This Teacher Magazine column by Professor Martin Westwell, Chief Executive of the South Australian Department for Education, looks at 3 current debates about getting the balance right in classrooms, including explicit instruction and AI. He argues that each one comes down to a single question about who is doing the thinking.
He starts from Rob Coe's 2013 warning about poor proxies for learning. Students can be busy and productive without learning what was intended, and Coe's simple formulation is that learning happens when people have to think hard, provided they're thinking about the right thing. Cognitive load theory explains why hard thinking differs from unproductive struggle. Working memory is limited with unfamiliar material, so a novice asked to discover a principle may spend effort searching for an approach and working out what matters. Westwell sees this as a strong case for explicit instruction early on, through clear explanations and guided practice. He warns, though, that a teacher who explains 6 maths problems while students copy each step may be making every decision, leaving students attentive but doing little thinking. He sketches 4 classroom situations, with low unnecessary load and hard thinking as the sweet spot, and treats them as broad tendencies.
On technology, he notes that enjoyable digital tasks can put most of the effort into operating software or earning points, though a good simulation or instant feedback can help. He cites UNESCO's 2023 finding that technology may raise engagement without improving learning. Drawing on Lodge and Loble, he says offloading work to a calculator is sensible, but asking AI to build an argument before attempting it may leave understanding unchanged, and he points to Bastani et al. and the OECD for evidence of harm.
He concludes that AI use should be designed around learning, with teachers able to say which cognitive work the tool does and which the student must still do. Guidance should ease as knowledge grows, so students take on more of their own judgement.
