Education Focus
- How should I revisit past content? | Bodil's blog The three part lesson; the 5 minute lesson plan; the 7 Es lesson structure; the countless other lesson planning proformas I’ve encountered. What do they all have in common? Despite being wildly popular, they place no emphasis on recalling and revisiting prior learning. Memory deserves far more love and attention than this. [ ] Recaps should be a nonnegotiable part of practically every lesson.
- What's the best, most effective way to take notes? [theconversation.com] 'If it feels like you forget new information almost as quickly as you hear it, even if you write it down, that’s because we tend to lose almost 40% of new information within the first 24 hours of first reading or hearing it. If we take notes effectively, however, we can retain and retrieve almost 100% of the information we receive.'
- The Literacy Blog: i.t.a: a great idea but a dismal failure 'Talk to anyone today who was taught to read through i.t.a. (Initial Teaching Alphabet) and they will almost invariably tell you how they’ve never been able to spell correctly since. [ ] As i.t.a. was more or less abandoned in the sixties/early seventies (though it did cling on for much longer in some places), many of today’s generation of teachers will never even have heard of it except from their parents or grandparents! So why write a blog posting about it?'
- Feedback from teachers doesn't always help pupils improve [theconversation.com] 'What looks feasible in controlled experiments or in theory may not work so well in practice. Once the researchers with their extra funding have gone away, and the intervention moves away from the enthusiastic schools volunteering to take part in the study, perhaps the “effect” of feedback on attainment drops. When rolled out across the board to all pupils and all schools, any advantage may be reduced or even lost because of the challenges, such as time pressure, that teachers face in implementing feedback strategies in the classroom. Some teachers may also exhibit sullen resentment at being told how to do something that seems so basic.'
Other Business
- Competence, Performance, and Climate – Lingua Franca - Blogs - The Chronicle of Higher Education [Geoff Pullum] 'Noam Chomsky’s distinction between competence and performance has been controversial in linguistics and psycholinguistics for 50 years. The proponents of generative grammar presuppose it and rely on it, and have tried explaining the distinction many times, often unsuccessfully. I recently came across a neat way to encapsulate it that comes not from a linguist but from a mathematical meteorologist.'
- How One Psychologist Is Tackling Human Biases in Science [nautil.us] 'Sometimes it seems surprising that science functions at all. In 2005, medical science was shaken by a paper with the provocative title “Why most published research findings are false.” Written by John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, it didn’t actually show that any particular result was wrong. Instead, it showed that the statistics of reported positive findings was not consistent with how often one should expect to find them. As Ioannidis concluded more recently, “many published research findings are false or exaggerated, and an estimated 85 percent of research resources are wasted.”'
- Most people want to know risk of overdiagnosis, but aren't told
[theconversation.com] 'An Australian survey released today has found a
large majority of people report they’ve never been told by doctors about
the danger of being overdiagnosed – and an equally large majority say
they want to be informed. [ ] This is the first time anywhere in the
world the general community has been asked about their knowledge and
views on the “modern epidemic” of overdiagnosis, which happens when
someone is diagnosed with a disease that won’t actually harm them. Being
overdiagnosed means you’re likely to be over-treated, and potentially
suffer the harms of that treatment without getting any of its benefits.'
Education Focus
- How One Psychologist Is Tackling Human Biases in Science [nautil.us] 'Sometimes it seems surprising that science functions at all. In 2005, medical science was shaken by a paper with the provocative title “Why most published research findings are false.” Written by John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, it didn’t actually show that any particular result was wrong. Instead, it showed that the statistics of reported positive findings was not consistent with how often one should expect to find them. As Ioannidis concluded more recently, “many published research findings are false or exaggerated, and an estimated 85 percent of research resources are wasted.”'
- Donald Clark Plan B: Deficit model in education: a dangerous conceit? 'If only we filled our minds up with even more knowledge, even more skills, GDP will dog-leg upwards, productivity will soar and all will be well. The conceit of education is that the answer to bad schooling is always more schooling. The glass is always half empty, even when the data suggests it is close to the brim. We always seem to have deep deficits and divides; digital divide, digital skills, maths, 21st C skills, qualifications, even happiness!'
- Five ways universities have already changed in the 21st century [theconversation.com] 'Global higher education underwent a period of remarkable change in the first 15 years of the 21st century. Five key trends affecting universities around the world illustrate how, despite increased access to information, our understanding of higher education remains limited.
- University Readiness | The Traditional Teacher 'The problem isn’t spoon feeding: it’s hoop jumping. Pupils are trained to perform peculiar tricks for the benefit of examiners, while schools neglect to give them a proper grounding in the academic subjects. In fact, our pupils are not being fed enough. They are intellectually malnourished. But this is not inevitable, even within the current exam system. There are brave schools that are bucking the trend and focusing on core knowledge. They will find that their GCSE results are very good as well, because they will go far beyond the impoverished requirements of the GCSE curriculum.'
- researchED New York, part 2: Daniel Willingham persuades - Tom Bennett - Blog 'Willingham was doing something he's very good at, and many academics aren't: summarising and highlighting useful lessons that cognitive psychology can teach to teachers – all teachers, be ye progressive bringer of light or neo-trad axeman. He took pains to describe how these biases and filters affect everyone. In point one, above, he was at pains to say, "this is all of us, we all do this".'
- What’s the Point of a Professor? - NYTimes.com 'You can’t become a moral authority if you rarely challenge students in class and engage them beyond it. If we professors do not do that, the course is not an induction of eager minds into an enlarging vision. It is a requirement to fulfill. Only our assistance with assignments matters. When it comes to students, we shall have only one authority: the grades we give. We become not a fearsome mind or a moral light, a role model or inspiration. We become accreditors.'
- What is an “original contribution”? | patter Doctoral regulations invariably include a requirement that the thesis constitute an "original contribution" to knowledge. What does that mean? 'As David Lodge argues, originality is taking the reader, and I’m suggesting the thesis reader/examiner too, somewhere which is simultaneously familiar and not. Original thinking and writing defamiliarises and in doing so, recovers a newness about the topic no matter how well trodden it is. An original contribution to knowledge offers the reader a chance to re-view and re-think the event/text/phenomena in question. That’s the kind of original contribution I’m interested in.
- Do all good ideas need to be researched? | David Didau: The Learning Spy 'I was asked a very good question by Alex Wetherall. Basically – and I hope he forgives my paraphrase – he asked whether it would be worth conducting some ‘proper’ research on my good idea. I said no. It seemed as though this came as something of a surprise to the research literate audience. I’ve had a good think since and I stand by the justification I gave.'
- Ideas: Why Good Teachers Get Bad Evaluations '...an interesting piece of research on student evaluations of teachers. It judged the quality of teachers by how well their students did in later courses, compared the result to student evaluations of teaching quality, and found that the two anti-correlated. On average, good teachers get bad ratings, bad teachers get good ratings.'
Other Business
- BBC - Future - Press me! The buttons that lie to you
'The tube pulls in to a busy station along the London Underground’s
Central Line. It is early evening on a Thursday. A gaggle of commuters
assembles inside and outside the train, waiting for the doors to open. A
moment of impatience grips one man who is nearest to them. He pushes
the square, green-rimmed button which says “open”. A second later, the
doors satisfyingly part. The crowds mingle, jostling on and off the
train, and their journeys continue. Yet whether or not the traveller
knew it, his finger had no effect on the mechanism.'
Back again. Move went well, thanks. Now trying to get back on an even keel.
Education Focus
- What is an “original contribution”? | patter (In respect of the rubrics for a doctorate) 'As David Lodge argues, originality is taking the reader, and I’m suggesting the thesis reader/examiner too, somewhere which is simultaneously familiar and not. Original thinking and writing defamiliarises and in doing so, recovers a newness about the topic no matter how well trodden it is. An original contribution to knowledge offers the reader a chance to re-view and re-think the event/text/phenomena in question. That’s the kind of original contribution I’m interested in.'
- Do all good ideas need to be researched? | David Didau: The Learning Spy 'I was asked a very good question by Alex Wetherall. Basically – and I hope he forgives my paraphrase – he asked whether it would be worth conducting some ‘proper’ research on my good idea. I said no. It seemed as though this came as something of a surprise to the research literate audience. I’ve had a good think since and I stand by the justification I gave...'
- Ideas: Why Good Teachers Get Bad Evaluations '...an interesting piece of research on student evaluations of teachers. It judged the quality of teachers by how well their students did in later courses, compared the result to student evaluations of teaching quality, and found that the two anti-correlated. On average, good teachers get bad ratings, bad teachers get good ratings.'
- Conservative victory means England’s school system will look like few others in the world [theconversation.com] 'The Conservative education manifesto was long on aspiration. It promised that England would lead the world in mathematics and science; that there would be a place in a “good” primary school for every child; that every “failing” or coasting school would be turned into an academy to drive up standards; that universities would remain “world-leading”; and that further education would “improve”. But translating these – rightly aspirational – goals into policies will bring some difficult challenges...'
- How 'digital natives' are killing the 'sage on the stage' [theconversation.com] 'Make the lecture an entertaining performance piece on the area that causes the students to look into it more deeply. Recognise that students can get information from many places and embrace this by aiming for the lecture to be a highlight reel and a teaser rather than an expert at the pulpit. Yes, this means every lecture should be a special occasion, but is that really a bad thing? If it gets our students thinking, then hasn’t it done its job?'
- Ludwig Wittgenstein's Short, Strange & Brutal Stint as an Elementary School Teacher | Open Culture'Wittgenstein comes off, by many accounts, as an exemplary and almost unbelievably engaged teacher. He and his students, in Robins’ words, “designed steam engines and buildings together, and built models of them; dissected animals; examined things with a microscope Wittgenstein brought from Vienna; read literature; learned constellations lying under the night sky; and took trips to Vienna, where they stayed at a school run by his sister Hermine.” Hermine herself remembered the kids “positively climbing over each other in their eagerness” to answer their philosopher-teacher’s questions,'
- The Dvorak Keyboard Controversy: Interesting Thing of the Day 'All modern computers—Macs, PCs, and Linux machines—include the capability of switching into a Dvorak layout if that’s what you prefer (though the physical keys won’t match the characters they type unless you perform some minor surgery on your keyboard or put stickers over the existing letters). So if you want to try out Dvorak yourself, you need only consult your computer’s Help to find out how to change that setting. Chances are you’ll find that it takes a few weeks or so to retrain yourself to the point where you’re about as fast as you were using QWERTY. If you can tolerate the temporary loss in productivity, you may find the experiment useful.'
- What should written feedback look like? | David Didau: The Learning Spy and The fetish of marking | David Didau: The Learning Spy 'I don’t really think marking is a bad thing, but I do think it comes at an appalling cost to teachers’ well-being. The fact that very many teachers seem reluctant to cast off their shackles shows the extent to which we’ve imbued marking with magical powers and superstitious awe. Teachers probably do need to mark some work, if only so they understand the process of assessment, but I don’t think the process needs to be nearly so onerous or widespread. Marking is only a proxy for what we actually want...'
- I'll be back: TEDinator 2. A review of Ken Robinson's 'Creative Schools' Part 1 - Tom Bennett - Blog' [W]hat Ken does is point out that in many educational ecosystems, things are far from perfect. Life, too is far from perfect. And he does what all great politicians, circus barkers and medicine men have done for centuries: tells us he knows how to fix it. The map to Canaan is his. But pointing out to people that they're slaves in Egypt doesn't mean you're Moses. Sometimes it can make you Pharaoh.'
- Will at Work Learning: Excellent New Book Debunking Learning and Education Myths 'There's too much crap floating around the learning and education fields; too many myths, misconceptions, and maladaptive learning designs. [ ] I'm passionate about the need for more debunking. The need is great and the danger to learning and learners is dire. [ ] Fortunately, entering the world is a great new book by three researchers, [...] Their book is titled, Urban Myths about Learning and Education, and it's jam packed with a list of 35 myths that plague our field.
- The Trials and Rewards of Teaching in Prisons | Academies Community 'Teaching in prisons is tough: not just mentally but also because of the insensitive system. However when teaching the most troubled and desperate of people can also come hand in hand teachers also experience the greatest amount of pride when their students succeed. It’s a mentally challenging rollercoaster.'
Other Business
- The centenarian psychologist [apa.org] 'As he approaches his 100th birthday, cognitive psychology pioneer Jerome S. Bruner reflects on the past, present and future of psychology.'
