Archive

Making a mockery of marking: The new GCSE English Language mocks

Dec 05, 2016 | Category: assessment

The following is a guest post from the mastermind of Comparative Judgement, Dr Chris Wheadon.The marking of English Language is likely to be extremely challenging this year. English Language has long...

#marking #Chris Wheadon #comparative judgement

Is criticising learning styles an attack on the poor?

Dec 04, 2016 | Category: myths

Richard Olsen is a PhD candidate at Monash University studying "pedagogical capacity, effectiveness and quality in a changing world". He recently linked to this Australian Research Summary of Learning...

Less marking, more feedback: A challenge and a proposal

Dec 01, 2016 | Category: leadership

I've been arguing for some time that if teachers spent less time marking (by which I mean writing comments on students' work) then they might have a lot more time for giving meaningful feedback which...

#marking #feedback #intelligent accountability

Marking is an act of folly

Nov 30, 2016 | Category: leadership

Contrary to popular belief, marking and feedback are not the same thing. Clearly they're connected - and, ideally most marking has the intention of giving feedback - but the process of marking or givi...

#marking #feedback #EEF

More good proxies for learning

Nov 28, 2016 | Category: learning

A few days ago, I wrote about a brief online discussion I had with Dan Willingham on the importance of thinking hard. In the comments, Greg Ashman pointed out that thinking hard cannot be the only way...

#Rob Coe

Seven Theses on Education

Nov 28, 2016 | Category: Featured

Dennis Hayes, professor of education at Derby University and co-author of The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education recently wrote the following Facebook post: Seven Theses on Education1. Education...

#Dennis Hayes

Can thinking hard be incidental? A conversation with Daniel Willingham

Nov 27, 2016 | Category: Featured

For some time now, Rob Coe has been suggesting that a good proxy for students learning in lessons is that they "have to think hard". This seemed eminently sensible and I've written about this formulat...

#Daniel Willingham #Rob Coe

Context isn't king

Nov 21, 2016 | Category: Featured

It's become quite fashionable recently to say that there's no best way to teach because what works depends on the context in which you teach. This is a considerable improvement on asserting that [inse...

#John Hattie #Greg Ashman #John Donlosky #Lucy Crehan

Bottom sets and the scourge of low-level disruption

Nov 14, 2016 | Category: behaviour

In many English schools, low-level disruption is the norm. Children talking when expected to be silent, fiddling with equipment and each other, calling out, and generally not being 'on task' are all r...

#Ofsted #EEF #halo effect #expectations #ability setting #low-level disruption

What do we mean by 'skills'?

Nov 10, 2016 | Category: Featured

Any definition of skills depends on knowledge. Joe Kirby has written persuasively about skills and knowledge forming a double helix - inseparably intertwined and mutually interdependent. This is defin...

#creativity #skills #essay writing #procedural knowledge #propositional knowledge #tacit knowledge