Do we undermine formative assessment by confusing learning and performance? Student performance during a lesson is “a highly imperfect index of long-term learning” (Soderstrom and Bjork, 2015), but it’s…https://improvingteaching.co.uk/2017/03/26/formative-assessment-flawed-confusing-learning-performance/
Is formative assessment fatally flawed? Confusing learning & performance Read More »
To err is human Alexander Pope Making mistakes is an inevitable part of life. We’re all wrong about something at some point. Obviously contending with failure, learning to drag ourselves up by the bootstraps when we fall down and persist in the face of setbacks is part and parcel of human existence. But is making
What’s so great about making mistakes? Read More »
In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker argues that “education is a technology that tries to make up for what the human mind is innately bad at.” Schools have only ever existed in cultures where culturally specific knowledge has outpaced universal folk knowledge. What is universal – speech, recognising distinctions between the properties of inanimate objects
What’s the point of school? Read More »
Don’t say goodbye to Mr Chips!!! Maybe it’s because I’ve read Lord of the Flies but I’m not sure putting children in charge of education is the best thing for them, our schools, or, indeed, all of our futures. In her ‘Utopian Thinking’ piece in the Guardian, Rachel Roberts argues: There are a few things
Democratic Education is no Utopia Read More »
This article examined (1) the research on speed reading and (2) the relative merits of reading a physical book, newspaper or article as opposed to reading from a screen. I am going to discuss (1) this week and (2) next. The internet, emails, texts and Twitter all contribute to the fact that people today encounter
By taking a few specific actions, teachers could be doing an incredible job of helping students of color reach their full potential. Continue Reading →https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/students-of-color/
Four Ways Teachers Can Support Students of Color Read More »
I’ve been looking at the specimen papers for GCSEs in English, Maths and Science to get a feel for the expectations at the top-end. Although, in theory, schools should have been engaging with these materials for a while, with Year 11s ready to go this May and Year 10s already on the road with Science,
Teaching and assessment for top-end success in new GCSEs Read More »
Say ‘No’ to professional development. That’s the obvious conclusion to be drawn from a series of recent, rigorous, randomised-controlled studies of professional development programmes. Unlike… https://improvingteaching.co.uk/2017/03/12/why-good-professional-development-still-fails/
Why good professional development still fails Read More »
This essay was first published in the Spring 2016 edition of Use of English. I can remember reading Othello for the first time when I was studying A-level, and feeling slightly disappointed and cheated when I read the notes about Shakespeare’s sources for the play. What particularly offended me was how the main female character in the
Shakespeare and creative education Read More »
If we knew the precise things that make the most difference in terms of school improvement in order to secure the specific outputs we want, then everyone would be laughing. We would simply do more of those things and the outputs would improve. Voila! Bob’s your uncle! However, of course we don’t actually have a precise
The cause-effect illusion-confusion Read More »