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What every teacher needs to know about '21st-Century learning'

Oct 09, 2015 | Category: Featured

Here's my column in this month's Teach Secondary magazine which is packed full of stuff much better than my meagre scrawlings so you'd be well advised to subscribe. You’ve seen Shift Happens, right?...

#Teach Secondary

A decreased focus on facts & knowledge won't help either

Sep 21, 2015 | Category: Featured

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another. - Joseph Addison The TES reports today that “A leading independent school headmaster has warned that the greater focus...

#knowledge #TES #21st Century Learning

How can we teach problem solving?

Oct 18, 2015 | Category: Featured

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.G. K. Chesterton In an uncertain future, the ability to solve novel problems will become increasingly in demand. Now,...

#George Polya #problem-solving

Intelligent Accountability

Oct 04, 2015 | Category: Featured

The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the law....

#Daniel Willingham #accountability #Roger Scruton

Could less marking mean more feedback?

Sep 27, 2015 | Category: Featured

Opportunity makes a thief. - Francis Bacon I wrote recently about the differences between marking and feedback. In brief, and contrary to popular wisdom, they are not the same thing; feedback is uni...

#marking #feedback #Chris Wheadon #No More Marking

A heck of a lot of posters

Sep 20, 2015 | Category: Featured

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 d...

#fun

What's the point of parents' evenings?

Jul 15, 2015 | Category: Featured

Earlier today I read this post on the purpose of parents' evenings by David James. It's an excellent exploration of some of the vagaries and oddness of being either side of the table, but ultimately i...

#parents' evenings

Why we really mistrust Ofsted

Sep 15, 2015 | Category: Featured

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 repo...

#Ofsted #Sir Michael Wilshaw #Schools Week

Pedagogy? I hate the word

Sep 06, 2015 | Category: Featured

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 ext...

#pedagogy

Foxy Thinking: why we should embrace ignorance and learn to love uncertainty

Sep 05, 2015 | Category: Featured

"The grand perhaps! We look on helplessly, there the old misgivings, crooked questions are." Robert Browning Ted Hughes' poem The Thought Fox is an attempt to describe the mysteries of the creative...

#researchED #Donald Rumsfeld #ignorance #Laura McInnerney #Nate Silver #uncertainty