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myths

The Cult of Outstanding™: the problem with 'outstanding' lessons

2014-01-16T13:26:35+00:00January 16th, 2014|learning, myths|

First of all I need to come clean. Up until pretty recently I was a fully paid up member of the Cult of Outstanding™. Last January I considered myself to be a teacher at the height of my powers. In the spirit of self-congratulation I posted a blog entitled Anatomy of an Outstanding Lesson in which I detailed a lesson which I confidently supposed was the apotheosis of great teaching, and stood back to receive plaudits. And indeed they were forthcoming. I was roundly congratulated and felt myself extraordinarily clever. And then Cristina Milos got in touch to tell me that there was no [...]

Is praise counter productive?

2013-09-22T22:15:13+01:00September 22nd, 2013|behaviour, learning, myths|

I had an interesting discussion with Tim Taylor this morning. He said,  "At best, praising effort has a neutral or no effect when students are successful, but is likely to be negative when students are not successful." But what could possibly be wrong with praise? Surely praise is one of the most fundamental way to motivate pupils? Teachers are, generally, keen to praise pupils, and pupils , generally, welcome and expect it. We use praise to reward or change pupils' behaviour, and to that extent it may well be effective. But could this praise also be diluting learning and effort? Various research seems [...]

Hats, schmats: what really matters is the quality of debate

2013-09-21T13:51:57+01:00September 21st, 2013|blogging, myths|

I feel the need to make a few things clear. A few days ago I wrote this: Six Silly Hats (When is it OK to mock stuff you think is daft?) and some of the response I got suggested that I was confused on several points. I clearly had no idea what the hats actually were (I do) I had gotten confused about the metaphorical nature of the hats and that people don't actually wear them (I wasn't and they do. Honestly.) The hats are just a tool to help pupils think laterally and if thinking laterally is a good thing then [...]

Six silly hats (When is it OK to mock stuff you think is daft?)

2020-08-01T22:38:25+01:00September 19th, 2013|myths|

Who doesn't love wearing silly hats? Christmas dinner just wouldn't be the same without popping on a paper hat and looking like a complete buffoon for the duration. But does this kind of behaviour have a place in education? And if you think not, is it acceptable to poke fun at those who disagree? So, firstly, let's establish whether or not Edward de Bono's Thinking hats actually are silly. Harry Webb's rule of thumb on determining whether an idea is silly or has merit is to imagine whether it could feature in a Monty Python sketch. Now clearly I'm partisan here, [...]

Chasing our tails – is AfL all it's cracked up to be?

2013-08-29T21:17:40+01:00August 29th, 2013|assessment, learning, myths|

Is it blasphemous to doubt the efficacy of AfL? While purists might argue that it's 'just good teaching', we teach in a world where formative assessment has become dogma and where feedback is king. (Don't worry, I'm not about to start upsetting the feedback applecart although there are occasions when pupils can benefit from it being reduced.) But AfL as a 'thing'? I'm not just talking about some of the nonsense that gets spouted about lolly sticks and traffic lights, I'm questioning the entire edifice. Is assessment for learning really all it's cracked up to be, or is it just me? You [...]

Why can’t we tell a good teacher through lesson observations?

2020-07-17T15:38:53+01:00August 23rd, 2013|leadership, learning, myths|

No teacher is so good - or so bad - that he or she cannot improve. Dylan Wiliam The English education system is obsessed with ascertaining the quality of teachers. And what with the great and the good telling us that teacher quality is the most important ingredient in pupils' success then maybe it's small wonder.  As Michael Barber says, "the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers." And taken in the round, assessing teacher quality and then working to develop teachers is an entirely laudable aim. Bizarrely though, many schools seem incapable of seeing beyond [...]

Why the knowledge/skills debate is worth having

2015-01-26T08:41:20+00:00July 7th, 2013|blogging, myths, SOLO|

'I note the obvious differences between each sort and type, but we are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike'. Maya Angelou I've come an awful long way since September 2011 when Cristina Milos took the time to point out that my view on the teaching of knowledge and skills were seriously skewed. I'm flabbergasted that, as an experienced teacher, I could have been so ignorant. I said at the end of that post that "I guess my conclusion isn’t that skills are more important than knowledge: rather that both are required for mastery of a subject." But I didn't really believe it. If [...]

Independence vs independent learning

2013-09-28T20:12:33+01:00June 20th, 2013|literacy, myths, Teaching sequence|

Last weekend #SLTchat was on fostering students' independence. As you'd expect, there were lots of great suggestions shared, as well as some not so great ideas. One comment I tweeted in response to the idea that to promote independence we should get students learning independently got quite a lot of feedback: This seemed to really divide opinion; some people got upset with me, and some others agreed enthusiastically. Having read Daisy Chistodoulou's fabulously well-researched, cogently argued and clearly expressed eBook Seven Myths About Education, my thoughts on teacher talk and independent learning have started to coalesce. On Tuesday this week I [...]

Testing & assessment – have we been doing the right things for the wrong reasons?

2013-06-16T18:01:29+01:00June 16th, 2013|assessment, Featured, learning, myths|

A curious peculiarity of our memory is that things are impressed better by active than by passive repetition. I mean that in learning (by heart, for example), when we almost know the piece, it pays better to wait and recollect by an effort from within, than to look at the book again. If we recover the words in the former way, we shall probably know them the next time; if in the latter way, we shall very likely need the book once more. William James, The principles of psychology (1890)   Never stop testing, and your advertising will never stop improving. David Ogilvy Tests are rubbish, right? Like [...]

So, what does 'gifted' mean anyway?

2013-06-14T21:27:59+01:00June 14th, 2013|Featured, myths|

As you may be aware, non-selective secondary schools are failing the 'most able'. How do we know? Because a brand new Ofsted report tells us so. The report's key findings include such revelations as the fact that "expectations of what the most able students should achieve are too low" and  that not enough has been done "to create a culture of scholastic excellence" which leads, unsurprisingly, to, "Many students become used to performing at a lower level than they are capable of." The problem is attributed to ineffective transition arrangements, poor Key Stage 3 curricula and early entry to GCSE exams. [...]

Deliberately difficult – why it's better to make learning harder

2013-06-10T20:24:17+01:00June 10th, 2013|Featured, learning, myths|

The most fundamental goals of education are long-term goals. As teachers and educators, we want targeted knowledge and skills to be acquired in a way that makes them durable and flexible. More specifically, we want a student’s educational experience to produce a mental representation of the knowledge or skill in question that fosters long-term access to that knowledge and the ability to generalize—that is, to draw on that knowledge in situations that may differ on some dimensions from the exact educational context in which that knowledge was acquired. Robert A Bjork, 2002 Who could argue with this? Certainly not Ofsted who [...]

Magic glasses and the Meares-Irlen syndrome

2016-05-25T21:54:58+01:00May 27th, 2013|literacy, myths, reading|

In case you missed it, I published a post on the dubious existence of dyslexia this weekend. A few people have been in touch via Twitter to tell me about the remarkable effect of Irlen lenses and that their miraculous success is clear evidence of the existence of dyslexia. Well, despite their apparent impact on some people's ability to read, I'm not so sure it has much of a bearing of on whether we can agree that dyslexia definitely exists. I have a good friend who wears plain, very pale yellow spectacles when reading. She is dyslexic and convinced that she's unable to read any but [...]

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