The science of learning is not the same as “back to basics”

How teachers can move past educational pendulum swings to a more evidence-informed future.

About a year ago, we showed our students a video about explicit instruction developed by Dr. Nathaniel Swain. After the class, one of our students approached us and said, “Oh, I get it now— the science of learning is like back to basics.”

This comment was not entirely surprising. We’ve heard other people make similar comparisons and at first glance, it makes some sense. Both the science of learning and the back to basics movement emphasize things like explicit instruction, practice, and foundational skills. So it's not surprising that people sometimes conflate the two.

But while this confusion is understandable, it’s also concerning. While the two approaches sometimes overlap in what they recommend, they diverge in why they recommend it. That distinction is important.

So what’s the difference between “back to basics” and the science of learning? And why does it matter?

What is “back to basics”?

The back to basics movement emerged in the 1970’s in response to concerns that students were failing to master essential academic skills, particularly reading, writing, and arithmetic. Many critics felt that progressive educational philosophies had swung too far, focusing excessively on things like inquiry-based learning, self-esteem, and student agency at the expense of foundational literacy and numeracy skills. Over the years, the influence of the back to basics movement has waxed and waned. In times of social or economic uncertainty, calls for a "return to basics" often resurface in educational and political debates.

At its core, back to basics promotes a strong focus on reading, writing, and math; a preference for explicit instruction; an emphasis on drill and repetition; and teacher-led classrooms. There is a lot of value in these things. Students do need to master math facts, grammar, and decoding skills. There’s also a lot of merit in providing structure, clarity, and purposeful practice. Many of these practices are similar to ones recommended by the science of learning.

In some respects, it shouldn’t be surprising that some of the approaches championed by the back to basics movement align with recommendations from the science of learning. Teaching is a very old profession. The approaches that we refer to today as “traditional” are ones that previous generations of teachers came to value because they often proved effective. Modern research simply provides empirical confirmation that many of these older approaches do indeed have educational value.

However, at its core, back to basics is limited in what it can do for us. It essentially says, “We should teach like we used to.” It prescribes certain kinds of practices, but lacks an underlying rationale for doing so. Rather than being grounded in science or evidence, it leans heavily on tradition, intuition, and a romanticized vision of the past. It offers no opportunities for growth and improvement, since any new ideas can be criticized as a deviation from the way things once were.

Back to basics is perhaps best understood as a blend of a political movement and an ideology. It calls attention to certain instructional priorities, many of which do have value, but it’s not a serious attempt to examine what actually works, or why.

What is the science of learning?

The science of learning is different. It’s not a return to the past. Rather, it’s a research-based framework for understanding how students learn best. It draws on findings from cognitive science, neuroscience, and psychology to guide classroom instruction.

Some key findings:

• Working memory is limited. So we should avoid overloading students with too much new information at once.

• Students forget. So we should space out practice and return to key ideas over time.

• Learning requires effort. So we should use techniques like retrieval practice (e.g., low-stakes quizzes or frequent recall) to strengthen memory.

• Understanding builds on prior knowledge. So we need to carefully sequence instruction and connect new ideas to what students already know.

These aren’t opinions or preferences or educational fads. They’re insights backed by real evidence about how brains process and retain information.

Examples of science of learning practices that are not part of “back to basics”

While the science of learning and the back to basics movement both value structured instruction and skill development, they differ when it comes to how learning is best supported over time. In fact, some of the most powerful, research-informed strategies uncovered by the science of learning are practices that back to basics advocates might normally overlook, or even reject:

• Low-stakes / No-stakes retrieval: The science of learning emphasizes retrieval practice, the idea that trying to recall information from memory strengthens learning far more than simply reviewing it. While back to basics might lean heavily on repetition and review, it tends to treat quizzes as assessment tools rather than learning opportunities.

• Spacing and Interleaving: Research into the science of learning has uncovered the benefits of spaced and interleaved practice. Spreading out learning and mixing related topics have been shown to build deeper understanding and long-term retention, even if they feel harder in the short term. Back to basics, by contrast, tends to favour massed practice, encouraging students to repeatedly drill a single skill until it appears mastered, even though this often leads to rapid forgetting.

• Cognitive Load: The science of learning also gives serious attention to cognitive load (i.e., how much information students can process at once) and draws on multimedia design principles to ensure that visuals, text, and narration work together, not against each other. These concerns rarely show up in back to basics thinking, which tends to rely on more traditional forms of instruction without much attention to cognitive architecture or multimedia design.

• Metacognition: Lastly, the science of learning encourages teaching metacognition—helping students reflect on their own thinking and learning strategies—alongside content. Back to basics approaches often sideline this kind of instruction, focusing almost exclusively on procedural accuracy and content delivery.

In short, the science of learning draws on decades of evidence to guide how that instruction is designed, delivered, and reinforced. It’s not about returning to the past; it’s about moving forward scientifically, with what we now know about how people learn.

Final Thoughts

Educational trends are often compared to a pendulum, swinging back and forth between traditional and progressive approaches to teaching and learning. For decades, our profession has been caught up in battles between these two ideologies, with public sentiment periodically swinging one way or the other. But the constant back-and-forth has left many educators stuck in the middle, unsure of which ideas to trust, and wary of being caught on the “wrong” side.

Part of what fuels these swings is the way ideology influences our language. Instead of having constructive conversations about what works and why, we often fall into the trap of using loaded language in ways that label, dismiss, or disparage. This is where terms like “drill and kill,” “teacher-centered,” or “rote learning” come into play. They’re not neutral descriptions. Rather, they’re labels designed to make certain practices sound harmful or outdated, even when there’s solid evidence to support them.

A good example is the long-running debate over how to teach reading. For years, explicit phonics instruction was framed by some progressive educators as robotic, joyless, or even harmful to children’s love of reading. It was dismissed as “old-fashioned,” while the whole-language approach, which focused on context, meaning, and student choice, was celebrated as being humane and modern. But decades of research, including large-scale reviews and longitudinal studies, revealed that systematic phonics instruction is crucial for helping children learn to decode words. It’s especially helpful for struggling readers. Countless students have suffered because of the ideological framing that made “phonics” a dirty word in some circles.

When our decisions about teaching are based more on loyalty to a worldview than on what helps students learn, we all lose. And the kids who need effective instruction are hurt the most.

The good news for teachers is that the science of learning offers a new way forward. It allows us to turn our back on the endless “progressive vs traditional” battles and focus instead on what actually works best for students. Rather than viewing teaching through ideological lenses, we can instead ask clear, practical questions grounded in research: “What does the evidence say about this approach? Does it reflect how learning happens in the brain? Does it minimize cognitive overload? Does it support struggling learners? And does it help all students retrieve, apply, and build on their knowledge?”

When we shift our focus from ideology to evidence, teaching becomes less about allegiance and more about student success. As educators, we have an opportunity to move beyond the pendulum swings that have distracted and divided the profession for far too long. We can instead commit to approaches that are grounded in research. It’s a path forward that honours both the art and science of teaching, and one that, ultimately, serves students best.

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References

Ehri, L.C., Nunes, S.R., Stahl, S.A., & Willows, D.M. (2001). Systematic phonics instruction helps students learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel’s meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 71(3), 393–447.