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Seven tools for thinking #5 Occam’s razor

2016-06-09T13:01:21+01:00June 8th, 2016|Featured|

All things being equal, the simplest solution is usually the best one. William of Ockham You've probably heard the old adage that if you hear the pounding of hooves echoing through the Wiltshire countryside you shouldn't assume a herd of zebras is on its way. The simplest explanation for a phenomenon is the likeliest and in this case you're probably safer to expect to see some horseflesh any moment. Of course, this isn't always the case. If you're on the African savannah then zebras are a more reasonable expectation. There are, of course, times when the simplest explanation won't turn out to be true, but it's a [...]

Seven tools for thinking #4: Answering rhetorical questions

2016-06-08T11:45:33+01:00June 7th, 2016|Featured|

Always the beautiful answer who asks a more beautiful question. E. E. Cummings Everyone likes a rhetorical question, don't they? Do they? Think about it. Try answering it. Do you think everyone really does like rhetorical questions? Some people do, but everyone? Maybe some people hate them? You can see where this kind of thinking can take you. It might result in navel gazing, but, equally, it might help us spot some pretty flawed reasoning. Like the surely klaxon, a rhetorical question is an invitation for readers to agree, to gloss over the substance of a statement and just nod approvingly. Some rhetorical [...]

Seven tools for thinking #3: The “surely” klaxon

2017-09-12T20:47:36+01:00June 6th, 2016|Featured|

Rumack: Can you fly this plane and land it? Striker: Surely you can't be serious? Rumack: I am serious. And don't call me Shirley. Airplane, 1980 It's natural to want to build consensus. We're all guilty of sometimes assuming that what we think is true or reasonable will be thought true and reasonable by everybody else. Often though, what we decide is true is just wishful thinking. Sometimes this is simply lazy thinking, sometimes it's bullshit. I've written before on how to spot and avoid bullshit: it's a fine line between calling bullshit and applying the principle of charity. A good rule of thumb [...]

Seven tools for thinking #2: The principle of charity

2017-09-12T20:41:49+01:00June 5th, 2016|Featured|

Ah! What a divine religion might be found if charity were really made the principle of it instead of faith! - Percy Bysshe Shelley A few weeks ago I wrote about the philosopher, Daniel Dennett's recommendation that we value our mistakes, learn from them, and never make the same mistake again. The second of Dennett's seven tools for thinking from Intuition Pumps is to respect your opponent. This is something I really struggle with. Debate in education is as ideologically riven as any other field where there are few certainties and no absolutes; evidence is nearly always contingent. But you'd never know. The [...]

Why I think table top mats are better than wall displays

2016-05-29T09:13:48+01:00May 29th, 2016|Featured|

A couple of days ago I posted an article exploring why I'm not keen on teaching being expected to spend time putting on displays in their classrooms. This made some people happy :) but a few people were sad :(  . One criticism was that some displays contain important information that can be covered up so that students can be tested to see whether they've memorised it. This is the Bananarama Principle: It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it. Wall displays can be used well and table top mats can be used badly. So, of course displays [...]

What every teacher needs to know about… classroom display

2016-05-26T21:13:45+01:00May 26th, 2016|Featured|

Once again the finest monthly publication for secondary teachers, Teach Secondary, have demeaned themselves by publishing another of my sloppily put together rants. This month my barrel scraping has reached a new as I quibble about such harmless trivia as teachers putting up posters. Sorry.  The firmly established, yet largely unexamined, position on classroom display is that there’s nothing quite so magical as a classroom plastered in beautiful display work and nothing half so bleak as a bare wall devoid of all humanity and joy. A good teacher will, as a matter of course, strive not only to fill every inch of wall space with exciting [...]

Triple impact feedback on the EEF marking review

2016-11-30T14:14:09+00:00May 24th, 2016|Featured|

1.The EEF publish a review of the evidence of marking. 2. I give them some feedback. 3. The EEF respond to my criticisms. 4. Well... we could go on for ever. Feel familiar? James Richardson and Robbie Coleman, say they'd be happy "if people took the current lack of evidence on marking as the key finding of the report." So would I. Unfortunately, I don't think that will be the case. Teachers and school leaders are desperate to have their views validated and some will, I fear, latch on to the weakly evidenced "findings" the report offers. Now of course, absence of evidence [...]

Seven tools for thinking #1: Use your mistakes

2016-06-11T11:08:15+01:00May 22nd, 2016|Featured|

"The chief trick to making good mistakes is not to hide them - especially not from yourself." - Daniel Dennett. I've been rereading the philosopher, Daniel Dennett's wonderfully erudite manual for making and improving on mistakes, Intuition Pumps. The first - and maybe most important - of his seven tools for thinking is that we should use our mistakes*. Now, there's a lot written in praise of mistakes and failure; some of it sensible but much of it eulogistic to the point of absurdity. Making mistakes for the sake of making mistakes is not something to be lauded, it's just a waste of time. [...]

A plug for Teaching & Learning Conference on 2nd July

2016-03-21T19:29:56+00:00March 21st, 2016|Featured|

The following is a guest post from Anne Williams wherein she promotes the Teaching & Learning conference she has organised on 2nd July in Leeds. I'll be speaking there and so will loads of other rather excellent people. Tickets are selling fast so don't miss out. At the end of June last year, I was hosting a visit from two other schools when a particularly portentous email dropped into my unsuspecting inbox: ‘Confirmation: school is happy for you to host a conference on 2nd July 2016’. @Sabato0612, who I was drinking coffee with at the time, will bear witness that I [...]

Walking the tightrope between cynicism and sincerity

2016-03-16T13:45:20+00:00March 16th, 2016|Featured|

Life is either always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope. Edith Wharton I wrote recently about unscrupulous optimism. Mostly this seems to have been understood as a warning against the unbridled enthusiasm for the new and the recklessly blinkered belief that the best possible case will always come to pass. Naturally enough I suppose, some readers read into it a celebration of negativity and cynicism. This could not be further from the truth. My favourite definition of cynicism comes from the novelist John Fowles who wrote in The Magus, "All cynicism masks a failure to cope - an impotence, in short, and [...]

Why do edtech folk react badly to scepticism? Part 2: Confirmation bias

2016-02-23T16:12:00+00:00February 23rd, 2016|Featured, technology|

In Part 1 I explored the concept of vested interest and how it could lead us to make decisions and react in ways which might, to others, appear irrational. This post address another predictable way we make mistakes: the confirmation bias. Confirmation bias, the tendency to over value data which supports an pre-existing belief, is something to which we all routinely fall victim. We see the world as we want it to be, not how it really is. Contrary to some of the accusations levelled at me, I don't hate technology. Far from it. I'm just sceptical about unbridled enthusiasm. Technology might help in [...]

Just semantics? Subtle but important misunderstandings about learning styles, modalities, and preferences

2016-02-21T22:54:54+00:00February 21st, 2016|Featured|

This is a guest blog from Yana Weinstein, Assistant Professor at University of Massachusetts, Lowell, one of the masterminds behind the wonderful Learning Scientists site. Scientists get quite attached to terms that describe the constructs they are studying. This is because you can’t measure something until you’ve defined what you think it is – and for convenience - labelled it. The naming process itself is fairly arbitrary. A researcher discovers an effect or proposes a process, and if it catches on and further research confirms the construct’s importance, the name might stick. Once a construct is identified and named, hypotheses about it can be formed [...]

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