Big Ideas Are the reading wars really over?
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Sep 8, 2025 In this insightful discussion, Jenny Donovan, CEO of the Australian Education Research Organisation and a champion for evidence-based education, tackles the critical literacy crisis facing Australian schoolchildren. She emphasizes the shift towards explicit instruction methods and their potential to improve reading proficiency. Topics include the necessity of proper teacher training, educational inequality across socioeconomic regions, and the push for cohesive policies that support effective teaching. Donovan advocates for bridging the gap between research and classroom practice.
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Episode notes
Family Roadtrip Framing The Talk
- Jenny Donovan recounts family trips and reading favourites to open her talk.
- She uses that travel story to pivot into a national journey on education reform.
Why Explicit Teaching Works
- Explicit teaching presents new knowledge in small sequenced chunks with worked examples and lots of practice.
- It reduces working memory load and aligns with cognitive science about how novices learn.
Equity And Effectiveness Of Explicit Teaching
- Explicit teaching benefits all students and is essential for some while harming none.
- It requires intensity and practice by teachers to be done well, not rote uniformity.
