@harishjose.bsky.social Hi Harish I believe change & hence learning happens via action. But learning that happens in my classroom is not via action in the physical situation, not even the micro physical How does cybernetics describe the particulars of the situation in which this action takes place

When we generalise the principles of edu cog sci we arrive back where we all started. If we take the particulars and put them into practice, yeah they work some of the time in some situations but believing they meaningfully describe more than a fraction of learning is delusional.

@cmooreanderson.bsky.social To me, this is the description of the imaginal situation in which our pupils are acting, from which change is occurring.

New post - going back to the basics: Why cognitive science matters for teachers? open.substack.com/pub/efratfur...

Yes. Everyone whom talks about Dual Coding, I'd say, needs to read Paivio's Mental Representations. It covers the comparison between linear & non-linear thinking — & its intellectual history — as well embodied cognition. That's 30 years before Sweller.

New Blog Post 📝 I hate QLA. Originally due to the time it sucked out of my PPA I now know that QLA documents do not provide the information we think they do. I go over the justification for why I ditched QLA and the reasons why you should get rid of it too. open.substack.com/pub/joel1201...

Understanding matters. Intuition matters.

A major problem with the EduCognitivist revolution was trying to algorithmise teaching. Algorithms are such thin rules that they can only ever work in a tightly controlled environment (no exceptions). Therefore, to allow their algorithms to work, they also had to homogenise students & classrooms.

Finally locked into a title: 📗 Teaching Meaning: What Works When Telling Isn't Enough Coming soon, it will explore teaching and learning according to *enactive* cognitive science. #EduSky

This is *exactly* the argument, and one that has propelled me forward to suggest different paradigms. And the purpose of my latest book. What if the paradigm is wrong? What if we shouldn't *hold* attention, but *prompt* attention. It certainly works better in my teaching.

I would say this helps pupils to associate knowledge by tapping into embodied and visuospatial cognition as well as using the medium of orality.

Have you looked at any of Lynne Kelly’s work on indigenous memory Theo. It is fascinating and revealing about ways in which people effectively dealt with the transient effect before being able to manipulate the external memory field (reference to Merlin Donald)

Interesting, I can agree with Sue when its done in an inflexible and tortuous way, yours sounds more like call and response. I recall enjoying it in primary,A technique used by cultures in music and storytellling for aeons. The Cab Calloway clip in this clip is ace! youtu.be/PmjuKRvdEM8?...

@psteidinger.bsky.social what has captured your interest recently Peter?

If everyone agrees exposing prior knowledge/models of understanding is super important for learning, then please someone tell me how we can do that without first asking the pupils to do some kind of ‘inquiry’ tasks?

For all those teachers and speakers who use slides (all, thus, except John Sweller😂) I give you the 'Oli-Filter' . Please use it! @olicav.bsky.social

#BlueLZ Mini-Whiteboards im Unterricht. open.substack.com/pub/lstam/p/...

We all agree teacher explanations are important. We all agree pupil thinking is important. How do you maximise the thinking pupils are doing whilst you are explaining?

No, movement doesn't replace thinking. But it can hold information at no cognitive cost and to the benefit of retrieval.

When AI tutors become ridiculously amazing at supporting and matching the content and choice of activity to each particular tutee, I wonder what people will say if we will start to see an indisputable emergence of learning styles 🤔

Cybernetics is not the Banana (Part 2) with Benjamin P. Taylor @antlerboy.com is now on YouTube: youtu.be/0IBjnZlcdfQ

Want to teach biology this way? See Difference Maker: cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...

Time to repost this: #UKEd #EduSky

This summer I started working on a new book for a general audience and really enjoying it. Working title so far: ▸Six Premises to Reframe the Art of Teaching. Six chapters, exploring the consequences for (teaching and learning) of six fundamental principles. A *fresh* look at classroom practice.

Transience is inevitable. Working memory is the ability to resist transience. We have tools and technologies to support our ability to resist transience. We are in a constant stream of information, sometimes we are required to keep up with the stream, sometimes we need help.

Thread on Value Agency Interest Motivation Simulation & Aims VALUE • action causes a change and the sum of the value of the change across multiple aspects is calculated as overall value of the action.

I haven't written anything for a while... Here is something inspired by @claireharley.bsky.social's post from yesterday about values and clarity of communication What Makes Great Leadership? Clarity of Communication & Reducing Uncertainty #UKEd #EduSky musingsofadr.wordpress.com/2025/07/24/w...

There is a lot of talk of what to teach and how to teach, and these are important but they are always at any moment, proceeded by a gestalt awareness of what is needed at that moment. Where is the discussion of this gestalt perspectival awareness of what is needed at that moment? #eruditepedagogy

If you or they are confused. The 1st thing to do is to mitigate the transient effect by moving the information into the permanent. Space is time as we can only pay attention to one thing at a time.

How important is agency to you? How important is agency for your pupils? How important is agency for teachers?

What is not obvious in the moment will be transient if a decision is not made to place it in the permanent.

We cannot get away from our embodied interpretation of the world. Every concept we have is a thing - a thing that is in relation to other things. We cannot remove the way we interpret via spatial cognitive sense making. Visuospatial is fundamental to thought.

Launching my new Substack today! It starts with some key ideas from Chapter 1 of Rethinking Educational Theory — Weekly posts will explore how dialogic education + AI can transform teaching and learning. Subscribe if interested in that sort of thing rupertwegerif.substack.com/p/turning-th...

Christian helps us look at our day to day habits & challenge our assumptions. Shifting our questions from those that unintentionally carry uncertainty of meaning, to those of clarity so pupils get straight to the hard thinking. cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...

I have just finished reading Difference Maker by Christian Moore-Anderson and would advise any Biology Teachers to give it a read. I have never been so convinced by the pedagogy within a book.

a perfect demonstration of how visuospatial communication can make relational information completely obvious, and where sequential text just fails.

Fioella provides a fascinating description of his work on generative learning activities. He describes 2 ways we try to make sense of information. We verbally self explain as we go by making inferences and we combine this with visualising the situation - both generative. youtu.be/NSzgqVl3CfA?...

How do you imagine knowledge is organised? Whatever you imagined is your prototype of the structure of knowledge.

A lovely example of pupils using a simple explanatory model to really interact with and explore the interconnectedness of photosynthesis and respiration.

#UKEd #EduSky This diagram didn't make the cut for the Organise Ideas book. But looking over it again, I rather like the attempt to coordinate the various theories around visual thinking/communication. It's wider & deeper than just dual coding theory. Sorry.

@cmooreanderson.bsky.social Fritz Zwicky created the Morphological Analysis (now known as the Zwicky Box) in which variations of set elements, laid out in ordered visual fashion, allows significantly more combinations to be considered than when done in one's head.

What distinguishes an explanatory model from a description? What distinguishes an explanatory model from an explanation? How do we know an explanatory model is designed so 1: pupils can actually use them? 2: they maximise for explanatory power?

There is a distinction, otherwise @cmooreanderson.bsky.social would not need to draw our attention to it (counterintuitively). So that debate is settled 😀 I challenge Christian to provide the argument that the negative impact of using the term ‘encoding’ is greater than its usefulness.

If we substituted the word "encoding" for "learning" in many of the eduposts we see today, would it make a difference? In other words, are people talking about the same idea and just using a different word? What advantages does the term "encoding" bring? #EruditePedagogy

NEW BLOG: Managing attention in classrooms is a social justice issue hobbolog.wordpress.com/2025/06/02/m... #UKEd #Edusky #EduBlogUK

Redesigning our Year 9 curriculum to include Semmelweis and Snow, and vaccinations. Explaining through causality is part of our curricular metacontent. So these models build on a culture of explaining. I explain metacontent here: cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol... #iTeachBio #chatbiology

NEW: Are we living in a simulation? open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...

I think the biggest problem with the EduCogSci movement is its (almost sole) focus on empiricism. It's produces a view of: data = knowledge = understanding. So people only interact with research results. They miss all the philosophy (of science) that gives it any meaning. #EduSky #EruditePedagogy

If you want to boost your enjoyment of teaching - do this.

Another endorsement for the variation theory of learning. A brief introduction here ↓ cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol...