A New Podcast Explores Literacy and the Science of Learning

I'm a co-host, along with Dylan Wiliam and Doug Lemov, of Season 3 of the Knowledge Matters Podcast.

Photo by Lee Campbell on Unsplash

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In what way is education like a miracle drug? In an elementary school where 39 different languages are spoken, what happens when all students in a classroom read the same entire novel? What “amazing” thing did teachers see in a high-poverty school district after they adopted a method of explicit writing instruction?

If these questions pique your interest, check out the new six-episode season of the Knowledge Matters Podcast, called “Literacy and the Science of Learning,” part of which I’m hosting. My co-hosts are Dylan Wiliam and Doug Lemov, and each of us took responsibility for two episodes. Five of the episodes, including one of mine, are already out and can be accessed through the Knowledge Matters Campaign website or one of the major podcast platforms. My second episode, the final one of the season, drops on July 29.

Each of us co-hosts has a new book on cognitive science and literacy, and our episodes take off from our respective books. Dylan is a co-author, along with nine other prominent education experts, of Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival, which is freely available for download online and is also available in hard copy form, for a price.

Dylan’s podcast episodes—Episodes 1 and 2—provide an engaging excursion into the evidence for the importance of knowledge not only to literacy but to all learning, drawing on interviews with John Sweller, David Geary, and other cognitive science luminaries.

Doug’s new book, which he co-authored with Colleen Driggs and Erica Woolway, is called The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading: Translate Research to Reignite Joy and Meaning in the Classroom. It will be published July 29 and is available for pre-order now.

In Episodes 3 and 4, Doug focuses on two important and often overlooked issues relating to literacy. In Episode 3, he explains the importance of reading fluency and what educators can do to foster it. In his subsequent episode he turns to the significant benefits of having students read whole books rather than just brief passages or excerpts, taking listeners to a Texas fourth-grade classroom where the reading experience has been transformed by having kids read entire novels together.

My two episodes build on my book, Beyond the Science of Reading: Connecting Literacy Instruction to the Science of Learning. I decided to dive into an area of literacy that doesn’t get the attention I believe it deserves: writing. In Episode 5, I argue that cognitive science tells us (although not always explicitly) that writing has enormous potential power to boost learning—but also that the heavy cognitive load writing imposes can prevent students from enjoying its benefits. The key to unlocking the power of writing is to make it less overwhelmingly difficult. John Sweller, the father of cognitive load theory, makes a repeat appearance, along with retrieval practice researcher Jeffrey Karpicke.

In the sixth and final episode, out next week, I’ll describe what happened in a high-poverty Louisiana school district, Monroe City, that combined a content-rich curriculum with an explicit method of writing instruction. Sneak preview: even though teachers didn’t set out to align their instruction with principles of cognitive science—principles that they, like most educators, were not familiar with—they began to see improvements not only in students’ writing but also in their reading comprehension and learning in general. “We realized,” one teacher tells me, “that teaching students to write clearly was actually teaching them to think clearly.”

Writing as a Way of Thinking

I’ve said that writing doesn’t get the attention it deserves, but within the last few days I’ve read two excellent Substack posts that both make the argument I’ve been trying to get across—namely, that we need to stop seeing writing solely as a product and recognize that it’s also a way of learning and of deepening understanding. It’s great to see others making that argument, but both posts are by people I already knew were on my wavelength. Whether this understanding will spread further remains to be seen.

One of the two posts appears on the Teach Like a Champion Substack and draws on the forthcoming book by Doug Lemov and his colleagues. They argue that writing is “not just a means of expression, but a powerful engine for deeper thinking and, crucially, for building mastery in reading.” They also advocate for having students engage in “Formative Writing,” where the goal is not to “prove what you know” but to “discover what you think.”

The other post, on the No More Marking Substack, is by Daisy Christodoulou—one of the guests featured on Dylan Wiliam’s first podcast episode. Daisy, who is generally a fount of wisdom and clear thinking, asks what the point of writing is in “a world with AI.” She draws an interesting analogy between writing and running a marathon that I won’t go into here, but her basic point is that while it might be okay to rely on AI for simple communicative tasks, it doesn’t work in the many cases where writing actually helps you figure out what you think—in other words, Formative Writing.

That’s the kind of writing we need to teach students how to do in school. Yes, it’s harder than using AI, but that’s why it’s powerful: there’s no learning without effort.

If students see writing as just transcribing what’s already in their heads, they’re more likely to subcontract out that supposedly menial task to a bot. But the evidence is mounting that when students outsource their writing, they’re also outsourcing their thinking. They learn less and can fall victim to what one study has called metacognitive laziness.

The Writing Revolution

One way schools can combat metacognitive laziness is to adopt the method of writing instruction that has helped change the trajectories of students’ lives in Monroe: The Writing Revolution. It’s the name of a nonprofit that provides training in the method, and they’ve just unveiled some intriguing new resources that you can check out on their recently revamped website.

It’s also the name of a book I’ve co-authored with the creator of the method, Judith Hochman, and the audio version of the second edition is coming out on July 29^th, narrated by me. (Lots going on this month in the area of literacy!) I wouldn’t recommend relying solely on the audio version—many features of the book depend on visuals to fully come across—but teachers have told me it’s been helpful to use the audiobook in conjunction with the print version. (Note: I also serve on the advisory board of The Writing Revolution organization.)

Here's hoping these various developments help educators understand the crucial connections between reading and writing, and between both of those aspects of literacy and content-area learning—connections that have unfortunately been obscured by our education system, to the detriment of untold numbers of students.