Another thought provoking read Chris. I learned a lot reading about your distinction between reformers and pragmatists in education, and how most policy makers and researchers actually sit somewhere in between.
It’s really refreshing to see a writer on Substack change their mind on a subject as well. I similarly try to offer as balanced a perspective with my school visits as I can.
Thanks, Sam, it means a lot. Coming at this from the academic side, it can be easy to get tunnel vision, and I think people in education research do sometimes struggle to find common ground.
That is why spaces like Substack, and especially the comments, matter so much. I have genuinely valued having my assumptions challenged here. I have also really appreciated the way you approach the schools you visit: sympathetic to their aims, but still willing to examine the claims being made. Finding that balance is harder than it looks.
Thanks Chris, that was a helpful read. I think this is important - "We can and should dispute methods and findings, but we should apply the same scrutiny whether the conclusions slot into our worldview or not. All evidence tells us something about the world; forgetting it shrinks our potential to improve children’s lives."
Thanks for this, George. If I’m honest, it’s something I still struggle to do. There's something satisfying about putting an argument together and watching all the pieces fall into place - and a real temptation, when something counters it, to turn a blind eye. I think it’s worth doing though, and I’m trying to hold myself to it!
Thanks for the followup post Chris. Speaking about me, you said "He was applying the line to one side. I think it applies to both, and I’m going to tell you why." I found this very interesting, and I think you're right, at least as it pertains to perception. About two years ago, I was taking a graduate-level university course on didactics*, taught by a mainstream education academic (which is how I view that side of the debate, moreso than "reformers"). The professor teaching the course invited one of his faculty colleagues to discuss his own research interests which are about explicit teaching, viewed from a Vygotskyian framework. What I found especially interesting was how my professor framed the talk, which, to paraphrase, was that his colleague was "one explicit teaching proponent who isn't dogmatic". That made an effect on me, because from my perspective, isn't it the mainstream education academics who are dogmatic? I have plenty of reasons to think so, but evidently they think the same of effective teaching proponents.
I remember listening to a talk by a mathematics education researcher in which she was describing one of her recent research projects, about designing and testing a game intended to introduce toddlers to the concept of quantity. During the talk she said something that made me think: that she'd probably get more impressive results if she were to, say, study the explicit teaching of mathematics, but that one has to study what one values, and in her case it's, I suppose, seeing the smile on a child's face as the child discovers mathematics. I understand that what brought you, Chris, to education research was the belief that school hampers curiosity, and the desire to find data demonstrating this. I came to education after doing research in mathematics and then having to learn how to teach mathematics at the postsecondary level. I realized that many of the difficulties my students had in my courses (even the future secondary school mathematics teachers) had to do with insufficient mastery of simple arithmetic and algebraic operations, which naturally led me to wonder how those skills could be improved, and so brought me to the effective teaching side. How we came to care about education influences our perspective on the debate.
Of course I also have other more "systemic" concerns. The grade I give my students in a differential calculus course can affect whether they can become medical doctors later, despite it having little to do with how skilled they would be at practicing medicine. When I teach future secondary school mathematics teachers, I have to wonder how much postsecondary-level mathematics they really need to do their job effectively, which might very well be less than what we actually teach them. (Student teachers often complain that their mathematics classes are very theoretical and not useful for their job, but then again they also complain that their pedagogy classes, taught by education academics, are theoretical and don't touch on the realities of classroom teaching.) But as a teacher, I feel that developing the most effective way to transmit my knowledge and skills to my students is the best I can do for them.
What I worry about is that even by mainstream education academics' or reformers' stated metrics, I'm not sure if their proposed remedies are optimal. Take motivation, for example: Greg Ashman often suggests that the best way to motivate a student might not be to make the learning more student-centered or more relevant to the students' lives (which are also two separate things existing on different axes), but to teach effectively so the student can experience success. He recently pointed out** that self-determination theory (a theoretical framework that is in my experience very popular in education research) actually has competence as one of its building blocks even if it is somewhat deemphasized in education research, while autonomy is being somewhat misrepresented.
I'll finish by saying that England currently lives under a school framework introduced by a Conservative government and promoting effective teaching, which explains why people on the other side of the debate like Chris (who doesn't think the Govian reforms were entirely positive for his students) might feel that their opponents have all the power and don't listen to their concerns. Quebec had an education reform in the early 2000s that wanted to emphasize skills-based learning, apparently under the conception that until then schools were only teaching (disconnected) facts that left the students unable to actually do anything, like solve actual problems. (Having to fit the content of my courses into the very vague "competences" that learners are supposed to be developing is a bureaucratic exercise that I do not believe improves my teaching.) The reform also sought to promote varied methods of teaching at the expense of lecturing which was assumed to be how it was done until then. So it was more of a "reformer"-driven change, which explains why I tend to view mainstream education academics as having more power. The reform also wasn't altogether successful, and this is why more recent governments have come upon the idea of a national institute of excellence in education which was criticized by education academics.
* Didactics is the French word for discipline-specific pedagogy, and is a whole field of research in the French-speaking world. It seems to have started with didactics of mathematics with Guy Brousseau in the 1970s, but the theoretical frameworks pioneered there were then applied to the didactics of other school subjects. Interestingly, despite some efforts there doesn't seem to be all that much cross-pollination between French didactics of mathematics (for example) and English-language mathematics education research.
Thanks so much for this Marc. It was great to be able to build a post around your concerns, and it pushed me into thinking about issues I'd only thought about from my own perspective. It's something I'm going to try to carry forward.
Your perception point is doing something my post didn't quite manage. The anecdote about your professor describing a colleague as 'one explicit teaching proponent who isn't dogmatic' caught me – because of course, I have academic colleagues who think that way about people on the pragmatic/effective-teaching side of the debate. It's uncharitable, but I think it can be a consequence of failing to spend enough time discussing the issues with those who hold a different view. Your professor's framing is the mirror image, and that's the symmetry I was trying to get at.
The Quebec / Gove contrast makes the same point with even more weight: depending on where you stand, the picture of who holds power and who's the insurgent flips entirely. England's current framework is part of why people on the academic/reformer side feel the wind has been knocked out of them; your Quebec example, with the institute of excellence row, is the mirror. I gestured at this in the post but you've made it concrete, and it would've been great to include something like it.
The way you put it – 'how we came to care about education influences our perspective on the debate' – is also very helpful. Your route in (post-secondary teaching, students arriving without the arithmetic and algebra they needed) and mine (a hunch that school hampers curiosity, looking for evidence) point at quite different parts of the same problem. The mathematics education researcher's line that 'one has to study what one values' is generous and probably right. It's a charitable framing of the disagreement, and one I'd want a reader to extend to me.
You're also right to question any simplistic dichotomy. You hold systemic concerns and practical questions about effective teaching, and I don't think you're alone. My worry is as much about the level of the discussion as the substance – particular journals or Substacks can feel (to me) as if they prioritise one side at the expense of the other. We should be asking both sorts of question: how can we improve classroom teaching today, while also questioning practices, like the ones you mention, that may not be good uses of time or may affect students' prospects unnecessarily.
Regarding self-determination theory, it's one of the foundations of my doctoral research and I like it, but the point about reformers' own metrics lands. Competence does get short shrift, and Ashman is right that autonomy gets misrepresented. (Paul Kirschner posted this recently: https://www.kirschnered.nl/2026/04/06/seven-lethal-mutations-of-self-determination-theory/. which is worth a read, and has some similar ideas) I'm working on a post about SDT so it's something I'll return to.
Despite my Gove post being critical of Christodoulou's conclusions, I do think her questioning of the skills/knowledge divide was the right question. Too often they're treated as different poles when we want students to develop both. A question of framing – exactly the sort you've helped me think about more carefully here.
Another thought provoking read Chris. I learned a lot reading about your distinction between reformers and pragmatists in education, and how most policy makers and researchers actually sit somewhere in between.
It’s really refreshing to see a writer on Substack change their mind on a subject as well. I similarly try to offer as balanced a perspective with my school visits as I can.
Thanks, Sam, it means a lot. Coming at this from the academic side, it can be easy to get tunnel vision, and I think people in education research do sometimes struggle to find common ground.
That is why spaces like Substack, and especially the comments, matter so much. I have genuinely valued having my assumptions challenged here. I have also really appreciated the way you approach the schools you visit: sympathetic to their aims, but still willing to examine the claims being made. Finding that balance is harder than it looks.
Thanks Chris, that was a helpful read. I think this is important - "We can and should dispute methods and findings, but we should apply the same scrutiny whether the conclusions slot into our worldview or not. All evidence tells us something about the world; forgetting it shrinks our potential to improve children’s lives."
Thanks for this, George. If I’m honest, it’s something I still struggle to do. There's something satisfying about putting an argument together and watching all the pieces fall into place - and a real temptation, when something counters it, to turn a blind eye. I think it’s worth doing though, and I’m trying to hold myself to it!
Thanks for the followup post Chris. Speaking about me, you said "He was applying the line to one side. I think it applies to both, and I’m going to tell you why." I found this very interesting, and I think you're right, at least as it pertains to perception. About two years ago, I was taking a graduate-level university course on didactics*, taught by a mainstream education academic (which is how I view that side of the debate, moreso than "reformers"). The professor teaching the course invited one of his faculty colleagues to discuss his own research interests which are about explicit teaching, viewed from a Vygotskyian framework. What I found especially interesting was how my professor framed the talk, which, to paraphrase, was that his colleague was "one explicit teaching proponent who isn't dogmatic". That made an effect on me, because from my perspective, isn't it the mainstream education academics who are dogmatic? I have plenty of reasons to think so, but evidently they think the same of effective teaching proponents.
I remember listening to a talk by a mathematics education researcher in which she was describing one of her recent research projects, about designing and testing a game intended to introduce toddlers to the concept of quantity. During the talk she said something that made me think: that she'd probably get more impressive results if she were to, say, study the explicit teaching of mathematics, but that one has to study what one values, and in her case it's, I suppose, seeing the smile on a child's face as the child discovers mathematics. I understand that what brought you, Chris, to education research was the belief that school hampers curiosity, and the desire to find data demonstrating this. I came to education after doing research in mathematics and then having to learn how to teach mathematics at the postsecondary level. I realized that many of the difficulties my students had in my courses (even the future secondary school mathematics teachers) had to do with insufficient mastery of simple arithmetic and algebraic operations, which naturally led me to wonder how those skills could be improved, and so brought me to the effective teaching side. How we came to care about education influences our perspective on the debate.
Of course I also have other more "systemic" concerns. The grade I give my students in a differential calculus course can affect whether they can become medical doctors later, despite it having little to do with how skilled they would be at practicing medicine. When I teach future secondary school mathematics teachers, I have to wonder how much postsecondary-level mathematics they really need to do their job effectively, which might very well be less than what we actually teach them. (Student teachers often complain that their mathematics classes are very theoretical and not useful for their job, but then again they also complain that their pedagogy classes, taught by education academics, are theoretical and don't touch on the realities of classroom teaching.) But as a teacher, I feel that developing the most effective way to transmit my knowledge and skills to my students is the best I can do for them.
What I worry about is that even by mainstream education academics' or reformers' stated metrics, I'm not sure if their proposed remedies are optimal. Take motivation, for example: Greg Ashman often suggests that the best way to motivate a student might not be to make the learning more student-centered or more relevant to the students' lives (which are also two separate things existing on different axes), but to teach effectively so the student can experience success. He recently pointed out** that self-determination theory (a theoretical framework that is in my experience very popular in education research) actually has competence as one of its building blocks even if it is somewhat deemphasized in education research, while autonomy is being somewhat misrepresented.
I'll finish by saying that England currently lives under a school framework introduced by a Conservative government and promoting effective teaching, which explains why people on the other side of the debate like Chris (who doesn't think the Govian reforms were entirely positive for his students) might feel that their opponents have all the power and don't listen to their concerns. Quebec had an education reform in the early 2000s that wanted to emphasize skills-based learning, apparently under the conception that until then schools were only teaching (disconnected) facts that left the students unable to actually do anything, like solve actual problems. (Having to fit the content of my courses into the very vague "competences" that learners are supposed to be developing is a bureaucratic exercise that I do not believe improves my teaching.) The reform also sought to promote varied methods of teaching at the expense of lecturing which was assumed to be how it was done until then. So it was more of a "reformer"-driven change, which explains why I tend to view mainstream education academics as having more power. The reform also wasn't altogether successful, and this is why more recent governments have come upon the idea of a national institute of excellence in education which was criticized by education academics.
* Didactics is the French word for discipline-specific pedagogy, and is a whole field of research in the French-speaking world. It seems to have started with didactics of mathematics with Guy Brousseau in the 1970s, but the theoretical frameworks pioneered there were then applied to the didactics of other school subjects. Interestingly, despite some efforts there doesn't seem to be all that much cross-pollination between French didactics of mathematics (for example) and English-language mathematics education research.
** https://fillingthepail.substack.com/p/curios-of-the-week-162
Thanks so much for this Marc. It was great to be able to build a post around your concerns, and it pushed me into thinking about issues I'd only thought about from my own perspective. It's something I'm going to try to carry forward.
Your perception point is doing something my post didn't quite manage. The anecdote about your professor describing a colleague as 'one explicit teaching proponent who isn't dogmatic' caught me – because of course, I have academic colleagues who think that way about people on the pragmatic/effective-teaching side of the debate. It's uncharitable, but I think it can be a consequence of failing to spend enough time discussing the issues with those who hold a different view. Your professor's framing is the mirror image, and that's the symmetry I was trying to get at.
The Quebec / Gove contrast makes the same point with even more weight: depending on where you stand, the picture of who holds power and who's the insurgent flips entirely. England's current framework is part of why people on the academic/reformer side feel the wind has been knocked out of them; your Quebec example, with the institute of excellence row, is the mirror. I gestured at this in the post but you've made it concrete, and it would've been great to include something like it.
The way you put it – 'how we came to care about education influences our perspective on the debate' – is also very helpful. Your route in (post-secondary teaching, students arriving without the arithmetic and algebra they needed) and mine (a hunch that school hampers curiosity, looking for evidence) point at quite different parts of the same problem. The mathematics education researcher's line that 'one has to study what one values' is generous and probably right. It's a charitable framing of the disagreement, and one I'd want a reader to extend to me.
You're also right to question any simplistic dichotomy. You hold systemic concerns and practical questions about effective teaching, and I don't think you're alone. My worry is as much about the level of the discussion as the substance – particular journals or Substacks can feel (to me) as if they prioritise one side at the expense of the other. We should be asking both sorts of question: how can we improve classroom teaching today, while also questioning practices, like the ones you mention, that may not be good uses of time or may affect students' prospects unnecessarily.
Regarding self-determination theory, it's one of the foundations of my doctoral research and I like it, but the point about reformers' own metrics lands. Competence does get short shrift, and Ashman is right that autonomy gets misrepresented. (Paul Kirschner posted this recently: https://www.kirschnered.nl/2026/04/06/seven-lethal-mutations-of-self-determination-theory/. which is worth a read, and has some similar ideas) I'm working on a post about SDT so it's something I'll return to.
Despite my Gove post being critical of Christodoulou's conclusions, I do think her questioning of the skills/knowledge divide was the right question. Too often they're treated as different poles when we want students to develop both. A question of framing – exactly the sort you've helped me think about more carefully here.