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Learning about learning: What every teacher needs to know

2016-03-02T08:34:17+00:00February 3rd, 2016|psychology|

When I trained to be teacher I was told little or nothing about how children learn. Because a lot of what we intuitively suppose about the process of learning is often flatly contradicted by cognitive science this was a huge handicap. Since you can't think about stuff you don't know, I spent all my time pontificating on the process of teaching, but lacked the theoretical framework and knowledge base to consider how my students learned. I don't think I'm alone in this. Over the past few years I've discovered an awful lot through reading various books and academic papers which has given me the ability to start thinking [...]

Ouroboros: a review

2016-01-29T09:40:28+00:00January 29th, 2016|Featured|

I've been following Greg Ashman's writing for some years and have always been struck by his clarity, precision, humour and single-minded sense of purpose. I haven't always agreed with everything he's written but I've been persuaded by an awful lot. Naturally, when I discovered he was writing a book I was keen to read it. The concept or conceit of Ouroboros is that education is constantly eating its own tail. New ideas are old ideas repackaged for a new market; lessons are not learned; the past is forgotten and the future is always new and exciting. As Greg says in his introduction, this [...]

Cargo cult teaching, cargo cult learning

2017-03-27T22:54:04+01:00December 10th, 2015|English, learning|

…it is the peculiar and perpetual error of the human understanding to be more moved and excited by affirmatives than by negatives… Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Aphorism, 1620 Cargo cults grew up on some of the South Sea islands during the first half of the 20th century. Amazed islanders watched as Europeans colonised their islands, built landing strips and then unloaded precious cargo from the aeroplanes which duly landed. That looks easy enough, some canny shaman must have reasoned, if we knock up a bamboo airport then the metal birds will come and lay their cargo eggs for us too. This is the [...]

When is it worth arguing about bad ideas?

2015-12-08T19:09:09+00:00December 7th, 2015|Featured|

Argue with idiots, and you become an idiot. Paul Graham Trying to identify and inoculate yourself against bad ideas is always worthwhile, but trying to set others strait is a thankless, task. And maybe a pointless one too. A good deal of what we believe to be right is based on emotional feedback. We are predisposed to fall for a comforting lie rather than wrestle with an inconvenient truth. And we tend to be comforted by what’s familiar rather than what makes logical sense. We go with what ‘feels right’ and allow our preferences to inform our beliefs. If we’re asked [...]

How to deal with criticism

2018-01-23T01:31:30+00:00November 9th, 2015|blogging|

The destroyer of weeds, thistles, and thorns is a benefactor whether he soweth grain or not. Robert Green Ingersoll Every now and then, someone pops up (usually a relative!) to tell me something I've written is crap. This is wounding. Like everyone else who blogs, I'm convinced of my own genius and sagacity. Anyone who's critical is clearly a fool. Except sometimes someone like Andrew Old comes along who, despite his many and various failings as a human being, is no fool. As an example of the kind of arguments we used to enjoy, take a look at the comment thread on this [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #10 Mastery

2015-06-07T18:48:33+01:00June 7th, 2015|psychology|

This is the second of four posts exploring what motivates students and the tenth in my series examining the Coalition for Psychology in Schools and Education’s report on the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching and Learning . This time I turn my attention to Principle 10: “Students persist in the face of challenging tasks and process information more deeply when they adopt mastery goals rather than performance goals.” Mastery gets bandied around a lot at the moment. Everyone who's anyone is shoehorning 'mastery' into their post-Levels replacements and it seems to mean something different every time it's used. In layman's terms, mastery just [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #6 Feedback

2015-06-01T21:25:26+01:00May 30th, 2015|psychology, research|

In this, the sixth in a series of posts examining the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning, I cast a critical eye over Principle 6: “Clear, explanatory, and timely feedback to students is important for learning." The fact that feedback is important is regularly used to wallop teachers. This has been accepted as a self-evidently truth. And by and large it's true. There are, however, a few points worth making that appear widely overlooked. Feedback is, for instance, not the same as marking. In the abstract to their seminal 2007 paper, The Power of Feedback, Hattie & Timperley make the [...]

20 psychological principles for teachers #5 “Learning is dependent on practice”

2016-02-04T10:08:30+00:00May 28th, 2015|psychology|

This is the fifth in a series of posts unpicking the Top 20 Principles From Psychology for Teaching And Learning. In this post I investigate Principle 5: “Acquiring long-term knowledge and skill is largely dependent on practice.” Whenever the going got tough, my mum always used to remind me that 'practice makes perfect'. Well, I'm delighted to say it turns out she's wrong. Sorry mum. Practice makes permanent. What we repeatedly practice we get good at, and if we practice doing the wrong things, we'll get good at them. So, while practice is certainly necessary for us to acquire long-term knowledge and [...]

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