Behind every ordinary classroom routine sits an argument someone had in print. These are ten of the arguments that won, and one that lost.
Teaching practice looks like common sense from the outside and is nothing of the kind. Whether a teacher explains a rule before pupils try a problem or after it, whether a class moves on together or only when everyone has reached a standard, whether early reading is taught through letter sounds or through whole words — each of these was contested, sometimes bitterly, and each has a literature behind it. Some of those arguments are settled enough that the evidence points clearly one way; others are still live, and a few popular ideas have been tested and found wanting. The quiz covers all three kinds, and the explanations say which is which rather than presenting every idea as equally supported.
Every question in this quiz is listed below with its correct answer and the reasoning behind it. Play first if you would rather not see the answers — or read through as a study sheet.
Play it insteadAnswer: D. The levels of thinking a task demands, from recall up to evaluation and creation
Why: A revision published in 2001 restated the levels as verbs rather than nouns. It also swapped the top two, placing creating above evaluating.
Answer: C. The gap between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with help
Why: The practical descendant of the idea is scaffolding: temporary support withdrawn as the learner takes over. Vygotsky died at thirty-seven and his work reached English-language readers only decades later.
Answer: B. Gives feedback during learning so teaching can adjust
Why: The same quiz can be either, depending on its use. Used to decide what to reteach it is formative; used to award a mark it is summative.
Answer: A. Repeatedly tested and not supported by the evidence
Why: People do have preferences about how material is presented, and those preferences are real. What studies have failed to find is the predicted gain from matching teaching to them.
Answer: D. Experience and active inquiry rather than passive reception
Why: He founded a laboratory school in Chicago in 1896 to try the ideas out in practice. Much of what is now called progressive education traces back through him.
Answer: C. Treating pupils as empty accounts into which knowledge is deposited
Why: He developed the argument while running adult literacy programmes in Brazil. His method tied reading directly to the circumstances of the learners' own lives.
Answer: B. Pupils move on only once they have reached a set standard on the current material
Why: Benjamin Bloom argued that schools normally fix the time and let attainment vary, and that reversing the two would narrow the spread of results. Implementing it in a class of thirty is where the difficulty lies.
Answer: A. Map letters and letter groups onto sounds and blend them
Why: Reviews of the evidence have generally favoured systematic phonics for decoding. Decoding alone is not comprehension, which also needs vocabulary and background knowledge.
Answer: D. Illustrated textbooks written for children
Why: His Orbis Pictus paired pictures with labelled text in Latin and the vernacular. It stayed in classroom use across Europe for roughly two centuries.
Answer: C. Explicit, carefully sequenced teaching with frequent checks for understanding
Why: It is usually set against discovery learning. The evidence tends to favour explicit teaching for beginners, while more open work suits learners who already hold the basics.
Ideas That Shaped Teaching has 10 questions and takes about 8 minutes to finish. It is rated Hard and sits in our Education & Learning category.
Each of the 10 correct answers adds 10 XP, up to 100 XP for a clean run. Wrong answers cost you nothing, and your full question-by-question review is shown at the end.
Yes. All 10 questions carry a written explanation of why the correct answer is right, so the quiz works as a study sheet as well as a test.
Yes, as often as you like. The questions and the answer options are reshuffled on each run, and you can use Practice Mistakes afterwards to retry only the ones you missed. No account is needed to play.
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