three seconds. I think it’s enough of a window as an example that extends the opportunity for everyone, without demotivating the quickest as well. So it will say three seconds is the ideal. But it gives an indication of it’s worth considering how long we leave, I think is what I took kind of took from that study.
Craig Barton 6:39
It’s really interesting. You say this, I think I remember Dylan William. And when I want to hear him give a talk. He was citing similar research. And the other interesting thing he said was that teachers always overestimate how much time they are they’re giving. So if you ask teachers, they’ll say, oh, yeah, wait five seconds, six seconds, but then when you actually measure it, and it’s 0.2, or whatever, it’s quite a shock. As teachers, we can be quite easily fooled just generally can’t wait.
Bradley Busch 7:07
Tell you what I felt. I felt that comes double when everyone had to do online teaching, when you can’t even pick up like any verbal nonverbal cues. And you ask question, you don’t know, are they sitting there thinking? I’m thinking really hard about this? And I’m right on the edge of getting it? Or are they really bored? So we tend to think everyone has this sort of negativity bias, we tend to assume the worst. And so therefore, I should move on quickly. Yeah, I think generally speaking, people are quite poor. That self estimation of how long we actually leave.
Craig Barton 7:35
That’s really interesting. I’d say the other thing to talk about online teaching. So I’ve been doing a lot of online kind of courses over the last couple of years running them. And there’s a lot of things that are very bad about running online courses versus being there in person. But one of the things I found worse is knowing how long to give teachers to either work on a task or think about an answer or discourse and so on. Whereas when you’re in person, obviously you you can get a bit of a sense from the room, you know, when people are ready, whereas online, I the only way I found to do is I put a little question up saying click click, click Yes. When you’re ready to move on. And the problem I have with that is let’s say I’ve got 50 people online, as soon as I see about two or three who’ve clicked yes, I start getting anxious thinking, Oh, God, I bet start moving on here. And it’s really the reason I say that is remote reminds me what you’ve just said there where we, as a teacher, I always have kind of the the kind of fastest kid in mind, if that makes sense. And I think well, as soon as somebody’s ready, I bet started getting the ball rolling, whereas the other 90% of kids or whatever, they may need those extra few seconds just like the other 90% of teachers with your workshops, they will probably appreciate it. But there’s we’re always kind of in a rush, aren’t we to to kind of satisfy the one or two, we’re ready to move on, if that makes sense.
Bradley Busch 8:49
Absolutely. And the other thing that I would kind of work with you that’s similar is if we rush and someone gets the answer, right? We don’t know if they’ve got it right. Because they just guessed because they felt under pressure to come up with an answer. I mean, just guessed anything, or if they actually really know the content. And that’s actually really problematic. And we talked about checking for understanding and misconceptions. If I assume that you know this, because you got the answer. Right, was actually you just got lucky because you felt under pressure to blurt something out. That can hinder the learning process as well. So yeah, it’s anything that was aimed for the quickest, and yet it can lead to either sloppy mistakes, or in fact, blind guessing, which is still problematic, I think.
Craig Barton 9:30
Yeah, this is fascinating. The other thing I love that you said there, Bradley, as well as the fact that it’s you kind of the research into retrieval is so ubiquitous, ubiquitous now and it’s made its way into classrooms. And now it’s the time to start thinking about the nuances. I’d never tied the two together before the the notion of wait time and the power of retrieval and the fact that if we give students longer to think they’ve got they’re accessing long term memory, they’re making more connections than if we if we try and drive it forward at a quicker pace that yeah, that’s fascinating. Not.
Bradley Busch 10:00
So the way a colleague described it to me is essentially, on a basic level, everyone’s brain works at different speed. And so therefore, if we short circuit, the wait time, only the quickest have done successful retrieval practice, which means because of like, you know, the macro effects that like, you know, the more you know that you did it to learn new information, the gap just gets wider then, because those who probably need it the most haven’t had that successful retrieval. And so now for me, the two are inextricably linked, because I want everyone doing retrieval practice, successfully, ideally. But short wait times don’t facilitate that.
Craig Barton 10:38
This is fascinating. So I guess the big question here, because it’s interesting, when I first started my voyage through the research, I was getting so mad that there just wasn’t answers, clear answers. Questions. So if we don’t have it with with, with wait time, we don’t have this optimal, which makes sense, right? Of course, it’s gonna depend on us so many different factors. I guess the big question, Bradley is how his teachers do we know how much weight time to give? Is there? Is there anything there that we can do any signs, any indications? Yeah, any kind of benchmarks?
Bradley Busch 11:07
I mean, I definitely I was frustrated that there was no clean answer. And then I’m actually now come to the kind of at peace with it in terms of maybe that’s the role of research is, at best, it just kind of informed and it gives guidelines, and it should never replace teacher judgement, it’s always going to come down to an individual judgement call. I have heard some teachers when we speak them about it say the type of question makes a difference in terms of if it’s factual, or if it’s kind of a higher order one, just the practicalities of, you know, how much content do we need to get through? Because like, we can all sit here and say, in an ideal world, we can leave long wait times. But if there is real well pressure to get through a heavy curriculum, but you do have to factor that in, I think, How much stuff do the students already know makes a difference? Probably why you’re asking the question. And so no, I don’t think I would love that. I wish I could come up with a new formula. And I do think there is I think it’s just, it’s worth the discussion around. How long do I leave? And what factors do I consider? And those might be some of them. And that’s kind of why I was quite keen on my, the way I kind of worded The first tip to you was wasn’t increased wait times or to give a long wait time is it’s just important to consider reflects how long you leave and why you leave them. And I think that’s what research should be about is driving that self reflection as opposed to? Here’s a nice answer, necessarily.
Craig Barton 12:33
That’s really good. And final thing just on this tip. Yeah, I’m always a big fan of kind of research Best Bets. Because, again, we don’t have these definitive answers, but there are there are certain kind of Best Bets from research that might come out. Is it I’ll try and push on this badly. It would you go so far as to say just in general, obviously, there’s going to be exceptions. But as teachers that perhaps if we ask a question, when our instinct is to then, you know, call upon the chance to give our answer, it might be a good idea just to hold fire for a couple more seconds, then then perhaps our instinct says certainly for less experienced teachers that might be might be a smart move, or is that is that is that to
Bradley Busch 13:08
open that fight? I think I think the potential gains are waived potential losses in that. So as a rule of thumb, going a bit slower than you think is probably a really healthy starting point.
Craig Barton 13:20
Love it. Okay, Bradley, what’s your second tip for us, please?
Bradley Busch 13:25
Okay, so the second tip, I’ve gotten to a slightly different area away from kind of retrieval and memory is about how to develop resilience students, and how to develop resilience, because I think that’s in danger of almost becoming a cliche or another buzzword. Everyone wants resilience independent learners. And yet some of the research out there I think, is really fascinating. And this tip is from my favourite research paper on resilience that helps develop a resilient environment, the two factors you need to consider is having high levels of challenge. So setting the bar high teach the top high expectations, but also combining that with high levels of support. So do the students feel included part of the group so they know who to turn to for motional support? And why quite like that is? I think a lot of the resilience focus tends to be on how do I motivate the student and how do I help develop his or her resilience was actually if we talking about it in terms of an environmental or organisational level? What does that pass on that has high challenge and high support look like? Because if it only has high challenge, and doesn’t have high support, you can see stuff like perfectionism, fail, failure, burnout and stress. And I think we do a lot of stuff on high expectations, and that’s fairly well known. There’s been a big focus on that the last few years. But combining that with high levels of support, I think is interesting because again, looking back at my early career, I was so supportive, and I was so inclusive and I wanted to help everyone and I didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable, that I look back and I go as well as In 2014, I was actually just subtly lowering the level of challenge. And I was depriving them of that healthy struggle. And I think that’s a nice practical starting point. For developers and and students, we need both high challenge and high support.
Craig Barton 15:13
Love it, love it. Well, okay, let’s let’s dive into this a little bit more than this could be a terrible question relative, please forgive me on this. What will be some of the features of a classroom that have this high challenge and high support? What are some of the practical things a teacher could could could do to get this balance.
Bradley Busch 15:29
So I think looking at high challenge, that axis of it first, I think having high expectations, not necessarily high expectations around outcome, but high expectations around attitude and habits and work ethic, I think fundamentally believing that all students can improve, can learn and can develop. And I know, I don’t know if I’m slightly different to some people on this. I think people have been a bit too quick to dismiss some of the growth mindset area. Because I think there is some really good stuff within that it’s complicated, but at a fundamental level, believing that every child can improve and can learn. And I’m gonna work hard with that child too often challenging questions to believe they can do more they could do last week, that I think is a hallmark of this high expectations is high challenge. And so not necessarily always letting students self select which level of difficulty I think is kind of pits with high challenge. I think high support includes, I think it’s quite closely linked to the research on feedbacks, feedback on the task feedback on their processes on their self regulation, as opposed to just feedback on outcome or on them as a person. I think having a really warm, but formal relationship, I think we’re students is important. So I don’t know if he found any, I haven’t really been able to find any research and find that we learn more from someone that we like, I think it’s one of these big kind of myths or misconceptions. But I do think the teacher student relationship is really important. I just don’t think it’s based on likability. But I think it’s based on Do I trust that you are going to challenge me and stretch me and help me improve, and also kind of trust that you’re going to support me when I struggle and fail. And so I think that reliability and trust is probably linked to this talent and support as opposed to just necessarily likability and popularity, is
Craig Barton 17:29
really, really interested in this. So just a couple of points on this one. First, I agree with you that I’ve been guilty of this in terms of the growth mindset research, like first I was all for it, then I started reading research. And I thought, No, this is a load of nonsense, I dismissed everything. And now obviously, you think no, actually, you know, it can’t all be nonsense. There’s some real good stuff in there. One thing that I think to pick up on what you’ve said there that feels really important to me is growth mindset, in the sense that of a teacher have any of their kids not, not just the kids having it of themselves. So teacher really believing that this, this isn’t a bottom set, who’ve got like, you know, they’ll never get beyond this level. But thinking No, you know what they could do and having that mindset that feels like it’s got no kind of negative side to it whatsoever, as as a teacher that feels really important,
Bradley Busch 18:13
really cool study that looked at teacher mindset on student performance. And what they found is so they told that they gave a hypothetical situation where they said to a teacher, it’s the first that she did math. They said, its first maths exam of the year, while she was really badly. How do you respond to that student? What’s your approach? It’s a teacher with a great mindset, we’re much more likely to focus on what they call strategy. They said, it’s too early to tell how good the kids can be sample size one, I will set them more time or something, lots of questions, I will talk through the step by step process of how to answer them. Whereas those are the six mindset teachers, these were the more likely to go. I’ll go for comfort approach, which is let me make you feel better about your failure. You know, not everyone can be good at math. And what made the study really cool is when they then interviewed students, and they said, if you did bad in your exam, and your teacher said, either A or B, how would you feel a lot of students misinterpreted this comfort approach, as proof that the teachers didn’t believe they could ever get better. They’re making me feel better, because this is my limit. Whereas those who have been exposed to the strategy approach had much higher self expectation and were more motivated and indeed more resilient. To apply this sort of stuff. I think that’s a nice indication of growth mindset might not be a straight line from teacher to student, but it influences teacher decision making, which influences student approach. And that’s where I think it’s linked to this high challenge of, I believe you can all get better, and I’m going to show you how to get better, but I think that’s key to it.
Craig Barton 19:45
It’s really interesting, really interested and the other thing I was going to say on that it’s just you mentioned struggle. And I my kind of working theory with struggle is well first I used to think struggle is always a good thing. Like get the kids struggling, they’re gonna learn and so on. And then what Well, where I’m at at the moment is that certainly you don’t want kids to give up in the first sign of struggle, because that’s almost kind of the opposite of resilience. But I think one thing that you’ve got to bear in mind is students kind of past experience in my domain in mathematics kind of shins past experience of their kind of relationship with maths or how much success they’ve had with maths. Because if you take two students, one of whom has had a lot of experience of success in maths over the past, if they’re struggling on a problem, that they’re likely to have the belief that if I keep struggling, I’ll probably get there in the end. Or even if I don’t get there, in the end, it’s okay, because it’s just one small problem. And I’ve got loads of other things that I do understand. This is another kid who’s struggling, who thinks this is yet another thing I don’t understand, I’m going to waste my time going through this, and so on and so forth. So there’s kind of kids prior experience in terms of their resilience feels really important, and something important for teachers to know because you can’t just go in with this kind of blanket strategy that I’m going to going to do the same thing with all kids or with all different classes. Because for me anyway, that that prior experience feels like a critical variable in this, if that makes sense.
Bradley Busch 21:07
Yeah, no, totally. I mean, if you look up from the research on self efficacy, which is basically domain specific confidence, how confident I can amass previous performance is the biggest predictor of someone’s self efficacy. So that would make sense. Yeah, so where we’re at with struggle is kind of where I’m at with mistakes I’ve ever made mistakes are good and can help you learn. And now I kind of think mistakes could be good, and they can help you learn, but only if there’s good feedback only if the environment right or else you’re just doomed to repeat the mistake. And that’s not good. And I think we’re stuck like resilience. It’s easy to almost fetish or like sensationalised mistake and struggle, whereas like, I don’t want my students failing. I do want them learning and succeeding and doing well. But it’s just how we manage that process to get there, I guess.
Craig Barton 21:54
Brilliant. Okay, probably what’s tip number three, please.
Bradley Busch 22:00
So tip number three, is essentially to really actively challenge students on what they think is best for them. So I’m growing increasingly aware that when people get to self select how they study and learn, pretty much they do the opposite of what all the research suggests they should do. So the classic one, you know, I think a lot of people know like rereading versus retrieval practice, like we know, retrieval is probably more effective. And yet students will tend to self select rereading. We know spacing versus kind of blocking, students tend to leave stuff to the last minute, whereas in it’s perfect to do it in advance. And the other one that I’m finding increasingly interesting is only when I go into schools, about 80% of students tell me, it’s better for them, they, they learn better if they revise whilst listening to music. And yet, when you look at the research, there are some individual differences. But music that has lyrics leads to a huge degradation in learning and memory, compared to no music or music without lyrics. And yet students will swear blind, that they know what works best for them. As I I’ve wrestled with it. But I find it interesting, the balance between giving students autonomy, which I think it’s important to have motivation, versus people make really bad choices. And people tend to do what they prefer, as opposed to what’s best for them. So the example that I always come up with a moment, my four year old, he prefers chocolate buttons for breakfast, like that’s what he that’s what he likes to breakfast, but I know as an adult, that’s not what’s best for him. And I think something similar happens with learning and memory, and revising, and as people do what they like, because revising is hard to be the stuff that makes it more fun, but not necessarily what’s actually best for us. And so now, I think it’s not enough just for educators to know about being researched and formed, we have to kind of make this stuff explicit to students and challenge some of their preconceived notions. Because as they get older, they’re the decisions they make working independently become more important. And we need to help educate them to make better, better decisions.
Craig Barton 24:08
This is another great one, Bradley, I’m really pleased if you’ve picked this, it reminds me of when I used to do with my elevens I used to say in the build up to exams, right? We’re gonna have a revision lesson here. And you can just bring in the top Bring, bring in, you know, go through the textbook, go through exam papers, work on the things that you feel you need to work on. And I’ll never forget this girl Erin. She used to sit there and she would do fraction after fraction after fraction. And I’d say well, why are you working on fractions? How many shares ox I like him. I love the fraction, like quadratic graphs. You never flipping clue what one of them was, but forget now let’s just keep working on the fractions. And it’s really tricky, as you say that the trade off between kind of motivation, autonomy and kind of self direction feels feels a tricky one. And also, of course, you’ve got an issue that if you’ve got 30 kids in a class, you could kind of make the argument that as a teacher, you might not actually be able to pinpoint exactly what each of those 30 need to work on and show Normally the best person to do it is the student themselves. But as you say, it feels like they need educating in certainly things like blocks desirable difficulties, I think are a really good one to share with students along the lines of look, spacing feels hard. But here’s why it’s better. interleaving feels hard. And crucially, like, you know, practice testing feels hard, certainly compared to watching a YouTube video or reading notes. But here’s why it’s better, it feels like kids need some kind of real practical examples and explaining the theory in a way that they can understand. So they can make those informed choices. If that makes sense,
Bradley Busch 25:35
I have to say, because we go into it a broad range of schools. The progress in this area, I think, is phenomenal in the last few years, like 10 years ago, used to be how to help make a revision timetable, where there is more of a conversation around the conditions within that revision is better. And the big challenge for me is, I don’t know any domain apart from school, where students don’t go to school for intrinsic motivation. They told like legally parents, you have to send your kids to school. So I’m asking you to develop intrinsic motivation for something that wasn’t your choice to do. And we know because desirable difficulties is going to be tough. And so I’m asking you to choose the more difficult path and not make it fun and enjoyable at times. repeatedly. And I can see why people do want to make it easier and more fun because it’s not their choice, and it’s difficult. But we need to help help them with that decision. So it’s a hard one but I’m starting to think it’s one of the most important things we can help them knowing the conditions under which they learn best, as opposed to what just they like the most
Craig Barton 26:45
is I agree and if we just shift to the practical slightly for a second so I agree with you I’ve I’ve I’ve certainly used to spend a lot of time on making a revision timetable for kids who spend ages just laminating things and colouring things in and all sorts it was absolute disaster. What I try and do now I’ve certainly found I’ve spoken about this on a previous tips for teachers video, even showing them the diagram of the forgetting curve. I think it’s quite powerful. The fact that every time they revisit something, it flattens out this this slope of the forgetting curve, I find that quite powerful. And also the de Laski strengthened in the student toolbox paper that does things like shows that practice testing is more effective than rereading things like that I’ve seen to be quite effective. Is there anything else practically you’d suggest that teachers could kind of share with students or approaches that could help them make more informed choices?
Bradley Busch 27:33
Yeah, so just, I agree, we do based on the stuff that we showed in the forgetting curve, we talked about the Danowsky toolkit. On a really basic practical level, one of our favourite activities to illustrate, one of the areas is, if I asked you to draw, like the Apple logo, from memory, most people actually aren’t very good at drawing the Apple logo. And yet they’ve seen it 1000s of times in their life. And yet, if you saw it now on screen, you’d go identify which company that is, obviously the Apple logo, but it’s a great illustration of how there’s been some familiarity and real deep knowledge. And so we can do that explained with him as a as an icebreaker to talking about. So we need to revisit. Likewise, there’s loads of activities that you can do well around multitasking. So students are convinced that they can multitask and you know, got tabs open or TV or YouTube at the same time. And yet, there’s loads of neat experiments you can do where it’s impossible to do two things at once. And yet we assume we can so I think, starting not talking about it from a revision and learning perspective, but a general principle, and then following up with that discussion. So what does this mean for your revision is a really good one. And you can do the same with listen to music, you can give basic quizzes, and you can see how much people remember quizzes versus if they don’t have distracting lyrics. So yeah, I think those practical icebreakers, I think, are a good starting point for that. I like that. I
Craig Barton 28:57
never thought to do that. I always start with the revision element, but I like that show them the power of it first and then link it to revision. That’s lovely. Okay, Bradley, what is tip number four, please?
Bradley Busch 29:08
Tip number four, is to absolutely ban mobile phones in schools.
Craig Barton 29:17
Nothing I love nothing more than a definitive.
Bradley Busch 29:21
Like I’ve been hedging it a little bit to consider wait times without giving a number and stuff whereas this one, you know, the more a research, I read on it and be just anecdotal evidence going into schools who have different policies. I think the area of research is complicated because sometimes they talk about in research technology in the classroom. And technology can include school issued tablets that you can limit what they go on. And that’s obviously I’m not even saying they’re brilliant if I’m honest, but it’s a different proposition to mobile phones. Because I think there is a potential learning gain to be Add with mobile phones, but I think the learning loss outweighs it. And that’s before we even get into the pastoral and safeguarding side of things. I am amazed. It’s amazing how many things just kind of creep in in the last 10 or 15 years. And I think they’re an absolute nightmare.
Craig Barton 30:20
All right, let’s see, let’s dive into this a little bit. So you’ll have seen probably more mobile phone kind of school policies than that I will have because I’m never on the lookout for these. But I’m going to be from now on are we so we say best policy is just a blanket ban them? Is that is there? Is there a kind of nuances to that, that also work, like have lunch and break? You see stuff like that?
Bradley Busch 30:43
So yeah, so um, okay, let’s go to recess, I guess ice is a good starting point. And there’s a really nice, large scale study with a large amount of schools that compare different policies. So schools that didn’t have a mobile phone policy schools that had one that didn’t really enforce it, versus schools that had wide. And I think their policy was, if I see it in class, or in the corridors, I’m taking it, but I think they were allowed it a lunch break, which even then I’d even go further than that. And they tracked the school, I think was about five years. So we’ve got a good longitudinal data. And they found a significant increase in I think GCSE results for schools that banned mobile phones. And that impact was felt double for the struggling and disadvantaged students. So then you can kind of talk, is there a moral imperative around? How do we help? You know, we talked about levelling up and lost learning and all that kind of stuff? You know, maybe it’s, it’s a good policy anyway. But it’s especially helpful for struggling students. There have been studies all over the world that have linked the amount of time you’re on your phone in class is negatively correlated to worse exam results or learning. I mean, I don’t think that I think there’s much doubt about that. We do hear some pushback. Schools tell us, especially in the first few weeks, when they try and enforce it. So parents want their child to be able to be contactable. And so I think it’s my place, as a psychologist say, here’s what work as a blanket policy. I definitely wouldn’t have them in the classroom, right? Like that. I can say pretty confidently. Because also, like, they’re called mobile phones, but like, no one’s using them to make phone calls. Like we have to kind of acknowledge this. I can’t say this all the time. But like, they use them to access porn, gambling, social media gaming. Yes, you can do learning stuff on there as well. And there are some good retrievals apps, for example, by law, like practically how most students are using them on the way adults want them, to be using them. And I think I see a notable difference in schools that have them compared to schools that don’t, and that’s regardless of state versus private boys or girls who like schools that have you know, strip mine off in policy. As an outsider, when we go in, we
Craig Barton 33:03
can tell the difference almost immediately. It’s really interesting, right? A couple of things on this, I’m fascinated by this area. And the first is you’re absolutely right, that the schools I’ve worked in, tend to have the policy that if you see the phone, the teacher takes it. What a flippin nightmare that is because that’s never a smooth transaction that it’s never okay, you’ve caught me, here’s the phone. It’s no, no, no, you give me another chance server and it just like, and then you’ve got to go through the pain of because some of these phones cost like about 700 quid and if you lose them, it’s all going to be kicking off. So then you’ve got to have them into reception with the name and it’s such a pain. So yeah, I completely agree with you that that is a flippin pain from the teacher, I’d say the other thing. So every couple of years, I reread one of my favourite books, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it. Finally, a Deep Work by Cal Newport. It’s one of my all time favourite books. And the notion is, you know, a really good thing to do is get into this state of deep work where your uninterrupted research tends to suggest you need about 45 minutes to kind of get into this zone. And you can last till till about 90 minutes. And then, you know, you just can’t concentrate anymore, and so on. So I’ve been trying to have numerous projects I’ve been trying to get into deep work, even if I have my phone on silent and it’s visible, or even if it’s not visible, but I know it’s in the room. I can feel myself my mind is wandering, it’s crying out just to either check Twitter, or check football or anything like that. And I just can’t. The difference it makes even if I’m not looking at it is phenomenal. And I can only assume that if kids have it in their bags or even in their pockets and they don’t look at it in lessons. It’s still going to be it’s not like it’s having a net negligible neutral effect, right. It’s still gonna be nagging in their mind I’d imagine.
Bradley Busch 34:43
So some of my favourite mobile phone service. There’s one which I should say has been contested. So it’s not, you know, a set rule but they found just having a phone what you’re describing in salt on silent bunny, you they called the mere presence of it, they found it led to a significant reduction in concentration. I’ve read studies that found if you have your phone next to you while you’re eating food, people rate their food is less tasty. If you have your phone next to you, when you’re speed dating or in like a social group, the rate the person has less interesting. And that’s before we even get into like the memory and the learning like interruption side of things. So you see kind of all these kinds of studies and that sort of thing before you even get into the safeguarding. There’s been some horrendous stuff around teachers being filmed and putting on Tick, tick tock, that is not great. So yeah, your face what you described, the research would certainly support that. And it’s just, yeah, I wouldn’t want to be in charge of 10 people’s 700 pound phone, either like, that sounds like a nightmare. And then finally, the study that I’ve just mentioned is, so basically, you’re competing, it’s a test of self control, right? It’s kind of like your work versus the phone is the self control test. We know from research that in your adolescent years, your ability to delay gratification changes significantly. So we know people at age 25 tend to the balance between sensation seeking and impulse control has kind of levelled out a bit more. Whereas in your teenage years, you’re basically you’re all accelerator, no break, you just want to do stuff. So it’s harder, I think, to manage distractions in your teenage years. Bear in mind, when I was in school, and this is going to show my age, I was addicted to the game snake or my Nokia 3310 Every distraction in the world on your phone. And there’s no way a teenage brain versus all the geniuses of Silicon Valley designing smartphones. It’s just not a fair fight. And so sometimes we get, we get here the argument, maybe we should expose students more to phones, because it’s part of society. Now. It’s kind of self regulation. But like, I wouldn’t have my phone now you don’t have your phone out in most jobs. So why would I have at school. And I’d hate the argument that if something’s bad for you, we just expose people to it more and teach them self regulation, because we ban stuff all the time, like we ban smoking in school when we banned alcohol for under 18. And I just don’t see why this would be any different. Really
Craig Barton 37:12
interesting. Let me play devil’s advocate for the final for the final bit on these phones. So as a maths teacher, there is a wealth of of apps out there, that would really be handy if my kids had access to them. So things like Desmos, for drawing graphs, GeoGebra, and so on. And then you’ve alluded to a lot of the retrieval apps and flashcards Quizlet, and all these kinds of stuff. Now, I’m guessing the argument is that the benefit of having those available is not outweighed by the potential downside of the kids been distracted, and so on and so forth. Is there an argument that for older kids, so maybe, you know, sixth formers, that they’ve got a place because that’s where actually from a math teachers perspective, they really need access to these apps, we schools don’t have the devices available. And that’s at that stage, they’re a bit older and a bit more responsible, or still, do you think the the costs outweigh the benefits?
Bradley Busch 38:03
I do get that. I guess the two things I say is, I’m not a math teacher. And I’d hate to tell someone, this is how you should teach because I don’t know. I think everyone has to kind of make that judgement call based on their expertise. I have been in some really poor struggling communities where they schools simply can’t afford everyone have their own device, we can control them. And so therefore you do naturally go, okay, but they all do have the supercomputers in their pocket, maybe we should access them. I think it’s certainly worth considering. The big question for me is Do you feel the gains outweigh the losses. And if you feel that there’s no other way to teach students with how to be those graphs, or to do this retrieval, and you feel that you can really manage the distractions, you’ve got real tight policy around that. That’s, I think, for each school to decide. I just think you have to go to really eyes wide open knowing what the potential losses, learning losses are. And for me, I’m pretty convinced the losses outweigh the games.
Craig Barton 39:09
Fantastic. Okay, Bradley, what is your fifth and final tip for us, please?
Bradley Busch 39:14
Okay, fifth and final tip are, I’ve gone for something a bit more generalised as opposed to a specific like, wait times, I think. I guess my first tip, I think, for all teachers who are interested in becoming more research informed, is to ask yourself, what evidence would I require to change my mind about something? Because we alluded to some of the growth mindset stuff earlier. I was very bullish when I read some initial research. And then you’ve read conflicting research. So it doesn’t disprove anything, but it just paints a more richer picture. And it’s insane to think about what evidence would be required to change your mind because sometimes research it’s very easy. And we also have a time Only with ourselves that the profession is much more research engaged. But do we just use it as a way to confirm our initial belief? And we add more weight to the studies that kind of cement our previous position? And we find easy ways to discredit studies that don’t spend opposition. And, yeah, I think it’s really interesting to consider, what would it take to change your mind on the position that you have? And so I’m, for example, I think retrieval practice and spacing is probably about a stronger bet as you get when you look at 30 years of research. I don’t see that changing anytime soon. But what research would it take for me to change my mind on that, I think is a healthy conversation, because I think we do have to be quite discerning users with research in terms of asking awkward questions of ourselves. And I think it’s, I think research can give guidelines. But equally study does change how I view stuff like I know the retrieval practice slightly differently to how I did three years ago, based on some stuff that I’ve read. I think that’s an interesting discussion around, you know, what it takes to change your mind, either from personal experience wishes, or from research that that you’ve read.
Craig Barton 41:16
This is a brilliant one this I want to dig into this specifically in a second. But I’m just intrigued by that that retrieval thing, what was it that you’ve changed your mind about in terms of retrieval?
Bradley Busch 41:26
So like, I guess, yeah, so because I read one really interesting study that came out, it came out about two years ago, I only read it last month, around should you give hints during retrieval practice. And what they found is, for example, students love it when you give them hints, and students perceive it to have helped them with their learning more. But yeah, actually, when you check how much they actually learned, they have been given quite a lot of hints, tend to remember less. So you have, again, comes back to that autonomy is about what you like, and what’s best for you. And so now, I kind of, I love things like how it’s not just enough to do retrieval. Actually, I need to do retrieval that difficult, but still successful. That still probably is followed by feedback. It doesn’t have to be, but I think it’s better if it is. So it’s not just the act of retrieving, though that has benefits. It’s more nuanced approach of how we do retrieval is probably another example. I used to think. And I still think it’s okay, you do retrieval at the end of the lesson based on the lesson that you’ve taught. But I now kind of think of that more look into checking for understanding where it’s actually now I think maybe it’s better to do retrieval on stuff you did two or three weeks ago. Because I know, from a whole bunch of studies, retention rates are really high in the first day to get to go right. And you’re actually doing quizzing on stuff that I don’t expect you to get it all right, but I want to see what’s bubbling away. So maybe I do retrieval more and stuff you did two weeks ago than the pace of this lesson. So yeah, it’s just, it’s not wholesale change. It’s not like I was pronoun Auntie or anything. It’s more about just the nuance of the application. I think that’s what we’re kind of improving our understanding of
Craig Barton 43:02
God, I’d say what’s interesting for me, Bradley, so when I first started reading research, I’ve been teaching for 12 years before I read my first piece of research. And when I read it, I thought, This is amazing, because this has all the answers here you read a piece of research, it tells you something, and then you go and do it in the classroom, everyone’s happy. And then as we’ve spoke about earlier on in this conversation, you read something that says either the exact opposite or contradicts what you’ve said, and so on. Now, I mean, you’ve probably read 10 times the amount of research that I’ve read, but I’ve read a fair bit but but it is something I’ve done about you, I still don’t think I’m at the point where I can accurately decide whether a piece of research is valid or reliable, because like I A classic example of this is I used to think John Hattie’s visible learning and effect size and stuff. Were kind of the be all and end all I thought, This is amazing. This is combining, you know, all the best research studies into one like a meta analysis, what could be better than that. And then, on the Lovells education research Reading Room, they had a whole episode where a guy was just tearing apart. Hattie’s work on like, say, meta analyses, reload and answers, and I’m thinking, how can I, as a teacher, get my head around this, and then you’ve got, you know, sample sizes, significance levels, all this kind of stuff, random control trials. So it’s real dangerous, sensitive, because like, I’m with you, I think retrieval is amazing. But somebody could come along to me and say, Look, there’s this study that says the worst thing you can ever do is spaced learning. And I’d have to, I’d have to really look hard at that study. I don’t know if I’ve got the tools to think is that a valid or reliable studio? No, it’s difficult, isn’t it?
Bradley Busch 44:32
Yeah. I guess a couple of things I’d say. So what I’m finding to you mentioned effect sizes, is I now pretty much don’t care about effect sizes. I care about effect size, kind of relative to the time cost. So if you’re doing an intervention that’s only 20 minutes from a research paper, and lead for small effect size, well, I’m kind of okay with that. I care a lot more effect sizes smaller and it’s been a 10 week intensive programme. So I think more like the ratio is like an interesting part. I I sometimes talk about research papers, I think I think there’s something I don’t even know if this is a thing of I’ve just made it up the TripAdvisor effect. When I say to the people who go on TripAdvisor to get something five stars because they loved it, or one star because they hated it. And you see that with research all the time is this paper is brilliant five stars, it proves my point, or this papers, rubbish, it debunks the whole theory. And that isn’t the way to do research or even understand research. So if you find one paper that essentially gives for one of a better phrase space learning one star on TripAdvisor, for me that doesn’t debunk, I actually hoped that I’d be like on the bank spacing, that study adds to our knowledge of the existing research. And so we kind of talked about in our, in our book, right at the start, we said, one study is kind of like a single thread. But taking together when you zoom out, you can see it as like the whole tapestry. And so I think that’s why one study wouldn’t change my mind on something, it might raise some questions, but I’d have to see how does that fit in with both all the stuff I’ve read, but also, the stuff I’ve experienced as well, because I don’t think we should discount that either. So I think you can find this valuable, I don’t think you need to be as a teacher, you don’t need to be this expert judge on quality of research and where one study proves or disproves. It just has to paint a picture. And now, I actually get quite excited when studies sharp results that I’m not expecting. Because it does make me ask awkward questions of myself in my practice, but that I think that’s the only way we get better. And we have to get better because it’s too important to get wrong. So we shouldn’t shy away from the studies. And if retrieval practice works better in some conditions, or with some age groups and others, I want to know about that. And also want to know why I like so it’s not a case of disproving retrieval practice. It’s about oh, it’s interesting that these types of retrieval works better for older students than for primary aged students. That’s, that’s an interesting conversation. And then one is community we should be having as part of our professional dialogue. Yeah, I think it’s a good thing when I see studies that might suggest stuff like that
Craig Barton 47:08
is fascinating. And just final thing on this. So what interests me if we take something like rose and shines work, now rosin shine that has been around for for decades, years, and years and years, and yet, it’s only in the last kind of three or four years, it went absolutely mental and have its posters in every school wall, and so on. And I think a lot of that was to do with Tom Sherrington. Write in a really nice, concise, easily accessible book, and so on. So for busy teachers out there, Bradley, obviously, this curation of research and summaries of it is a really important part of this. But I’ve got, obviously, we have that downside, that we’re then relying on somebody to have taken a representative sample and interpret it right, and so on. Do you have other Do you have kind of kind of favourite curators who you look to you think, you know, this is a good place to at least start? And then is your process then to read the original source? Or how do you go about kind of digesting the, you know, the mountains of research that are out there?
Bradley Busch 48:01
So yeah, like, it’s been interesting, taking both and trying to see example. I think the work that Tom has done has been incredible. Because it’s just made it accessible, which I think is a big part. So yeah, I’m a huge fan. I think it’s been incredible for the profession. One thing we wrestle with, because because that’s basically what we do is we try and be kind of a Google Translate. Because there’s stuff behind paywalls, or it’s written for the psychologist a lot of the time. One thing that generally keeps us up at night, and we wrestle with is to make stuff accessible, yet still being true to the original research, because the original research has nuances. And yet everyone wants a nice headline, and sometimes the two, and so the more accessible, you make something do you risk dumbing down or veering from the original research? So finding reliable sources is tricky. I’m a huge fan of I think the education Endowment Foundation do Brilliant stuff. I’m a huge fan of evidence based education, Charter College for teaching, be remiss, not for me not So bear in sight in a drive. We think we tried to do a good job of that. Well, one thing I think I’m getting more and more interested in is seeing classroom teachers blogging themselves, about how they’ve applied research. So what I’m always into there is not the actual research itself. It’s their interpretation of how it applies to their setting. And that’s that middle bit. That’s the interesting part. Because it’s not up to it shouldn’t be up to teachers to explain the research. That’s the researchers job. The teacher’s job is working out which stuff is appropriate for my context, and trial and error. And sharing that I think that’s a brilliant form of CPD of how other people are wrestling with the same sort of problems. But yeah, I wouldn’t worry too much about one off sample size or randomised controlled trials because I’m not saying In my heart on any one study, therefore, if one studies large scale one study small, I don’t discount the small scale study, it might be really appropriate for that design of that research. And I think it’s been really endearing. It’s lovely to actually see the progression over the last five, let’s say five years, we’ll say 10 years, maybe really embrace your search and translate and take it their own. And people always worry about lethal mutations. I’m not too worried about lethal mutations, because I think we need that trial and error. And we need that. I wouldn’t want anyone to go, this is what they did in the study. That’s what we have to do in my setting, because they are meant to be different. So I kind of I kind of like the mutations because that’s how we make informed judgments, I think.
Craig Barton 50:42
Fascinating. Okay, Bradley, let me hand over to you. What should our listeners check out of yours?
Bradley Busch 50:49
Okay. Yeah. So if you type in a DR dot code at UK, we have a whole bunch of research papers that we’ve summarised, so if you Google integrative studies, that’s probably a decent starting point. Every time we find a new study that we think is interesting, we tend to summarise it and write in the newsletter. So there’s a newsletter that people could subscribe to. And for students, if you do your inner drive resources, I think we have about 200 completely free to download resources there infographics that I think are good conversation starters, the graphics, but each of the graphics is linked to a blog, which has the original research that has been nuanced. And that’s more I guess, for the teachers or the parents involved. And we’re also on Twitter, in underscore Dr.
Wow. But we’ll put links to all those resources in the show notes. And probably this has been absolutely brilliant. It’s been it’s been practical. It’s been wide ranging. I’ve loved every minute. So thanks so much for taking the time to join us.
Well, thanks for the invite. I know really appreciate what you’re doing if the amount of resources you’re giving away for free is. It’s brilliant. So thanks for having me off as part of it.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai