Items to Share: 8 November 2015

Education Focus

• Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design | David Didau: The Learning Spy

• 10 things you might have missed about the Green Paper - Wonkhe 'After letting the initial coverage of the [Teaching Excellence Framework] Green Paper digest for a few hours, here are 10 critical points you may have missed.' [See also the response from the ANTF here.]

• 10 reasons to Save Adult Education | Lifelong Learning Matters 'Please sign and share the link to the petition to Save Adult Education. Evidence shows successive and massive funding cuts over recent years and a decline in numbers of adult learners in part-time education.'

• Learning Technology – what next? | FurtherEdagogy 'I want to set my stall out before you read on. I’m a huge advocate of learning technology and believe that it will play an important role in education going forward. I’ve written articles that have advocated the need to use technology, its importance and how to maximise its use here and here. However, just recently, I have started to question my thinking. [   ] I know I wasn’t alone in embracing and running with new technology in the ‘early years’ and I hope that I’m not alone in realising that there is a place for it and that place is when it serves a purpose – filling a gap. Aside from the fact that the technology I was using may not have had the impact I first thought, it seems less and less innovative software/apps are appearing – just more of the same stuff. I haven’t seen anything of late which has solved a problem.'

• Wrong lever! | teaching personally 'At the root of this [emphasis on continous improvement through micro-management] is an inability to accept that there are some very important things over which we have very little control. And key amongst those, particularly with the older students, is their wider culture and attitudes. It may be necessary for schools to claim they have total control over student outcomes, but I am afraid it just isn’t so. Even Hattie accepts that. I am not going to suggest there is nothing we can do to tackle complacency and over-confidence in students, but I think it is foolish to expect to bring about a rapid, profound change – or that coercion will achieve it.'

• Reading should not carry a health warning – Frank Furedi – Aeon Contagion, poison and trigger. The idea that books are dangerous has a long history, and holds a kernel of truth.

• Why is teacher assessment biased? | The Wing to Heaven 'Teacher assessment discriminates against poorer pupils and minorities, and generates significant workload for teachers. Tests are fairer and less burdensome. They deserve a better reputation than they have, and a greater role in our assessment system.'

Other Business

• 100 years of the unconscious - Philosophy and Life 'This month marks the centenary of Sigmund Freud's seminal 1915 paper on the unconscious. In this episode of Science Set Free, Rupert Sheldrake and myself [Mark Vernon] discuss Freud's understanding of this dynamic, hidden part of the human psyche. We look at the different ideas of Carl Jung, and also ask how the unconscious links to perceptions of the soul and morphic fields.'