Interesting Blog which tackles a tendency in education towards a view that there is a “right” way to teach which should result in the abandonment of all the “wrong” ways of teaching.
I’ve written before of my First law of Education : “Anyone who claims there is a universal “right” way of teaching is automatically wrong.” I’ll stand by that.
An excellent blog on how SLTs need to trust more and demand conformity and compliance less.
This is a summary of my presentation to Teaching and Learning Takeover (TLT14) this October. The organisers asked me to base my presentation on my most-read blogpost The Myth of Progress Within Lessons. This is what I came up with.
I began by reasserting my twin premises from the original blogpost:
There is no such thing as progress within lessons. There is only learning.
And
The main perpetuators of the myth of ‘progress within lessons’ are leadership teams within schools, not Ofsted.
If anything, with numerous and notable exceptions amongst school leaders, this has become even more true: not because school leaders have become even more faithful subscribers to the myth, but because Ofsted (at least at their leadership level) have done even more to distance themselves from the myth.
And as if to illustrate that point for me (not to mention steal my thunder, the buggers), Ofsted released their…
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The excellent Learningspy blog has written about the surplus model of school improvement. I’ve put the link below. I found it thought-provoking and agree with much of it. However, it did nudge me to comment on a concept about which I feel a little conflicted: the culture of “continuous improvement”. Continue reading
I’m a fan of the pupil premium as a concept. It may not be perfect (what is?), but it seems to me a sensible approach to provide greater resources for those who have greater need.
However, Jack Marwood, writing at his excellent blog, has been chipping away not at the pupil premium, but at how it is being implemented. Continue reading
Thought this was a rather good blog. Not all new ideas are good ones, and not all criticism or doubt is misplaced or cynical.
The role of a challenger?
Following all the discussions at the ResearchEd conference last weekend, I’ve been thinking about the balance we need to strike when presented with new ideas or when we’re presenting them ourselves. We need to be open to the possibility that a strategy might be a good one whilst remaining confident that, as professionals, we’ll be able to discuss the evidence and challenge the idea if necessary.
As I describe in my talk and blog about barriers to effective CPD, the two ends of the spectrum are equally problematic. The hyper-puppy evangelists often put up defenses that are difficult to deal with. They can take it personally if you burst their bubble of wild enthusiasm with any suggestion that you’re not entirely on-board. Similarly the jaded eye-rollers of doom can kill the spirit of any number of exploratory initiatives before they’ve had a chance to…
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Disappointed Idealist 