May on The Learning Spy
Blimey, but May was a busy month! I wrote more posts than ever before - a ridiculous 29, and had more views than any other months with 90,590 views. Anyhoo, I did this last month and 4 people got in touch to say they'd like me to do it again, so this is for them. Here follows a brief run down of what I wrote about. Two stars and a [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #8 Creativity
In this, the eighth in a series of posts examining a report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning, I take a closer look at Principle 8: “Student creativity can be fostered." Of all the psychological principles I've read about, this seems the weakest. The report starts badly: "Creativity—defined as the generation of ideas that are new and useful in a particular situation—is a critical skill for students [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #7 Self-regulation
In this, the seventh in a series of posts examining a report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning, I take a closer look at Principle 7: "Students’ self-regulation assists learning, and self-regulatory skills can be taught." Before getting into the thorny matter of whether self-regulation can be taught, we need to be clear about what we actually mean by the term. Rather than attempting a definition, the [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #6 Feedback
In this, the sixth in a series of posts examining the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning, I cast a critical eye over Principle 6: “Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important for learning." The fact that feedback is important is regularly used to wallop teachers. This has been accepted as a self-evidently truth. And by and large it's true. There are, however, a few points worth [...]
Ofsted inspections to be higher stakes: for inspectors!
Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Mathew 7:7 Sometimes life takes a surreal twist. In January 2014 I predicted Ofsted would stop grading lessons within a maximum of two years. I was wrong. Grades had been scrapped by June the same yearGrades had been scrapped by June the same year! I then got a [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #5 “Learning is dependent on practice”
This is the fifth in a series of posts unpicking the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning. In this post I investigate Principle 5: “Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely dependent on practice.” Whenever the going got tough, my mum always used to remind me that 'practice makes perfect'. Well, I'm delighted to say it turns out she's wrong. Sorry mum. Practice makes permanent. What we repeatedly [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #4 Context
This is the fourth in a series of posts unpicking the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning. In this post I investigate Principle 4: "Learning is based on context, so generalizing learning to new contexts is not spontaneous but instead needs to be facilitated." The fact that learning occurs in context is well established. Our ability to retrieve information is heavily context dependent - we link it to [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #3 Development
This is the third in a series of posts unpicking the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning. This time it’s the turn of Principle 3: Students’ cognitive development and learning are not limited by general stages of development to come under the microscope. Most teachers' understanding of cognitive development begins and ends with Jean Piaget. Piaget's theory that all children pass through a predetermined sequence of developmental stages has bewitched [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #2 Prior knowledge
This is the second in a series of posts unpicking the Top 20 Principles From Psychology For Pre-k–12 Teaching And Learning. This time it's the turn of Principle 2 – What students already know affects their learning to come under the microscope. You can see the other principles here. Students' minds are not a blank slate; when they arrive at school they already know stuff. According to Nuthall, whenever teachers begin a new [...]
20 psychological principles for teachers #1 Mindsets
We are what we believe we are. Benjamin Cardozo A few weeks ago I posted a brief summary of The Coalition for Psychology for Schools and Education's report, Top 20 Principles From Psychology For Pre-k–12 Teaching And Learning. Since then I've been reading through the research they cite to see how far I agree with their conclusions. First up for investigation is Principle 1 - Students’ beliefs or perceptions about intelligence and [...]
Is it possible to get assessment right?
No. After my last blog on how to get assessment wrong, various readers got in touch to say, OK smart arse, what should we do? Well, I'm afraid the bad news is that we'll never get assessment right. Or at least, it's impossible for assessment to give us anything like perfect information on student's progress or learning. We can design tests to give us pretty good information of students' mastery [...]
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