(with chapter contributions from Jo Jukes)
Nimish Lad has taken Shimamura’s learning model and combined it excellently with practical strategies to apply each part of the framework proposed by the original author. His efforts to explain each part of MARGE with concrete examples familiar to classroom teachers make it instantly accessible and immediately gets the reader thinking about how to integrate the theory into their existing practice.
Lad’s chapter on Motivation is one of the most interesting and sensible commentaries on the subject I have come across. The link to curiosity is made right at the start of the chapter and that just seems to make perfect sense with the techniques that follow. Using big picture questions is not a strategy to provide a ‘hook’ as was so frequently suggested to me early in my career. Instead, through carefully crafting big picture questions and the related component questions that feed into them, we can show pupils how what they are doing in any given moment relates to the bigger aims we are working towards. This emphasis on relevance provides the why that pupils are so often searching for. Equipped with an understanding of why this lesson is important in the big picture, motivation and the associated curiosity are likely to increase. We are also treated to refreshing clarity on the matter of storytelling. Another frequently advised yet poorly defined technique throughout my early (and subsequent) career. I even remember having one observer tell me that I should construct a story about teeth themed around fractions because storytelling is ‘good’ and our topic was teeth… However, there is no such confusion in Nimish Lad’s account. He is clear that the features of storytelling: character, conflict, causality and complications, are the abstract concepts that should be taken and applied to new learning across the curriculum to help it become more memorable. Of course, this makes perfect sense. It is the principle of storytelling that we need to harness rather than mimicking the traditional act of it. I can only read with envy at the newly qualified teachers reading this chapter early enough in their career to avoid the kind of muddled, confusion riddled attempts at telling stories in every lesson (sometimes accompanied by costume) that made up part of my early career. To make this section even more relatable, we are given a case study that really brings home the nuts and bolts of what we are to take from the chapter.
His efforts to explain each part of MARGE with concrete examples familiar to classroom teachers make it instantly accessible
The second chapter: Attend, begins with a summary of what the theory in action looks like before we delve into the substantial detail that follows. Sharing explicit learning goals is the first concrete example of applying theory into practice and links seamlessly with what we now know about motivation – by being explicit about what the aims are for one learning episode and where they link to the big picture aims, we are able to not only direct attention but also deepen motivation. This is the first hint at one of Nimish Lad’s central points. MARGE is not a checklist. We do not do 5 minutes of motivation building and then onto 10 minutes of getting pupil attention. Rather, MARGE is an interconnected framework that we can apply any part of at any point in the learning process to attempt to improve it. Often, one action will affect more than one aspect of MARGE. We are also introduced to the three Cs – categorise, compare and contrast in the context of directing pupil attention. By thinking deeply about what we want pupils to attend to when they are presented with new information, we are able to construct questions and tasks that facilitate the type of thinking we want them to do. Categorising, contrasting (looking for differences between new and existing knowledge) and comparing (looking for similarities between new and existing knowledge) allow us to heavily influence where pupil attention is focused, meaning they are more likely to notice that which is most useful to far transfer of knowledge and connection to existing knowledge – either what is the same, what is different or how it can be categorised.
The third part of the MARGE – Relate – has a section on schematic representations which helpfully summarises the uses of representing the schema related to a topic. Firstly, and here is another link… they help to direct pupil attention by simultaneously connecting and isolating elements of knowledge to be learned. They also help to activate prior knowledge in a way that is most helpful to the ‘to be learned’ knowledge because the representation reveals the connections to prior knowledge, making understanding more stable. Overall, they vastly reduce cognitive load and allow for a more focused, deep consideration about certain parts of the learned material or how different parts of it relate to each other. This is far superior to the disconnected and necessarily shallow understanding that is the cognitively demanding and inefficient alternative. Nimish Lad also provides several examples of different schematic representations alongside an explanation of their key features. As someone who has used concept mapping frequently throughout their career and has somewhat successfully taught pupils to use the method themselves to make sense of demanding text in Reading lessons, I was delighted to see it included and equally delighted to be challenged on the ‘why’ and consider when an alternative model might be more appropriate.
Generate is the fourth part of the MARGE model and Nimish Lad includes a brilliant summary of the generation effect and the production effect. Generating responses rather than being given them has been shown to improve learning. Lad links this to one of the central uses of retrieval practice and offers a number of practical applications of this, not least the importance of cuing generation as a scaffolded approach. The production effect states that if you ‘do something’ with new knowledge quickly after learning it, you are more likely to retain it. This is a simple yet fundamentally crucial sentence that all new teachers (in particular) should read and that we should all be reminded of. How often do we apply this straightforward consideration to our task design? How often do we really critically consider the extent to which our tasks require pupils to do something with the most important knowledge they have just learnt? Whatever the answer for you, I would suggest that we could all benefit from checking how often and how well we go through this process.
The final part of MARGE is Evaluate. In this chapter, we are treated to a summary of interleaving and how to avoid the illusion of knowing. Nimish Lad offers the excellent contrast between knowing something and being familiar with it. He also makes the point that we are often familiar with something that, if we allow ourselves to think hard about, we probably do know. But, he also points out that the feeling of familiarity is often enough to make us feel that further thought is not necessary and that we have already attained an adequate depth of understanding – the illusion of knowing. Simply being aware of this likelihood and directing pupils to self-explain in order to expose the depth of their current understanding and see the need to drive deeper will improve anyone’s teaching. The message is clear, don’t be satisfied with surface level familiarity. Push for depth, connection and contextual variation. Happily, Lad also provides an expert section on the use of flashcards that is a practical guide for one way to push for this depth and connection. This is something I have personally under-used in my Primary teaching career but Nimish Lad’s writing on the subject inspires me to give it a more consistent go, to use flashcards as a way of developing a culture of thinking hard and remembering.
This excellent book concludes with a reminder that MARGE is not a checklist. It is a framework through which to view what is going on in our lessons at any given moment and to review what we could do to improve that for pupils. The cross overs and links between the different aspects of MARGE populate the book and are a metaphor for how to apply the model itself. Connect the parts, feed from one into the next and back again. For example, use clear learning goals to direct attention but also to connect to longer term goals and the motivation that will come from that.
This is a book that should be read by anyone who has an interest in reframing the way they view the teaching and learning process but wants to do so in a way that is familiar and compliments other cognitive science inspired approaches to understanding the complex task of teaching. For this reason, and the fact that it is a brilliant framework through which to view teaching in the early part of one’s career, it is a must read. Digestible, impactful and full of light-bulb moments.
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