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The revolutionary wisdom of the tribe

2017-04-11T23:16:27+01:00March 12th, 2016|blogging|

In A History of the World, Andrew Marr suggests there needs to be a balance between new ideas and what he calls 'the wisdom of the tribe': What is the right balance between state authority and individual liberty? No successful state is a steady state. All successful states experience a relentless tug-of-war between conservatism, the wisdom of the tribe, and radicalism, or new thinking. The wisdom of the tribe really matters: it is the accumulated lessons of history, the mistakes as well as the answers, that a polity has gathered up so far. But if this wisdom is not challenged, it ossifies. The [...]

The Learning Styles myth debunked on the back of an envelope

2016-02-18T21:03:10+00:00February 18th, 2016|myths|

"You don’t have to believe in learning styles theories to appreciate differences among kids, to hold an egalitarian attitude in the midst of such differences, and to try to foster such attitudes in students." Daniel Willingham, Learning Styles FAQ The Learning Styles myth, for those that aren't already clear, is that by aligning teaching to a student's preferred Learning Style, outcomes will improve. Despite lots of research into this claim - the so-called 'meshing theory' - no supporting evidence has turned up. But who needs evidence? In a 2014 survey, 90% of teachers agreed with the claim, "Individuals learn better when they [...]

Student voice: windmills of the mind

2015-12-12T23:27:30+00:00December 12th, 2015|leadership, learning|

Pray look better, Sir … those things yonder are no giants, but windmills. Cervantes Does it matter if students like their teachers? Is it worth knowing if students don't maths or hate PE? Should students be asked to evaluate the quality of their lessons? It sometimes seems that the clamour of 'what students want' drowns out even the presumed demands of 'what Ofsted want'. Students' opinions might be interesting but should they be used to judge the effectiveness of teachers? Certainly some school leaders appear to think so. An anonymous blog on the Labour Teachers site* reveals the extent of the rise of this [...]

Why teacher assessment is less fair than standardised testing

2021-08-10T12:07:55+01:00November 4th, 2015|assessment|

Tests Guns don't kill people, rappers do Goldie Lookin Chain I spent the day yesterday at the Department for Education thinking about how best to cut down on the "unnecessary workload" associated with marking. Today I spent far too much time bandying words with children's writer, Michael Rosen about the value of testing over teacher assessment. It strikes me that both experiences offer an opportunity to set out my objections to teacher assessment and my support for standardised testing. Let's start with teacher assessment. My first concern is that any expectation on teachers to assess students' work adds to their workload. If we're [...]

From Scared Straight to Reading Wrong

2015-10-24T10:56:16+01:00October 24th, 2015|reading, research|

He that will not apply new remedies, must expect new evils: for Time is the greatest innovator: and if Time, of course, alters things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end? Francis Bacon In 1978, Scared Straight! won the Academy Award for the best documentary film. It followed a group of teenagers from the wrong side of the tracks who, as part of a new crime reduction programme, were taken to a maximum security prison to be threatened, humiliated and intimidated by a bunch of murderers and rapists. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ri7G7xHj5LE The premise [...]

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

2015-09-06T15:46:14+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 suddenness [...]

Do gender differences make a difference?

2023-02-13T15:37:26+00:00July 18th, 2015|psychology|

It's a well-known fact that boys underachieve. Every statistic tells us so. But ever since writing this post I've been suspicious of gender as the root cause for differences in achievement. Yes, girls outperform boys but is this due to fundamental differences in gender? Or is it more to do with expectations, perception and bias? Or is it, perhaps, an illusion? Might differences in performance be due to other, less beguiling causes? There's no doubt that boys and girls are biologically different. But, as Gertrude Stein put it, “A difference to be a difference must make a difference.” Do the very obvious [...]

Reading is a rebel act: on the role of school libraries

2015-07-13T18:24:44+01:00July 13th, 2015|reading|

"My library was dukedom large enough" The Tempest, Shakespeare "The act of poetry is a rebel act." Farewell to English, Michael Harnett Some people are never happy. After writing my last post on how it might be possible to get students to read more, one commentator criticised that there was no mention of school librarians. Well, it was a blog post: the list of things which went unmentioned dwarfed what was written about. This post seeks to rectify that omission. Changing the culture of a school is a big ask. By the time they reach secondary school, many children are aware that reading isn't [...]

How do you get students to read for pleasure?

2016-03-03T10:40:33+00:00July 11th, 2015|reading|

"There are perhaps no days of our childhood we lived so fully as those we spent with a favorite book." Marcel Proust Reading seems to make us smarter. Here's Keith Stanovich explaining why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF6VKmMVWEc&feature=youtu.be&t=45s For most people, this is uncontroversial. We talk a lot about the power of books and the need to get more children to read for pleasure. But how do you get students to read for pleasure? I have no idea. Neither does anyone else, not really. This is an endemic conundrum which troubles all teachers and parents. But it's a bit of an odd question when you think [...]

How do we know if a teacher’s any good?

2020-07-23T15:07:13+01:00May 9th, 2015|leadership|

Obviously enough, not all teachers are equal. But how do we know which ones are any cop? Well, we just do, don't we? Everyone in a school community tends to know who's doing a decent job. But how do we know? Rightly, most school leaders feel it important to evaluate the effectiveness of their staff, but how can they go about this in a way that's fair, valid and reliable? Over the past year or so I've spent a fair bit of time explaining why lesson observation cannot be used to evaluate effective teaching. Mostly, the message has been received and understood. [...]

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