Thread by @cbokhove

There are 17 principles of Rosenshine but only 10 in the publications (UNESCO and American Educator) are somewhat explained. Some you see seldom mentioned, in my opinion several points are underspecified.

For example the one about feedback. What type of feedback, when feedback etc.

That makes the principle 'safe' (ie we will agree) but not very concrete to adopt. I think that's the case with numerous principles.

Yet I'm being told that they are nice and practical. But what I'm wondering is whether such underspecified principles are adopted in the same way.

For example 'present new material in small steps with student practice after each step'

When is material still new, after 15 minutes? Longer time? Small steps, how small? Is smaller always better as some seem to make the 'load' argument? And these things are not explained extensively in the articles.

So you do what you have to do any way: use professional judgement. You implement as see fit. Everyone likely slightly different. So as a starting point the principles can be ok but I would read wider.

Some have called the principles ‘common sense’ but I’m not really sure about that. Given the way the principles were based on three sources and one source included Brophy and Good’s product-process work it is ‘common sense from the teachers we deem to be teaching well’.

Mind you, I then think it’s even more important to know more detail about 17 principles. 26 references then seems rather low.

But there is another more important issue with looking at the best teachers...survivorship bias en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivors…

Furthermore, the observations stem from being a good teacher. Whether the 17 principles *lead* to being a good teacher is a different question altogether.

I personally think that the correlation gives the principles merit but again you need to look wider because of that bias.

Something I’ve mentioned before, is that the references are quite old. In a document from 2010 (UNESCO) more than 80% is from before 1997.

That does not necessarily have to be a problem of course. Some sources are timeless. In fact, paying attention to Bruner, Snow, Cronbach...

..Carroll, Bloom, Ausubel would be beneficial. Sometimes the ‘cognitive science!’ label seems to suggest it has all been superceded.

So we keep the ‘good old’...but we also look at the new. And I would say it’s a shame that the references then are a bit dated.

Things like desirable difficulties, retrieval practice but also well-organised groupwork/pair-work (explanation), etc... I think there are again more insights to be had, even in 2010.

The date of the research, by the way, might also be relevant because in the old days sample sizes could be rather small. I have only to mention the one Ebbenhaus used (N=1) ;-)

One thing I’ve always disliked is a clear distinction in the articles between the three types of sources Rosenshine uses. Especially a distinction between research that does allow causality and that doesn’t would have been useful.

As some of it is correlational we need to know. Afternall, if we observe ‘lots of feedback given’ in groups with higher achievement, maybe feedback led to higher achievement, but maybe teachers were just giving more feedback to higher achievers.

I would also say to resist suggestions that the 17 points are some sort of complete program. They have never been tested that way (nor would that be very feasible, too many degrees of freedom). I aleady made the case to look wider and deeper.

But there is another challenge.

The sum of the individual principles might have interactions. For example ‘small steps’...but teachers also have to prepare students for ‘independent practice’. Scaffolds can be used for that. I think that shows a tension between principles....

...’small steps but not indefinitiely, have to scaffold towards more independent practice’ is how I would read this. But when? How? And what about, for example, desirable difficulties I mentioned before?

Perhaps some have found me overly critical on Rosenshine. To be honest, I would not have any problem as nice starting point. I don’t think there is anything controversial in it, unless they are the *only* thing you would look at. Look wider, look deeper as well.