“The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify … into every corner of our minds.” John Maynard Keynes Knowledge is power, without doubt. What is an education if not the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. And yet, we should be mindful of the rather …
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 »
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 …
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, …
Mention the phrase ‘graded lesson observations’ in any staffroom in the country and what would be the response? In many staffrooms they are derided as an ugly feature of a particular strain of virulent OFSTED-itus. Only three or four years ago ‘graded lesson observations’ were the norms in pretty much every school in the nation. …
(Image via Vanderbilt Edu) “The research says…” is something I have heard uttered many times in the last couple of years and I do so myself too. With healthy skepticism, I have been wary of the authority this statement wields and how it may be received uncritically by some. It is time to examine the …
(Comic via http://xkcd.com/552/) I have had an interesting fortnight in my role as a school leader and Research-lead. In this job, you get to share a lot of teacher training materials and the like, coupled, or most often, decoupled from the evidence. In just the last couple of weeks I have been repeatedly ‘exposed’ to popular …
