Archive

Why 'mastery learning' may prove to be a bad idea

Jan 24, 2016 | Category: learning

"It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us." Disraeli What could be wrong with wanting students to master difficult content? Nothing. For the most part...

#mastery

New Year's resolutions for teachers and school leaders

Jan 01, 2016 | Category: workload

We have more ability than will power, and it is often an excuse to ourselves that we imagine that things are impossible. François de La Rochefoucauld It's a new year, with no mistakes. In the few da...

Ouroboros: a review

Jan 29, 2016 | Category: Featured

I've been following Greg Ashman's writing for some years and have always been struck by his clarity, precision, humour and single-minded sense of purpose. I haven't always agreed with everything he's...

#Greg Ashamn

John Hattie and the magical power of prediction

Jan 28, 2016 | Category: research

In this post I picked up on a rather odd comment made by Professor Hattie at a recent conference: ...tests don’t tell kids about how much they’ve learnt. Kids are very, very good at predicting how wel...

#John Hattie #effect sizes #George Lilley #self-reported grades

A definition of learning

Jan 28, 2016 | Category: learning

"For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences." Cervantes Learning (n)1....

Is it a 'sin' to tell teachers how to teach?

Jan 27, 2016 | Category: learning

Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence. Samuel Butler According to a recent TES article, Professor John...

Is it what you do or the way that you do it?

Jan 23, 2016 | Category: research

Alex Quigley has just responded to my post Two Stars and a Bloody Wish! with the revelation that it works for him and others: Using a ‘Two Stars and a Wish’ model ironically meant that many teachers w...

#marking #Alex Quigley #EEF #two stars and a wish #bloodletting

Big data is bad data

Jan 11, 2016 | Category: leadership

The cost of bad data is the illusion of knowledge. – Stephen Hawking Schools, as with almost every other organ of state, are increasingly obsessed with big data. There seem to be two main aims:...

#data #Nicholas Nassim Taleb

What every teacher needs to know about... Edtech

Jan 09, 2016 | Category: Featured

Here's my most recent Teach Secondary column:Technology has been transforming education for as long as either have been in existence. Language, arguably the most crucial technological advancement in...

#Teach Secondary

Can anyone teach? Well, that depends on what you think education is for

Jan 05, 2016 | Category: training

In a fascinating series of posts, Nick Rose has discussed to what extent teaching is a natural ability and how far it might be described as an 'artificial' science. In The ‘artificial science’ of tea...

#Nick Rose #folk psychology