Archive

If writing is magic, grammar is alchemy

Nov 09, 2015 | Category: writing

I really do not know that anything has ever been more exciting than diagramming sentences. I like the feeling the everlasting feeling of sentences as they diagram themselves.Gertrude Stein Writing i...

#grammar #Michael Rosen

Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design

Nov 08, 2015 | Category: planning

Thank you so much to everyone who helped out, presented, turned up on a wet Saturday or just joined in from afar on our creaky Livestream (I'm particularly devastated that Professor Ray Land's keynote...

#Threshold concepts #researchED

October on The Learning Spy

Nov 01, 2015 | Category: blogging

Here's what I got up to in October. The major themes this month were accountability and teachers' judgement. Books I read which I found particularly interesting were Beyond the Checklist and Matthew S...

In praise of signposts

Oct 31, 2015 | Category: research

The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.C. S. Lewis If you're not sure which way to go, a sign pos...

#learning styles #VAK

The closed circle: Why being wrong is so useful

Oct 30, 2015 | Category: psychology

Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others.Fyodor Dostoevsky A closed circle argument is one where there is no possibility of convincing an opponent that they might be wrong. T...

#Richard Feynman #pseudoscience #falsifiability

Is growth mindset pseudoscience?

Oct 24, 2015 | Category: research

Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder.Carl Sagan What's the differenc...

#Carol Dweck #Growth mindset #Michael Shermer #pseudoscience #Scott Alexander

Is school a straightjacket? A response to David Aaronovitch

Oct 23, 2015 | Category: Featured

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution. Igor Stravinsky In yesterday's Times, David Aaron...

#Sir Ken Robinson #Sugata Mitra #David Aaronovitch

From Scared Straight to Reading Wrong

Oct 24, 2015 | Category: reading

He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alters things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the b...

#Daniel Willingham #Matthew Syed #decoding #James Finckenauer #phonics

Is teaching a 'wicked' game?

Oct 12, 2015 | Category: leadership

What a wicked game you play to make me feel this way. Chris Isaak, Wicked Game Ok, I've cheated a bit. In this paper Robin M Hogarth identifies what he calls 'kind' and 'wicked' domains. A kind domain...

#Matthew Syed #narrative fallacy #Robin Hogarth

Heads I'm right, tails I'm not wrong

Oct 12, 2015 | Category: reflection

The path of least resistance and least trouble is a mental rut already made. It requires troublesome work to undertake the alternation of old beliefs. Self-conceit often regards it as a sign of weakn...

#ED Hirsch #Daisy Christodoulou