Educational dog whistles (and how not to blow them)
As in every sphere, there are certain phrases or topics that act as dog whistles in education. When people use terms like 'progressive,' 'knowledge-rich,' 'no excuses,' 'deep dive,' 'SLANT,' or 'fronted adverbial' they are tapping into a groundswell of - usually negative - opinion which stirs up like minded folk into predictable paroxysms of outrage and fury. What happens is, I think, something like this: for some people 'fronted adverbial' stands for soulless, mind numbing tedium and clunky, inelegant writing. For others, the term conjures up the thought that children are - at long last - receiving some of the [...]