3-Read Friday #108

Knowledge-rich curriculums, teachers' working memories, and the number line

Here are three blog posts I found interesting this week:

1. Do knowledge-rich curriculums cause mental health problems? by Daisy Christodoulou

Another belter from Daisy. She argues that cross-UK comparisons show that teen wellbeing has declined similarly in England, Scotland, and Wales despite sharply divergent curriculum policies, undermining the claim that England's knowledge-rich reforms are responsible for rising youth unhappiness.

2. The Real Bottleneck in Explicit Instruction: The Teacher’s Working Memory by SOL in the Wild

You don’t hear much about the limits of teachers’ working memories, but ours are just as limited as our students’. SOL in the Wild explains how we can combat this by relying less on thinking harder in the moment and more on offloading explanations, questions, and decisions into planning and routines so the teacher's working memory is free to notice and respond to student thinking.

3. The Number Line Is A Tricky Beast by Dan Murphy

One for my fellow maths geeks to finish. Dan argues that the number line, often presented as a natural introduction to number, is in fact a late and conceptually demanding invention that collapses the ancient distinction between discrete number and continuous magnitude, and its early introduction in modern curricula is a legacy of the failed "New Math" reforms!

Have a great weekend!

Craig

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