Do all good ideas need to be researched?
We used to think that if we knew one, we knew two, because one and one are two. We are finding that we must learn a great deal more about ‘and’. Arthur Stanley Eddington After my presentation on Slow Writing at the researchED Primary Literacy Conference in Leeds, I was asked a very good question by Alex Wetherall. Basically - and I hope he forgives my paraphrase - he asked [...]
How do we know if a teacher’s any good?
Obviously enough, not all teachers are equal. But how do we know which ones are any cop? Well, we just do, don't we? Everyone in a school community tends to know who's doing a decent job. But how do we know? Rightly, most school leaders feel it important to evaluate the effectiveness of their staff, but how can they go about this in a way that's fair, valid and reliable? Over [...]
Top 20 principles from psychology for teaching & learning
The Coalition for Psychology for Schools and Education haves released a new report detailing what, in their opinion, are the most important and useful psychological principles teachers ought to be aware of. They break these principles in five areas: How Do Students Think and Learn? 1. Students’ beliefs or perceptions about intelligence and ability affect their cognitive functioning and learning. 2. What students already know affects their learning. 3. Students’ [...]
Why do people vote Conservative?
Reason coldly of your grievances, or else depart. Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet All my life I've been a left-leaning liberal kind of guy. I believe in social justice, equality and protecting those less fortunate than myself. As such, voting Labour - or at a push LibDem - has always seemed the unarguable moral choice. So why do so many people vote Conservative? This morning my Twitter timeline was full of [...]
The myth of progress
We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive. C. S. Lewis We tend to believe that things are getting better, that mankind is on a journey to some perfect state in which irrationality will be banished. This belief shapes and distorts our [...]
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 [...]
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