Old habits
Funny what habits are coming back as I start blogging again. Without thinking about it, I found myself for the first time in quite a few years adding “blog” to my search terms (this one was “knowledge organisers blog”) and being more enthused by the results and the depth of thinking there was there. The […]
Praxis – The Rarest of the Three
Aristotle divided human activities into three broad categories: thinking (theoria), making (poiesis), and doing (praxis). Put another way, I suppose, they are the why, the what, and the how. In very coarse terms, and trying to link it to rhetoric, I wonder how it matches the various posts I read on Twitter and blogs. The categories...
What to avoid when teaching
Durham University, the Sutton Trust and CEM published an interesting report called “What Makes Great Teaching” in October 2014. It’s an overview of what research appears to be telling us at the moment. While it would be wonderful to think there is a simple, step-by-step formula to a perfect lesson, I’m not at all...
A Personal Vision of an Idealised School Culture – Roland S Barth
I would welcome the chance to work in a school characterised by a high level of collegiality, a place teeming with frequent, helpful personal and professional interactions. I would become excited about life in a school where a climate of risk taking is deliberately fostered and where a safety net protects those who may risk […]
The Effects of School Are Overplayed
John Hattie’s book Visible Learning is a (dense) treasure trove of statistically backed educational research. He looks at 800 meta-analyses of school research and then analyses them for effect. The idea is essentially to try to come up with a way of measuring how much good various initiatives as compared to, say, a child’s...
Workspace, Learnspace, Brainspace
I’ve just been watching Channel 4’s The Secret Life of Buildings. The presenter’s an acquired taste but there are some fascinating bits to it. The main take-aways for me are : buildings and spaces actually change the way the human brain works. (more complex, interactive spaces make for more engaged brains. Fred...