Learning about learning: What every teacher needs to know
When I trained to be teacher I was told little or nothing about how children learn. Because a lot of what we intuitively suppose about the process of learning is often flatly contradicted by cognitive science this was a huge handicap. Since you can't think about stuff you don't know, I spent all my time pontificating on the process of teaching, but lacked the theoretical framework and knowledge base to consider how my students learned. [...]
January on The Learning Spy
Here, for your delight and edification, are the blogs I wrote during January: 1st January - New Year’s resolutions for teachers and school leaders Make this year better than last! 2nd January - Varieties of boredom How and why some varieties of boredom might not be a bad thing but others are dreadful. 5th January - Can anyone teach? Well, that depends on what you think education is for An exploration of the [...]
Some assumptions about scripted lessons
"So long as we use a certain language, all questions that we can ask will have to be formulated in it and will thereby confirm the theory of the universe which is implied in the vocabulary and structure of the language." Michael Polanyi In this post I wrote about the fact that one of the tenets of Direct Instruction (note the capitals!) is scripted lessons which aim for 'flawless communication'. Let me [...]
Scripts: whose lesson is it anyway?
When I was 16, Whose Line Is It Anyway? first aired on UK television. The show, hosted by Clive Anderson, asked four comedians to ad lib responses to various prompts and scenarios, much of it shouted out by audience members. The whole thing was completely unscripted with the comedians having to make everything up on the spot. The results were anarchic; always daft and often hilarious. I'd never seen anything quite like it [...]
Proof of progress – Part 1
Measuring progress is a big deal. I've written before about the many and various ways we get assessment wrong but, increasingly, I'm becoming convinced there are some ways we might get it right. As regular readers will know, I'm interested in the potential of comparative judgement (CJ) and have written about it here and here. Greg Ashman mentions the process obliquely in his new book: When we measure on an absolute scale [...]
Ouroboros: a review
I've been following Greg Ashman's writing for some years and have always been struck by his clarity, precision, humour and single-minded sense of purpose. I haven't always agreed with everything he's written but I've been persuaded by an awful lot. Naturally, when I discovered he was writing a book I was keen to read it. The concept or conceit of Ouroboros is that education is constantly eating its own tail. New [...]
John Hattie and the magical power of prediction
"Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous." Hyman G. Rickover — Speech to US Naval Post Graduate School, March 16, 1954 In this post I picked up on a rather odd comment made by Professor Hattie at a recent conference: ...tests don’t tell kids about how much they’ve learnt. Kids are very, very good at predicting how well they’ll do in a test.” Are they? In my response I argued that he's wrong: Most [...]
A definition of learning
"For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences." Cervantes Learning (n) 1. the retention and transfer of knowledge 2. a change in the way the world is understood I'm often asked what I mean when I talk about 'learning' so, although I've written about it many times before, I thought it [...]
Is it a 'sin' to tell teachers how to teach?
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence. Samuel Butler According to a recent TES article, Professor John Hattie, "one of the world’s most widely quoted education academics," has been telling teachers that it's a 'sin' to tell teachers how to teach. I'm sure the irony went unnoticed. Is he right? He apparently he said 80 [...]
Is it a ‘sin’ to tell teachers how to teach?
Half the vices which the world condemns most loudly have seeds of good in them and require moderated use rather than total abstinence. Samuel Butler According to a recent TES article, Professor John Hattie, "one of the world’s most widely quoted education academics," has been telling teachers that it's a 'sin' to tell teachers how to teach. I'm sure the irony went unnoticed. Is he right? He apparently he said 80 [...]
What's the difference between character and personality?
The recent Sutton Trust report on character education, A Winning Personality, concludes that extroversion correlates strongly with career success. It recommends that schools focus their efforts on improving "less advantaged students" knowledge and awareness of professional careers, using "good feedback to improve pupils’ social skills," providing "suitable training in employability skills and interview techniques" and on ensuring that attempts to improve outcomes for less advantaged students are "broad-based – focusing on wider [...]
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