Most teachers already sense it: a lot of what gets celebrated as innovation in schools is designed to survive a walkthrough, not produce learning. This episode names that tension directly, and offers one honest diagnostic that cuts through the performance and gets back to the question that actually matters: what are students being asked to figure out?

This episode draws in part on research in:

• Cognitive Load Theory (Sweller, 1988; Kirschner, Sweller & Clark, 2006)
• Performance vs. learning distinction (Soderstrom & Bjork, 2015)
• Desirable difficulties and productive struggle (Bjork, 1994)
• Technology adoption and classroom practice (Cuban, 2001)