We’ve all seen it—the silent hum of a classroom filled with students scribbling away, hands flying up to answer questions, or groups enthusiastically building poster presentations. It looks like learning is happening. But is it? I think I have been seduced by these proxies before and spent many years getting this all a bit wrong, but I guess the first step is to admit there is a problem.
The Illusion of Learning: Why Being Busy Isn’t Always Best
There’s a comforting rhythm to a classroom where students appear “on task.” Pens scratching, heads nodding, hands raised. It looks like learning. It feels like learning. But, I often wonder – what if it isn’t?
Robert Coe has led the way with this revolutionary thought: many of the things we take as signs of learning are actually poor proxies. They’re behaviours that might accompany learning—but don’t necessarily indicate it.
And if we’re not careful, we design lessons that prioritise the appearance of progress over the substance of it. I am happy to admit I have been guilty of this in the past, lovely notes but what did they learn? What are they doing with it?
Here are the five proxies Coe outlined—and why we need to rethink them:
1. Students are busy: especially with written work
Busyness is seductive. It fills time, looks productive, and keeps classrooms quiet. But completing tasks doesn’t always mean grappling with ideas.
Writing can be a rehearsal for thinking—but only when it’s deliberate. Without cognitive challenge, writing becomes a shallow exercise in copy and recall.
Action: It is too easy to be driven by content and not the thinking. We need to design tasks that demand thinking, not just doing. Focus on retrieval, reasoning, and restructuring knowledge.
2. Students are engaged and motivated
Of course we want engagement. But we often mistake being entertained or cooperative for true motivation. The hard truth is that learning is effortful. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable. Genuine engagement comes from cognitive investment, not just enjoyment.
Action: This is an easy mistake to make, we need to foster purposeful struggle. Let students wrestle with content and then motivation will follow the meaning.
3. Students are getting lots of feedback
Feedback is only as good as how it’s received—and used.
Students may nod along without internalising anything, they turn quickly to the written feedback in their books but stop at the grade.
The presence of feedback isn’t proof of learning; it’s the impact of feedback that matters and much more tricky to capture. I have tried a variety of methods with varying degrees of success, including whole class feedback, feedback sheets, and 3 stars and a wish. However, the key question remains – how has the feedback been used?
Action: We are constantly on the feedback loop which involves us teaching students how to act on feedback, building metacognition, not dependency on the teacher.
4. The classroom is calm and well-behaved
Control does not equal learning. A quiet room might mean compliance—or confusion. And a noisy one might mean challenge—or chaos. Order matters, but it’s not the goal. I guess I am always looking for a bit of bubble in the room and getting this balance right is crucial.
Action: Where is the bubble? Look beneath the behaviour. Are students thinking? Is the calm a sign of deep engagement—or disengagement?
5. Students are answering questions correctly
Correct answers can mask fragile understanding. Rote responses are easy to produce—and easy to misinterpret. What looks like mastery may just be mimicry.
Action: We need to ask more questions that require explanation, justification, and connection. Look for depth, not just accuracy.
So, what is learning, then?
Learning happens when something changes in long-term memory. “Memory is the residue of thought.” Daniel Willingham.
If students aren’t thinking hard, they probably aren’t learning much. And that kind of thinking isn’t always visible. We need to design lessons for learning, not performance. This means being brave enough to sometimes let go of neatness, smoothness, and instant results.
It’s about trading the comfort of certainty for the messiness of meaning.
Because learning isn’t what you see. It’s what you build.
Coe R (2013) Improving education: A triumph of hope over experience. Inaugural lecture, Durham University. Available at: www.cem.org/attachments/publications/ImprovingEducation2013.pdf
the unconscious curriculum 