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On compromise

The right of thinking freely and acting independently, of using our minds without excessive awe of authority, and shaping our lives without unquestioning obedience to custom, is now a finally accepted principle in some sense or other with every school of thought that has the smallest chance of commanding the future. Under what circumstances does the exercise and vindication of the right, thus conceded in theory, become a positive duty in practice? If the majority are bound to tolerate dissent from the ruling opinions and beliefs, under what conditions and within what limitations is the dissentient imperatively bound to avail himself [...]

2014-05-05T16:06:39+01:00April 30th, 2014|Featured|

The AfL debate: does it matter who's right?

If you're not already aware of my critique and Dylan Wiliam's defence of formative assessment I do recommending getting up to speed before reading this post. Dylan's defence rests on the idea that although we can never be sure what's going on in a child's mind, "teaching will be better if the teacher bases their decisions about what to do next on a reasonably accurate model of the students’ thinking." He makes a rather interesting and surprising point: it doesn't matter that we can't know what's going on in our students' minds because his "definition of formative assessment does not require that the inferences we make [...]

2014-04-28T23:35:37+01:00April 28th, 2014|assessment|

Progressively Worse: a summary and a review

I’ve just finished reading Robert Peal’s blistering polemical attack on progressive education in England, Progressively Worse, the burden of bad ideas in British schools, and, while it clearly has an agenda and an axe to grind, it’s a book I hope everyone involved in teaching spares the time to read and absorb. Doubtless, it’s intrinsically biased nature will ensure that many readers will find it easy to dismiss as ‘prog bashing’, and it certainly takes every opportunity to go for the jugular. In many ways, the endorsement from Michael Gove could well be a kiss of death; Gove could announce longer [...]

2016-08-07T20:41:26+01:00April 28th, 2014|Featured|

Do we value pupils' writing?

Why do we ask pupils to write? There may be very many answers to that question but in my experience of working with teachers and observing lessons, overwhelmingly, teachers ask pupils to write in order to check that lesson content has been understood. This is of course a worthy aim, but do we value the actual writing? Leadership guru, John C. Maxwell said, "To add value to others, one must first value others." Likewise, to add value to pupils' writing, one must first value pupils' writing. In a lesson I observed last year, a science teacher had taught her Year 8 class about Marie [...]

2014-04-26T00:07:01+01:00April 26th, 2014|literacy|

Dylan Wiliam's defence of formative assessment

Back in March I wrote a post called Why AfL might be wrong, and what to do about it based, largely, on Dylan Wiliam's book Embedded Formative Assessment (If you haven't already read it, I encourage you to do so as many of the common misconceptions about AfL are specifically addressed). I'm pleased to report that Dylan has taken time out of his hectic schedule to comment on the post and defend the essentials of formative assessment. What follows is, in its entirety, the comment left on the original post. In his post on “Why AfL might be wrong, and what to [...]

2014-04-25T09:03:19+01:00April 25th, 2014|assessment|

A simple theory about writing

The first thing to say is this is not in any way supposed to be a complete or unified theory - I'm well aware that there are many other important strands to improving pupils' writing and have written about many of them before. But I do think this theory (which has been bubbling away on my mental back burner for a while now) describes just one of the processes that can turn otherwise able pupils from poor writers into much more able ones. That said, I tend to get a bit over excited about these sorts of things and am often mistaken. [...]

2016-09-23T13:39:51+01:00April 23rd, 2014|literacy|

The dark art of creativity

I was recently reminded of the 'schools are killing creativity' trope that was so prevalent a few years ago. Tempting as it may be to nod along with Ken Robinson and his cronies, it's worth contemplating the creative power of constraints. Without clear knowledge of forms and ‘rules’, creativity is inevitably stifled. Ideas become a kitchen-sink soup with everything chucked into the pot with little regard for structure or purpose. Children’s imaginations are already pretty vast and the younger the child, the greater the depth of their imagination. We don’t need to teach this, it just is. Sir Ken claims that children arrive [...]

2014-04-12T12:32:29+01:00April 11th, 2014|myths|

Getting feedback right

For the sake of convenience I've collated and condensed my recent series of posts on getting feedback right, and they are now available as a single download. It's not intended to be a complete or exhaustive exploration of everything to do with feedback or as a necessarily right; instead I hope it provokes discussion and that it's useful for classroom teachers in considering why and how they might go about providing their pupils with feedback on their work more thoughtfully. If you do find it useful, I'd love to know. Getting feedback right from David Didau

2015-04-08T10:06:49+01:00April 10th, 2014|Featured|

Does it do what it's supposed to? Assessing the assessment

In response to a request for constructive criticism of the English assessment model I helped design, Michael Tidd got in touch to query whether it met his 7 questions you should ask about any new ‘post-levels’ assessment scheme. For the record, these questions are: Can it be shared with students? Is it manageable and useful for teachers? Will it identify where students are falling behind soon enough? Will it help shape curriculum and teaching? Will it provide information that can be shared with parents? Will it help to track progress across the key stage? Does it avoid making meaningless sub-divisions? My initial response [...]

2014-04-06T06:22:54+01:00April 6th, 2014|assessment, English|

One step beyond – assessing what we value

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 [...]

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

Getting feedback right Part 4: How can we increase pupils’ aspiration?

You may remember that over the past few weeks I've been trying to refine my thinking about how we can improve the way we give feedback. If you haven't already read the previous instalments, you might find it helpful to go over  Part 1 (which discusses the different purposes for giving feedback) Part 2 (which looks at how to increase pupils’ understanding) and Part 3 (which considers how to get pupils to expend greater effort.) In this post I want to explore how feedback can be used to encourage pupils to aim higher, want more and go beyond their current performance. Many high achieving pupils [...]

2015-07-08T20:26:01+01:00April 2nd, 2014|assessment, learning|

On dichotomies

I seem to regularly find myself embroiled in various polarised debates, and invariably, at some point in the discussion, someone butts into to dismiss the entire exchange as a 'false dichotomy'. (And hence, a waste of time.) The answer, they claim lies not at the margins but somewhere in the centre. In this way we can dispense with the futile bickering between 'traditionalists' and 'progressives', and those who champion either the teaching of knowledge or skills because they are both right. We just characterise our adversaries as occupying an extreme position but no one really believes something so diametrically oppositional. Do [...]

2014-03-28T17:14:40+00:00March 27th, 2014|Featured|
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