The gradual decline of effective teacher modelling – why tech can often hinder modelling

The death of modelling – why analogue teaching is the bridge to deeper pupil understanding.

There’s an element of teaching that is dying, withering on the pedagogical vine, and it is one that holds the key to deeper pupil understanding, more effective teaching, and a dynamic, adaptive and responsive approach. Its bountiful harvest is sadly often eclipsed by the seeming efficiencies of digital curriculum presentation and so, quietly, and without anyone seeming to notice, it has remained shaded, away from the glare and fanfare of louder, seemingly swifter approaches, tactics and software.

Modelling is a dying art. And modelling is where the magic lies. Modelling is the bridge between excellently designed curriculum resources and what subsequently goes on in our pupils’ heads that the science of learning has focused on with such precision in recent years. Modelling is the glue, the catalyst and the weaving together of abstract content into meaning making by the teacher’s expert thinking and is what illuminates, connects and sense makes in the mind of the novice learner. Modelling is the switch that causes the light bulb moment, it’s the hand that causes the penny to drop and in a world of PowerPoint presentations, it is actually the teacher modelling that makes things “click” for students.

But modelling is often not championed or focused on with the same precision as techniques that are used for checking understanding. We are increasingly well versed in cold calling, retrieval practice, using mini whiteboards but these frequently assume that children already have something ready to share, to retrieve, to remember – an emerging idea or a gradually establishing understanding to interrogate. But how do we get to that point? We cannot simply circumvent the need to show children how to do things, or how things work, or why things happen and leapfrog to the retrieval. The words of the famous children’s story “We’re going on a bear hunt” always spring to mind when I think of modelling curriculum content; there is, put simply, no way to teach well without modelling and making expert thinking visible through effective modelling. As the narrator in Bear Hunt says, “We can’t go over it. We can’t go under it. Oh, no! WE’VE GOT TO GO THROUGH IT!”

And it is this, “going through it” and doing so effectively that is seemingly a dying art. I see hundreds of lessons in many dozens of schools every year and as I visit classrooms, talk to children and teachers, and work with teams on their curriculum design and pedagogy there is frequently a pause when I say, “So how are we going to model this?” In an age where pre prepared slides, screens and prompts are often the default, there is not the need to approach the teaching with the same degree of “analogue thinking” that was required pre mass tech. Before digital resources were king of the classroom, modelling was literally front and centre. Teachers had to draw, annotate, explain, unpack and reveal in real time exactly how a text or process or diagram or idea worked. There will always be a need to have some pre prepared diagrams and resources on hand but the default to everything pre prepared does create a potential modelling void. Teacher large scale handwritten explanations coincided with natural gestures, underlinings, circlings, arrow drawing, font size changes, all narrated in real time and making their expert thinking visible in embodied explanations that required gesture, explanation, opportunities to model slight errors or amendments, a deeply human and connected way to link content, thinking and concept. And because the models were often drawn in real time, they functioned in very much a similar way to the visualisers that are championed now. But the difference was that the modelling was big, it was large scale on a big board which loops in children’s spatial thinking and proprioception. It neatly ties in beat and designed gesture, both of which we know can support working memory and enhance learning. It provided the novelty of the teacher’s hand and arm movement as well as their facial expression and they modelled not only the process but their own retrieval and thinking. Large scale live modelling provides opportunities to harness attention as we are hard wired to tune into movement, and there is not much that is more static than a PowerPoint.  It was also slower, and slow modelling is not a bad thing. In a world where screen transitions in children’s programmes can change multiple times and frames in a second, the slower analogue modelling that tunes into 300,000 years of how we process information and make sense of the world, actually aligns with the need for language, processing time, a slower introduction of new material in order to avoid attentional overwhelm. The pace of analogue modelling allows for greater processing time for both teacher and pupil. The frenetic pace of children’s lives, especially their digital lives, is not how the human brain has evolved to learn. Simple, clear, expert modelling looping in opportunities for children to see the hand, eye, mouth and thinking of their teacher expert aligns with much of what we know about attentional resources, cognitive load theory and making meaning.

Modelling is often the poor relation in CPD and professional discourse. It is potentially because it can be unique to each discipline as well as each age group. The way you model in a Y1 art lesson is going to be very different to Y3 English, Y9 music or A level physics. But modelling is how we reveal the picture of each discipline, how we introduce children to the landscape of our subject, the topography of its concepts and help them not only find a single route through that which we’re talking about that day but how each journey is connected, how to navigate and how to make sense of where they are. The language of importance and connection therefore needs to feature highly in modelling. Our novice learners whether we’re introducing them to magnetism or Macbeth have not met this content before and literally need telling which are the important bits and where the connections lie. If we’re constantly just clicking through a series of PowerPoint postcards and not narrating the journey with all its twists, turns, missed junctions and scenic routes then we are not teaching – we’re just throwing content at kids. Modelling is storytelling, it’s diagnostic storytelling in that you are aware of the expert story you want to tell but you are aware where children are literally going to lose the plot and so you emphasise with dramatic pedagogical emphasis and precision the scenes you want them to remember and understand. There is no point putting in a showstopping pedagogical performance if the audience isn’t with you. Teachers are not simply content explaining automatons, they are bridge builders between the known and the unknown, the misunderstood and the deeply connected. Modelling is the bridge that takes children across this cognitive chasm. Without it, we can leave them floundering and stranded with not only nothing to retrieve, but essentially a whole suitcase of misconceptions to drag along with them.

Modelling also requires sound subject knowledge. We need to know not only what we are going to be explaining but how it connects to what has come before, what will come next and where the thorny and gnarly misconceptions are likely to lie. Great modelling therefore requires the experience of knowing the content, being well versed in where the content will provide tricky bits and how to overcome these. This is then woven seamlessly into a narrative that explains and explores not only the what but the what it’s not, the parameters, errors and versions of a lesson’s focus. It therefore cannot be outsourced or circumvented or replaced by a neat pre prepared resource. Modelling includes not just the how to do it, but the “how many of you are with me on this” and the “Where might we be going wrong” and “Is it still right if we do this?” Modelling is the lesson’s window for how to do things but also the lesson space where assessment is its pedagogical bestie. Modelling is not simply making expert thinking visible; it’s where we check on the developing expertise of our children. If modelling is the superhero, then assessment, is its trusty sidekick. Without modelling though we have limited cognitive momentum. We have put the brakes on progress as we do not then illuminate the hidden world of the expert thinker. Modelling is therefore the efficient sharing of our thinking and doing so with clarity, precision and a sharp focus on exactly what we want children to think, notice and learn. If we don’t know how we’re going to model it, we’re not teaching it.

Modelling is also often misunderstood as just “explaining things at the front” which for many subject and age groups simply doesn’t fly. If children are to understand flexibility or the feel of magnetism or the difference between soft and smooth then they need to have a hands on, not just eyes on experience. Modelling doesn’t just occur from the front; it is in the task designs and opportunities we put in front of our children, and it is in the understanding of what can simply be told and what actually needs to be experienced and then talked about and discussed. Modelling is also victim to the curse of knowledge. We often forget as experienced adults that our children are novices and are yet to amass the huge swathe of sensory and interpersonal experiences that we have had. Therefore, our modelling needs to ensure it sits on a firm foundation of concrete experiences as well as modelling of procedural, abstract or creative processes. The madness of children being introduced to the parts of a flowering plant via an AI produced image of a plant rather than a real one will never cease to make me shake my head in despair, or the introduction of magnetism and the associated concept of attract and repel without ever having felt it equally makes me want to scream into the pedagogical void.

Modelling is therefore fundamental. It is what makes our teaching “work”. Modelling is the space within which we notice, we articulate, we explain, illuminate, connect, interrogate, unpack and sort out exactly how the curriculum works.

You can’t fish in an empty lake, so you cannot retrieve what you don’t know. Modelling is the bridge to that lake and in its deployment builds the cognitive connections that help children to make sense of our curriculum content.

Modelling needs to be our number one strategy for making meaning within our curriculum.

In the words of Montell Jordan, “This is how we do it.”