But this debate about the relative importance of knowledge and skills, people outside the education world are baffled by it – and they’re right. Everyone with their feet on the ground in the real world knows you need both, and these old arguments, old practices, old divides – they’re holding our children back.
Keir Starmer, 6 July 2023
The leader of the Labour party is right about one thing: people are baffled by the knowledge and skills debate. However, it isn’t just those outside of education who struggle with the conceptual arguments. I know more teachers who would fall into the trap of believing knowledge and skills are entirely ‘different things’ than those who would not.
But the problem is that this ‘debate’ is the tip of the iceberg. Most within education who spend time pushing back on this dichotomous belief are themselves bound by a cognitive paradigm; one in which we imagine our knowledge and skills to be stored somewhere, ready to be retrieved for our use. This paradigm is itself contested.
Confused? I don’t blame you. And (assuming you are within the world of education) if you are confused, how can we expect those outside of this world to understand any of this? We have a comms problem. If we want policymakers to make good policy, we need to be able to challenge their misconceptions in layman’s terms. And to do this, we need a shared understanding of what it means to know something.
Let’s work this through.
The scourge of common sense
Of course knowledge and skills are different. It is common sense.
On the one hand, I know that the Battle of Hastings was fought in 1066. On the other hand, I can simplify equations. I have both knowledge and skill. I know things and I can do things.
I am not going to spend too much time explaining why the above ‘common sense’ is questionable, because others have done it far better than I can. This blog by Daisy Christodoulou is worthy of your time. In it, Daisy argues that knowledge and skills are not different things. Instead, the former are the ingredients of the latter.
If we take simplifying equations as an example. To have this ‘skill’, we need to know a great deal. For example, we must understand the order in which we deal with brackets, multiplication/division, and addition/subtraction. What we observe is the skilful act of the novice mathematician, but this skill is the practiced application of knowledge.
We fall into the trap of knowledge/skill separation in schools because some things look more like a skill and some things look more like knowledge. If I visit a textiles class and see students using sewing machines, it is ‘common sense’ to conclude that they are learning skills. Whereas, if I walk into a French class and they are memorising verb tenses, I will conclude that this is purely about memorisation. What we may not think about is that the memorisation is an essential ingredient of the skill students will later demonstrate in constructing grammatically correct sentences, and we will not have seen the hours of instruction about how a sewing machine works, the different kinds of stitches we can use, and what all of the controls on the machine do.
Such assumptions about subjects underly another false dichotomy: the academic/vocational divide that is the favourite of politicians. It is true that some subjects and qualifications are linked more closely to particular vocations than others, but we should think of this as a spectrum, not a binary distinction. Placing subjects like history and maths on the academic side of a divide ignores the fact that the knowledge learnt in these subjects will be vocationally very useful to historians and mathematicians! And labelling subjects as ‘non-academic’ just because there are lots of practical skills on display ignores the fact that these skills are manifestations of the possession of knowledge.
There are other pernicious effects of knowledge/skill separation. Assessment can be ruined (and has been for many years, on and off) by the belief that skills somehow float free of knowledge, therefore can be possessed as generic abilities. Pupils are ‘skilled’ at comprehension, critical thinking, or writing essays. Comprehending what? Thinking critically about what? Writing an essay about what?
So, what is our message to policymakers so far? We agree that people need both knowledge and skills – they need to know stuff and be able to do stuff. But it is a mistake to think that skills are separate from knowledge. The pathways to building skill is by acquiring knowledge and practising the application of this knowledge. If we think of skills as being separate from knowledge, we end up making bad policies.
Knowledge-rich
We have considered the argument that skills are ‘made up’ of knowledge. But is it possible to possess knowledge independently of skill? Can we ‘know things’ without being able to ‘do things’?
In one sense, the answer is yes. This type of knowledge is sometimes called ‘declarative knowledge’ (because it is knowledge you can ‘declare’). Defining some forms of knowledge as declarative suggests: a) that this knowledge is materially different to the knowledge required to perform a skill (which we then call procedural knowledge), and; b) that we can distinguish between types of knowledge in our curriculum (curriculum ‘objects’). This, in turn, suggests that there may be different ways of teaching that are more suited to each ‘type’ of knowledge.
Debates about knowledge and skill often get hung up on the importance of declarative knowledge. Some subjects appear to contain lots of it. Where this is the case, there is a focus on ‘remembering lots of stuff’. ‘Memorisation’ requires repetition, and this gets labelled as ‘rote learning’ – a term often used in a derogatory way to imply that learning is nothing more than a drill.
When people in education promote a ‘knowledge-rich curriculum’, this can be mis-characterised as a call for more rote learning of ‘facts’. Proponents of a knowledge-rich curriculum are often, in fact, making the case rehearsed above i.e. that skills cannot be learnt separately from a rich body of knowledge. They are not arguing for more knowledge and less teaching of skills, as Keir Starmer appears to believe, but rather making the case that ability grows in the rich soil of knowledge.
Again, we have a comms problem. Knowledge-rich is not counterpoised to skill-rich, they are one and the same. We want pupils to be able to do things by knowing things.
Our second message to policymakers, therefore, is this: We want the same thing you do, that is for young people to develop abilities that set them up for life. When we call for a knowledge-rich curriculum, we are saying that the way to develop ability is to ensure that pupils can acquire a broad, rich, complex body of knowledge which can be applied to solve problems, weigh up arguments, think creatively, think critically, and do all the things that an ‘educated person’ should be able to do. Please don’t mis-characterise the term ‘knowledge-rich’ as a reductive call for more rote-learning, or set up a ‘skills-rich’ straw man, or suggest that educational professionals, by engaging in a nuanced and informed debate about knowledge, are unnecessarily confusing the issue and do not have their ‘feet on the ground’. The ground is exactly where you will find us.
To illustrate further how the concepts of knowledge and skill are difficult to distinguish, let’s turn to the work of psychologist John Sweller.
Sweller points out that it is often not possible to ascertain whether someone is drawing upon declarative or procedural knowledge. When faced with a test of ability (such as a question in a test), we may draw upon one of four thought processes. First, we may fluently recall the answer. Second, we may make some effort to sift through the possible answers and select the one that is most credible. Third, we may apply a practised procedure to arrive at the right answer. Fourth, when faced with an unfamiliar problem, we may construct a process to reach the solution. The first two approaches rely on declarative knowledge whereas the last two rely on procedural knowledge. Fluent recall and the application of a rehearsed process (1 and 3) are relatively automatic whereas search/selection and the solving of novel problems (2 and 4) require cognitive effort and navigation.
We might observe all four possible processes in action when students are answering a simple maths question such as 7 multiplied by 7. They may know the answer is 49, they may select from the 7 times table pool of possible answers (42, 49, 56) that are in the ballpark, they may count up in 7s, or (if they have not moved beyond the 5 times table in their learning) they may logically deduce a method such as counting to 7 on their fingers 7 times. If successful, all four approaches will deliver the correct answer, but which method was employed will not be immediately obvious to the teacher.
Sweller’s insight implies that declarative and procedural knowledge should not be considered ‘curriculum objects’ but rather ‘ways of thinking’. Which way of thinking is preferable? Well, having a fluent recall of times tables is important in freeing up working memory to perform more complex calculations. However, the ‘number sense’ and procedural knowledge which means we can tackle novel problems is also important in becoming a capable mathematician.
If we should avoid thinking of declarative and procedural knowledge as curriculum objects, perhaps we should also question our assumption that a knowledge or a skill is something that is ‘possessed’. Does it make sense to say that a student possess the knowledge that 7 times 7 is 49, or that they possess the skill to work it out? Is it more meaningful to say that they have the ‘ability’ to answer the question?
To enter this debate, we need a paradigm shift in our thinking about knowledge. Keir Starmer is going to love this!
The ability to do something
Might it be possible to bridge the knowledge/skills divide in another way?
Suppose I ask you to fetch me a cat. You may have a cat ready to retrieve, perhaps in a box somewhere (which would be weird, but go with me). However, you are more likely to go looking for a cat. The question is, do you have the ability to bring me a cat?
Now suppose I ask you to describe a cat. We may imagine that you have such a description stored in mind which you are able to draw upon. However, this is a rather odd way of thinking about it. Is your conception of what a cat is just waiting for you to retrieve it? It feels more correct to say that you have the ability to describe a cat.
This example illustrates the fundamental difference between the conception of a ‘storage’ model of memory and the ‘ability’ model of memory.
The ability to describe a cat will require a respondent to remember: but not to remember what a cat ‘is’, but to remember what cats have been seen, what they have been told about cats, what their experience of cats has been. Rather than these memories existing as a ‘schema’ in mind, they merely exist in a way that enables the respondent to describe a cat when asked. If you are never asked to describe a cat, your potential to do so is never revealed. Equally, each time you are required to describe a cat, you are unlikely to do so in the same way.
The teacher Bernard Andrews provides a critique of the storage model of memory in this blog. In it, he argues that memories are ‘an ability we have retained, not data that is stored’. Because we can ‘remember’, we mistakenly infer that ‘memories’ are objects held somewhere waiting to be retrieved, like the cat in the box. Instead, he argues, we should think of remembering as ‘to retain an ability one has acquired’.
Andrews gives the example of riding a bike. To say we have a memory of how to ride a bike would be strange. Instead, we would say we have the ability to ride a bike. Is riding a bike a skill? In layman’s terms, yes. But this skill is not an object held somewhere in mind. It would be more correct perhaps to say we have the ‘potential’ to ride a bike.
An ‘ability’ model of memory may be more useful than a ‘storage’ model when considering a range of ’embodied’ or ‘practical’ contexts. Consider a group of students performing a drama piece. Are we not more concerned about the quality of their performance than what declarative or procedural knowledge they possess? It is true that to bring students to the point when they can perform well will mean teaching them knowledge and skills, and it is also true that we may want to test their knowledge and skills periodically to estimate whether they are developing the potential to perform a strong piece. However, the quality of their final performance is evidence of their potential, not evidence of a schema of knowledge and/or skill. If we were to look inside their mind we would not be able to see this performance represented there.
The philosopher Wittgenstein said, “Memory can be compared with a storehouse only so far as it fulfills the same purpose”. When we come to view a student’s ability holistically, in certain domains and in certain contexts, the storage model of memory may cease to serve us.
Rumelhart and Norman (1981) state, “Information is not stored anywhere in particular. Rather it is stored everywhere. Information is better thought of as ‘evoked’ than ‘found'”. In this way, perhaps we should think of assessment as more revealing potential than possession.
This critique does not only apply to ’embodied’ skills, however. We had a debate with our Head of History a couple of years ago about history essays. I argued that the essay should test whether students possessed a specified body of knowledge and you should expect students to draw on the same knowledge. I was wrong. Our Head of History argued that to some extent it didn’t matter what knowledge students drew upon as long as their answer was informed, credible, well argued, etc. The storage and ability models of memory may explain why we could not understand each other. Our Head of History was concerned only that students knew enough to provide a ‘quality’ answer to the question – he was interested in their ability more than their knowledge. I couldn’t get past the thought that an assessment should be testing a discrete body of knowledge so that comparisons could be made between students as to how secure they were in this knowledge.
Let’s summarise these two paradigms.
The Storage Model of memory assumes:
- Memory ‘contains’ knowledge
- It is organised in schema
- We can ‘retrieve’ this knowledge
- Memories are objects (a thing to store)
The Ability Model of memory assumes:
- We have an ability to retain abilities
- Memory is the ability to do things
- Ability is not limited to the mind and what is stored there
- There is no ‘place’ in mind where particular knowledge can be ‘found’.
The storage model of memory has been the mainstay of cognitive science and is the dominant model in educational discourse presently in this country. However, increasingly cognitive science is coming to view the act of remembering (or retrieval as they may call it) is an act of reconstruction in that new memories are made each time we bring information stored in long term memory into our working memories.
Neisser (1982) said that there is “no sharp dividing line between factual recall and piecing together the most plausible and relevant story”. In other words, retrieving what we know is inextricably bound up with the act of creating new knowledge in order to respond plausibly and relevantly to what is asked of us. When we are asked to describe a cat, we draw upon what we know to provide a plausible response. There is no ‘idea’ of a cat held somewhere within our memory, but equally we are constructing our response from somethings held in mind. Perhaps there is hope that we can bridge these competing models of memory to reach a more informed position.
I take a pragmatic approach by ignoring which of the above models is more correct and instead asking when each might be more useful. There are times when we might want to know that a pupil ‘possesses’ a particular piece of knowledge or can carry out a well-defined procedure. There are times when we may want to see what students are capable of, without worrying about from where this ability arose.
Where do these rather abstract and arcane ideas leave us in relation to the knowledge and skills debate? People outside of education may indeed be baffled by it. I am not 100% clear myself.
It seems pragmatic to conclude that we should concern ourselves both with whether pupils ‘possess’ certain knowledge and skills and whether they have the ability to employ their faculties to demonstrate their potential in varied domains. Sometimes we will want to unpick exactly what pupils know and can do and instruct them accordingly. At other times, we we want to provide opportunities for students to show us their abilities – to create, to perform, to compete, to collaborate, to solve real-world problems.
Our message to policymakers is that knowledge and skills are necessary, but not sufficient. Humans are more than the content of their minds, the sum of their capabilities, and the stock of knowledge which can be catalogued. In fact, their worth should not be measured in ability, nor in the contribution they will make someday to the economy, nor in the qualifications they will achieve. Education is about more than the acquisition of knowledge and skill. It is about the flourishing of individual potential.
We can both be rigorous in equipping young people with the abilities they need and ideological in our hopes for what they will become. We don’t wish to over-complicate the task, but neither should we play to the crowd and pretend that it is all common sense. Don’t patronise us, listen to us. We know more about what it means to educate than you ever will as a policymaker.
I am not optimistic about getting through to policymakers, let alone the wider public, about why the knowledge/skills debate is so wrong-footed. I expect that we will keep returning to the debate and that we will keep swinging, pendulum like, from one ‘side’ to the other. Perhaps one day informed voices will be heard by those who keep the pendulum swinging.
Matthew Evans 