Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design
Thank you so much to everyone who helped out, presented, turned up on a wet Saturday or just joined in from afar on our creaky Livestream (I'm particularly devastated that Professor Ray Land's keynote will be lost to posterity!) I will, in due course, write something which pulls together the experience of organising Saturday's #researchED's first subject-specific conference, but for now, here are the slides you've all been clamouring for [...]
We don’t know what we don’t know: the uses of humility
Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life. George Arliss In my last post I challenged the widely-held belief that teachers' judgements are generally sound and suggested instead that we are routinely beset by very predictable but unconscious bias. Two criticisms emerged that I want to address. Firstly, some commenters noted that it's impossible to prevent teachers making judgments [...]
Why teacher assessment is less fair than standardised testing
Tests Guns don't kill people, rappers do Goldie Lookin Chain I spent the day yesterday at the Department for Education thinking about how best to cut down on the "unnecessary workload" associated with marking. Today I spent far too much time bandying words with children's writer, Michael Rosen about the value of testing over teacher assessment. It strikes me that both experiences offer an opportunity to set out my objections to teacher [...]
Five techniques for overcoming overconfidence and improving decision-making
One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision. Bertrand Russell Every successful leader will have one thing in common: they trust their judgement. And why not? Their intuitions must have proved their worth otherwise they wouldn’t be successful, right? Well, maybe not. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman suggests that “the amount [...]
October on The Learning Spy
Here's what I got up to in October. The major themes this month were accountability and teachers' judgement. Books I read which I found particularly interesting were Beyond the Checklist and Matthew Syed's Black Box Thinking. I also found time to reread Conditions for Intuitive: Expertise A Failure to Disagree by Gary Klein & Daniel Kahneman. 4th October Intelligent Accountability - a manifesto for improving the ways in which teachers are held accountable in an [...]
In praise of signposts
The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. C. S. Lewis If you're not sure which way to go, a sign post is very useful. A quick glance confirms either you're headed in the right direction or you're not.If you are facing in the right direction, all you have to do is keep on walking. Obviously you [...]
The closed circle: Why being wrong is so useful
Lying to ourselves is more deeply ingrained than lying to others. Fyodor Dostoevsky A closed circle argument is one where there is no possibility of convincing an opponent that they might be wrong. They are right because they're right. Imagine you wake to find yourself in a psychiatric ward, deemed by all and sundry to be mad. Any attempt to argue that you are not, in point of fact, mad, is [...]
Is growth mindset pseudoscience?
Claims that cannot be tested, assertions immune to disproof are veridically worthless, whatever value they may have in inspiring us or in exciting our sense of wonder. Carl Sagan What's the difference between science and pseudoscience? The basis of all reputable science is prediction and falsification: a claim has to be made which we can then attempt to disprove. If we can't disprove it, the claim holds and we accept the [...]
From Scared Straight to Reading Wrong
He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alters things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end? Francis Bacon In 1978, Scared Straight! won the Academy Award for the best documentary film. It followed a group of teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks who, [...]
Is school a straightjacket? A response to David Aaronovitch
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution. Igor Stravinsky In yesterday's Times, David Aaronovitch wrote an opinion piece headlined, Pupils aren't just another brick in the wall. His argument was that schools "force" children into cohorts depending on their age and abilities and that this is a "straightjacket". Many aspects of schooling are, [...]
How can we teach problem solving?
It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem. G. K. Chesterton In an uncertain future, the ability to solve novel problems will become increasingly in demand. Now, some folk might, correctly, point out that we're hard-wired to problem solve. We can't not attempt to solve problems when we have an idea of what the answer might be. However, we tend to be [...]
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