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The trouble with troublesome knowledge

A recent blog post made some interesting assertions about knowledge. In doing so it presented a series of opinions as facts. That is not a criticism - we all have a tendency to do this. But in order to confront the troublesome nature of knowledge we should address these claims head on and to do so I will treat them as if they were factual. Fact claim 1: we can teach children [about the world using a globe] as a set of facts to recall, but it just won’t go in like it does later on – they simply cannot place it [...]

2018-06-16T07:32:11+01:00June 16th, 2018|Featured|

The best books I’ve read so far this year…

I normally round up my favourite reads at the end of the year but I've read so many really excellent books so far this year that I decided to put them out there now. Who knows? Maybe you'll consider picking one of them up to peruse over the summer. In no particular order... Factfulness: 10 reasons we're wrong about the world - and why things are better than you think, Hans Rosling Sadly, Hans Rosling died last year. If you've never heard of him before have a look at some of his videos. The Swedish statistician and epidemiologist was an expert communicator [...]

2018-12-16T23:25:23+00:00June 12th, 2018|Featured|

The problem with dead white men – a reply to Mary Bousted

Apparently, Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union has announced that England is “hurtling forward to a rosy past” with its emphasis on knowledge. She is reported as having said the following: As an English teacher, I have no problem with Shakespeare, with Pope, with Dryden, with Shelley. ... But I knew in a school where there are 38 first languages taught other than English that I had to have Afro-Caribbean writers in that curriculum, I had to have Indian writers, I had to have Chinese writers to enable pupils to foreshadow their lives in the curriculum.” If a [...]

2018-06-09T01:08:56+01:00June 9th, 2018|Featured|

The illusion of leadership

Everyone knows what's needed to turn around a struggling school: strong leadership. In order for it to be deemed necessary for school to be consigned to 'special measures,' something has to have gone badly wrong. It's more than likely true that poor leadership will be at the heart of the problem. So, the school is taken over and a new 'strong leader' is parachuted in to turn it around. This tends to be fairly straightforward. Very bad (and very good) schools conform to the Anna Karenina principle: "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” [...]

2018-10-12T17:36:26+01:00June 8th, 2018|Featured|

Should Ofsted observe lessons?

As you may have seen, Ofsted have published a report which lays the ground work on how they might start observing lessons once more: Six models of lesson observation: an international perspective. Most people will probably accept that if Ofsted are going to inspect schools then should almost certainly observe lessons as part of the inspection process. And, as someone who spends a fair bit of time visiting schools around the country, it’s clear that you can learn a lot about a school from seeing how lessons unfold. But when I observe lessons, I do so informally. I’m not attempting to make [...]

2019-01-24T10:51:21+00:00May 31st, 2018|Featured|

Lessons from the dojo

Struck with the inescapable knowledge that I'm not getting younger and, therefore, am unlikely to stay fit and healthy without some investment in exercise, I've struggled over the past few years to find a form of physical activity that I don't actively dread. In January I made the decision to try out my local karate club and, thus far at least, I love it. I've been going two, sometimes three, times a week and I increasingly find myself looking forward to it. Without really knowing why or how, I've suddenly become highly motivated to take regular exercise. That said, I'm rubbish [...]

2018-07-23T09:04:44+01:00May 6th, 2018|learning|

What can you practise in English lessons?

Over my last two posts I've argued that, contrary to popular opinion, English is not a 'skills based' subject. In fact, what appear to be skills are actually composed on many thousands of individual components of knowledge organised together as schema. In my last post I tried to demonstrate that practising 'inference skills' won't actually help students get better at making inferences, and that this ability depends on what they know about a text and about the domain of English more generally. In this post I will attempt to reclaim the concept of practice in English lessons from the confusing quagmire [...]

2018-05-04T22:52:26+01:00May 4th, 2018|English|

Why practising inference doesn’t work

In my last post I argued that thinking about English as a 'skills based' subject is counter-productive. One response to this was to say, "Hang on, what about practice. If you can practise something you become more skilled at it, so how can you say English isn't a skills-based subject?" It seems obvious that "just knowing" something is different from practising it. Pretty much anything we do can be improved through practice. But, the role of practice changes depending on whether you think English is a skills based subject or not. In the skills-based approach it makes sense to practise the [...]

2018-04-29T16:37:03+01:00April 29th, 2018|Featured|

Why English is not a ‘skills based’ subject

The idea that English is a skills based subject has become axiomatic. Most English teachers of my acquaintance accept it unquestioningly, as did I until a few years ago. How do we know English is skills based? Because it depends on the skills of reading and writing. And, in turn, reading depends on such skills as inference and analysis, while writing depends either on the skill of making points, using evidence and explaining it or on the skill of using language creatively and persuasively. From this certain things have followed. If English is skills based then it obviously makes sense to [...]

2019-06-11T17:10:41+01:00April 27th, 2018|Featured|

Leading literacy in schools

Leading on literacy can be a thoroughly thankless task. It can often feel like you’re working incredibly hard to produce resources and strategies which colleagues at best ignore and at worst resent. Part of the problem is that we’re expending effort in the wrong place and trying to persuade teachers to do the wrong things. Frustratingly, there’s very little guidance about how best to spend your precious time and it can be hard to find clear information on what approaches are likely to be most successful. My advice is to minimise the amount of time spent on apostrophe worksheets and spelling [...]

2018-05-03T14:05:07+01:00April 25th, 2018|literacy, training|

The death of my father

Yesterday my father died in his flat. He was a difficult man, and our relationship had been strained for years. He could be capable of great warmth, wit and wisdom, but he was also the most self-centred, childish and dogmatic person I have known. He loved solving mathematical puzzles, winning at Scrabble, studying the Bible, and being made cups of tea. He was a very bright man and, at the same time, a complete fool. He could explain relativity, but refused to accept evolution, passionately arguing for creationism. The rot in our relationship really set in about 20 years ago when [...]

2018-03-23T08:59:57+00:00March 21st, 2018|Featured|

The Case Against Education

I've been reading the economist Bryan Caplan's new book, The Case Against Education with great interest. His is very much a contrarian point of view: that most of the time and effort spent on the project of education is wasted. Cue steep intake of breath. He's not saying time and money spent on an individual's education is a waste, but that the billions of tax dollars spent on educating society is, in large part, misplaced. He compares an individual's education to standing up in a concert; if one or two people stand up then they're guaranteed a better view of the [...]

2018-03-23T09:00:26+00:00March 17th, 2018|Featured|
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