We are walking our way into a fundamentally flawed education system, and we have been warned

Why do conferences always have such bad coffee?

This was my first thought as I sat down recently, waiting for the education conference ResearchEd to begin.

This is the fourth time ResearchEd has come to Ireland, the first taking place in 2019 in St Columba’s College in Dublin. A conference aimed at both primary and secondary level teachers, it began in England – founded by Tom Bennett with the help of Helen Galdin-O’Shea in 2013 – and aims to bring “the best evidence available” into the classroom in practical ways.

This year’s event took place in Bandon Grammar, on the west side of Bandon, with its tree-lined entrance and sign pointing to the “boy’s dormitory” hinting at its private school status, but without the ostentation of other such institutions.

After recovering from my coffee, I headed to the keynote speaker, Bradley Busch, chief psychological officer at InnerDrive. The conference was taking place in a typically chilly gym, and with the stage flanked by some green mood lighting, it felt like I was about to watch a school musical. Thankfully, the presentation was a bit more professional than that, but with the same level of enthusiasm.

Busch promised us “transformational” research. In a fascinating talk about how memory works, and how we can help transfer information from students’ working memory to their long-term memory, he made some observations that teachers, students and parents consistently ignore – students will probably be upset that highlighting doesn’t mean learning; teachers that dense PowerPoint presentations aren’t helping; and parents that checking the number of pages their child has read doesn’t mean anything.

Learning is about reading and then quizzing, checking repeatedly to see what you know and what you don’t know.

Oh, and he reiterated that we really can’t spot AI in students’ writing, not to any consistent level, once again calling into question the value of not only homework, but of the AACs (project work) that are being brought into the new Leaving Cert specifications.

We are walking our way into an education system that is fundamentally flawed, and we have been warned.

[ One in five Irish children and teens use AI for schoolwork, survey suggestsOpens in new window ]

From the gym I went to a tiered lecture hall to listen to Amarbeer Singh Gill, assistant director of London-based Greenshaw Research School. His talk posed a question, “Why are students so bad at learning?” It centred on how students forget, and the inevitability of forgetting. Singh spoke about how short-term performance does not reflect long-term retention, how doing well in an assessment straight after instruction doesn’t mean students have learned the topic. A lower performance can lead to improved learning, once we keep returning to assess the topic.

Study was one of the focuses of the talk, highlighting the misconception that long periods of studying one topic is beneficial. Instead, it’s better to distribute study. Shorter, 30-minute sessions are more helpful. Added to that is the notion of interleaving your study. Move from one area to a separate yet connected area – that way students can see connections and stay focused.

From there, I moved to the safety of a traditional classroom for a talk by Julian Girdham, deputy principal at St Columba’s College in Dublin, an English teacher and the organiser of the first Irish ResearchEd. Speaking to a packed room about the importance of “attention” in the contemporary classroom, his talk was about how we can teach our students to focus on the task at hand and encourage them to think closely about the minutiae of our subjects in a deliberate manner.

Girdham’s belief in students, his dismissal of “it was better in my day” rhetoric, spoke of an optimism in our basic humanity. The human impulse to pay attention and think deeply is still within us all.

[ Students are screen hostages. They’re losing the ability to switch off and knuckle downOpens in new window ]

Mutterings of “yes, true” accompanied his presentation. We all left the room wishing we could have been his student, wishing we could teach like him.

His talk contrasted with Tadgh O’Donovan’s in the same room later that day. O’Donovan, a science teacher at Carrigaline Community School and a TikTok creator, spoke about how to grab students’ attention and interest by using content creators’ tactics, such as being punched by the room’s student assistant, as O’Donovan was – with his consent, of course.

Generations apart, Girdham and O’Donovan have fundamental similarities: their love of the job, their appreciation of the possibilities within each student and their understanding that getting students to pay attention doesn’t have to be confrontational.

The use of a “three, two, one” countdown by a couple of English presenters, with raised arm and fingers lowering one by one, to get our attention before and after asking us to chat on a topic, was an unconscious example of how to frustrate a class rather than bring them together with warmth.

The closing talk was by Mark Roberts, director of research and an English teacher at Carrickfergus Grammar School. He spoke about the importance of failure, but in the context of a safe environment. Errors are natural and beneficial once the student feels safe to make those mistakes.

Which made me pause and reflect on my reaction to the bad coffee that morning. Maybe I shouldn’t have gone straight to the organiser of the event, and made my complaints. Maybe I should have simply thanked her for a day of invigorating, positive talks, and then hinted at the coffee issue by including a bag of locally roasted beans.

We are all learning.