Hasn’t this been suggested before?

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'The need for a historical perspective [in education] is most evident in the constant repetition and recycling of ideas and practices that dogs the teaching profession – and in the extraordinary credulity of the profession towards alleged innovations and solutions, some of which stand in contradiction to empirical evidence. How often must we witness the (re)discovery of play-based learning, or explicit instruction, or ‘whole’ language, or phonics, or individualised pathways, or learning ‘styles’ – as if these have never been tried before? How often must we believe that some new technology – the telegraph, radio, film strips, television, video, personal computing, the mobile phone – is destined to usher in a utopian future of success for all?’. [1]

Any teacher who has been in the profession for more than a minute will have heard older hands talk about education ‘cycles’ – old ideas recycled in new language and presented as ‘new’. 

These cycles are much-debated by historians of education (some even denying that they really exist in such a neat-and-tidy manner), but they find ready expression in more popular stories told about education from teachers and scholars who are not necessarily historians [2]. One of the most popular ways to speak about this process is of a ‘pendulum swing’ between extremes on a given issue. For example, this analogy was recently employed about the role of ‘knowledge’ in education in Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival (2025) in which the authors suggested that:

The role of knowledge in the curriculum can be metaphorically described as a pendulum oscillating between two extremes, from highly visible to virtually invisible knowledge elements. [3]

In other words, knowledge was once central to curriculum thinking, the pendulum then swung to an opposite extreme and knowledge disappeared and, as the subtitle of the book suggests, knowledge is now being ‘revived’.

As the comment from Brian Moon at the beginning of this piece suggested, we could probably rotate the notion of ‘knowledge’ out of this swinging pendulum metaphor and replace it with almost anything that has been fashionable in education at one time or another: project-based learning, explicit instruction and so on. In the 21st century, I would suggest that by far the best example of a pendulum swing has been in the area of technology – at least in an Australian context. I vividly recall teaching in 2009 when the Australian Federal government decided to fund a 2.1 billion dollar program called the Digital Education Revolution (DER) which provided every year 9 school student with a laptop computer. Now, less than 20 years later, many schools have moved to ban devices entirely from most learning contexts and some commentators are gaining significant traction for prosecuting a case against the so-called  ‘digital delusion’.

In the case of the Australian government’s DER, regardless of one’s philosophical views about technology and education, one might be forgiven for feeling sympathy for any teacher who spent tens of hours of work shifting all their resources and teaching tools over to these digital devices that are: a) no longer provided; and, b) actively discouraged in many contexts.

All of this raises important questions about the nature of education and the experience of teachers and students who file in and out of schools five out of a precious seven days per week. Why do these cycles occur? How do they effect teachers and students (workloads, morale, learning and satisfaction)? Should we look for a way to end the cycles once-and-for all, or do they also allow education a necessary flexibility that it would be dangerous to eliminate altogether?

From the point of view of a teacher, these observations also raise a simpler and more practical question that could help to guard against well-meaning bandwagonism. When confronted with an idea or suggestion about education, teaching or pedagogy that we are told is ‘new’ or ‘forgotten’, we could simply ask: has this been suggested and/or tried before?

It is a simple question to pose and to comprehend, but it is also powerful in unlocking follow-up questions that could save a lot of unnecessary work: if it has been tried, where, when and how? What do we know about how it worked out? What worked well and not so well? What don’t we know about how it worked out? Is it still being used anywhere? Is it really substantially different to other ways of thinking that have been (or are currently) promoted?

This frame of mind is not a panacea for avoiding temporary fads and fashions, but it could certainly help ensure that more educational ideas promoted or (literally) sold as ‘new’, are met with greater skepticism.

The point here is not to suggest that everything promoted as new is really and truly not, that would be naive and rediculous. I think there are genuinely new ideas in education, even if they are modifications and extensions of previous ideas. Sometimes genuinely new thinking also has to take place in response to developments no one could have predicted, such as Artificial Intelligence. But even here, the ‘newness’ of the ‘new’ is not complete – we have had to respond to major advances in technology before and I suspect the dynamics are likely to rhyme in some important ways with the past.

The point here is also not to suggest that teachers should lock in to a steady suite of teaching approaches and never look to evolve, that would also be naive and ridiculous. In my view, teaching is a profession that requires near-constant synthesis and iteration as new ideas collide with older ideas and force us to adapt and evolve in ways that are intelligent, ethical and sustainable.

Nevertheless, if we do not have any questions like this (has this been suggested and/or tried before?) ready to hand, there is every danger that we unconsciously find ourselves part of a wave of energy and activity that ultimately turns out to be a bit of a dead end. Then, what will all of the effort have been for? At least if we ask the question and explore it genuinely we can rest in the knowledge that we tried to think it through and perhaps position our response in a way that was thoughtful, critical and personal. None of this is likely to end the swinging pendulum, but it might prevent us as indivuduals being drawn too far in a direction that later requires serious repair work.

If what I am suggesting here is generally reasonable, it also raises an important question about teacher training. From what I understand, none of the education programs I am familiar with in New South Wales include robust or sustained engagement with the history of education – some others might that I am not aware of. In fact, one motivation Brian Moon offered for writing his book was that: ‘Initial Teacher Education programs have long neglected any study of the history of schooling’. [4]

Could it be that deep knowledge about the history of education would actually be quite practical for beginning teachers? Could it be that the discipline of History also has a role to play in challenging the siwnging pendulum? I’d say probably. But then again, hasn’t that been suggested before? [5]

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Endnotes

[1] Brian Moon, The History of Popular Schooling: Introductory Lectures for Teacher Education, Moonwell Press, 2023, p. ii

[2] See, for example: Laura Tisdall, A Progressive Education? How Childhood Changed in Mid-Twentieth Century English and Welsh Schools, Manchester University Press, 2019, pp. 6-7

[3] Surma, T, et. al. Developing Curriculum for Deep Thinking: The Knowledge Revival, Springer, 2025, p. 41

[4] Moon, p. i

[5] Craig Campbell and Geoffrey Sherrington, 'The History of Education: The Possibility of Survival', Change: Transformations in Education, Vol. 5.1, 2002, pp. 46-64