November on The Learning Spy
Here's all the stuff I wrote last month. Knock yourself out. 3rd November Five techniques for overcoming overconfidence & improving decision-making - more wisdom from messrs Kahneman & Klein 4th November Tests don’t kill people - standardised tests are great but they seem to cause people to behave stupidly 5th November We don’t know what we don’t know: the uses of humility - I'm a big fan of humility. In fact, I think it's possibly the [...]
Opportunity knocks: the hidden cost of bad ideas
Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent or rather thrown away Five Shillings besides. Benjamin Franklin There are those that would have it that opportunity cost is a [...]
Should students respond to feedback?
The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting. Fran Lebowitz One of the criticisms of my post about book monitoring is that I have omitted checks to see whether students have responded to feedback. This omission is entirely deliberate. Does this mean I don't care whether students respond to feedback? You might think this is a bit of a silly question - of course they should. [...]
What I want from a school leader
In response to various posts on book monitoring earlier in the week, Lee Donaghy asked what the role of school leaders ought to be. Now, some would have it that because I don't lead a school any opinion I might offer is invalid. Many people do not understand the purpose of leading teaching and learning. Why? Because they have never done it. — @TeacherToolkit (@TeacherToolkit) November 26, 2015 This is an interesting [...]
The problem with book monitoring
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way. Albert Camus Most schools these days routinely monitor students' exercise books in an attempt to extrapolate the quality of teaching. In some ways this is positive and reflects the growing recognition that we can tell much less than we might believe about teaching quality by observing lessons. On the whole I'm in favour of looking at students' work, but, predictably, book monitoring [...]
Is it just me or is Sugata Mitra an irresponsible charlatan?
Knowledge comes by eyes always open and working hands; and there is no knowledge that is not power. Ralph Waldo Emerson When I first saw physicist, Sugata Mitra speak about his Hole in the Wall experiments in India I was astonished. Not only was he as self-deprecatingly warm and funny as Sir Ken Robinson on a major charm offensive, the content of what he was saying blew any of SKR's woolly [...]
Workload, retention & accountability: One policy to rule them all
More men are killed by overwork than the importance of the world justifies. Rudyard Kipling There's a lot wrong with the way schools are held to account which result in perverse incentives for school leaders to treat teachers less well than we might want. There are also huge fears about a recruitment and retention crisis in education: Teachers seem to be leaving the profession in droves and new cannon-fodder is [...]
What every teacher needs to know about…Zero Tolerance
My latest column for the wonderful folk at Teach Secondary magazine looks at the ins and outs of "Zero Tolerance" behaviour systems. There is a limit at which forbearance ceases to be a virtue. Edmund Burke If you’re going to manage children’s behaviour you need a healthy balance of carrot and stick. Positive reinforcement is great, but at some point children confront us with behaviour that requires sanctioning. After many years [...]
The Illusion of Knowing
Knowledge, n.: The small part of ignorance that we arrange and classify. Ambrose Bierce Advanced Learning has commissioned me to write a piece about the uses and abuses of data in schools. My thesis, if that's not too grand a term, is that while data can be extraordinarily useful in helping us make good decisions, too much data leads, inexorably, to overload. When we have too much data we start doing [...]
Comparison is easy
The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike. Jacob Bronowski Judging the quality of a thing in isolation is hard. Is this wine good? What about this restaurant? This cheese? This television programme? This child’s essay? But just because we’re bad at making meaningful judgements doesn’t mean we’re aware of experiencing any uncertainty. Uncertainty is [...]
Essay writing: style and substance
You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable. George Eliot As with most subjects, the step up from GCSE to A level English literature is tough. You can get a pretty good grade at GCSE without developing a critical style or understand much about the art of constructing an academic essay. Students' work is routinely littered with stock phrases such as "I know this [...]
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