My researchED Denver #rEDDenver highlights

I just participated in this marvelous conference as a speaker and learner (always) on November 9th.

Here I share some key ideas I wrote down during the sessions I listen to:

Dr. Jim Heal keynote "Mental models: cognitive keys to effective teaching"

Learning is like rock climbing:

1. Consolidating meaningful pieces (chunks) of knowledge in our long-term memory creates the footholds where learners can support further learning...
2. New ideas, concepts, and skills, are the new handholds learners have to reach and that will be the new foothooks If they learn with effective teaching or learning strategies. Teachers must help them to create those footholds and new handholds by being really explicit about what they want students to achieve (being specific about the information they need to master, helping them to identify what is the most relevant information (prior knowledge and new ones), how to bridge the what between their current knowledge and the desired one, etcétera.

Gene Tavernetti "Developing coaching relationships without Chocolate"

Three things I want to highlight?from his talk:

1. Instructional coaches need validation and should be introduced by school administrators or principals. Give them the appropriate context and legitimacy to start doing what they need to do (and help teachers improve with them).

2. Use the internal capacities within the schools (leaders you have), not just external people who come and then disappear. Build long-term relationships with instructional coaches.

3. Coaching work shouldn't be confidential; principals should know what is happening and what improvement processes are taking place within their schools. They should also be involved in the purpose of those initiatives.

Meg Lee and Dr. Jim Heal "How teaching and learning happens. Implementing evidence-informed?practice in the classroom, school, and district"

- It's an essential shift for any institutional change effort to transform the framing " from problem-solving..." to "problem setting." How we frame the problems is crucial for addressing them more effectively ("framing effect", see picture)

Teachers can help students organize their "knowledge closets": Students need to develop rich knowledge schemas that are well-organized (like a well-categorized closet where you know where to put different kinds of clothes). However, that can only be achieved by making schemas explicit and helping students understand the underlying principles behind the contents and tasks (gradually developing expertise) through explicit teaching.

- "Initiative fatigue": a really representative concept for what happens in education; teachers getting exhausted about continually having to try totally different initiatives that get popularized or that are made mandatory in an ever-changing?cycle of essay and error.

Andrew Watson " Because the research says so: how to evaluate ′research-based′ teaching advice"

Some keys to assess the research experts use to prescribe practices or ideas to school practitioners:

1. Be confident in asking researchers and experts this essential question when?you are unsure about their statements: "What is the best research you know of that supports this claim?" (see the picture below for the full steps to evaluate this claims)

2. Andrew gave a great talk where he appealed to the responsibility of researchers and anyone who gives talks or teacher coaching to be rigorous about their assumptions and research claims, especially when they give "advice" to teachers. Many use research that is not conclusive enough to give practical recommendations or make extrapolations from contexts that are not relevant to classrooms (for example, mice experiments; brain physiology without any psychological mechanisms that could explain it, etcétera).

3. Practical resources to assess research that I didn't now (and that I will start to use):

- Scite.ai ; elicit.org ; connectedPapers.com (see picture for a great example)

I'm just so grateful to being able to participe in this conference, to share what is my passion and to learn from great people