Ep 31. Exploring evidence for equitable education with Nidhi Sachdeva and Jim Hewitt

This transcript was created with speech-to-text software.  It was reviewed before posting but may contain errors. Credit to Jazmin Boisclair.

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You can listen to the episode here: Chalk & Talk Podcast.

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Ep 31. Exploring evidence for equitable education with Nidhi Sachdeva and Jim Hewitt

 

[00:00:00] Anna Stokke: Welcome to Chalk and Talk, a podcast about education and math. I'm Anna Stokke, a math professor, and your host. You are listening to episode 31 of Chalk and Talk. My guests in this episode are Dr. Nidhi Sachdeva and Dr. Jim Hewitt. They co-teach a course on the Science of Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, or OISE, at the University of Toronto. They also co-author a newsletter that explores the latest science of learning research and its practical applications.

 

In the first part of the episode, we discussed the innovative Science of Learning course that they designed. It is my hope that more courses like this will become available for educators worldwide. I recently met Nidhi and Jim at researchEd Canada, where they presented on equitable instruction. They reviewed the literature on various instructional techniques to determine what works best for closing the achievement gap.

 

I found their presentation fascinating and thought my listeners would too. In the latter part of this episode, they share their findings with us, so be sure to stay tuned. It was an absolute pleasure to have this insightful and informative conversation with Nidhi and Jim. You won't want to miss it. Just a note, the resource page for this episode lists articles discussed in the episode.

 

Now, without further ado, let's get started.

 

I've got an exciting conversation planned today. I am joined by two people in Toronto, Dr. Nidhi Sachdeva and Dr. Jim Hewitt. Dr. Nidhi Sachdeva has a Ph.D. in education from OISE, that's the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. Her research interests are Microlearning, Cognitive Science and Evidence Informed Instructional Design.

 

She has a Master's in Applied Linguistics from York University and a B.Sc. in Occupational Therapy from Delhi University. She teaches at OISE, and she's received an eCampus Ontario Fellowship to support post-secondary educators with digital fluency. Dr. Jim Hewitt is a professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at OISE.

 

He has a Ph.D. in Educational Technology from OISE and a B.Math in Math and Computer Science from Waterloo. His research focuses on the educational applications of computer-based technologies and he previously taught math and computer science at the secondary level. He teaches educational technology and courses in online teaching and learning.

 

Now, as a team, Nidhi and Jim designed, and they co-teach, a course called Science of Learning to educators and pre-service teachers at OISE, and we're going to hear a lot about that today. They also write a Substat called "The Science of Learning," which is a newsletter examining the latest science of learning research and its implications for instructional practice.

 

And I will put a link to that on the resource page. Welcome to both of you. Welcome to my podcast.

 

[00:03:30] Jim Hewitt: Well, thank you very much. Glad to be here.

 

[00:03:33] Nidhi Sachdeva: Thank you, Anna.

 

[00:03:33] Anna Stokke: I'm excited to talk about your course, which sounds amazing. So, let's start with that. So, why did you decide to design a course on the science of learning?

 

[00:03:43] Jim Hewitt: Well, the idea kind of grew out of work that Nidhi and I had been doing together. So about five years ago, I was feeling a bit disillusioned. I was frustrated by all the different educational theories and all the fads, and it didn't feel like the field of education was making much progress. And at the time I was on sabbatical, so I became really interested in hunting down scientifically rigorous studies.

 

I wanted to know what we could learn about effective teaching, and so I started reading all these review articles and some meta-analyses, and around this time I became aware of a new book called How Learning Happens by Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendrick. It was a really helpful book because it talked about some of the landmark studies in educational research and what the studies can tell us about effective teaching.

 

So around this time, I think it was late 2020, I met Nidhi and she agreed to do a reading course with me. And so, we both started reading How Learning Happens together.

 

[00:04:45] Nidhi Sachdeva: I think I should add that it was Jim who agreed to do the reading course with me. So this was the time when I was in my second year of doctoral program at OISE and I was doing my coursework and among all the courses that I was doing, I had a very strong research interest in microlearning and what that would mean in formal higher education, if there's a place for it, and if there is, how does that look like?

 

So I wanted to take a course, but there wasn't really a specific course in that area of microlearning and higher ed within our course offering. So I wanted to do an independent research and reading course, and I was looking for professors who would be able to supervise me for that kind of course.

 

So I went to Jim, and so that's what I mean, I am glad that he agreed to do the reading course with me, and we put together a reading list. And as a part of that course, Jim was working on that book or reading the book How Learning Happens at the time, and he handed over the book to me and he said, “Let's read this book together and what you could do is as a part of your microlearning assignment, you could develop five or so microlearning videos kind of like a series and see where that takes us and how we can work with that within higher education.”

 

Of course, I did a literature review on microlearning as well, but that's sort of how I got connected to that. And as we did this work, we felt that there was just such great material here in that book for a course on how people learn. And we didn't have a course on this topic at our institution at the time.

 

And we said to each other, “Hey, wouldn't it just be a great idea to build a course like that?”

 

[00:06:20] Anna Stokke: So, it's sort of based on the book, How Learning Happens, by Paul Kirschner and Carl Hendrick, right? That is a great book, and I recommend that anyone read it, but I think it's excellent that you're using that book for a course. So, what are some of the main topics that are covered in the course?

 

[00:06:41] Nidhi Sachdeva: Yeah, so we developed, as we mentioned, using the, the course, using the first edition of the book, How Learning Happens, back in 2020, and what's really great about this book is that it's organized around a set of 28 significant studies in educational psychology that illuminate different aspects of how learning takes place. It's almost like the hits of educational psychology are in there.

 

So what we did was we curated the course with specific chapters from the book and some other resources like other research papers and various large-scale studies and meta-analyses and videos that we felt would be very useful for our students or teacher candidates and even for educators out there.

 

So we developed some 120 learning objectives on topics like cognitive load, dual coding theory explicit instruction or deep processing, importance of prior knowledge. We also talk about David Geary's evolutionary educational theory, ritual practice. We cover multimedia principles, we talk about self-efficacy, motivation, and a bunch of other topics in there.

 

[00:07:44] Anna Stokke: Okay, sounds great. So my understanding as well is that you incorporate some of the learning techniques taught in the course within your instructional design. Can you elaborate on that?

 

[00:07:57] Jim Hewitt: Yes, we do our best to incorporate these techniques in our own teaching. Students have commented on the fact that we practice what we preach, which is nice to hear. So, yeah, we teach our course online. We have an hour-long Zoom meeting each week. And the rest of the time, students do assignments and have text-based discussions.

 

In an asynchronous environment that we have called Pepper, and we teach the entire course using explicit instruction. We work very hard not to overload our students. We have lots of retrieval practice in the form of brain dumps and polls and mini-quizzes. And we use a variety of tools to make connections to students prior knowledge and experiences.

 

One of our more interesting innovations in the course is the midweek micro lesson. This was Nidhi's invention. We were worried about situations where we have a Zoom session on a Monday, and then students don't think about our course again until the following Sunday. So, we thought let's introduce this midweek micro lesson that will mail out to them halfway through the week and what we do is we send them a short self-contained five-minute lesson, usually in a video format on some really interesting topic that, you know, something that really kind of sparks their interest.

 

And that gets them thinking more about the readings and the material that they're studying. And Nidhi usually ends the microlesson with a little test-me quiz, so that students can make sure they understand the lesson. The micro lesson itself is a great example of explicit instruction. But all of this is to say that we make a real effort to embody the principles we teach in our course because it helps the students learn better if we do so.

 

[00:09:38] Anna Stokke: Awesome. So, just to follow up on that, and Nidhi, I'll ask you this, because I understand you know a lot about microlearning, so when you talk about a microlesson, that's generally a very short lesson, in this case, a short video, so, what should the length be?

 

[00:09:57] Nidhi Sachdeva: With microlesson, the idea of length, the way we design or we talk about is not so much in terms of timing or how long it should be or like a time frame. We always talk about, especially within our course as well, from the notion of mental complexity and cognitive overload.

 

So yes, it should be short, but you'll want to think about things like, you know, from a few seconds to a certain number of minutes. But if we focus so much on the idea of time frame or how long it is going to be within a scope of something that you can measure in seconds or minutes or whatever, then what we may miss out on is that you could still overload someone, cognitively overload someone, even if it's less number of minutes or seconds, right?

 

So, when you pay attention to the mental complexity part, when you pay attention to if you're going through the loops of covering prior knowledge and giving students, or whoever's doing that microlesson, giving them enough exposure to explicit instruction, clear instruction, and how to do that, then I think that's really important.

 

Of course, you don't want to make it like an hour because then that's sort of really further along, but having a clear focus, short, non-overwhelming, well-organized, explicitly sort of explained lesson would be in our mind a microlesson. So I've done a lot of work in my doctoral research in that also.

 

[00:11:19] Anna Stokke: Okay, got it. It just reminded me because in my classes, I use short little videos to do the worked example effect. When students are working on their own, I want them to see a worked example and then sort of mimic that and then do problems on their own. So I don't like to go past six or seven minutes. Mainly because I think attention span is something I have to think about with students. But yeah, so anyway, it was just reminding me of that. So I was just curious about that.

 

[00:11:50] Jim Hewitt: It's a really great thing for math, isn't it, because you have these things and you can reuse them each year and students can stop them and rewind them and see each step.

 

[00:12:00] Anna Stokke: Absolutely. And the students do appreciate it. I mean, certainly, I teach direct instruction when I'm teaching new concepts, but I do give them these little mini videos and my colleagues use them too. It works pretty well.

 

[00:12:12] Nidhi Sachdeva: And I'll just add if you don't mind here. I have younger kids and they are learning math. And what ends up happening is when something's not clear, so their math program does offer these short videos that they can watch if they get stuck on a specific step. And then they know, they automatically now know, they've been trained to do that, they just go back to this video, this short microlearning video, and can watch these steps.

 

And it's usually around like that seven, eight-minute mark. So the point I'm trying to make here is that it not just works for like adult learners, but it also works really, really well with younger learners too, if they have access to it, especially in the context of math learning also.

 

[00:12:50] Anna Stokke: Back to your course. So, you were kind enough to give me access to your Pepper page, so this is like your learning management system that you use for your course. And I did notice that you discuss educational myths, so for example, learning styles and the learning pyramid.

 

I'm wondering, are the students surprised to hear that some of these things are myths?

 

[00:13:14] Nidhi Sachdeva: Yes, they're, they're very surprised, actually. So what we do now is that we actually have a dedicated folder in our learning environment called “Educational Myths.” And what we do is that each week we post an additional reading, sort of busting a popular myth. Could be learning pyramid or this notion of left brain, right brain, or things like learning styles, as you mentioned, or multitasking, or even things like that teaching facts is not important, but busting myths of that sort.

 

So, what we find is that students really enjoy this folder and they wait actually for the latest article that we're about to share or we will be sharing that week. And sometimes we've also seen that they also share some myths that they come across. They feel it's just getting to be a bit of an activity for them, or they are right up there in the interest now.

 

Oh, I came across this, so say they share that. And students do often respond with surprise. Sometimes they respond with frustration as well, and anger even I've seen. Many of our students are practicing educators or even learning designers, and when they learn about some of these popular myths, they often react by saying, “Well, why is this the first time I'm hearing of this? Why haven't I heard this before?”

 

And I remember when we first introduced the learning style myth in one of our groups, one student came to me and said, “I feel like my whole life is a lie as a teacher.” And then I thought to myself, it's actually funny. First I laughed at it. And then you think, it's actually not so funny at the same time because it really affects them, right?

 

Finding this out so late in their career and that really sometimes upsets them too. So anyway, we started the myths folder in our course as a bit of an experiment in the beginning, but it's now a regular part of the course.

 

[00:15:02] Anna Stokke: Yeah, I think that's a great idea. And there are a lot of myths out there. So, I think it is important to address these. Unfortunately, sometimes the myths are actually taught, though. That's sort of what I've discovered from speaking with education students. What sort of feedback do you receive from students who've taken the course?

 

Do they find the course beneficial? And is the course popular?

 

[00:15:28] Jim Hewitt: Yes, we get really good feedback. Students tell us they really like the course they like the readings, the discussions. Students sometimes have these “aha” moments, like when we talk about the differences between how experts learn and how novices learn. Or when we explain what biologically primary knowledge is and what's biologically secondary.

 

I think Pamela Snow explained that really well on a recent podcast. But this is new to them and they really appreciate hearing about it. We also have an online environment which is very active with student discussions and contributions. And many of them tell us that this information is very new, as you say, it's not always something they encounter in their regular teacher training.

 

So, our course evaluations have been very positive. Some students tell us they took the course because of a friend's recommendation. And the fact that students are recommending the course to their friends means a lot to us. It shows that we're having an impact. So, we do think that there's a real thirst for this kind of content among educators.

 

[00:16:33] Anna Stokke: And I'm not surprised that students are happy to get the course because it makes sense to get a course where you actually learn about how students learn because it's going to help you as a teacher.

 

[00:16:46] Nidhi Sachdeva: Yeah, I just wanted to add here. We've actually taught the course, well, the first time we taught it was fall 2021, and I think we've taught it about 10 times since, in different forms, actually at OISE. And altogether about 400 students have taken it so far. So, yeah, we're very excited for what we've been able to do so far.

 

And I think, hoping to continue to teach and share this really important area of literature in educational psychology and in education generally with our future educators as well.

 

[00:17:17] Anna Stokke: I thought we'd shift and talk a bit about equitable instruction. You gave an excellent presentation at researchEd in Toronto, you co-presented, I attended the presentation, and actually it was one of the best presentations that I attended, I thought. And the title of your presentation was “The Science of Learning and Equitable Instruction.”

 

So why did you choose that topic?

 

[00:17:46] Nidhi Sachdeva: First of all, thank you for attending researchED Toronto and being there and attending the conference and just those really kind words that you said about the session and the conference. So talking about equity. So equity is a really, really important theme. Definitely today, even more so. And again, it's very important both in schools and in teacher education programs.

 

And there are a lot of ideas about how to achieve equity. So, as we built our course, we started to see a lot of studies that had implications for equity. And we became very, very interested in this. So, we decided we wanted to examine the equity literature more closely, particularly with respect to large-scale studies.

 

So, things like what instruction strategies have the best track record in terms of promoting equity, and that turned into our presentation at researchEd Toronto.

 

[00:18:40] Anna Stokke: And I think it was really well received in general. I saw a lot of people there. A lot of people were taking pictures of your slides. I mean, when I saw it, I thought, “Oh, yes, I have to have you on the podcast to talk about that because there's definitely an interest.”

 

So, you reviewed the literature on various teaching strategies in the context of improving educational outcomes for struggling students. So, let's talk about your findings. But first, what do you mean by equitable instruction, and why is it important?

 

[00:19:14] Jim Hewitt: Well, there are many different ways to study equity, but Nidhi and I are focused on academic outcomes. And we find that especially in some topics like mathematics, there can be a huge difference in student ability in a single class. And we want to know, how do you shrink the achievement gap?

 

And what has worked in the past? What can research tell us about this? Part of the problem is that we have to recognize that children start from different places. Some start from a position of disadvantage, and different children will have different needs and some are going to require more supports than others to succeed academically.

 

But a good indicator for us of improved equity. Would be to see children who are struggling in math, say, to start to succeed and do better and better in math over time. I think we're interested in this because we feel that outcomes are important. Academic success, particularly in a subject like math, opens up all sorts of career opportunities and it improves a person's chances in life.

 

And ultimately, of course, it also produces a healthier, more diverse community. So, we feel it's very important.

 

[00:20:23] Anna Stokke: Absolutely. And I'll just follow up on a couple of things you said there. So for sure, there are lots of gaps among students in math, and because math is really cumulative, that can snowball, right? It doesn't get better, it only gets worse, unless there's a way to sort of narrow those gaps. And we do want students to have opportunities.

 

These inequities can start early, and parents who can afford it, they'll get help for their kids. And those who can't afford it, they won't get that help. And so this is just making things worse, right? So, we do want to make sure that we're thinking about ways that are going to narrow those gaps in the classroom.

 

[00:21:08] Jim Hewitt: Exactly, that's exactly what we're trying to figure out. What's the best way to do that? And so we decided to challenge ourselves for this presentation at researchEd, and we did an extensive literature review.

 

[00:21:21] Anna Stokke: We talked about equity. What about inclusion? Is there a difference between equitable instruction and inclusive instruction?

 

[00:21:30] Nidhi Sachdeva: Inclusion is about creating classroom environments where all students feel valued, like they belong, and no one feels left out or left behind, and everyone feels free to participate and feels that they have a contribution to make, and they can feel proud about it.

 

An inclusive classroom is one where differences are respected and honoured, so inclusion is also really, really valuable, and there's been a lot of great research on that as well. So, we truly believe that both inclusion and equity are important, but for the purposes of our researchED presentation, when we were looking at the literature, we focused on equity because, as Jim mentioned, we were more interested in figuring out what strategies are effective in closing achievement gaps, so specifically academic gaps.

 

[00:22:18] Anna Stokke: All right, now you found that three whole-class instructional strategies have been shown to reduce inequities. So, let's talk about those. The first you mentioned was explicit instruction. So, can you recap some of the main components of explicit instruction?

 

[00:22:35] Jim Hewitt: Sure. I think people sometimes have the wrong idea about explicit instruction. You know, I've seen people refer to it as if it was the same thing as lecturing or rote learning or passive learning, or they think it's just regular teaching. And I think those are misrepresentations and misunderstandings because explicit instruction is something bigger than all those things.

 

So explicit instruction is about teaching in ways that best support learning, and it generally involves a bunch of different things. First, as a teacher, you have to be very aware that students have limited working memories, so this means you can't teach them too much at once, or they'll get overwhelmed.

 

You need to teach new concepts or skills by breaking down material into chunks, and you need to be able to think about what students already know and don't know and try to connect the new concepts in the lesson to ideas that are already familiar to them, and you need to be really precise in your language.

 

You have got to be very sensitive to the vocabulary you're using because unfamiliar words can easily confuse students, and this is particularly a problem with many second-language students. Another part of the process is showing students how to apply the new knowledge and provide them with some examples, worked examples, as you were talking about earlier. And then you need a period of guided practice where students try to apply what they've learned with support from the teacher.

 

And then ultimately, with practice and support and feedback, students will be able to apply the new knowledge or skills independently. And at this, point, the students own the new knowledge, so, so good explicit instruction requires a lot of planning and thought. And one of the ways that you know you've been successful in explicit instruction is if you have a high success rate and students can grasp the new ideas quickly.

 

If you can do this, then students will feel good about themselves. It'll increase their confidence, and they'll be more motivated. But one of the best ways to motivate a student is to help them be successful at it. And so all these components together, that's what makes up explicit instruction.

 

[00:24:47] Anna Stokke: That was a phenomenal summary of explicit instruction. So, thank you very much for that. I do agree that it's often misunderstood or caricatured, so we do have to take these opportunities to define it correctly. You stated that explicit instruction is inclusive instruction. So what did you mean by that?

 

[00:25:09] Nidhi Sachdeva: Explicit instruction is great for all learners, because it's about starting from where the learner is, in younger learners, we would say where the child is, and gradually helping them build these new skills and abilities. However, it's particularly beneficial for students who are struggling.

 

These are the students who benefit the most from clear, direct guidance and support. So, students who are struggling for one reason or another, they tend to do best with explicit instruction. And if you look at research studies, you'll see that explicit instruction is often recommended for children who are on the autism spectrum or the ones who suffer from learning disabilities like dyslexia or ADHD.

 

So, this makes sense if you think about it, effective explicit instruction is all about clarity and breaking down information and minimizing the load on working memory. So, as Jim mentioned, you don't want to overload the learner. So, this is why we say explicit instruction is the inclusive way to teach, or explicit instruction is inclusive instruction.

 

So, if you're teaching the class using explicit instruction, then a greater number of students can benefit from it.

 

[00:26:25] Anna Stokke: And it reminds me of something Pamela Snow said on the podcast previously, is that explicit instruction is necessary for some, hurts no one, and benefits all. She attributes it to someone else, but I associate it with her because she said it on the podcast. So that's essentially what you're saying as well, I think.

 

[00:26:48] Nidhi Sachdeva: Yes, that's right.

 

[00:26:49] Jim Hewitt: That's a great summary.

 

[00:26:51] Anna Stokke: So, you also said that there's good evidence that explicit instruction improves educational outcomes. So, what type of evidence is there?

 

[00:27:02] Jim Hewitt: Yes, there are, there are a lot of studies that show that explicit instruction is effective. Hattie, for example, looked at meta-analyses and calculated a, you know, a good effect size of 0.59, but the point that Nidhi and I are making is not simply that explicit instruction is effective. The point we're trying to make is that it's both effective, and it helps level the playing field.

 

It prevents struggling students from being left farther and farther behind. There's good evidence from a number of studies that disadvantaged students benefit from explicit instruction. There's a math study by Kroesbergen and colleagues from the Netherlands that randomly assigned low-achieving students to one of two conditions, either an explicit instruction condition or a small group constructivist condition, and the explicit condition was shown to be much more beneficial for low-achieving students.

 

And there's a kind of another study by Andersen and Andersen that looked at 56,000 students across 825 schools and found that again, teacher-directed explicit approaches tended to reduce educational inequalities, while the more inquiry-based approaches tended to increase it. We found another paper by Baker published in 2002, that was a meta-analysis of 17 studies that again identifies explicit teaching as one of the things that helps low-achieving students learn math.

 

In some ways, it should be obvious why explicit instruction supports equity, because if you're explicit to students about what they're trying to learn, if you break it down for them, if you provide lots of guidance and feedback and practice, then students don't have to guess what the teacher wants them to learn.

 

You know, the problem we sometimes have with inquiry-based methods or discovery-based methods is that they tend to privilege students who have backgrounds like the teacher. You know, students who have a sense of what the teacher wants or who have access to educational resources at home. And this can widen the achievement gap instead of narrowing it.

 

[00:28:58] Nidhi Sachdeva: I just want to add something there. So when a child, let's say, does not receive explicit instruction, let's say in the topic like math, but then they have to do an assignment or some kind of task, and it was done in sort of the more popular forms of teaching, like inquiry-based or discovery, that child then goes home and if they have access to support at home, then they'll get it, and the parents will probably be doing the job of doing explicit instruction.

 

If the parents are not available or not able to do that for some reason, and if they have means, then they'll send that child to a tutoring center or some kind of learning space where that specific requirement was, will be fulfilled so that the child can do the task. This is the big problem. So in the end, the product seems like the task was achieved, but the explicit instruction was still missing.

 

And that's where the problem with equity or the challenge of equity comes is that the ones who had these means available to them. They did it and the task was completed, but the ones who didn't will not be able to do that. And that just continues to widen this gap for learners who do come from disadvantaged backgrounds. It could be their background knowledge or other reasons, right?

 

And that's why if we gave explicit instruction to everyone, then we'd be taking care of that, or at least addressing that issue. And everybody would be able to do the final assigned task, level playing field.

 

[00:30:27] Anna Stokke: All right, so you also talked about Project Follow Through can you say a bit about that?

 

[00:30:32] Nidhi Sachdeva: Yeah, Project Follow Through was a massive, a huge study back in the 1960s and 70s, that focused specifically on equity. In fact, it's probably the biggest educational study in history. And the goal of the study was to compare a bunch of different teaching methods to see which one best help children from low-income and other socially disadvantaged communities succeed academically.

 

So, what they did was they tested 22 different teaching models. Some models focused on discovery learning with lots of student inquiry, some models examined open learning. There were models that looked at fostering self-esteem. Some were all about developing students' cognitive skills, where students learn collaboratively.

 

And then there was this one method called direct instruction, the uppercase DI, which was the explicit learning model. Now, each of these 22 models at the time of the study were tested in schools in economically depressed areas of the United States, and there were control groups for each of these models.

 

Anyway, so this project ran for about eight or ten years before the results were tabulated and released, and what they discovered was that the students in direct instruction condition made huge gains. They excelled in language, they excelled in math, they were more confident, and they were also better problem solvers.

 

And in comparison, students in the other models who were, let's say, taught using discovery learning or who were taught thinking skills, didn't seem to benefit at all. And in some cases, they did worse.

 

[00:32:10] Anna Stokke: And, what happened after the results were released?

 

[00:32:15] Jim Hewitt: Well, that was the funny part because few people objected to it and there was a bit of paper writing back and forth. But after that, it was kind of completely ignored. I was, I think 56 years old, 57 years old before I learned about Project Follow Through and I've got two educational degrees.

 

I had never heard of it. I've gone through teacher training, I've got a master's, a doctorate - I had never heard of it. I think what happened was the wrong team won on this case, you know, back then direct instruction was associated with behaviourist learning, and there was constructivist methods.

 

And the story of Project Follow Through didn't really fit into the narratives of teacher education programs back then, and it just generally became lost in time. It was fascinating and a bit of a shock to me to discover it and learn about it.

 

[00:33:13] Anna Stokke: So what about today? Did they teach about Project Follow Through in teacher education programs today?

 

[00:33:20] Jim Hewitt: Not that I knew of. Nidhi and I, of course, put it into our course. But we think it's fascinating. And it's a tremendous story to tell. Not only about the results of the research, but what happened afterwards. And how it was, it's been lost in time.

 

[00:33:37] Nidhi Sachdeva: We do usually teach it in the week when we bring all the themes together and we talk about explicit instruction towards the end of the course. And Jim and I, whoever's doing the lead teaching that week, will talk about the story of Project Follow Through.

 

And I, as a speaker, as a presenter in the moment, I feel like, you know, I have these goosebumps when I'm talking about it and I'm getting a bit emotional with all the results that we saw and the emotional part also comes from that nothing happened out of it.

 

And so, students also respond with, just like with learning myths, this is one of those things, like this is not a myth. This is the truth that they should know about it and why. So there's like this again, surprise, frustration and anger, all of that together, I don't know if there's a word for that combined feeling, but I feel it literally every single time during that week when I'm teaching.

 

And I have found myself saying this to students as well, but I know I've said this to Jim many times. What would the world be like today had we listened to the results of Project Follow Through? Would our discussions around diversity, equity, inclusion be different today? It was so clear, the results, and it wasn't like a result of one year, it lasted for 10 or so years.

 

It's the longest study ever conducted, and anyway, it just makes me really emotional every time I talk about it, actually.

 

[00:34:56] Jim Hewitt: Yeah, like how many lives could have been changed if over the past 50 or so years, we had embraced the science rather than embracing what was convenient for our beliefs at the time? It's staggering.