ASE always feels a bit like intellectual whiplash — you walk out of one session thinking deeply about particle models and velocity–time graphs, and into the next questioning whether our entire assessment system makes sense. This year was no exception.
One of the strongest threads running through the conference was challenge — what it really means, who it’s for, and how easily we confuse it with “more”, “harder”, or “faster”.
When a graph isn’t “just maths”
One of the standout sessions for me was Clever questions to improve scientific understanding with equations and graphs. It sounds deceptively simple: students should be able to look at a graph and understand the physical process, and look at a physical process and sketch the graph.
But watching this unpacked made it clear just how cognitively demanding that actually is.
Take the classic example of filling a glass with water. Straight-sided glass? Fine — most students sketch a straight line. Martini glass? Suddenly the room goes quiet. And that’s the point. The graph isn’t the learning — the thinking is.
What really landed was the reminder that:
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even simple graphs require complex cognitive processing,
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students draw on both graph schemata and science knowledge,
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and it can take 30 seconds just to properly read a graph.
Thirty seconds! How often do we give them that before asking a question?
The expert–novice comparison was also painfully familiar. Teachers scan titles, axes and scales first. Students go straight to the question and hunt for numbers. No wonder line graphs feel harder than bar charts if the x-axis is essentially invisible to them.
The practical takeaway?
Model your thinking. Talk out loud. Annotate everything. Build habits slowly, then remove the scaffolds. And sometimes… don’t talk about gradients at all.
Because when calculating a gradient becomes a plug-and-chug routine, it can actually get in the way of understanding what’s changing, and why.
Low floor, high ceiling — and wide walls
If the graphs session was about cognitive challenge, The Challenge Continuum zoomed out to look at who challenge is for.
The core idea is refreshingly human: students don’t sit neatly in boxes. Ability isn’t fixed, linear, or consistent. A student can need lots of support in one topic and crave stretch in another — sometimes in the same lesson.
This is where the continuum really diverges from traditional differentiation. Differentiation puts students in lanes. The continuum lets them move.
Some of the most powerful strategies were also the simplest:
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“How many ways can you…”
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“Odd one out”
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“What do you notice?”
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“Work out everything you can about this.”
Low floor means everyone can start.
High ceiling means no one is finished.
Wide walls mean there’s room for individuality.
What I loved most was how often these ideas overlapped with the graphing session. Annotating a heating curve? That’s a goal-free task. Asking what’s happening to particles at each stage? That’s HOTS, not MOTS. Letting students go as far as they can — from states of matter to latent heat calculations — is adaptive teaching in action.
Support isn’t the opposite of challenge
Another big takeaway: reasonable adjustments aren’t about lowering expectations.
Movement breaks, sensory adjustments, flexible timings, and explicit scaffolds benefit everyone. “SEND for all” approaches don’t dilute challenge — they often increase it, by freeing up cognitive capacity for actual thinking.
I also appreciated the honest discussion around masking, energy accounting, and recovery time. Inclusion isn’t just about access to content; it’s about access to learning without exhaustion.
A recurring question
Across sessions — from AQA on high-demand questions, to maths skills in science, to practical work and cognitive load — one question kept resurfacing:
Are we helping students think, or just helping them get through questions?
Whether it’s unfamiliar contexts in exams, gradients in Hooke’s Law, or required practicals remembered years later, the message was consistent: understanding needs space, time, and intention.
And maybe that’s the real challenge continuum — not where students sit on it, but whether our teaching allows them to move along it at all.
