Endorsements – what are they worth?
What every genuine philosopher (every genuine man, in fact) craves most is praise — although the philosophers generally call it “recognition”! William James You might not have noticed (I've been the very soul of subtlety!) but I've got a new book out in June. This is my third book, and I have to say I love the process of assembling ideas, crafting them into some semblance of meaning, rethinking, redrafting, editing, [...]
What should written feedback look like?
To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away. Arthur Schopenhauer In response to my last post, Cristina Milos pointed out that I use the term 'feedback' without providing any further clarification as to what I mean. She challenged me to explain exactly how I envisioned the feedback process taking place and to be clear about what, specifically, it ought to contain. Now of course [...]
Two stars and a bloody wish!
A heap of epithets is poor praise: the praise lies in the facts, and in the way of telling them. Jean de La Bruyère We are held hostage by our superstitious belief in the mystical power of marking to cure all educational ills. It won't. A teacher inscribing marks in students' exercise books is every bit as mundane as it sounds; in my 15 years in the classroom it rarely [...]
April on The Learning Spy
A few readers kindly got in touch over the last week or so to complain I was writing too much and that they couldn't keep up. Instead of shutting me up, this merely served to start me wondering about producing a digest of the month's posts to make my output easier to swallow. And here, in all its relative glory, it is: 1st April - Dipsticks: It all depends on what [...]
The fetish of marking
Even the most valuable fetishes will turn into dusts and ashes! Mehmet Murat Ildan Fetishism hasn't always been about rubber and high heels. The word originates from the Portuguese feitico, meaning an object or charm of false power. When explorers first encountered native religions in West Africa, whatever talismans or totems the locals revered were dismissed as fetishes. A fetish has since come to mean an object or practice onto which [...]
Trust, accountability and why we need them both
I've been thinking a lot about trust in recent months - particularly because it seems a commodity in such short supply. If, my optimistic thinking went, teachers were trusted to do a good job, then they probably would. But, of course, there's always that nagging concern that some wouldn't. This got me thinking about why people - and specifically teachers - are trustworthy or not. Is it down to an inherent [...]
A few thoughts about character education
The idea that schools should be educating students' character has been gathering momentum in recent years. But the once distant drums have become increasingly urgent; politicians and professors, hucksters and headteachers, all kinds of apparatchiks - even the occasional edu-blogger - have all waded into the debate. Unusually for me, I've mainly stood back, listened and pondered. Last year I visited Kings Leadership Academy in Warrington and although I was hugely [...]
A review of The Beautiful Risk of Education by Harry Webb
I blundered into a discussion of Gert Biesta's The Beautiful Risk of Education yesterday and was asked to justify my view that it's 'a bit silly'. Rather than do the hard work of writing my own critique, I have chosen the more indolent route of posting our dear departed Harry Webb's review as his Webs of Substance blog is now sadly defunct. Creation Myths The Beautiful Risk of Education doesn’t start well, [...]
Slow Writing at #researchED primary literacy conference
Here are the slides I used during my researchED presentation on Slow Writing (including some we didn't get around to looking at due to my rambling incoherence.) If you want to read more about it, do please read this post. But if you'd rather watch me struggle with a monstrous hangover, Leon Cych filmed it:
Chicken or egg? Thoughts about thinking
Which comes first? The chicken of knowledge or the egg of thinking? Over the past few years I have been advocating the view that thinking is a very shallow experience without knowledge. It seems self-evident that you can't think about something you don't yet know. Give it a go... tricky, isn't it? But not only that, the more you know the better you can think about it. If I ask [...]
Whose research is it anyway?
The TES reports today that Professor Hattie, the crown prince of education research, isn't much keen on teachers conducting research in their classrooms. Apparently he thinks we should leave education research in the hands of academics. Because, I assume, they know best. Now I'm certain TES journos have rubbed this particular story vigorously on the crotch of their cricket whites, the better to produce a savage topspin in the hope [...]
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