This blog series was inspired by the simple and complex truth, offered by Professor Rob Coe, that we need to get students thinking hard to learn best. The first post in my series, entitled ‘Thinking Hard…And Why We Avoid It‘, explores why our students’ lazy brains let them down and how their thinking is […]
Thinking Hard… Practical Solutions for the Classroom Read More »
Do boys loaf more or less when working in groups with girls? Do girls work better in a single sex group? What is the ideal classroom grouping scenario? Such questions can beguile even the most experienced of teachers. Answering those questions could provide us with important marginal improvements for our teaching practice. Whilst we
Gender and Group Work Read More »
Is it better to group students based on their prior ability, in mixed ability groupings, or something in between? This questions besets schools, departments and teachers on an annual basis. There are unique conditions, supports and pressures that mean it is a difficult issue with no silver-bullet answer. The best we can do is survey the
Student Grouping: Setting or Mixed Ability? Read More »
Are you struggling to motivate your horizontal students too? So we have found the secret to learning…thinking hard. Part one of this series – you can find it here – explored what we mean by thinking hard and it explored just some of the many reasons why we avoid it. It is, of course, not a
Thinking Hard…and Motivation Read More »
In his excellent 2013 paper, called ‘Improving Education: A Triumph of Hope Over Experience’, Professor Rob Coe defines the secret of learning: “Learning happens when people have to think hard.” With refreshing honesty, Professor Coe goes on to describe his wise aphorism as “over-simplistic, vague and not original”. Now, despite this self-critical statement being partially true,
Thinking Hard…and Why We Avoid It Read More »
Wouldn’t life be great if we could easily learn from the best and recreate it in our own image? Take schools: can’t we peer admiringly at the dizzy heights of school league tables and the like, or search out the gleaming gems of best practice from speeches by the great and the good, and simply copy
The Importance of School Culture Read More »
(Babbage’s ‘The Difference Engine No. 1’, 1832, image via Science Museum) Charles Babbage is a name too few people remember, but in many ways his brilliant ideas have helped shape our modern world. Born in 1791, Babbage was a brilliant polymath, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge, and he is now most famous as the
The Difference Engine Read More »
