Jul 15, 2026 · 47 min · 11 segments
In this episode of The Science of Learning, Paul Cline joins us to explore independent learning and how schools can help students become more confident, motivated and self-regulated learners. We…
Bradley BuschHost
Do you think this stuff works if we're going to educate students in standalone sessions like assemblies or PHSE? Or is it up to individual teachers making it relevant to their subjects? And if it is both, like, what is the process of like, when can we be general to introduce new concepts versus end up being quite specific?
I think there is a place, but a massive limitation on the kind of whole school approach.
So, you know, the assemblies, the form tutor periods, the ASHE, that's great for general principles.
Because I quite like that stuff, I think in terms of dedicated time to introduce stuff.
Sure, and often like form tutors can be really powerful Because a lot of the time, depending on where you work, tutor time is not necessarily the most effective thing.
So like I was saying about the use of flashcards earlier, and obviously it's more than just with flashcards, subject teachers need to be contextualizing that and saying this is how I want you to do this for for me yeah this is how this subject works because every subject has its own you know sort of disciplinary rules its own assessment
you still want like consistency you don't want everyone just working silos though either right
no you so you want central messages and you want everybody to be saying okay we think retrieval practice is really important um and here's why yeah but then what that looks like for english or for maths or for french or for geography or whatever needs to be delivered by those subject experts because they're the ones who who know what they actually want their students to know and how they want them to know it so so there has to be that contextualization um otherwise it it's just going to fall flat and i think that that's like i said earlier that's that's where we are at at the moment that's what that sultana study shows yeah that we're we've done the general stuff really really well but we need to go further with contextualizing it.
And also the teachers are the ones who can build in those big accountability loops, set it for homework, check it, give them feedback on it, which you can't do when you're doing an assembly to the whole of year 10 or whatever.
Paul, thank you so much for your time and reflections on independent learning.
Do you think this stuff works if we're going to educate students in standalone sessions like assemblies or PHSE? Or is it up to individual teachers making it relevant to their subjects? And if it is both, like, what is the process of like, when can we be general to introduce new concepts versus end up being quite specific?
I think there is a place, but a massive limitation on the kind of whole school approach.
So, you know, the assemblies, the form tutor periods, the ASHE, that's great for general principles.
Because I quite like that stuff, I think in terms of dedicated time to introduce stuff.
Sure, and often like form tutors can be really powerful Because a lot of the time, depending on where you work, tutor time is not necessarily the most effective thing.
So like I was saying about the use of flashcards earlier, and obviously it's more than just with flashcards, subject teachers need to be contextualizing that and saying this is how I want you to do this for for me yeah this is how this subject works because every subject has its own you know sort of disciplinary rules its own assessment
you still want like consistency you don't want everyone just working silos though either right
no you so you want central messages and you want everybody to be saying okay we think retrieval practice is really important um and here's why yeah but then what that looks like for english or for maths or for french or for geography or whatever needs to be delivered by those subject experts because they're the ones who who know what they actually want their students to know and how they want them to know it so so there has to be that contextualization um otherwise it it's just going to fall flat and i think that that's like i said earlier that's that's where we are at at the moment that's what that sultana study shows yeah that we're we've done the general stuff really really well but we need to go further with contextualizing it.
And also the teachers are the ones who can build in those big accountability loops, set it for homework, check it, give them feedback on it, which you can't do when you're doing an assembly to the whole of year 10 or whatever.
Paul, thank you so much for your time and reflections on independent learning.
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