Archive

How helpful is Hattie & Donoghue's model of learning? Part 1: The problem with depth

Jun 17, 2017 | Category: learning

I saw John Hattie speak recently at a conference on his latest re-imagining of his Visible Learning work. He was an excellent speaker and charming company. I was particularly flattered that he asked m...

#SOLO taxonomy #John Hattie #Deans for Impact #K Anders Ericsson #deep learning

The secret of successful schools: the Anna Karenina Principle

Jun 14, 2017 | Category: leadership

For men are good in but one way, but bad in many.Aristotle Tolstoy's great novel, Anna Karenina, opens with the famous line, "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own wa...

#Anna Karenina Principle

Ability is the consequence not the cause of what children learn

Jun 13, 2017 | Category: Featured

The evidence on ability grouping appears relatively well-known. The EEF Toolkit summarise the research findings thus: Overall, setting or streaming appears to benefit higher attaining pupils and be de...

#Dylan Wiliam #setting #EEF Toolkit

My idea for making science a more fundamental part of culture and society

Jun 02, 2017 | Category: Featured

I've been asked to contribute an idea to the British Science Association's campaign, Science: not just for scientists. Their aim is to compile "100 ideas to make science a more fundamental part of cul...

#falsifiability #British Science Association

What does the Theory of Multiple Intelligences tell us about how to teach?

May 26, 2017 | Category: psychology

As I explained here, the scientific consensus is that intelligence is general. That is, if you are good at verbal comprehension, you'll also tend to be good perceptual organisation, and if you're good...

#Multiple Intelligences #Howard Gardner

What teachers need to know about intelligence – Part 2: The effects of education

May 22, 2017 | Category: psychology

In Part 1 of this series I laid out why IQ matters and that, far from being a banal measure of merely of how well some people do in a series of irrelevant tests, IQ actually has real power to predict...

#intelligence #IQ #James Flynn

What teachers need to know about intelligence - Part 1: Why IQ matters

May 21, 2017 | Category: psychology

Intelligence is required to be able to know that a man knows not.Montaigne Although it’s become a truism to say we know relatively little about how our brains work, we know a lot more now than we used...

#Steven Pinker #intelligence #IQ

Should teachers do what children want?

May 19, 2017 | Category: behaviour

Every weekday morning, my daughters both moan about having to get up for school. They moan about their teachers and they moan about homework. Given free rein, they would spend all day every day watchi...

#fun #groupwork #engagement

Everyone values critical thinking, don't they?

May 02, 2017 | Category: Featured

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning ani...

#Sugata Mitra #knowledge #Aristotle #E.D. Hirsch Jr #Michael Polanyi

The problem with problem solving (or, why I struggle to reset my clock)

May 14, 2017 | Category: psychology

When the clocks went forward in March and we arrived in British Summer Time, I made an abortive attempt to change the time on my car's clock. I knew, from having eventually changed it six months ago,...

#problem-solving #John Sweller #means-end analysis