XFacebookYouTubeLinkedInEmail

Featured

What’s the big deal with Big Questions?

2021-03-22T09:32:35+00:00May 31st, 2019|Featured|

You might know them as Fertile Questions, Enquiry Questions, or plain old, Big Questions, but the idea that the curriculum ought to be organised around broad, disciplinary, substantive enquires is a popular one. It seems to be an especially popular approach with the history teaching community. Christine Counsell goes so far as to say that such questions are "vital in history because without [them] you can't learn how the second-order concepts of the discipline work." For instance, she claims, question such as 'Why did Russian Revolution happen in 1917?' are required for students to get a feel for issues of causation. [...]

Three animated films about learning

2020-12-06T16:57:30+00:00April 9th, 2019|Featured|

UPDATE December 2020: BBC Bitesize has moved the films here. Back in December I gave a lecture to the staff of BBC Bitesize about how learning works and how they might go about making more effective learning materials. This talk has been turned into a series of three short animated films by the production company Mosaic. I think they're pretty good. Here they are. Film 1: How learning works: A quick guide to how we store and retrieve information Film 2: The myth of multitasking and other modern misconceptions about how we learn Film 3: Cognitive Load Theory: How to make [...]

Ofsted and deeper learning: it’s like learning, but deeper

2019-03-13T17:40:43+00:00March 13th, 2019|Featured|

Recently, I was contacted by a school who wanted some help working on 'deeper learning'. I asked them what they meant to which they replied, "Oh, we were hoping you'd tell us!" According to the school's last Ofsted report, the school is not outstanding because, "Teaching is not consistently of the highest quality because deeper learning is not promoted across the curriculum". In order to improve, the report offers the following advice: "Improve the quality of teaching, learning and assessment across the curriculum by leaders and managers ensuring that effective strategies are in place to enhance deeper learning across the curriculum". Now, [...]

What do students think about marking?

2023-02-12T13:21:35+00:00March 3rd, 2019|Featured|

Over the past year or so, I've been doing some very informal research into students' attitudes and opinions with some of the schools I work with on an ongoing basis. Two years ago I wrote 2 posts summarising the problems with marking and suggesting an alternative way forward: Marking is an act of folly Less marking, more feedback: A challenge and a proposal Since then I've been recommending that one of the ways schools can seek to reduce teachers' work load is to move away from the expectation that teachers must write extended comments in response to children's written work [...]

What’s wrong with Ofsted’s definition of learning?

2019-12-17T19:05:37+00:00February 4th, 2019|Featured|

As everyone already knows, Ofsted have published a draft of the new Inspection Framework which is currently undergoing a process of consultation. Amazingly, one of the most contentious aspects of the document is the definition given to learning: Learning can be defined as an alteration in long-term memory. If nothing has altered in long-term memory, nothing has been learned. However, transfer to long-term memory depends on the rich processes described above.[1] In order to develop understanding, pupils connect new knowledge with existing knowledge. Pupils also need to develop fluency and unconsciously apply their knowledge as skills. This must not be reduced [...]

Does creativity have a dark side?

2019-01-30T21:28:15+00:00January 30th, 2019|Featured|

Of course it’s desirable that students are able to identify problems, generate potential solutions, evaluate the effectiveness of those strategies, and then communicate with others about the value of the solutions. If you want to call this 'creativity,' so be it. But it may be that creativity isn't always desirable. Kaufman and Beghetto argue in their wonderfully titled paper, In Praise of Clark Kent: Creative Metacognition and the Importance of Teaching Kids When (Not) to Be Creative, that teachers need to encourage restraint in students and that often it is much more efficient to follow well-established processes rather than trying to think of [...]

Can ‘creativity’ be taught?

2020-04-17T13:17:05+01:00January 29th, 2019|Featured|

The way ideas come to fruition is often mysterious; while we may remember consciously thinking a few things, we are unaware of all the ingredients simmering away in the pot of thought. I like the image of placing a pot on the back boiler on a very low heat and allowing flavours to develop over time. It seems, at least to me, that some of my favourite ideas have emerged in this way. This article on creativity by Paul Carney appeared in Schools Week a few days ago, criticising my ideas about how creativity works. It says: [Didau] argues that creativity is [...]

Why smart people say stupid things: a response to Jack Ma

2019-01-24T14:36:07+00:00January 24th, 2019|Featured|

In case you're unaware, I've just published a book that explains the role of knowledge in thought. Rather than rehash the arguments in depth (there are a series of chapter summaries here) suffice it to say that no one, no matter how intelligent they believe themselves to be, can think about something of which they have no awareness. It's literally impossible, but I'll pause for you to give it go if you're unconvinced... We can only think about things we know, and, the more we know the greater our capacity for thought. It therefore follows that if we want young people [...]

Leading literacy masterclass: 1st March 2019

2019-01-23T09:46:43+00:00January 23rd, 2019|Featured|

Since the publication of The Secret of Literacy back in 2014 I've been asked to visit a lot of schools to talk about how teachers can make sure they're focussing on reading, writing and speaking as well as teaching academic content. In that time I've learned an enormous amount about how schools can successful implement policies that support children's ability to use academic language with burdening teachers with pointless frippery and tedious gimmicks. It's become increasingly clear that I should really condense all this thinking and experience into a new version of the book but, as is so often the case, [...]

Making Kids #Cleverer – Conclusion: Shifting the bell curve

2019-01-11T10:10:47+00:00January 11th, 2019|Featured|

This is the final post in a series of chapter summaries of the arguments made in my new book, Making Kids Cleverer. The rest of the series can be found here. And so, we finally reach the conclusion. Here I explicitly take on the arguments of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in The Bell Curve. They argue that the normal distribution of intelligence across a population is more or less immutable and that "the story of attempts to raise intelligence is one of high hopes, flamboyant claims, and disappointing results." According to the data, they're pretty much correct. Or at least, it would be correct [...]

Making Kids #Cleverer – Chapter 10 Struggle and success

2019-01-10T14:41:25+00:00January 10th, 2019|Featured|

This post is part of a series of chapter summaries of the arguments made in my new book, Making Kids Cleverer. The rest of the series can be found here. This last chapter is aimed specifically at teachers and makes the case that if our aim is to make children cleverer then we should adopt explicit instruction. We look at why other methodologies which have problem solving at their heart are likely to be ineffective and look back to Chapter 6 on memory to understand why explicit instruction is likely to work best. One thing to make clear is that explicit instruction - or [...]

Making Kids #Cleverer – Chapter 9 Practice makes permanent

2019-01-09T21:09:12+00:00January 9th, 2019|Featured|

This post is part of a series of chapter summaries of the arguments made in my new book, Making Kids Cleverer. The rest of the series can be found here. This chapter moves our discussion of how to make children cleverer from theory into practice. In chapters 6 and 7 we talked about how knowledge can be embedded in long-term memory as 'skill' and here we move to a discussion of how best to make this happen. Practising the wrong things in the wrong ways makes us better at doing things badly; only by practising the right things in the right ways will we [...]

Toggle Sliding Bar Area
Go to Top