Archive

A tribute to my best teacher

Nov 26, 2018 | Category: Featured

There's little doubt in my mind that my English teacher, Roy Birch, was the best teacher I had at school.He became my teacher in what is now known as Year 10. I was part of the first ever cohort to ta...

"It's all about relationships"

Nov 11, 2018 | Category: behaviour

Every now and then I come across the argument that the success or failure of a teacher is due to the quality of their relationships with students. Poor behaviour? Ineffective lessons? "It's all about...

#behaviour #Thomas Hobbes

How to explain... structured discussion

Nov 09, 2018 | Category: literacy

Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that there is something particularly cognitively 'sticky' about speech. We are more likely to remember that which we have said than that which we ha...

#academic langugae #structured discussion

How to explain... schema

Oct 31, 2018 | Category: Featured

I've spent a fair bit of time trying to explain various psychological concepts in a way that is easily grasped by busy teachers and have come to the conclusion that some of my explanations might be wo...

An argument for order

Oct 24, 2018 | Category: behaviour

The second law of thermodynamics tells us that entropy within a system will always increase over time. What starts off as order descends, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but inexorably into chaos...

Garbage in, garbage out

Oct 16, 2018 | Category: assessment

This is my latest article for the rather wonderful Teach Secondary magazine.Schools are awash with data but do we know any more about how children are performing? Are we clear how likely they are to a...

#Amanda Spielman #Charles Babbage #Jamie Oliver

Survivorship bias and the enduring appeal of bad ideas

Oct 09, 2018 | Category: Featured

Survivorship bias occurs when we draw conclusions only from examples which have passed some sort of selection criteria and systematically discount those which have not.During World War II, British bom...

#John Donlosky #survivorship bias #illusion of knowledge

Modelling and observation: a low threat model for teacher development

Oct 07, 2018 | Category: training

For some years now I've been of the opinion that while lesson observations can be useful learning opportunities the person doing the observation learns far more than the person being observed. This is...

#Daisy Christodoulou #whole class feedback

A measurement checklist

Oct 03, 2018 | Category: Featured

Campbell's Law: The more any quantitive social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the...

What's the best (and easiest) way to teach?

Sep 25, 2018 | Category: Featured

I thought I'd said all I ever wanted to say about group work until, responding to a tweet from an education professor exhorting all teachers to add group work to their teaching repertoires, I unwisely...

#group work #direct instruction #Robert Slavin #PISA #collaborative learning #McKinsey #Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction #whole class instruction