Speaker 1
So I think what you're trying to do is set up, it's all about the choice of examples I agree. And it's all about, can you set up example sequences, essentially where the examples are exemplifying different features. And that you're carefully choosing them. So they're exemplifying the different features that are critical to the concept in this case. So in your case with a triangle, you're saying, all right, the orientation is actually not a critical feature. So that's like a non-example, but the sides is a critical feature. So we're gonna set up something like that. And I would say it's exactly the same with verbs in that you would say, well, the position of a word in a sentence is not a critical feature. So what happens is the risk you can get, the equivalent of just teaching a basic triangle as an example, and then that's what they think is the only triangle is always setting up sentences where the verb is the second word in the sentence. So I run to the shops, I go home, I walk around the park, he says hello, kind of thing. And then the students just get the wrong idea that well, it's always a verbs always the second word in a sentence. So they define it too tightly in the way if you're just giving them a simple triangle, they're defining it too tightly as that's the, and it's the orientation, the base at the bottom, they're just saying that's the only triangle possible. So that's the equivalent you get with a verb, and that's roughly a lot of students' understanding it kind of is. So what you would then wanna do is you would have to come up with examples of where verbs are not the first word, the second word in the sentence, where they're, you know, right in the middle of the sentence, for the fourth, that kind of thing. I think then the challenge is, when you're first introducing something, the best way of almost drip feeding with a complex thing like a verb or a triangle, there's lots of different features and lots of examples and non-examples, and how many of those do you want to introduce in one go? One of the things that Seagrid England talks about when doing this with verbs, which I can never kind of make my mind up on this, is he says straight away, you should be introducing verbs that are more than one word, not just one word. And I sometimes think that's kind of too hard to begin with. Like, is that like going in with a nice, not silly triangle? But I kind of think you do wanna start. My take is you do wanna sort of start with some of the obvious ones, but you don't wanna spend so much time that they just think that obvious one is the only example. And I do think ultimately these are empirical questions which you can set up with research. And you can set up different sequences and say which one leads to the best understanding. And this is why if Engleman talks a lot about the picky picky detail, and this is what I think is picky detail, but it's really important. If you teach students a triangle and you introduce an isoscelet triangle first or what impact does that have? How should you be doing? If you teach them. So, and I think the other thing is you can't view, the other thing I was gonna say upfront as well is the problem with all of these complex concepts is you're never going to teach them in a lesson. Just that they are hard, they are difficult. So you're not gonna get a student to a perfect understanding of a verb or a triangle in a 60-minute lesson. However great you are and however amazing your students are. I just don't think it's possible. And I think that's why the other thing I think about a lot is again, this is a bit of an angle in direct instruction thing is, if you set up a perfect learning sequence, could you do it so that students never developed a misconception? And then you'd never have to be in a situation where you'd have to unpick a misconception because you'd have sequenced everything so perfectly that there's no chance for a misconception to come in. And that's kind of utopian and I kind of like the idea, but I just think no for two reasons. One reason, a lot of the really complex concepts we wanna teach students, they kind of exist a bit in the world anyway. So triangles, they're gonna encounter triangle before they meet you. Verbs, they're gonna be using verbs every day. So they're not coming in from like a zero, zero knowledge. So there's gonna be a chance that they've got some misconceptions even before they've met you. And the second reason is that even if it was by chance a concept they've never encountered before, so you're starting from based on it, because you cannot teach everything in one go, there's always the chance that some misconception will develop when you've only taught part of what the concept is. And because it's impossible to teach the whole concept in one go, you're gonna have to choose to start with some kind of triangle. You're gonna have to choose to start with a verb being somewhere. I just think there's always gonna be, you wanna, I definitely wanna minimize misconceptions, but I just think it's like, there always gonna be a chance for them to come up. So you do have to kind of anticipate and expect and come up with ways of unpicking them when they do arise. So yeah, it's a bit