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Why I recommend self-report to audit teachers’ grammatical knowledge

2017-11-21T11:29:32+00:00November 21st, 2017|Featured|

The response to my recent post on supporting teachers' standards of literacy was overwhelmingly positive, although, as expected, there was also some criticism. Some of the criticism was directed at my suggested process and several people were unhappy about the use of self-report to audit teacher's current level of confidence. I acknowledge that self-report is a notoriously unreliable tool for determining what people think and believe - often respondents simply answer in the way that they think the questioners wants them to and they are at pains to present themselves in the best possible light. Additionally, some readers felt that many [...]

Learning is liminal

2016-02-10T21:51:34+00:00February 10th, 2016|learning|

I am a part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades For ever and for ever when I move. Tennyson, Ulysses I offered my definition of learning here, but there is, I feel, something more to be said on the subject. Learning is a messy, complicated business. Imagine yourself standing before a dark, ominous doorway. Through it you can glimpse something previously unimagined, but entering and crossing through entails a risk – anything might happen. Not passing through, while safe, means you will never know what’s on the other [...]

A definition of learning

2016-07-21T19:49:18+01:00January 28th, 2016|learning|

"For a man to attain to an eminent degree in learning costs him time, watching, hunger, nakedness, dizziness in the head, weakness in the stomach, and other inconveniences." Cervantes Learning (n) 1. the retention and transfer of knowledge 2. a change in the way the world is understood I'm often asked what I mean when I talk about 'learning' so, although I've written about it many times before, I thought it might be useful to have a post dedicated to my definition. Learning is tripartite: it involves retention, transfer and change. It must be durable (it should last), flexible (it should be applicable in [...]

Is mimicry always a bad thing?

2015-12-06T07:13:03+00:00December 5th, 2015|learning|

Make not your thoughts your prisons. Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra Mimicry is the conscious or unconscious copying of experts in order. To understand the potential dangers of mimicry, it helps to understand the difference between learning and performance. Perhaps the differences can be summed up like this: Performance is inflexible, short-term and easy to spot, whereas learning is flexible, durable and invisible. Much of what we do in classrooms is geared towards maximising students' performance (because it's easy to spot) whilst ignoring whether learning is taking place (because it's very hard to correctly infer). Increasing student's performance is widely regarded as an acceptable [...]

Opportunity knocks: the hidden cost of bad ideas

2015-12-05T13:05:52+00:00November 30th, 2015|leadership|

Remember that Time is Money. He that can earn Ten Shillings a Day by his Labour, and goes abroad, or sits idle one half of that Day, tho’ he spends but Sixpence during his Diversion or Idleness, ought not to reckon That the only Expence; he has really spent or rather thrown away Five Shillings besides. Benjamin Franklin There are those that would have it that opportunity cost is a concept so complex as to be impenetrable to anyone other than highly trained economists. Opportunity cost, the idea that making a choice precludes another option being chosen, is a threshold concept. [...]

In praise of dignity and justice

2015-11-11T20:21:35+00:00November 11th, 2015|blogging|

They'll ask me how I got her I'll say I saved my money They'll say isn't she pretty that ship called dignity Dignity, Deacon Blue In Microaggression and Moral Cultures, sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning argue that we are at a turning point in the way we understand morality. In the past, morality was a matter of honour. Honour had to be earned in some way - whether through an accident of birth, the acquisition of wealth, good works, or public reputation - and respect was seen as honour's due. A lack of due deference to those possessing honour was an insult [...]

Squaring the circle: can learning be easy and hard?

2014-09-17T19:56:47+01:00May 11th, 2014|learning|

Regular readers will know I've been ploughing a furrow on this question for quite a while now. Last June I synthesised my thinking in this post: Deliberately difficult – why it’s better to make learning harder. For those of you who might be unfamiliar with the arguments, I'll summarise them briefly: - Learning is different from performance (the definition of learning I'm using here is the long-term retention and transfer of knowledge and skills) - We can't actually see learning happen; we can only infer it from performance - Performance is a very poor indicator of learning - Reducing performance might actually increase learning This [...]

One step beyond – assessing what we value

2014-09-01T09:31:17+01:00April 5th, 2014|assessment, English|

Hey you, don't teach that. Teach this! Do we always teach what we value? it seems to me that when push comes to shove, we end up teaching what is assessed. The urgency of accountability results, inexorably, in teaching to the test. And this, sadly, ends up with teachers teaching stuff that they don't particularly value. I'm not in any way a mathematician, but one of the problems with maths at GCSE is that the knowledge students are taught is atomised: they are rarely shown the links and connections between, say, vectors and averages. Why not? Because the examination doesn't require them [...]

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