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How can we teach problem solving?

2015-10-18T18:28:32+01:00October 18th, 2015|Featured|

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem. G. K. Chesterton In an uncertain future, the ability to solve novel problems will become increasingly in demand. Now, some folk might, correctly, point out that we're hard-wired to problem solve. We can't not attempt to solve problems when we have an idea of what the answer might be. However, we tend to be much worse at solving problems when we have no idea what the solution might look like. Everyone, regardless of their ideological beliefs about education, will surely agree that problem-solving is a [...]

What every teacher needs to know about '21st-Century learning'

2015-10-09T12:54:30+01:00October 9th, 2015|Featured|

Here's my column in this month's Teach Secondary magazine which is packed full of stuff much better than my meagre scrawlings so you'd be well advised to subscribe. You’ve seen Shift Happens, right? Several years back this ‘inspirational’ video was on heavy rotation in school INSETs up and down the land. Although it’s fallen from favour more recently, there’s still an updated 2015 version doing the rounds (look it up on You Tube if you can be bothered). Among its many outlandish propositions we’re told that “the top ten in-demand jobs in 2010 did not exist in 2004” and that “we are [...]

Intelligent Accountability

2016-10-05T20:44:27+01:00October 4th, 2015|Featured, leadership|

The history of human growth is at the same time the history of every new idea heralding the approach of a brighter dawn, and the brighter dawn has always been considered illegal, outside of the law. - Emma Goldman So many teachers I speak to are afraid to make nuanced professional judgements. When I make suggestions on how they could manage workload, organise classroom, speak to students, select curriculum content or plan lessons very often I'm confronted with,"That sounds like a great idea but I wouldn't be allowed to do it." Too many school systems have become blunt instruments used to [...]

Could less marking mean more feedback?

2015-09-27T18:32:36+01:00September 27th, 2015|Featured|

Opportunity makes a thief. - Francis Bacon I wrote recently about the differences between marking and feedback. In brief, and contrary to popular wisdom, they are not the same thing; feedback is universally agreed to be a good bet in teachers' efforts to improve student outcomes whereas as marking appears to be almost entirely unsupported by evidence and neglected by researchers. Marking takes time Although there are some who dislike the use of the term opportunity cost being applied to education, there's no getting away from the fact that whilst we may be able to renew all sorts of resources, time is always finite. [...]

A decreased focus on facts & knowledge won't help either

2015-09-21T19:17:50+01:00September 21st, 2015|Featured|

Knowledge is that which, next to virtue, truly raises one person above another. - Joseph Addison The TES reports today that “A leading independent school headmaster has warned that the greater focus on facts and knowledge in reformed GCSEs and A-levels may fail to equip pupils for the modern world.” Well, duh. Anything may fail or succeed in its aims, but this statement sort of assumes that up until now GCSEs and A levels have been doing a bang up job of preparing students for the modern world. I have little doubt that some pupils will continue to be every bit [...]

A heck of a lot of posters

2015-09-20T18:07:06+01:00September 20th, 2015|Featured|

Is it just me, or do secondary school children make a heck of a lot of posters? Now, I've got nothing against posters per se, but why do we seem to have decided that poster making is the best way to demonstrate knowledge and understanding? I suspect it may be because deep in our blackened, embittered hearts, we secondary school teachers think somehow that making posters is fun. Further, many secondary teachers have a bit of a warped view of what goes on in primary schools. We have a tendency to assume that the primary curriculum is - at least to some [...]

Why we *really* mistrust Ofsted

2015-09-16T08:33:10+01:00September 15th, 2015|Featured|

In the Schools Week profile on Ofsted's head honcho, Sir Michael Wilshaw apparently puts the teaching professions' lack of confidence in Ofsted down to "his relentless drive for challenge". He is reported as saying, Me coming out and being quite critical sometimes of leaders not doing what they should be doing, giving my view about how schools should be run, immediately puts people’s backs up. … and what has become clear to me is, once one person says ‘Ofsted’s broke’ … other people jump on that bandwagon... I know we’ve got this reputation of being this tough organisation that costs people their [...]

Pedagogy? I hate the word

2015-09-06T18:26:12+01:00September 6th, 2015|Featured|

If you can’t convince them; confuse them. - Harry S. Truman Pedagogy is defined as either the function or work of a teacher or as the art or science of teaching. As such, it probably seems a bit extreme to hate the word. Whilst I've always disliked it for its clunky, unlovely sound that neither here not there. I'm not going to rail against its pronunciation but rather its usage. It has become, I contend, a weasel word. When people talk about pedagogy, what do they really mean? Why do they choose the word over, say, teaching? Teachers teach -  do we really need [...]

Foxy Thinking: why we should embrace ignorance and learn to love uncertainty

2024-07-18T17:41:23+01:00September 5th, 2015|Featured|

"The grand perhaps! We look on helplessly, there the old misgivings, crooked questions are." Robert Browning Ted Hughes' poem The Thought Fox is an attempt to describe the mysteries of the creative process of writing a poem. We can imagine him sitting at his desk, staring in the dark, slowly become aware of a flickering presence and the awareness that "something else," an idea, "is alive". Hughes imagines this idea as a fox which makes his way into his mind at first tentatively: "Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf" and then take hold with startling [...]

Around the world in 80 classrooms

2015-07-22T10:49:38+01:00July 22nd, 2015|Featured|

A guest blog by Lucy Crehan (@lucy_crehan) I’ve spent the last two years learning about the best education systems in the world – from the inside. It was a particular moment in a year 11 Science class four years ago that set me on this journey. They had their GCSEs coming up in a few months, and we still had a lot of material to cover. Abdul, a boy who was quick to grasp concepts but slow to do classwork, put up his hand. “Miss, why do we sneeze?” My first instinct was frustration. Here we were with the whole of [...]

#WrongBook extracts

2015-07-18T14:54:19+01:00July 17th, 2015|Featured, writing|

For those who have as yet resisted the temptation to buy a copy of my new book, I've put together a selection of (hopefully) tempting extracts. Have a great summer y'all. 1. Cognitive dissonance 2. Fundamental attribution error 3. Availability bias 4. The halo effect 5. Overconfidence 6. 'Passive' learning 7. The purposes of education 8. How to teach 9. Evidence 10. Meta beliefs 11. Progress 12. Tacit knowledge 13. Knowledge vs understanding    

What's the point of parents' evenings?

2015-07-15T13:09:57+01:00July 15th, 2015|Featured|

Earlier today I read this post on the purpose of parents' evenings by David James. It's an excellent exploration of some of the vagaries and oddness of being either side of the table, but ultimately it doesn't answer the question: What are parents' evenings for? This is something my wife explained a number of years ago. For some reason neither of us can remember, I was allowed to attend our daughters' parents evening alone. Being a teacher I felt fairly confident of my role in proceedings: to hold the teachers to account. I scrutinised their books, looked carefully for the impact [...]

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