Progressively Incorrect

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell. In this episode, I’m joined by Sean Morrisey, creator of the Word Mapping Project, for a conversation about how students learn words—not just as spellings to memorize or definitions to recite, but as connected units of sound, spelling, and meaning. Sean spent eight years as … Continue reading S5E33: Sean Morrisey on Word...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell. I’ve always been fascinated by what teaching looks like in remote and challenging contexts. That interest goes back to my own time working in places like Sudan, where the namesake of this blog, Education Rickshaw, comes from. So when I was invited to present at … Continue reading S5E32: Doug Gray on Alaskan Schools, Bush...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell. Education is filled with myths. Some are harmless. Others shape curriculum, teacher training, intervention programs, and the lives of students for decades before anyone seriously asks whether they work. One of the reasons this podcast exists is to challenge those myths and examine the evidence … Continue reading S5E31: Ka...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell. Executive functioning has become one of the most frequently discussed topics in education, yet it remains one of the most misunderstood. Teachers are increasingly expected to help students manage attention, organization, memory, planning, and self-regulation, but questions remain about what these skills actually are, how &#8230...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. Today I’m bringing you an episode from the Direct Instruction Podcast—one that I think anyone interested in instructional design, curriculum development, or evidence-based teaching will find fascinating. I’m joined by Owen Engelmann of Engelmann-Becker Corporation, the curriculum development organization founded by Siegfrie...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell, and today we are talking about teaching, coaching, and the strange language of modern education. One phrase that comes up constantly in education is “student-centered learning.” It gets used so often, and so vaguely, that it’s started to mean almost everything and almost nothing at … Continue reading S5E28: AJ Pettway on...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I'm your host, Zach Groshell, and today we are talking about Montessori. I'll admit, I came into this conversation skeptical. Most of what gets sold as "Montessori" today is a watered-down, follow-your-bliss version of what Maria Montessori actually wrote. The popular caricature— that Montessori is a free-for-all where kids drift … Continue reading S5...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Zach Groshell, and today we are talking about.... PE! I’ll admit, I’ve often taken a dim view of PE as a subject. At its worst, it's often just games and activities that don’t appear to build toward much, and that, frankly, could be led by someone without … Continue reading S5E26: Ste Robinson on Mastery-Based, Knowledge-Rich PE

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect, a show about the teacher-centered and the student-centered, the traditional and the progressive, in education. My guest today is Jamey Peavler, literacy leader and instructional expert focused on building coherent, science-aligned systems of reading instruction. Jamey has worked extensively with schools and districts to design and implement structured liter...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I am you host, Zach Groshell. My guest today is Dr. Olivia Mullins, Founder and Executive Director of Science Delivered and lead developer of the Learning Squared science and literacy program. Olivia trained as a scientist before turning to elementary science education. She's become one of the sharpest voices working … Continue reading S5E24: Olivia M...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect, a show sponsored by John Catt from Hachette Learning and hosted by me, Dr. Zach Groshell. My guest today is Richard Wheadon, author of the forthcoming book Teaching Learning Habits – How to Develop Independent and Successful Learners, to be published with Routledge. He blogs at Everything Pedagogy and writes … Continue reading S5E23: Richard Wheadon o...

My name is Dr. Zach Groshell and welcome to my podcast! In this episode, I welcome Adam Robbins to Progressively Incorrect for a conversation about one of the biggest challenges in education: improving teaching. Together, we explore why teacher development is often so difficult and why schools need more than good intentions to make meaningful … Continue reading S5E22: Adam Robbins on the Cha...

My name is Dr. Zach Groshell and welcome to my podcast! This season, I continue to explore the science of learning—especially what the work actually looks like when schools try to build their instructional models around it. We talk a lot about evidence-based practice in education, but far fewer conversations focus on how schools implement … Continue reading S5E21: Inwood Academy Pioneers the...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect, a show sponsored by John Catt from Hachette Learning and hosted by me, Dr. Zach Groshell. My guest today is Christopher Such, literacy expert, former primary teacher, and author of Primary Reading Simplified. Chris makes his epic return to the show to tackle several debates currently shaping reading instruction in … Continue reading S5E20: Christopher...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. This season, I’ve been diving deeply into writing instruction — what the research actually says, where classroom practice often drifts, and what it truly takes to help students become confident, capable writers. Writing is one of the most cognitively demanding things we ask students … Continue reading S5E19: Leslie La...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. In this episode, I sit down with Ian Kelleher and Glenn Whitman of the Center for Transformative Teaching & Learning (CTTL). We began with the origin story of CTTL — how they set out to bridge mind, brain, and education science with real classroom … Continue reading S5E18: Glenn Whitman and Ian Kelleher on Bridgin...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. In this episode, I’m joined by the always fabulous, Femi Adeniran, to continue a conversation that started when I appeared on the Beyond Good podcast about math, coaching, and instruction. We discuss: How to begin a maths lesson How not to begin a maths … Continue reading S5E17: Femi Adeniran on Explicit Math Instruct...

Welcome back to Progressively Incorrect. I’m your host, Dr. Zach Groshell. In this episode, I’m joined by Scotty Jackson to talk about how summer camp can create the experiences—and build the kinds of values—that help kids be better people: honesty, respect, responsibility, caring, and belonging. I’m not coming at this as a distant observer. I … Continue reading S5E16: Scott Jackson on Summe...

In this episode, I sit down with Barbara Oakley—engineer, bestselling author, and one of the most influential voices in the science of learning—to talk about why so much instruction still misses the mark, what “good teaching” looks like when you take cognition seriously, and what’s at stake if we keep defaulting to methods that feel … Continue reading S5E15: Barbara Oakley on Constructivism...

The “Thinking Out Loud” episodes on Better Teaching: Only Stuff That Works are a running set of conversations to make sense of instruction, coaching, and implementation as they actually function in schools—not as we wish they did. The premise is straightforward: Gene Tavernetti and I take a concrete problem of practice, name what tends to go wrong, … Continue reading S5E14: Thinking Out Loud...

Mike Schmoker is one of the most influential voices in school improvement, urging schools to recommit to the fundamentals: coherent curriculum, strong lesson design, and authentic literacy—reading, discussion, and writing—throughout the school day. Across books like Focus and Results Now 2.0, and decades of essays and commentary, his through-line is the same: schools don’t usually … Continue...

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Brian Poncy to explore a claim you’ve probably heard in schools: “Teaching math facts interferes with understanding.” From there, we dig into better ways to think about math facts, what schools can do differently, and the practical decisions that show up when schools decide to take facts … Continue reading S5E12: Brian Poncy on Better Ways to Teach Math F...

In this episode, I sit down with Alex Gingell to unpack what it actually takes to make instructional coaching work in a school. Alex explains why his first priority wasn’t improving teaching, but stabilizing behavior, curriculum, and trust—and why coaching can only succeed once those foundations are secure. We talk through how he used Steplab … Continue reading S5E11: Alex Gingell on Setting...

In this episode of the Direct Instruction podcast, I’m joined by Laura Doherty, President and CEO of the Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP)—Maryland’s largest operator of neighborhood, PK–8 public charter schools, and one of the longest-running Direct Instruction networks in the United States.  For nearly three decades, BCP has been quietly doing something that many systems … Continue readin...

In this episode of Progressively Incorrect, I’m joined by Marty Siegel, Professor Emeritus of Informatics and Instructional Systems Technology, and a pioneer whose career bridges early Direct Instruction, large-scale computer-based learning, human–computer interaction, and the emerging world of AI-driven instruction. Marty began his career at the University of Illinois in the 1960s, right at the &...