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Leadership Issues
Curriculum Murmurations #2: Secondary Models Analysis. Compromises!!
This is the second in a series of posts about the direction of travel with curriculum thinking. The introductory post is here: Curriculum Murmurations #1. Thoughts from 2019. The image of a murmuration captures the sense of a system looking for direction with all the twists and turns and fluctuations. In this post I am … Continue reading
Curriculum Murmurations #1. Thoughts from 2019.
A murmuration of curriculum. That’s how my wife – a secondary Deputy Head – described the current state of things nationally. It’s a great image: the energetic but chaotic swirling around of individuals trying to stay together, following-the-leader in short bursts within a flock that has no overall sense of direction; patterns emerging here … Continue reading
7 Deadly Difficulties in Teaching.
Increasingly I feel that teacher development, performance review and the whole apparatus around lesson observation should place a strong, central emphasis on understanding the challenges that teachers face in securing the learning of all the students in a class. It can often be extremely difficult even for experienced expert teachers to nail every student’s learning … Continue reading
Rosenshine’s Principles: 10 FAQs.
Having published the little red and black booklet, Rosenshine’s Principles in Action, I now get asked to talk about it a lot. I also get asked a lot of the same questions. Here’s a sample of 10 FAQs. 1. Do the principles all apply to every lesson? No. It’s really important not to think of … Continue reading
#CPD: Meeting half-way. Changing minds, shifting the inertia, overcoming the resistance.
In my work as a travelling teacher trainer, in amongst the enthusiasts with welcoming smiles, I meet plenty of teachers who are being compelled to sit and listen to me. It’s not as if they are being held forcefully against their will but you can be sure, given a completely free choice, they’d be … Continue reading
Relationships at school. Teacher-student.
This post is Part 2 from two, based on a talk I gave to the Kings’ Schools in Dubai in August. Part One was about adult relationships: Relationships at School: The Adults. This one is about teacher-student or, more generally, adult-child relationships. Here are some of the areas that we discussed in the session: 1.We are … Continue reading
Mindsets vs Metacognition. Two EEF reports and a clear conclusion.
At ResearchEd in Cape Town I presented a workshop exploring two relatively recent reports from the Education Endowment Foundation – the 2018 guidance report Metacognition and Self-regulated Learning, and the 2019 report Changing Mindsets: Effectiveness Trial. Essentially, my argument is that these papers support the view – one that makes sense to me – that … Continue reading
Are Rosenshine’s Principles “just common sense”? #rED19
In my work supporting teacher development, I always refer to Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction as a major go-to source of ideas, linking findings from cognitive science and other research to classroom practice. There are lots of reasons for these ten principles gaining a wide audience, one of which is that, to many teachers, they feel … Continue reading
Relationships at School: The Adults.
Last week I was asked to lead a session with the three Kings’ schools in Dubai on relationships. This was partly about teacher-student relationships but also about adults’ relationships and their importance in the organisation. Here are some of the slides I used and the issues we discussed: Organisations are complex and dynamic; relationships are … Continue reading
Teachers can only improve themselves. But how?
I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of teacher improvement – naturally enough, given that this is my full-time job these days. Increasingly I think that we need to be very clear to understand the process as a very individual one and less of a general one. Essentially teachers are only going to improve … Continue reading
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