XFacebookYouTubeLinkedInEmail

David Didau

About David Didau

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far David Didau has created 931 blog entries.

Why Ofsted inspectors shouldn’t give advice

2016-10-01T21:52:21+01:00October 1st, 2016|Featured|

Unfortunately I was unable to attend the recent Learning First conference in Wolverhampton, but I did manage to follow some of the tweets. This one in particular caught my attention: Marilyn Mottram HMI talking about what Ofsted are looking for #LearningFirst pic.twitter.com/MJDrm3cUkf — school data updates (@jpembroke) October 1, 2016 As you can see by reading the thread below the tweet, it's possible that Marylin Mottram didn't actually say this was what Ofsted were looking for, but that's certainly what was inferred by some members of the audience. In response, I tweeted the following: As long as Ofsted 'look for' instead [...]

Why mini-plenaries are a waste of time

2018-10-28T12:37:23+00:00October 1st, 2016|learning|

Plenary is an interesting word. It originally meant absolute, without reservation or qualification. The pope used to offer plenary indulgences to crusaders absolving them in advance of any sin they committed in the defence of the Holy Land. Later it came mean full, complete or pertaining to all. A meeting or assembly to which all were obliged or expected to attend would be called a plenary. Nowadays, conferences often have plenary sessions which sum up themes and draw disparate threads together. From here the word has leapt into education parlance as a mechanism for ending lessons in a way intended to ensure [...]

Is our behaviour a choice?

2017-08-11T11:50:52+01:00September 29th, 2016|behaviour, literacy|

Arguments about free will date back to ancient Greece, but the scientific consensus now tends towards the belief that free will is an illusion. It's become an article of faith in the life sciences that all organisations can be reduced to algorithmic processes written in our genes. We either respond to environmental stimuli either by rapidly and unconsciously processing the best option in terms of survival or through random biochemical blips. We may believe we choose our actions, but in actual fact, choice is an illusion.  If every choice we seem to make is just an electrochemical brain process - a deterministic reaction [...]

What causes the gender gap in education?

2016-09-26T13:27:25+01:00September 25th, 2016|Featured|

In the 1940s the Belgian philosopher Albert Michotte identified our tendency to believe we could see causality. His book, The Perception of Causality, published in French in 1945 showed how certain very simple visual sequences carry the appearance of causal connectedness. Click this link for an example. This paper is a good recent update on how illusions of causality bias our judgement. Human beings are natural pattern seekers. We see shapes in clouds, faces in wallpaper and meaning where there is just random noise. In particular, we believe we can see causes when all we can actually see are effects. In teaching, [...]

Better teaching through chemistry?

2016-09-14T22:27:00+01:00September 14th, 2016|Featured|

One of my favourite books of last year was Yuval Noah Harari's magnificent Sapiens. It looks like his new tome, Homo Deus, is going to be just as fascinating if the rest of it lives up to the first couple of chapters. The book charts some of humanity's possible futures but is also an attempt to force readers to rethink their thoughts of the future by exploring and understanding our history. One of the most compelling ideas to surface so far concerns education. Harari pints out what anyone on edu-Twitter knows well: Whether in ancient China or Victorian Britain, everybody has his or [...]

What’s the job of a teacher?

2016-09-14T09:02:41+01:00September 13th, 2016|Featured|

One of the sessions I attended at researchED last Saturday was a debate on whether there really is a mental health crisis amongst young people. There were lots of interesting points made and the debate was slightly less polarised than you might expect, but it still turned out fairly predictably with one side saying the crisis is one we've created by pathologising normal feelings and behaviour and the other saying that young people are increasingly vulnerable and that the modern world is an increasingly scary place to live in. The bit I found particularly interesting was when one speaker made the point [...]

Do we teach children to love reading? Part 2

2020-09-19T15:55:16+01:00September 13th, 2016|reading|

In my last post I wrote about sociologist, Frank Furedi's views on reading and whether we do a good job of fostering a love of reading in young people. In this post I want to explore his view that reading has become 'medicalised'. Is reading unnatural? The other startling point to come out of Frank's talk at researchED was when he said that although he begun his research into reading as a confirmed advocate of phonics, as the deeper he delved the more sympathetic he became to whole-language teaching. Cue, sharply drawn breaths and restless muttering. When prodded he seemed to suggest that, despite [...]

Do we teach children to love reading? Part 1

2016-09-13T08:27:22+01:00September 12th, 2016|reading|

This sounds like a really obvious question but, after listening to Frank Furedi at researchED on Saturday and subsequently reading his book, The Power of Reading: from Socrates to Twitter, I've realised it isn't something I've given much thought. At one point during his lecture Frank said that few of the people interested in the teaching of reading actually value passing on a love of reading. My initial reaction was to reject this. I asked a question afterwards to challenge this view and his response was to ask why so few young people - especially boys - value reading if we actually value passing on [...]

The Trouble with Transfer – my #rED16 slides

2016-09-10T20:53:10+01:00September 10th, 2016|learning, psychology|

Today saw another triumphant outing for Tom Bennett's grassroots conference, researchED. This year I ran a session investigating the research into how we transfer what we learn between different contexts, the slides for which, along with hyperlinked references to the studies I've cited, are below. ResearchED 2016 The Trouble with Transfer from David Didau The high point for me was that Paul Kirschner said the presentation was "pretty good". I will write up an explanation for these as time allows over the next few days, but for those who can't wait, turn to Chapter 6 of What Every Teacher Needs To Know About [...]

Go Compare!

2016-09-09T20:54:35+01:00September 9th, 2016|assessment|

Another one from Teach Secondary, this one from their assessment special. This time it's an over view of Comparative Judgement. Human beings are exceptionally poor at judging the quality of a thing on its own. We generally know whether we like something but we struggle to accurately evaluate just how good or bad a thing is. It’s much easier for us to compare two things and weigh up the similarities and differences. This means we are often unaware of what a ‘correct’ judgement might be and are easily influenced by extraneous suggestions. This is compounded by the fact that we aren’t [...]

What every teacher needs to know about… seating plans

2016-09-09T08:50:06+01:00September 9th, 2016|planning, psychology|

Remarkably, the rather excellent Teach Secondary magazine haven't yet seen through me and are still running my half-baked ramblings. Here's this month's pale offering. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teacher in possession of a large roomful of children must be in want of a carefully crafted seating plan. Secondary schools have normalised the idea that children should sit in the same seat every lesson. Seating plans may be a great way to learn students’ names, keep order and establish routine, but they may be undermining children’s ability learn. Ideally, we want our students to go off into the [...]

Should everyone follow the rules?

2016-09-08T14:38:27+01:00September 8th, 2016|behaviour|

I've never liked being told what to do. I'm not a great team player and I struggle with authority. I've always chafed at constraints and, as I get older, I've become increasingly aware that what I used to imagine was an over-developed sense of injustice is actually entitlement; a sense the world should bend itself around my whims and conform to my desires. Childish, isn't it? Part of being an adult is learning to suppress these baser aspects of our nature and this is something I attempt, often with negligible success, to do. I've come to realise that if I want to avoid [...]

Toggle Sliding Bar Area
Go to Top