John Hattie and the magical power of prediction
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 students are novices – they don’t yet know much about the subject they’re studying. Not only do they not [...]
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 [...]
Why 'mastery learning' may prove to be a bad idea
"It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us." Disraeli What could be wrong with wanting students to master difficult content? Nothing. For the most part, the aims of mastery curricula are admirable. Ensuring all students have fully grasped conceptually difficult content is a hard but worthy aspiration. My problem is that, in practice, mastery values the here and now over the future, and [...]
Is it what you do or the way that you do it?
Alex Quigley has just responded to my post Two Stars and a Bloody Wish! with the revelation that it works for him and others: Using a ‘Two Stars and a Wish’ model ironically meant that many teachers were writing more concise comments and spending less time on marking than before. Rather than proving a waste of time as David Didau suggests, it was saving time for many (teachers weren’t beholden to two wishes each [...]
Big data is bad data
The cost of bad data is the illusion of knowledge. – Stephen Hawking Schools, as with almost every other organ of state, are increasingly obsessed with big data. There seem to be two main aims: prediction and control. If only we collect and analyse enough data then the secrets of the universe will be unlocked. No child will be left behind and all will have prizes. Can we learn from the [...]
What every teacher needs to know about… Edtech
Here's my most recent Teach Secondary column: Technology has been transforming education for as long as either have been in existence. Language, arguably the most crucial technological advancement in human history, moved education from mere mimicry and emulation into the realms of cultural transmission; as we became able to express abstractions so we could teach our offspring about the interior world of thought beyond the concrete reality we experienced directly. [...]
Can anyone teach? Well, that depends on what you think education is for
In a fascinating series of posts, Nick Rose has discussed to what extent teaching is a natural ability and how far it might be described as an 'artificial' science. In The ‘artificial science’ of teaching: System vs Individual competence he explores the implications for teacher training and professional development of these different interpretations of what it is to teach. All of this harks back to the hoary old chestnut of whether teaching is an art, [...]
Varieties of boredom
For I have neither wit, nor words, nor worth, Action, nor utterance, nor the power of speech, To stir men’s blood: I only speak right on; I tell you that which you yourselves do know Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act 3, scene 2 Teaching is a profession with an odd, uneasy relationship with boredom. At once we are almost never bored, but seem to always run the risk of being boring. [...]
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