Proof of progress Part 3
Who's better at judging? PhDs or teachers? In Part 1 of this series I described how Comparative Judgement works and the process of designing an assessment to test Year 5 students' writing ability. Then in Part 2 I outlined the process of judging these scripts and the results they generated. In this post I'm going to draw some tentative conclusions about the differences between the ways teachers approach students' work and [...]
School improvement: Can you buck the trend?
In my last post I discussed the natural volatility of GCSE results and the predictably random nature of results over the long-term. I ended by saying, "The agenda for school improvement has to move away from endlessly pouring over data looking for patterns that don’t exist. We need to find new – better – ways to hold schools to account and come up with new definitions of what school improvement [...]
Where now for school improvement?
In the past, school improvement was easy. You could push pupils into taking BTECs or Diplomas (sometimes with 100% coursework) equivalent to multiple GCSEs; you could organise your curriculum to allow for early entry and multiple resits; you could bend the rules on controlled assessment and a whole host of other little tricks and cons intended to flatter and deceive. Now what have we got? PiXL Club? As Rob Coe laid bare in [...]
Developing expertise #3: Circuit breakers
We've already seen how creating the right environment and seeking better feedback might help us the develop the kind of expertise required to make genuinely intuitive judgements and this post I'll discuss how imposing checks or 'circuit breakers' on our thinking might be another way to develop expertise. Many, perhaps most of the decision teachers make are made before conscious thought. As soon as we achieve a measure of familiarity with teaching the [...]
Developing expertise #2 – Seek feedback
In my previous post I suggested the first step for teachers to develop expertise was to find ways to change the environment so that the feedback we get is unbiased. In this post we will consider why much of the feedback we do get is unhelpful and how to get more of the helpful stuff. Many of the decisions we take - in life generally and as teachers - are [...]
Developing expertise #1 Create the right environment
In this post I discussed why teachers' experience might not translate directly into expertise. This is the first of a series exploring some of the different ways we could increase the likelihood that teachers are able to develop reliably intuitive judgements about how children learn and how to help them learn better. The theory is that experience will only lead to expertise in a 'kind domain'; in 'wicked domains' experience seems [...]
Developing intuition: when can you trust your gut?
At the talk I gave on intuition at Wellington College's Education Festival on Thursday, I ended up not using the slides I'd prepared and wandering a bit off topic. Here follows what I'd planned to say as well as the slides. Teachers' intuition: when can you trust your gut? from David Didau Certainty and over confidence can prevent us from thinking; the more certain we are that we're right, the less we'll [...]
Telling better stories
None of us know what made us what we are, and when we have to say something, we make up a good story. Steven Pinker, My Genome, My Self Stories are one of the most important ways we have of trying to make sense of the world. We look at all the coincidences, connections, curiosities and contradictions that surround us and weave them into a plausible narrative in which everything makes sense [...]
“There are no wrong answers!”
Along with, "It's a skills based subject," the cry that there are no wrong answers in English is, I think pretty unhelpful. Take the example of teaching Priestley's perennial, An Inspector Calls. Every time we've finished the play, without fail, a body of students will be firmly persuaded that poor, unloved Eva Smith was murdered by the Inspector. I'm not going to bore you with why this interpretation is so [...]
The Dangerous Rise of Therapeutic Education
Joyous distrust is a sign of health. Everything absolute belongs to pathology. Nietzsche Maybe those bored by debating the purpose of education feel the way they do because everyone keeps saying the same things over and over with the result that we all become a little more convinced of our own rightness. Perhaps this is because of the way the debate has been framed? The Great Educational Debate has always [...]
A conversation about the best way to teach a new concept
A few mornings ago, Rufus William got in touch with an interesting request: @LearningSpy fancy doing a quick maths activity? You just need something to write with some paper — Rufus (@RufusWilliam) June 14, 2016 I’ll admit to being a little anxious, but in the spirit of enquiry, I agreed. This was the activity: A domino is made up of 2 squares. A pentomino is made up of 5. How [...]
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