Items to Share; 28 September 2014

Apologies for lateness.

Education Focus

• Things to remember for my next staff development event | Sam Shepherd

• The Educators – Jo Boaler | Webs of Substance A critical evaluation of the ideas of a professor of maths education at Stanford; well worth reading.

• Why Americans Stink at Math Dan Willingham

• Course Content: Why Don't We Teach the Telephone Book? | Faculty Focus '... It is difficult or impossible to get students to want to learn course material if they do not see a practical use for it. Unfortunately, many college and university courses cover information that most students do not need to know and will never need to know, although many of my colleagues find that very difficult to admit."

• Shoot the elephant: The Ofsted report into low-level disruption. - Tom Bennett - TES Community 'Behaviour. It's always been about behaviour. From the day I stepped into a classroom, the biggest obstacle I faced in getting students from average A to brilliant B was how they behaved, or didn't. [The serious offenders aren't] the biggest problems for teaching; the Kryptonite for learning was the low-evel stuff – the chatting, the sullen refusals, the phones, the rocking, the headphones, paper-throwing. Everything that doesn't look like anything special in description, but collectively erodes the lesson like a universal solvent.' 

• Why it's not just assessors who benefit from multiple choice(s) [theconversation.com] A different take on multiple choice tests.

Other Business

• The bias fighters - Ideas - The Boston Globe 'Psychologists are testing ways to reduce unconscious racial prejudice--not just in the police, but in all of us.'

• Chaos In Motion « The Dish Choreographing traffic (video)