Has ‘growth mindset’ been debunked? Will the million+ selling book quietly be removed from shelves, or will it reappear rebooted in teacher training in some other guise in future? I began writing about the promise and the problems with ‘growth mindset’ in 2014. It was a wildly popular topic that was common in school INSET, based […]
Where does ‘growth mindset’ go next? Read More »
Is ‘instructional coaching’ the next big thing? Maybe I should be a little clearer: by ‘next big thing’, I wonder whether a nation-wide wave of enthusiasm for this particular professional development vehicle will soon wane, and the promise of coaching will quietly fold into mass of unshared failures in schools. In their book, ‘The Next
Is the ‘Instructional Coaching’ wave about to crash? Read More »
Making positive changes in schools is incredibly hard work. It typically involves lots of teachers who are naturally inclined to protect their hard-won habits. As such, it is crucial to draw upon their experience and expertise, whilst recognising their beliefs, challenges, and sensitively handling their natural hesitations. By asking simple questions about the acceptability, the appropriateness, and
Simple Questions to Support Change Read More »
“In education, the only way to improve is to stop people doing good things, to give them time to do even better things.” Dylan Wiliam It appears like a trite piece of advice – ‘stop doing stuff’ – but in practice it is really hard to do in any walk of life. In schools, it
The Surprising Secret of School Improvement Read More »
Today there is a great article on the BBC website about the inexorable progress of the Sky cycling team under the expert stewardship of Dave Brailsford – see here. The ‘aggregation of marginal gains approach‘ is now well known and can be easily summarised as identifying those small performance factors that, when aggregated together, can
School Improvement – The Dave Brailsford Model Read More »
