What if ...? - Hardcover

In short, this is my new favourite book on education. If I was still running a PGCE programme it would be required reading for my students, and I can think of no better choice for a book-study for experienced teachers. Anyone seriously interested in education should read this book. --Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor, Institute of Education

David Didau has written a truly remarkable book. No other book that I know of manages to integrate an in-the-trenches classroom-teaching perspective with an accessible coverage of critical findings from cognitive-science research. --Robert A. Bjork, Distinguished Research Professor, UCLA

This is a great book. Read it. David Didau has done exactly what anyone who knows his work will expect: to write convincingly, knowledgably, engagingly and provocatively about the interface between research and teaching. Almost everyone will find something to disagree with in this book, something to upset you, challenge your beliefs and either make you angry or make you think. However well-informed you are, Didau finds a crack, a weak point from which to infect you with doubt. Nothing is sacred: formative assessment, effect size and growth mindset all come under attack. But there is wisdom on every page, worthy of more detailed thought and study. If you can get beyond the feelings of uncertainty and challenge, you can learn a lot. This book contains the most classroom-focused presentation I know of the importance of key findings from cognitive psychology, such as the need for teachers to understand forgetting, spacing, testing and desirable difficulties. Didau is at heart a teacher; he understands teachers, classrooms and schools. But he understands research too and blends these elements into a coherent whole. Of course, I found a few things to quibble with: confusions over effect size and the difference between working and short-term memory, for example. But even those made me think again about things I thought I had resolved. This is the kind of book you could read quickly, but probably shouldn t. You could read it ten times and each time find something new. There is a canon of about a dozen books that I recommend to teachers most of which are cited in this one. My essential reading list has a new entry. --Professor Robert Coe, PhD , Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM), Durham University

Forewords by Robert A. Bjork and Dylan William. If you feel a bit cross at the presumption of some oik daring to suggest everything you know about education might be wrong, please take it with a pinch of salt. What if everything you knew about education was wrong? is just a title. Of course, you probably think a great many things that aren't wrong. The aim of the book is to help you 'murder your darlings'. David Didau will question your most deeply held assumptions about teaching and learning, expose them to the fiery eye of reason and see if they can still walk in a straight line after the experience. It seems reasonable to suggest that only if a theory or approach can withstand the fiercest scrutiny should it be encouraged in classrooms. David makes no apologies for this; why wouldn't you be sceptical of what you're told and what you think you know? As educated professionals, we ought to strive to assemble a more accurate, informed or at least considered understanding of the world around us.Here, David shares with you some tools to help you question your assumptions and assist you in picking through what you believe. He will stew findings from the shiny white laboratories of cognitive psychology, stir in a generous dash of classroom research and serve up a side order of experience and observation. Whether you spit it out or lap it up matters not. If you come out the other end having vigorously and violently disagreed with him, you'll at least have had to think hard about what you believe. The book draws on research from the field of cognitive science to expertly analyse some of the unexamined meta-beliefs in education. In Part 1; 'Why we're wrong', David dismantles what we think we know; examining cognitive traps and biases, assumptions, gut feelings and the problem of evidence. Part 2 delves deeper - 'Through the threshold' - looking at progress, liminality and threshold concepts, the science of learning, and the difference between novices and experts. In Part 3, David asks us the question 'What could we do differently?' and offers some considered insights into spacing and interleaving, the testing effect, the generation effect, reducing feedback and why difficult is desirable. While Part 4 challenges us to consider 'What else might we be getting wrong?'; cogitating formative assessment, lesson observation, grit and growth, differentiation, praise, motivation and creativity.