Archive

Two fallacies to avoid

Aug 14, 2017 | Category: research

Avoiding logical fallacies can be tricky and, as responses to some of my recent posts has made clear, anyone who spends time debating evolutionary psychology, behaviour genetics or science in general...

#behaviour genetics #Matt Ridley #moralistic fallacy #naturalistic fallacy

Do schools matter less than we think?

Aug 12, 2017 | Category: research

Disturbingly for all of us involved in education, it seems as if schools and teaching may matter a lot less than we would like to believe. Before setting out the arguments I want to make it clear that...

#heritability #behaviour genetics #non shared environment #school

Larkin was wrong: parenting makes less difference than we think

Aug 11, 2017 | Category: Featured

Being a parent is a terrifying responsibility. The message of Larkin's poem, ‘This Be The Verse’, is that parents cannot help but pass on their failings to their children, and that the reason we...

#Judith RIch Harris #heritability #parenting

What causes behaviour?

Aug 10, 2017 | Category: research

The age-old debate as to what causes human behaviour - nature vs nurture - shows little sign of running out of steam, despite having been emphatically resolved as far as science is concerned. Althoug...

#research #heritability #evidence #Joseph Carroll #science

Getting culture right Part 1: Normative messages

Aug 02, 2017 | Category: behaviour

If you want to change anything within a school, culture is crucial. As Tom Bennett argues in Creating a Culture: How school leaders can optimise behaviour, culture is "the way we do things round here"...

#Tom Bennett #culture #herd immunity #normative messages #social norms #Solomon Asch

Castle Shakespeare: Why study the Bard?

Jul 23, 2017 | Category: English

Let me give you, let me share with you, the City of Invention. For what novelists do... is to build the Houses of the Imagination, and where houses cluster together there is a city... Let us look roun...

#Shakespeare

How to be an English teacher: designing an English PGCE

Jul 22, 2017 | Category: Featured

From September I will be teaching a small group of prospective English teachers what I think they need to know in order to do a decent job as part of the new BPP University PGCE course. I was very fla...

Why I don't think emojis should be studied in school

Jul 20, 2017 | Category: curriculum

I have nothing against emojis, just as I have nothing against kittens, turpentine or billiards. I'm more than happy for anyone who's minded to stroke kittens, drink turps and swan around with a billia...

#English literature #opportunity cost #gimmicks #emoji

'Understanding' and Occam's razor

Jun 24, 2017 | Category: learning

At the beginning of the 20th century, physicists Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein both concluded independently that measurements of light speed would be the same for all observers. But while both a...

#knowledge #evolution #Albert Einstein #Occam's razor #David Geary #Richard Laland #Hendrik Lorentz

How not to disagree: Swearing & insults

May 30, 2017 | Category: Featured

If you don't like swearing this post's probably not for you. I'm a big fan of profanity and, much to the chagrin of my family, I swear immoderately. There are times when nothing else quite expresses t...