S04E02 - David Didau on Five Things Teachers Should Stop Doing

About this episode

David Didau discusses five teaching habits that hinder effective learning and challenges common educational beliefs.

Have you ever taught a "perfect" lesson where every student got the answer right, only to find they remembered absolutely nothing the next day? In this episode, education author David Didau joins me to reveal why what looks like learning is often just a "performance"—and how our best intentions might be fueling the illusion. We dig into five common teaching habits you need to stop immediately, including why "Sat Nav teaching" is creating dependency rather than independence and why the popular idea of "productive struggle" might actually be setting your students up to fail. David challenges deep-seated beliefs about practice, compliance, and memory, offering a provocative look at what it really takes to make learning stick. Resources mentioned: Books David Didau – What If Everything You Knew About Education Was Wrong? David Didau – Intelligent Accountability Websites & Tools Carousel Learning People Robert Bjork Adam Boxer Carl Hendrick Christina Milos You can connect with David: Twitter/X: @DavidDidau Linkedin Substack: https://daviddidau.substack.com/ Website: https://learningspy.co.uk/ David Didau Events: Canberra - Thursday 12th March…

People in this episode

Host: Brendan Lee

Guest: David Didau

Topics covered

• teaching habits
• learning retention
• educational practices
• dependency in learning
• productive struggle
• memory in education

Keywords

• teaching
• learning
• education
• memory
• dependency
• productive struggle
• David Didau

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: What If Everything You Knew About Education Was Wrong?, Intelligent Accountability

Places: Canberra, Melbourne

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