XFacebookYouTubeLinkedInEmail

Blog archive

One more thing I want from school leaders

The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything. Goethe A few weeks back I wrote this post laying out my wishlist for the 'perfect' school leader. Since then, one startling omission has become clear. I addition to wanting school leaders to be humble, loving, determined, focussed and possessing of vision I also want them to be clever. Too many people are, for a variety of reasons (but probably the biggest is confidence,) promoted above their ability. This results in the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Dunning-Kruger effect is the finding that the poorest performers are the least aware of [...]

2016-06-30T23:22:40+01:00December 9th, 2015|leadership|

When is it worth arguing about bad ideas?

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. Paul Graham Trying to identify and inoculate yourself against bad ideas is always worthwhile, but trying to set others strait is a thankless, task. And maybe a pointless one too. A good deal of what we believe to be right is based on emotional feedback. We are predisposed to fall for a comforting lie rather than wrestle with an inconvenient truth. And we tend to be comforted by what’s familiar rather than what makes logical sense. We go with what ‘feels right’ and allow our preferences to inform our beliefs. If we’re asked [...]

2015-12-08T19:09:09+00:00December 7th, 2015|Featured|

Why I struggle with learning objectives and success criteria

A strenuous soul hates cheap success. Ralph Waldo Emerson Broadly, I’m in favour of sharing with students the intention behind what they are being asked to do. Anything that adds clarity to the murky business of learning is probably a good thing. However, an intention (or outcome, objective or whatever you want to call it) along the lines of To be able to [inset skill to be acquired or practised] or, To understand [whatever the hell the teacher wants her students to learn] is unlikely to be of much help. All too often our learning intentions are lesson menus; here is [...]

2019-08-02T12:21:08+01:00December 6th, 2015|learning|

Is mimicry always a bad thing?

Make not your thoughts your prisons. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Mimicry is the conscious or unconscious copying of experts in order. To understand the potential dangers of mimicry, it helps to understand the difference between learning and performance. Perhaps the differences can be summed up like this: Performance is inflexible, short-term and easy to spot, whereas learning is flexible, durable and invisible. Much of what we do in classrooms is geared towards maximising students' performance (because it's easy to spot) whilst ignoring whether learning is taking place (because it's very hard to correctly infer). Increasing student's performance is widely regarded as an acceptable [...]

2015-12-06T07:13:03+00:00December 5th, 2015|learning|

Discord isn’t disharmony: in praise of inconsistency

Consistency is the playground of dull minds. Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens  What’s so great about consistency? How has the consensus that everybody 'singing from the same hymn sheet’ is always the best idea arisen? Superficially it makes sense – a choir singing from different hymn sheets would create a cacophony – but if we stretch the metaphor a little we can see that while a choir may be singing the same hymn, different choristers will be singing different parts and in different keys. Their hymn sheets will be different. As Harari says in, Sapiens, “Just as when two clashing musical notes [...]

2019-06-21T08:36:46+01:00December 3rd, 2015|leadership|

Why I ♥ blogging (and believe there is hope for Ofsted)

Earlier today I posted an outraged spume of invective directed at a recently publish Ofsted inspection report. Since then Sean Harford, Ofsted's National Director for Education, has been in touch to say that the report has been taken down and arses are being kicked. To be clear, I don't want or expect Ofsted to change its judgement about the school in question - I am in no way placed to make any kind of judgement or even comment on what the school in question might be like - but I do want and expect the report to be changed so that [...]

2015-12-03T15:19:58+00:00December 3rd, 2015|blogging|

Marking: What (some) Ofsted Inspectors (still) want

It is up to schools themselves to determine their practices and for leadership teams to justify these on their own merits rather than by reference to the inspection handbook. UPDATE: There is a happy(ish) ending to this sad story. As you will no doubt be aware, Ofsted has gone to great lengths to clarify its position on marking. In October 2014 it very helpfully published this clarification document which, from September 2015 has been incorporated into the Inspection Handbook. In it, several pervasive myths relating specifically to marking are addressed: Ofsted recognises that marking and feedback to pupils, both written and oral, [...]

2015-12-05T12:59:28+00:00December 3rd, 2015|workload|

November on The Learning Spy

Here's all the stuff I wrote last month. Knock yourself out. 3rd November Five techniques for overcoming overconfidence & improving decision-making - more wisdom from messrs Kahneman & Klein 4th November Tests don’t kill people - standardised tests are great but they seem to cause people to behave stupidly 5th November We don’t know what we don’t know: the uses of humility - I'm a big fan of humility. In fact, I think it's possibly the number 1 leadership quality 8th November Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design - my attempt to ruin the researchEd English & Literacy gig in Swindon 9th November If writing is magic, grammar [...]

2015-12-01T07:42:29+00:00December 1st, 2015|blogging|

Opportunity knocks: the hidden cost of bad ideas

Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent or rather thrown away Five Shillings besides. Benjamin Franklin There are those that would have it that opportunity cost is a concept so complex as to be impenetrable to anyone other than highly trained economists. Opportunity cost, the idea that making a choice precludes another option being chosen, is a threshold concept. [...]

2015-12-05T13:05:52+00:00November 30th, 2015|leadership|

Should students respond to feedback?

The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Fran Lebowitz One of the criticisms of my post about book monitoring is that I have omitted checks to see whether students have responded to feedback. This omission is entirely deliberate. Does this mean I don't care whether students respond to feedback? You might think this is a bit of a silly question - of course they should. After all, what's the point in giving feedback which will be ignored? Dylan Wiliam makes the following comment in my book: Sometimes the support we give to students may be emotional [...]

2015-11-30T12:46:27+00:00November 30th, 2015|assessment, leadership|

What I want from a school leader

In response to various posts on book monitoring earlier in the week, Lee Donaghy asked what the role of school leaders ought to be. Now, some would have it that because I don't lead a school any opinion I might offer is invalid. Many people do not understand the purpose of leading teaching and learning. Why? Because they have never done it. — @TeacherToolkit (@TeacherToolkit) November 26, 2015 This is an interesting perspective. In response, I'd like to submit that there might be plenty of people who do lead in schools who don't seem to understand the purpose of what they're doing either. Just doing [...]

2019-03-14T14:14:09+00:00November 28th, 2015|leadership|

The problem with book monitoring

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way. Albert Camus Most schools these days routinely monitor students' exercise books in an attempt to extrapolate the quality of teaching. In some ways this is positive and reflects the growing recognition that we can tell much less than we might believe about teaching quality by observing lessons. On the whole I'm in favour of looking at students' work, but, predictably, book monitoring goes wrong for pretty much the same reasons lesson observation doesn't work. The thing is, there's nothing wrong with observing lessons, work scrutiny or any of the other practices used to [...]

2020-01-02T17:17:02+00:00November 26th, 2015|leadership|
Toggle Sliding Bar Area
Go to Top