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June on The Learning Spy

2015-07-01T11:48:26+01:00July 1st, 2015|Featured|

June was a much quieter month on the blog than May. But despite the page views plummeting I still managed to churn out a fair few posts, summarised for your convenience below: #9 Motivation 6th June Throughout June I continued my uphill plod through the Top 20 psychological principles for teachers. This one was the first of four on what motivates students and looked at the costs and benefits of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. #10 Mastery 7th June Mastery learning is a much abused and very vogue-ish term. This post tried to begin unpicking what it is and isn't. It’s the bell curve, [...]

Have you read the #WrongBook?

2015-06-24T14:54:50+01:00June 17th, 2015|Featured|

I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken. – Oliver Cromwell My new book is finally out! In it I pose the question, what if everything you know about education is wrong? Just to be clear, I’m not saying you, or anyone else is wrong, I’m just asking you to consider the consequences of being wrong. What would you do if your most cherished beliefs turned out to be mistaken? You see, I think we’re wrong a lot more than we’d like to accept. We have all sorts of perceptual and cognitive biases that prevent us from recognising [...]

Should schools have to prepare for inspection?

2015-06-16T23:55:35+01:00June 16th, 2015|Featured|

Like everyone else who has witnessed Ofsted's attempts to clarify misconceptions and improve the inspection process over the last few years, I'm certain that those who led the organisation are genuinely well-intentioned and are actively seeking to do the best they can. The removal of individual lesson gradings was a triumph for common senses, and the attempts to learn from and engage with teachers to improve the system is entirely laudable. Without going into any specifics around Michael Wilshaw's latest round of announcements of what Ofsted will and won't be looking for, I feel genuinely confused about one point. Consultant and [...]

Fancy attending an English & maths conference?

2015-06-10T10:06:42+01:00June 10th, 2015|Featured|

I'm speaking at Optimus Education's English & Maths 2015: Effective Teaching Strategies to Meet New Accountabilities on Thursday 22nd October. The mathematicians amongst needn't worry; I'll only be inflicting my "inspirational keynote" to the English strand. If you're interested, this is what I'll be talking about: "Curriculum creativity: Enjoy your new-found freedom and develop a curriculum plan that successfully encourages breadth and depth of knowledge". There's lots of other great speakers lined up, but I'll be particularly looking forward to hearing the wisdom of Twitter's Andy Tharby (@atharby) and Chris Curtis (@xris31). The only reason I'm telling you all this is that if you're [...]

Fancy attending an English & maths conference?

2015-06-10T10:36:32+01:00June 10th, 2015|Featured|

I'm speaking at Optimus Education's English & Maths 2015: Effective Teaching Strategies to Meet New Accountabilities on Thursday 22nd October. The mathematicians amongst needn't worry; I'll only be inflicting my "inspirational keynote" to the English strand. If you're interested, this is what I'll be talking about: "Curriculum creativity: Enjoy your new-found freedom and develop a curriculum plan that successfully encourages breadth and depth of knowledge". There's lots of other great speakers lined up, but I'll be particularly looking forward to hearing the wisdom of Twitter's Andy Tharby (@atharby) and Chris Curtis (@xris31). The only reason I'm telling you all this is that if you're [...]

May on The Learning Spy

2015-06-02T18:31:28+01:00June 1st, 2015|Featured|

Blimey, but May was a busy month! I wrote more posts than ever before - a ridiculous 29, and had more views than any other months with 90,590 views. Anyhoo, I did this last month and 4 people got in touch to say they'd like me to do it again, so this is for them. Here follows a brief run down of what I wrote about. Two stars and a bloody wish! 3rd May (4,244 views) I started the month by continuing where I left off at the end of April by writing about marking and took aim at the execrable process widely [...]

Ofsted inspections to be higher stakes: for inspectors!

2015-05-29T06:49:48+01:00May 28th, 2015|Featured|

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. Mathew 7:7 Sometimes life takes a surreal twist. In January 2014 I predicted Ofsted would stop grading lessons within a maximum of two years. I was wrong. Grades had been scrapped by June the same yearGrades had been scrapped by June the same year! I then got a call from Sean Harford to cast eye over the new Inspection Handbook and was stunned to find that all my advice had been taken on board. Now today, after suggesting for [...]

The Testing Effect is dead! Long live the Testing Effect!

2015-05-20T10:50:21+01:00May 20th, 2015|Featured, psychology|

Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool. Richard Feynman Yesterday we were told that the much vaunted testing effect (which I've written about here) has been effectively shown to be useless in improving the learning of 'complex' material. Tamara van Gog and John Sweller's provocatively titled paper, Not New, but Nearly Forgotten: the Testing Effect Decreases or even Disappears as the Complexity of Learning Materials Increases explored the 'boundary conditions' of the effect. The abstract of the paper says, [One] potential boundary condition concerns the complexity of learning materials, [...]

The Variation Effect: How seating plans might be undermining learning

2015-05-17T13:01:36+01:00May 17th, 2015|Featured|

Observe always that everything is the result of a change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and to make new ones like them. Marcus Aurelius It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teacher in possession of a large roomful of children must be in want of a carefully crafted seating plan. Secondary schools in particular have normalised the idea that children should sit in the seat where they will be least distracted and best able to learn. There are many excellent reasons to use seating plans: they're a [...]

Robert Coe on #WrongBook

2015-05-15T21:39:54+01:00May 13th, 2015|Featured|

Robert Coe, Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring at Durham University burst into my consciousness two years ago with his vigorous critique of the lack of evidence underpinning lesson observation. I'm sure he needs no introduction, but his papers Improving Education: a triumph of hope over experience and What Makes Great Teaching? are essentially reading for anyone interested in education beyond own narrow sphere of opinion. In short, he's an academic I greatly respect and whose good opinion matters. So I'm thrilled that he's written this brief review of my forthcoming book. This is a great book. Read it. David Didau [...]

Michaela School: Route One Schooling

2015-05-16T17:31:38+01:00May 12th, 2015|Featured|

I learned two very important principles from my visit to Michaela: You can do whatever you want as long as you hold your nerve and accept the consequences. You can always go a lot further than you first think is possible. The first principle is embodied in Head Teacher, Katherine Birbalsingh’s explanation of how to get the culture you want: you just don’t compromise. If a teacher sees or hears a phone at Michaela it’s confiscated until the following term. It doesn’t matter whether the phone accidentally slipped out of a pocket, and it doesn’t matter whether the parent is going [...]

Why do people vote Conservative?

2019-12-13T12:45:25+00:00May 8th, 2015|Featured|

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 outrage and anger against 'class traitors' who had betrayed their roots and voted Tory out of naked self-interest and greed. Apparently, the polls were wrong because people were too ashamed to admit [...]

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