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Post-truth and the best way to teach

Jan 03, 2017 | Category: learning

A thing is not necessarily true because badly uttered, nor false because spoken magnificently. St. Augustine We've always had a tendency to defer to what is most said most magnificently and shun tha...

Struggle and success

Dec 09, 2016 | Category: learning

The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Albert Camus The gods of ancient Greece punished Sisyphus, the king of Ephyra, for his hubris...

#Robert Bjork #desirable difficulties #struggle

Robots, evolution and why schools shouldn't worry about innate skills

Oct 13, 2016 | Category: learning

It should come as little surprise to hear that some of what human beings can do is innate. That is to say, we are born with various capacities and abilities which appear to be 'hardwired' into our bra...

#David Geary #evolutionary psychology

More good proxies for learning

Nov 28, 2016 | Category: learning

A few days ago, I wrote about a brief online discussion I had with Dan Willingham on the importance of thinking hard. In the comments, Greg Ashman pointed out that thinking hard cannot be the only way...

#Rob Coe

Why what you teach matters

Nov 04, 2016 | Category: learning

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that within the next two years Ofsted will stop grading the quality of teaching, learning and assessment as part of their overall judgement on schools' effect...

#knowledge #opportunity cost #21st century skills

The trouble with transfer: How can we make learning more flexible?

Oct 17, 2016 | Category: learning

I define learning as the long-term retention of knowledge and skills and the ability to transfer between contexts. The retention bit is fairly straightforward and uncontroversial: if you can't remembe...

#Daniel Willingham #transfer #Barnett and Ceci

The feedback continuum: why reducing feedback helps students learn

Oct 15, 2016 | Category: learning

The effects of feedback are more complex than we often realise. While expertise and mastery is unlikely to develop without feedback it's certainly not true to say that giving feedback results in exper...

#John Hattie #feedback #Robert Bjork

Call and response

Oct 05, 2016 | Category: learning

Over the past few years I've spent a lot of time visiting schools to talk about literacy. One of my stock nuggets of advice is that it's worth spending lesson time scaffolding students' speech in orde...

#Academic language #call and response #Nigeria

On gimmicks

Oct 02, 2016 | Category: learning

What is a gimmick? The dictionary defines it as "a trick or device intended to attract attention, publicity, or trade." So, putting a cartoon tiger on a packet of breakfast cereal in order to attract...

#Daniel Willingham #cultural capital #Daniel Kahneman #opportunity cost #gimmicks #Rory Sutherland

Why mini-plenaries are a waste of time

Oct 01, 2016 | Category: learning

Plenary is an interesting word. It originally meant absolute, without reservation or qualification. The pope used to offer plenary indulgences to crusaders absolving them in advance of any sin they co...

#mini-plenary #plenary