The problem with SatNavs, or how feedback can impede learning
I'm not an especially good driver, but I'm a truly terrible navigator. This used to mean that I would get lost. A lot. When I first moved to Bristol in 2001 I bought an A-Z of the city and when driving somewhere new I would have to stop the car periodically and try to align the map to the streets around me. Needless to say, I found this pretty stressful. Luckily, I'm [...]
Now we are three
In a pleasingly synchronous turn of events this post marking the end of the third year of writing The Learning Spy is also the 300th post I've published on the site. That's about a blog every 4 days. I knew I'd written a lot, but this smacks of some sort of worrying compulsion. This last year has been by far the busiest yet with over 600,000 views but I'm sure [...]
Teaching for independence: thinking, memory & mastery
Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think. John Stuart Mill It's been a while now since I last wrote about the Teaching Sequence for Independence, so I'll start with a brief recap on what has come to be meant by [...]
Is listening really passive?
Listening is a positive act: you have to put yourself out to do it. David Hockney Like many others, I got very excited to see this published on the Ofsted website back in February: Inspectors must not give the impression that Ofsted favours a particular teaching style. Inspectors should not criticise teacher talk for being overlong or bemoan a lack of opportunity for different activities in lessons unless there is [...]
Listen up: Improving the quality of classroom discussion
We have two ears and only one tongue in order that we may hear more and speak less.Diogenes Pupils are asked to discuss stuff in class all the time. As, from time to time, are teachers. Think back to the last discussion you took part in. No matter how civilised they are, it tends to be an exercise in patience; we spend a lot of time waiting for everyone else [...]
Why we disagree: the purposes of education
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it. Aristotle (possibly a fake quote) We are fantastically bad at recognising that our beliefs are based not on evidence, logic and reason, but on self-interest, preference and emotion. When confronted with ‘others’ who disagree with our most fervently held beliefs, we tend to make assumptions that they are ignorant. When our opponents prove [...]
What I got up to at the Wellington Festival of Education Part 2
Day Two of the Education Festival dawned rather too early; I was camped out in my van and could have done with another hour or so before the hordes descended. By the time I was decent, and had scoffed a quick breakfast in the almost oppressively convivial surroundings of the Master's Lodge, I was ready to rejoin the fray. My first stop was a debate rather pointedly entitled, What's Wrong [...]
What I got up to at the Wellington Festival of Education Part 1
Sadly, I missed most of the Friday. I spent the morning speaking at a maths conference (I know, right?) on correcting the mistakes made in the name of ‘numeracy across the curriculum’. If you’re interested, I argued that whilst numeracy has a pretty superficial connection with much that goes on in other subjects, mathematical thinking would be a far more powerful way to explicitly teach pupils to filter how they [...]
Revisiting Slow Writing – how slowing writing might speed up thinking
Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast. Shakespeare It's been a while since I first wrote about Slow Writing and in that time it's rather taken on a life of its own. Today I had the interesting experience of someone excitedly telling me about this 'great idea' they'd been using to transforming students' writing, and guess what? Now, I don't want to suggest that I'm precious about it or that [...]
Pseudo intervention and the power of placebo
…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives… Francis Bacon Today's post has been contributed by a reader who has asked to remain anonymous, but got in touch after reading my blog explaining why I'd abandoned the SOLO taxonomy. Whilst this post isn't directly related to SOLO, it does address the need to provide compelling evidence when we start [...]
Why I changed my mind about the SOLO taxonomy
I've been meaning to write this for quite a while. Increasingly, I've become rather embarrassed about my erstwhile advocacy for Biggs & Collis's generic taxonomy, the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes. I used to have a separate page of SOLO resources on my blog which I have now removed, but even so my SOLO posts still get a surprising number of hits, and this presentation has been downloaded over 50,000 [...]
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