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Are ‘closed book’ examinations a bad idea?

Changes to the GCSE English Literature specifications are, apparently, starting to bite. As well as abandoning the modular approach to assessment in which students sat 2 separate modular exams and completed an extended piece of controlled assessment, students are now expected to sit two terminal exams.  One change to these exams which has upset lots of English teachers is the move from 'open book' to 'closed book' exams. What this means is that students are no longer permitted to take copies of the texts they have studied into the exam and are instead required to have learned quotations by heart. The TES [...]

2018-01-22T08:10:42+00:00April 6th, 2017|English|

Didau’s Taxonomy

Taxonomy is the science of classification. As such it’s useful for ordering items within a domain into different categories. Contrary to popular understanding, although taxonomies can be hierarchical, they don't have to be so. In education, the word ‘taxonomy’ is most closely associated with the prefix, ‘Bloom’s’. As every teacher knows, Bloom’s Taxonomy is a triangle with ‘knowledge’ at its base and ‘evaluation’ or ‘creativity’ at its apex. In fact, Bloom’s Taxonomy is not just a triangular diagram, it’s actually an attempt to classify different thinking skills. The triangle has simply come to represent the taxonomy. The educational psychologist, Benjamin Bloom, who [...]

2019-10-23T19:13:40+01:00April 4th, 2017|Featured|

The importance of reading fluency

Following on from a recent post on the folly of forcing children to read along as they are being read to, I presented my thoughts on reading fluency and the problems with 'reading along' at researchED's English & MFL conference in the stunning surroundings of Oxford University's Examination Rooms. For those who might be interested, here are the slides I used. The importance of reading fluency from David Didau

2017-04-03T00:02:04+01:00April 3rd, 2017|reading|

Global warming in education: Why Schleicher is wrong

Without data you're just another person with an opinion. Andreas Schleicher As we all know - well, most of us - the climate is changing as a result of human behaviour. Maybe we could do something about it, but it won't be painless. It would involve those of us living in the developed world giving up some of the conveniences we take for granted. If we don't make these changes we shouldn't be too surprised if global temperatures change drastically resulting in all sort of disturbing possibilities. Similarly, human behaviour has an effect on the educational climate and the beliefs and [...]

2021-06-29T16:54:11+01:00March 31st, 2017|Featured|

The problem with ‘reading along’

It has become an unwritten law of teaching that when reading aloud to students, the teacher must ensure students are reading along in their own copy of the text. This is, I contend, a bad idea. To understand why we need to consider working memory in some detail. It's well-known that the capacity of working memory is strictly limited - estimates range from anywhere between 4 to 9 items at any one time - but it's less well-known that working memory is almost certainly not a single edifice. Baddeley and Hitch's widely accepted working memory model contains four distinct components. The central [...]

2017-03-27T15:01:54+01:00March 25th, 2017|psychology, reading|

The consequences of freedom

Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM! Mel Gibson Freedom is one of the most popular tropes in modern thinking. We yearn for it and yet feel constantly thwarted. Like Macbeth we are "cabin'd, cribbed, confin'd, bound in to saucy doubts and fears." Wouldn't it be [...]

2017-03-26T21:38:23+01:00March 23rd, 2017|behaviour|

What do teachers believe?

It's well-established that various 'myths' about how students' learn are remarkably persistent in the face of contradictory evidence. In 2014, Paul Howard-Jones' article, Neuroscience and education: myths and messages revealed the extent of teachers' faulty beliefs: In the UK, 93% of teachers believe that matching instruction to students' preferred learning style is a good idea, 88% believed in some form of Brain Gym, with 91% being convinced by the left-brain-right brain hypothesis. He concludes with the following: Neuromyths are misconceptions about the brain that flourish when cultural conditions protect them from scrutiny. Their form is influenced by a range of biases in how we [...]

2017-03-16T20:49:30+00:00March 16th, 2017|research|

What’s so great about making mistakes?

To err is human. Alexander Pope Making mistakes is an inevitable part of life. We're all wrong about something at some point. Equally obviously, contending with failure, learning to drag ourselves up by the bootstraps when we fall down and persist in the face of setbacks is part and parcel of human existence. But is making mistakes something to aim for? Should failure be celebrated?  Clearly, in some areas of human endeavour mistakes cannot be tolerated. We are much more tolerant of failure in education than in, say, aviation, because the stakes are so much lower. If we mess things up [...]

2017-03-16T08:06:20+00:00March 15th, 2017|Featured|

What’s the point of school?

Education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at. Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate Schools have only ever existed in cultures where culturally specific knowledge has outpaced universal folk knowledge. What is universal - speech, recognising distinctions between the properties of inanimate objects and plants and animals, cooperating in groups, etc. -  is clearly the result of evolutionary adaptions; if it wasn't it wouldn't be universal. Children don't have to go to school to learn how to walk, talk, recognise objects or remember the personalities of their friends, even though these things are much [...]

2017-03-14T15:58:31+00:00March 14th, 2017|Featured|

Some videos of me saying stuff about education

Recently, Swedish education magazine, Lärarnas Tidning interviewed me about my views on various aspects of education. For those interested in seeing me do a very poor Stewart Lee impersonation, they've posted a few short clips on their YouTube channel. Here they are: 1. The importance of explicit instruction   2. Why 'grit' doesn't make much sense   3. Professionalism   4. Why teachers need to have high expectations of children's behaviour   5. How evidence can change minds   6. The appeal of gimmicks

2017-03-10T17:51:05+00:00March 10th, 2017|Featured|

Do we want ‘deeper learning’ classrooms?

It's very easy to present a false dichotomy to make our own beliefs and choices seem more desirable than the alternatives. Consider this infographic from the Hewlett Foundation which has been doing the rounds: What's being implied is that the 'deeper learning' classroom somehow better prepares children for being scientists in the 'science lab' than 'traditional' classrooms. Maybe we're also supposed to assume that the 'deeper learning' classroom is a better preparation for all workplaces? The infographic's designers use heavy-handed attempts to make the 'traditional' classroom' look less appealing. The walls are grey, there are fewer windows and there's a shelf of [...]

2021-06-26T18:54:57+01:00March 9th, 2017|Featured|

Should we give teachers the ‘benefit of the doubt’?

Earlier in the week, Schools Minister, Lord Nash announced that schools should be more like businesses and jettison underperforming staff. According to this TES report he's reported to have said, "“I think one of the things that it’s easy to say ... is that sometimes in education there is a tendency to give people the benefit of the doubt too often.” The consequence of this well meaning woolliness is that we consign children to a sub-standard education. Much better for school leaders to be like business leaders. The “best leaders in education” are “tough”, “have a real sense of pace”, and “realise the clock is [...]

2017-03-03T13:41:16+00:00March 3rd, 2017|leadership|
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