The Ten Strawmen of the Science of Learning

By Penny Van Bergen

Universities champion evidence. We test it, weigh it, and share it with our students. Given this, it is hard to understand the vehement and almost anti-evidentiary disagreement with the science of learning from some corners.

Below I address ten “science of learning strawmen” in the hopes they might help researchers and teachers alike to sort the wheat from the chaff.

Strawman 1: Science of learning is just a theory

The science of learning is a field of scientific study, focused on explaining how we learn and develop. It’s not a theory. Like all scientific fields, the science of learning continues to evolve, but there are core principles about how we learn that have been established over and over in robust programs of research conducted internationally.

The principles captured within the Brain and Learning section of the new Strong Beginnings core content for initial teacher education are just these kinds of principles. The flow of new information through working and long-term memory, the differences between novices and experts, and the processes of encoding and retrieval are well established and widely accepted by cognitive scientists, psychologists, linguists, and most philosophers of mind¹.

Strawman 2: Science of learning doesn’t apply to modern classrooms

The general principles underpinning the science of learning apply to all learners. This is particularly relevant when considering the impact of new technologies or the role of “21st century” skills.

It is sometimes said that the human brain has not evolved in the past 100,000 years. The truth is somewhat more complex – our brains and skulls became rounder, allowing greater spatial processing and social communication, and they have also lost around 10% of their size, allowing tighter and more efficient wiring. But our “biological starter kit” has still looked much the same for a very long time.

If general principles related to the mind and learning apply to all learners, then teachers must be afforded opportunities to understand how the mind works. They should understand what the implications are for teaching: what pedagogical approaches are compatible with these understandings, and under what conditions; which are not, and why. They should also know how age, discipline, motivation, emotion, and prior knowledge interact to inform these decisions.

Strawman 3: Science of learning is John Sweller is AERO

Science of learning is not commensurate with a single researcher or organisation. Science has never been about the individual: by design it is about producing a body of empirical evidence to explain how the world works. It is self-correcting, falsifiable, and it doesn’t care who is who.

This is not to disparage Sweller or AERO. I have drawn on both when teaching educational psychology classes to pre-service teachers. Both have also been influential in shaping teachers’ understanding of learning. But the body of scientific evidence that Sweller contributes to and that AERO translates and supports is larger and older than either alone.

Strawman 4: Science of learning claims are not tested in the classroom

It is true that psychological research is often conducted with first-year university students in labs, yet this applies more to some subfields than others. Claims that science of learning has not been tested in real classrooms or with real students are simply incorrect.

John Sweller’s earliest work on problem solving in mathematics was conducted in a local high school five minutes from my doorstep in Sydney. Patricia Bauer’s research on how children integrate different pieces of knowledge was tested first in labs, then in diverse primary school classrooms using curriculum-aligned STEM content. Pooja Agarwal’s systematic review of 50 classroom-based retrieval practice experiments considered students ranging from Kindy to medical school, while her popular book was written with classroom teacher Patrice Bain. Collie and Martin’s analysis of teacher’s emotional support, instructional support, and classroom management considered the perspectives of more than 40,000 public high school students in NSW. These are brief examples, but they are illustrative.

While less systematic than a formal research study, the policy shifts being observed in Australia now – and in other countries coming before and after us – also represent something of a large natural experiment. When teachers and systems tell us about implementation, researchers should be listening.

Strawman 5: Science of learning is un/settled

No science is ever fully settled. Good science rests on testing theories with evidence and explaining the findings. Over successive studies, findings are strengthened or disconfirmed and boundaries are sharpened, while new research directions emerge which build cumulatively on the old. This is true for physics, for biology, for medicine and earth sciences: all disciplines we trust inherently when considering application in the world.

Importantly, the fact that learning science continues to evolve should not be taken to mean that all claims are unsettled. There are ages and disciplines in which some phenomena are better understood than others, and for which we might rely on “best bets”. There are also areas of contention, both in theory and in application. Yet there are a plethora of insights with broad and longstanding consensus. If challenging these insights, it is helpful to propose a strong alternative.

Strawman 6: Science of learning ignores individual differences

Individual differences between learners may not be the headline, but they are well understood among science of learning researchers. While notions of learning styles have been thoroughly debunked, we know that learners can differ from one another in working memory speed and capacity, distractability, prior knowledge, self efficacy, temperament, neurodivergence, study skill, engagement, and so on. An early working memory classic, “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two” by Miller in 1956, puts this variability in the title. More recent work using person-centred analyses (e.g. LPA) focuses specifically on understanding variability.

The message relating to individual differences gets muddled when considering pedagogy. While individual differences matter, our cognitive and motivational similarities as learners are still very strong. Just as soccer players of similar age and experience may differ in running speed, lung capacity, or height, and yet still thrive at training, so too can children differ in nuanced ways and still thrive in the classroom.

Strawman 7: Science of learning is a unified movement

There are an increasing number of education stakeholders who now advocate for the adoption of approaches informed by science of learning. These include ministers, system leaders and schools, and researchers like myself. However, science of learning is not in itself a unified movement. It is still a field of science.

Organisations and individuals who have converged on approaches informed by the science of learning are not part of a conspiracy, and there’s no secret code-book. They are simply using scientific evidence about student learning to make decisions about how schools and teachers should operate. Like all things in life, stakeholders will present a range of positions and draw on a range of sources. Critique of these individual positions does not dismantle the science.

Strawman 8: Science of learning is scientism

Scientism, for those like me who were initially confused by the term, is the belief that only science can provide insights (or “truthclaims”) of value. It’s typically used disparagingly – yet science of learning is not the same as scientism.

There is nothing in the science of learning that demands monogamy. Philosophy gives insights regarding the purpose of education. Sociology gives lenses for understanding the inequalities of hidden curricula and the value of cultural capital. Education can and should draw on insights from other fields too, provided the insights are epistemically complementary and pragmatically useful. If insights from different fields disagree with each other, then it is important to know why.

Note here the chain of logic. In equating science of learning with scientism, claims that the findings of learning science research matter and should be taken seriously are contorted into claims that only science matters. This is a much easier argument to knock down, and with it goes the need to consider the science of learning at all. At the risk of mixing metaphors, this is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We need to safeguard against this path.

Strawman 9: Science of learning aims to deprofessionalise teachers

The science of learning provides teachers with a body of knowledge about children’s learning that should inform practice in important ways. Yet it should not be seen as a checklist of discrete activities or skills to apply senselessly. This is evidence of poor implementation, not poor science.

Teachers who are well versed in the science of learning will have conditional knowledge about which specific approaches are appropriate when, and based on which principles of learning (when to explain, when to discuss, when to elaborate, when to practice, when to check for understanding). They will have the knowledge to adapt a lesson in the moment to meet the needs of their learners. This knowledge is a key marker of professionalism.