Matt Gibson spends a lot of his time thinking about how people learn. As a fifth-grade math teacher and instructor in New Orleans, Gibson has become increasingly interested in effective teaching based on cognitive science - otherwise known as the science of learning - and how it can help teachers improve their practice.
This is largely due to Gibson’s participation as a coach at the Louisiana Educator Resource Center. The Center is a member of the Dean’s Network for Influence “Learning through Scientific Design”, collaborating on 10 training programs for educators — some in colleges of education, others in alternative certification institutions — working on the simple premise: knowing how to teach should begin with understanding how people learn.
The network has set out to redesign courses and clinical experiences to ensure that future teachers are better equipped to apply the principles of learning science in their practice. Now in his third year, his mission has expanded beyond primary education teachers to include better teaching and support for beginning teachers when they are in the classroom as part of a practicum or phase of teaching students in their program.
The team at Deans for Impact convinced first-hand how beginner teachers can improve by working together with high-quality trainers to hone their skills with science in mind. Through real-world examples and videos, let’s explore what happens when coaches like Matt Gibson use science to help a novice teacher grow.
The journey of a coach
Deans for Impact workshops begin by building an understanding by the trainer of the principles of science learning and related “teacher actions” (ie follow-up actions made by teachers), which they then apply to their own instructional coaching.
When we asked Gibson about this experience, he recalled how early he had been introduced to the idea of involving students in hard thinking: long-term memory and to be able to regain them later.
Principles like these have implications for the instructions teachers give, and for Gibson it was no different. For example, he had long known that higher-order questions were important to student learning, but now he knew why: because these are questions that encourage students to think carefully about content, which means information is more likely to be retained.
Connecting these points began to change Gibson’s expectations of the novice teacher and of himself - a process he described as taking place in parallel:
“As I saw teachers think a lot about students, I realized I thought a lot about teachers when I coached them,” Gibson told us in an interview. So I started thinking about ways I could ask teachers to think carefully about what I’m asking them to do — something as simple as, ‘What impact will this have on students’ thinking?’
The science of coaching in action
As new questions like these hard thoughts came to mind, Gibson began working with a novice teacher who completed training at the Louisiana Educators’ Resource Center named Michael Marie. Gibson’s goal was to help Murray think more deeply about his decision-making in teaching - a process that was supposed to be based on learning science.
What follows is a series of excerpts from the actual training between Gibson and Maria. You will first read excerpts from an interview we conducted with Gibson about what was going on in his head as a coach at all times during the session; then you will have the opportunity to see through videos how he applied the science of learning to the choices he made along the way - setting an example for Mary to use in her teaching.
Click on each image to see excerpts and videos.
Importantly ‘Aha!’
From here, Gibson and Marie entered the rehearsal phase of the process, rehearsing questions that would direct students to think hard about the right content and preparing Mary to repeat the lesson with that in mind.
Refining one’s practice in this way is a key step in teaching — but it can only happen when conceptual understanding is established or changed. To use Gibson’s expression, these are “Aha!” Moments you watch as a coach - the moment you see someone making sense of something critical to their approach for the first time.
Mary’s “Aha!” it happened the moment he removed the place of thinking from himself as a teacher and instead thought about what his students needed to engage in thinking hard. He summed up this change through a useful metaphor: “It is like the expression: ‘You can take a horse into the water …’ You can bring a student to the answer, but they will fully understand the idea only when they think and experience it for themselves. As my coach, Matt helped me think about my practice that way, which helped me do the same for my students. ”
This is what it means to apply the lens of the science of learning to what is happening in the classroom. Understanding how learning happens means understanding both the “what” and “why” of teaching and learning. As Gibson told us, “Even after 13 years in the classroom, learning about the principles of learning science has really changed me as a coach and as a teacher. That gave me a name and an explanation for many things I have already thought about. That allowed me to put it all together and say, “Okay. That’s why we do it. “
Matt Gibson’s journey to study science gave him fresh eyes to see the richness of his practice. As a result, he is now able to help a new generation of teachers like Michael Maria do the same.