AISC 2024 dark

For many years, a range of scientific disciplines have sought to "bridge the gap" between academic evidence and classroom practice. There are teachers with masters degrees and PhDs. There are the curriculum writers. There are consultants. Countless books have been written but most teachers still in the classroom will tell you that there is simply not enough time for research in modern learning environments.

Meanwhile, those same scientific disciplines are facing a more recent challenge: the reproducibility crisis. As Artistotle so aptly put: The more you know, the more you realise you don't know. Modern efforts to reproduce results from even heavily cited papers are coming up short.

With each classroom being affected by many different external variables, some of which greatly impact learning, why are we looking outside the classroom for answers to be handed down?

The questions this presentation hopes to raise are: where are the experts located when we consider each classroom as it's own vessel, who is responsible for ensuring change is meaningful and effective and what sort of standards of evidence do we need in order to make informed decisions about teaching and learning?

We invite you to a discussion about what could be next.

Expected Outcomes:
We hope that by sharing our small approach to a large problem, we can create relationships with other interested educators. The model we are proposing relies on a large community of educators in order to be successful. This means the barriers to entry must be as low as possible, while still maintaining an acceptable level of intellectual rigour.