Using the Science of Learning to Make Better Instructional Decisions
By Beth Smith, M. Ed. | #smithingifted
As educators, we spend a lot of time discussing instructional strategies.
Direct instruction or inquiry-based learning? Teacher-led or student-centered? Explicit teaching or discovery? Acceleration or enrichment?
Everyone seems to have a favorite approach.
But I think we’re asking the wrong question.
Instead of asking, “What teaching strategy do I like?” we should be asking, “What does the evidence tell me these students need right now?”
This is where I believe we can make a real difference in education, especially in gifted education.
Our instructional decisions shouldn’t be driven by educational trends, personal preferences, or the latest buzzwords. They should be informed by a body of evidence and what the science of learning tells us about how students acquire, retain, and apply knowledge.
And that means being willing to change what we’re doing when the evidence tells us something isn’t working.
🔍 What Does a Body of Evidence Actually Mean?
A body of evidence is more than a test score.
It’s the information we gather from multiple sources to understand what students know, what they’re ready to learn, and what support they need.
That includes:
- Research: What does credible research tell us about how students learn?
- Pre-assessments: What knowledge and skills have students already mastered?
- Classroom observations: What do students actually do when they encounter challenges?
- Student work samples: What patterns, misconceptions, and strengths can we identify?
- Student explanations: Can students explain their reasoning, or are they simply following a procedure?
- Transfer of learning: Can students apply their knowledge to a new or unfamiliar situation?
- Progress monitoring: Is our instruction producing meaningful growth over time?
No single piece of evidence tells the entire story.
A student who earns 100% on a worksheet may understand a concept deeply—or may have memorized a procedure without understanding why it works.
A student who struggles during an investigation may lack background knowledge, misunderstand the directions, or simply need a different scaffold.
Our job is to investigate the learning before deciding on the teaching.
🚀 Eight Ways I Use Evidence to Make Instructional Decisions
1. When Do Students Need Explicit Instruction?
Imagine introducing an unfamiliar mathematical concept.
Students are confused. They repeatedly make the same errors. When asked to explain their thinking, they cannot describe why their answers make sense.
That is evidence.
Instead of immediately assigning an independent discovery activity, I may need to explicitly teach the concept.
I model the process, think aloud, demonstrate worked examples, and provide guided practice.
The science of learning: Working memory is limited, and students generally benefit from more guidance when learning unfamiliar material.
The goal isn’t to keep students dependent on direct instruction. It’s to build the knowledge they need to become independent.
2. When Should We Compact the Curriculum?
In my Math Acceleration & Curriculum Compacting Academy, pre-assessment plays an important role.
Suppose a third-grade student scores 95% on a multiplication pre-assessment and can accurately explain multiple strategies.
Should that student complete every introductory lesson and repetitive practice assignment?
Not automatically.
If additional evidence confirms mastery, I can compact the curriculum and replace already-mastered work with advanced reasoning, algebraic thinking, or more complex problem-solving.
The science of learning: Prior knowledge strongly influences how students learn. Students need appropriately challenging instruction, not unnecessary repetition.
Gifted students should not have to prove the same mastery over and over before they’re allowed to move forward.
3. When Are Students Ready for Inquiry?
In our Global Innovation Lab, Every Drop Counts, students investigate water in their own communities and compare authentic data with students around the world.
I love the inquiry component of this project.
But meaningful inquiry requires knowledge.
Before students can interpret water data, they may need instruction in measurement, graphing, evaluating sources, and distinguishing evidence from assumptions.
Once students demonstrate those skills, I can step back.
They begin asking their own questions, investigating patterns, challenging conclusions, and designing solutions.
The science of learning: Background knowledge and appropriate guidance help students engage in more productive inquiry.
Inquiry shouldn’t mean abandoning students to figure everything out independently.
It should mean giving them the tools to investigate meaningful questions.
4. When Should We Model Student Writing?
My Duckventures Writing Challenge encourages students to develop imaginative stories featuring their own rubber duck characters.
And believe me, their imaginations are not the problem!
But a student might create a wonderful mystery while struggling with paragraph structure, punctuation, capitalization, or dialogue.
That’s evidence that the student needs targeted writing instruction.
I can provide a mentor paragraph, model sentence construction, demonstrate how to organize ideas, and give students a writing checklist.
As their skills develop, I gradually remove those supports.
The science of learning: Worked examples, guided practice, and specific feedback can help students develop unfamiliar skills.
Creativity and explicit instruction are not opposites.
Sometimes teaching the mechanics of writing gives students greater freedom to express their creativity.
5. When Should I Demonstrate—and When Should Students Discover?
Consider students learning to program a Micro:bit.
If they don’t yet understand variables or conditionals, immediately assigning an independent coding challenge may create unnecessary frustration.
Instead, I might demonstrate a short program, ask students to modify it, and then challenge them to create their own solution.
Eventually, students receive a problem without being given the code.
The science of learning: As students develop expertise, the amount and type of instructional guidance they need can change.
I don’t want students simply copying code.
I want them understanding it well enough to create something new.
6. How Do We Know Students Will Remember What They Learned?
Have you ever taught a lesson, watched students perform beautifully, and then discovered two weeks later that they couldn’t remember the concept?
I have.
That tells me immediate success doesn’t necessarily mean lasting learning.
Instead of relying only on review worksheets or rereading notes, I can incorporate short retrieval activities, spaced practice, and opportunities to revisit concepts over time.
The science of learning: Retrieval practice and spacing can strengthen long-term retention.
The goal isn’t simply for students to learn something on Tuesday.
It’s for them to remember and use it weeks or months later.
7. When Do Students Need More Challenging Reasoning?
In our Junior Detective Academy, students investigate evidence, interview witnesses, and develop conclusions.
Imagine a group immediately identifying a suspect based on one suspicious clue.
They are engaged. They are excited. They are participating.
But are they reasoning effectively?
Not necessarily.
I might challenge them with questions such as:
- What evidence supports your conclusion?
- What evidence contradicts it?
- What are you assuming?
- Could there be another explanation?
- What new evidence would change your mind?
The science of learning: Metacognitive prompts, explicit reasoning strategies, and feedback can help students examine and improve their thinking.
Sometimes students don’t need a harder assignment.
They need to think more deeply about the assignment they already have.
8. How Do We Know an Intervention Is Working?
Suppose a student continues struggling despite attending lessons, participating in activities, and completing assignments.
Do we keep repeating the same instruction and hope something changes?
Or do we examine the evidence?
I want to know what errors the student is making, what misconceptions exist, and whether the instructional approach is addressing the actual problem.
Then I can adjust the instruction and collect new evidence to determine whether the change helped.
The science of learning: Formative assessment and actionable feedback help teachers respond to students’ learning needs.
If our instructional approach isn’t producing growth, we need to be willing to change the approach—not simply ask students to try harder.
🧭 Five Questions That Should Guide Our Instruction
Before planning a lesson or choosing a teaching strategy, I believe educators should consider five questions.
1. What do my students already know?
Find out before teaching something they may have already mastered.
2. What does research tell me about learning this skill?
Consider background knowledge, cognitive load, modeling, retrieval practice, and feedback.
3. What instructional support do students need right now?
Some students need explicit instruction. Others need guided practice. Others are ready for independent inquiry, acceleration, or application.
4. What evidence will demonstrate actual learning?
Look beyond completion and participation. Ask students to explain, justify, demonstrate, and transfer their knowledge.
5. What will I change based on the results?
Reteach? Scaffold? Compact? Accelerate? Increase independence?
If we collect evidence but never use it to change instruction, what was the point of collecting it?
📚 Where Can Teachers Find Reliable Research?
We don’t have to rely on social media trends or the latest professional development buzzword to determine what works.
Several valuable resources can help us examine the evidence:
- What Works Clearinghouse: https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/
- The Learning Scientists: https://www.learningscientists.org/
- Education Endowment Foundation: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence
- CAST Universal Design for Learning: https://udlguidelines.cast.org/
These resources offer research reviews, instructional guidance, and practical strategies.
But research isn’t a script.
It helps us understand what is likely to work, under what conditions, and why. We still need to examine how those findings apply to our students.
💡 The Biggest Shift We Need to Make
Instead of saying:
“My students are gifted, so they should always be doing inquiry-based learning.”
What if we said:
“My students have demonstrated mastery of the foundational knowledge. They’re ready for an investigation that requires deeper reasoning and independent application.”
Instead of saying:
“I believe in direct instruction because it works.”
What if we said:
“My students are encountering an unfamiliar concept, and their responses show they need explicit modeling and guided practice before working independently.”
Instead of saying:
“My students loved the activity, so it was a successful lesson.”
What if we asked:
“What did my students actually learn, and what evidence demonstrates that learning?”
That is the shift.
From preference to evidence. From activity completion to demonstrated learning. From teaching the curriculum to responding to the learner.
🎯 My #smithingifted Bottom Line
I don’t believe gifted education should be defined by one instructional approach.
I believe it should be defined by how thoughtfully we respond to students’ demonstrated needs.
Gifted students don’t always need less instruction.
They don’t always need more challenging assignments.
And they certainly don’t need to spend their time repeating skills they’ve already mastered.
They need teachers who recognize when to provide explicit instruction, when to offer support, when to accelerate, when to challenge their reasoning, and when to step aside.
We also need to remember three important distinctions:
Independence does not automatically mean readiness.
Engagement does not automatically mean learning.
Completing an assignment does not automatically mean mastering a concept.
The science of learning gives us a stronger foundation for making those distinctions.
And a body of evidence helps us decide what to do next.
Because ultimately, great teaching isn’t about defending our favorite instructional strategy. It’s about having the knowledge, flexibility, and professional judgment to choose what students need—and the evidence to know whether it worked.
That’s the kind of teaching I want happening in my classroom.
That’s the kind of learning I want for my students.
And that’s what #smithingifted is all about.
💬 Let’s Talk!
What drives your instructional decisions: the strategies you prefer, the curriculum you’re expected to follow, or the evidence of what your students actually need?
And perhaps the bigger question:
When was the last time student evidence caused you to completely change how you planned to teach something?
I’d love to hear how other educators use the science of learning to make instructional decisions!
#smithingifted #GiftedEducation #ScienceOfLearning #EvidenceBasedTeaching #ExplicitInstruction #InquiryBasedLearning #CurriculumCompacting #StudentGrowth #CriticalThinking #InstructionalLeadership #TeachingWithPurpose