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A heck of a lot of posters

Is it just me, or do secondary school children make a heck of a lot of posters? Now, I've got nothing against posters per se, but why do we seem to have decided that poster making is the best way to demonstrate knowledge and understanding? I suspect it may be because deep in our blackened, embittered hearts, we secondary school teachers think somehow that making posters is fun. Further, many secondary teachers have a bit of a warped view of what goes on in primary schools. We have a tendency to assume that the primary curriculum is - at least to some [...]

2015-09-20T18:07:06+01:00September 20th, 2015|Featured|

Marking and feedback are not the same

Feedback is, we're told, the most powerfully important invention in which a teacher can engage, but marking students' books can be mind-numbingly tedious drudgery. Because of this tension, many schools have introduced strict marking policies and work scrutiny schedules to make sure that teachers don't shirk this crucial responsibility. But, the more I think about it, the more convinced I am becoming that marking and feedback are two quite separate things. Cambridge Dictionaries Online defines marking thusly: And here are two different definitions for feedback: Obviously, this doesn't prove anything other than that in the public mind, marking and feedback are considered [...]

2016-05-24T13:47:04+01:00September 19th, 2015|workload|

Does technology have the power to transform education?

Disruptors is a series of articles and opinion pieces commission by Virgin all loosely connected under the theme "Is education keeping up with the 21st century?" I like to think I can be as disruptive as anybody, and have responded to a commission to write about edtech with the following article: Does technology have the power to transform education? Undoubtedly. But not necessarily in the ways we expect and not necessarily for the better. Technology has been transforming education for as long as either have been in existence. Language, arguably the most crucial technological advancement in our history, moved education from mere mimicry [...]

2015-09-18T09:52:30+01:00September 18th, 2015|myths|

What is 'transfer' and is it important?

Very kindly, Greg Ashman posted his thoughts on #WrongBook on his site yesterday - if you haven't seen his 'review' you can find it here. I really like both the style and the substance of Greg's piece, but I do want to take him up on the way he's interpreted my use of the term 'transfer'. In the book, I define learning as, “The ability to retain skills and knowledge over the long term and to be able to transfer them to new contexts.” Greg is unhappy with the inclusion of transfer in this definition and argues the following: It sets the bar [...]

2015-09-17T22:19:53+01:00September 17th, 2015|learning|

Why sacrificing chickens will not help us evaluate teachers’ performance

Intellectually, philosophically, morally, the argument over whether teachers' performance should be evaluated by grading their teaching by means of a lesson observation has been won. Ofsted have accepted the crushing weight of evidence that, despite what some people may choose to believe, there is no validity or reliability to such a grade. Unsurprisingly, there are many benighted souls who choose wilful ignorance over enlightenment and insist on continuing a practice which has less accuracy than a coin toss. Last week the TES published an article from just such an individual arguing that grades were still a good idea in the Further [...]

2019-11-20T21:27:34+00:00September 16th, 2015|leadership|

Why we *really* mistrust Ofsted

In the Schools Week profile on Ofsted's head honcho, Sir Michael Wilshaw apparently puts the teaching professions' lack of confidence in Ofsted down to "his relentless drive for challenge". He is reported as saying, Me coming out and being quite critical sometimes of leaders not doing what they should be doing, giving my view about how schools should be run, immediately puts people’s backs up. … and what has become clear to me is, once one person says ‘Ofsted’s broke’ … other people jump on that bandwagon... I know we’ve got this reputation of being this tough organisation that costs people their [...]

2015-09-16T08:33:10+01:00September 15th, 2015|Featured|

When should we stop making students redraft work?

I managed to catch a bit of #Engchatuk today and was interested to see that the discussion was on how to get students to redraft their work. Redrafting is something I advocate when travelling round different schools and I've spent a fair bit of time training teachers in how to get students to proofread their work and subject it to critical scrutiny. There were lots of useful ideas, some of which I recognised and other which I may well pinch, but I was particularly intrigued by this contribution: @EngChatUK When does drafting stop in the new era of one-chance only 100% exam...? [...]

2016-08-27T09:04:17+01:00September 14th, 2015|writing|

The uses of disappointment

"Disappointment, when it involves neither shame nor loss, is as good as success; for it supplies as many images to the mind, and as many topics to the tongue." Samuel Johnson I had very low expectations of this weekend. The last few weeks have left me a bit punch drunk and I was looking forward to doing nothing much. In fact, I've been very pleasantly surprised and, all in all, I've had a great weekend: meeting friends, spending time with my youngest daughter, going out as a family for a meal, and going on a long hike this afternoon. I've heard it [...]

2016-03-05T16:29:40+00:00September 13th, 2015|psychology|

Should we learn to love our shackles?

"Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better." Albert Camus There's already been some pretty scathing reactions to the master plan to introduce a common curriculum and assessment system into UK schools Dame Sally Coates lays out in Schools Week. Carl Hendrick describes her ideas as a dystopian nightmare and Pedro De Bruyckere sees it as a surefire way to turn education into the caricature that Ken Robinson paints it. But is there any merit in her ideas? Some gold we can pan for? Well, maybe. Coates says she wants to liberate teachers  "from the pressures of curriculum planning" so they "could focus [...]

2015-09-12T10:48:33+01:00September 12th, 2015|leadership|

You can have a voice

I am a product of social media. I've been writing this blog since June 2011 and whilst this pales next to the senescence of veteran edubloggers like Old Andrew and Tom Bennett, it does mark me as a comparatively old hand. When I began, my blog was intended simply a means of recording reflections on my classroom practice, but as I realised there was an audience out there I started to grandstand and share my views on any and every aspect of education that popped up between my crosshairs. I started to realise that not only were teachers implementing some of my ideas [...]

2015-09-11T18:02:12+01:00September 11th, 2015|blogging|

Research vs evidence

"Faced with the choice between changing one's mind and proving that there is no need to do so, almost everyone gets busy on the proof." JK Galbraith, Economics, Peace and Laughter (1971), p. 50 Evidence is about being right, proving something, constructing an argument to support a belief. It's legalistic and limiting. Lots of folk talk about 'what works' as if there could ever really be any agreement about that. But on the other hand, I'm increasing keen on research. The more research I read, the more questions I have. The more interesting the study, the more numerous and unexpected the questions it [...]

2019-10-25T22:06:26+01:00September 9th, 2015|research|

Pedagogy? I hate the word

If you can’t convince them; confuse them. - Harry S. Truman Pedagogy is defined as either the function or work of a teacher or as the art or science of teaching. As such, it probably seems a bit extreme to hate the word. Whilst I've always disliked it for its clunky, unlovely sound that neither here not there. I'm not going to rail against its pronunciation but rather its usage. It has become, I contend, a weasel word. When people talk about pedagogy, what do they really mean? Why do they choose the word over, say, teaching? Teachers teach -  do we really need [...]

2015-09-06T18:26:12+01:00September 6th, 2015|Featured|
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