Why Ofsted inspectors shouldn’t give advice
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 [...]
Why mini-plenaries are a waste of time
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 [...]
Is our behaviour a choice?
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. [...]
What causes the gender gap in education?
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 [...]
Better teaching through chemistry?
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 [...]
What’s the job of a teacher?
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 [...]
Do we teach children to love reading? Part 2
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 [...]
Do we teach children to love reading? Part 1
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 [...]
The Trouble with Transfer – my #rED16 slides
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 [...]
Go Compare!
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 [...]
What every teacher needs to know about… seating plans
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 [...]
Making Meaning in English
*NEW* Intelligent Accountability
#Cleverer
#PsychBook
#WrongBook
The Secret of Literacy
The Perfect English Lesson
