Early missteps: project-based assumptions

Drew Perkins talks with Brendan Lee, a primary school teacher, host of the Knowledge for Teachers Podcast, and advocate for evidence-informed pedagogy. Brendan shares his transition from an initial belief in unguided project-based learning to a more structured approach rooted in the Science of Reading and the instructional hierarchy.

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Brendan explains the instructional hierarchy—a framework that identifies where a student sits on the continuum from novice to expert. He emphasizes that when students are in the "acquisition stage" (or frustration stage), they require high levels of scaffolding and explicit instruction. Without this foundation, students often become disengaged because they lack the prerequisite skills to tackle complex tasks.

A central theme of the conversation is the critical role of fluency. Brendan argues that a lack of fluency in "tool skills"—like basic math facts or decoding—acts like "climbing a mountain with a bag of bricks on your back". By implementing just five minutes of daily, timed fluency practice, teachers can free up cognitive space for students to engage in higher-order thinking and discovery.

Finally, Drew and Brendan discuss the "curse of knowledge" and why many inquiry-based approaches fail when they lack intentional design. They explore how "engineering the aha moment" requires a deep understanding of what students already know and the strategic fading of support as accuracy increases.

• • [00:09:15] Brendan's Background – From high school PE teacher and aspiring rugby pro to primary school educator.

• • [00:12:06] The Shift in Thinking – Moving from project-based learning to recognizing the need for foundational knowledge in young learners.

• • [00:17:29] Discovering the Science of Reading – Key resources and mentors that transformed Brendan's approach to literacy.

• • [00:23:58] The Instructional Hierarchy – Breaking down the framework of acquisition, fluency, generalization, and adaptation.

• • [00:33:32] Working Memory and Subskills – Why students struggle with multi-step problems when they lack fluency in basic components.

• • [00:46:54] Tool, Component, and Composite Skills – Defining the building blocks of mastery.

• • [01:01:52] Inquiry Before Explicit Instruction – Drew discusses using "framing questions" to create a "need to know".

• • [01:06:41] The Curse of Knowledge – Why teachers struggle to adopt a novice perspective when designing tasks.

• • [01:11:50] Behavior Analysis and Scaffolding – The importance of "contingency reduction" and fading prompts based on student accuracy.
  • [01:16:50] Final Advice – Focus on small, incremental improvements rather than mastering everything at once.