Archive

Why teacher assessment is less fair than standardised testing

Nov 04, 2015 | Category: assessment

Tests Guns don't kill people, rappers do Goldie Lookin Chain I spent the day yesterday at the Department for Education thinking about how best to cut down on the "unnecessary workload" associated with...

#Daisy Christodolou #Robert Coe #Daniel Kahneman #Michael Rosen

Five techniques for overcoming overconfidence and improving decision-making

Nov 03, 2015 | Category: leadership

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision. Bertrand Russell Every s...

#Daniel Kahneman #Gary Klein

What every teacher needs to know about...Zero Tolerance

Nov 21, 2015 | Category: behaviour

My latest column for the wonderful folk at Teach Secondary magazine looks at the ins and outs of "Zero Tolerance" behaviour systems. There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue.Edmund...

#Frances E. Jensen #zero-tolerance

The Illusion of Knowing

Nov 20, 2015 | Category: leadership

Knowledge, n.: The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify.Ambrose Bierce Advanced Learning has commissioned me to write a piece about the uses and abuses of data in schools. My thesis,...

#knowledge #data

Comparison is easy

Nov 19, 2015 | Category: assessment

The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.Jacob Bronowski Judging the quality of a thing in isolation is hard. Is t...

#comparison #Donald Laming

Essay writing: style and substance

Nov 17, 2015 | Category: English

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.George Eliot As with most subjects, the step up from GCSE to A level English literature is tough. You can...

#English literature #nominalisation #Stephen Pinker

Rethinking assessment Part 2: the Einstellung effect

Nov 15, 2015 | Category: assessment

As I set out here, Dr Chris Wheadon has come up with a beautifully simple solution to assessing students' essays which requires no rubrics, very little marking time and produces extremely reliable res...

#Daisy Christodoulou #Chris Wheadon #Einstellung effect

Rethinking assessment Part 1: How can we tell if students are making progress?

Nov 15, 2015 | Category: assessment

Is it progress if a cannibal uses a fork?Stanislaw J. Lec For some time now I've been of the opinion that the way we normally think of progress is based on a myth. Part of the problem is that becaus...

#Dylan Wiliam #Chris Wheadon

In praise of dignity and justice

Nov 11, 2015 | Category: blogging

They'll ask me how I got her I'll say I saved my money They'll say isn't she pretty that ship called dignityDignity, Deacon Blue In Microaggression and Moral Cultures, sociologists Bradley Campbell an...

#Jonathan Haidt #bullying #dignity #microaggression #Regina Rini #safe space #victimisation

How to deal with criticism

Nov 09, 2015 | Category: blogging

The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not.Robert Green Ingersoll Every now and then, someone pops up (usually a relative!) to tell me something I've...