Conflicted about cognitive conflict
I’ve written before about the importance of challenging children’s misconceptions when it comes to teaching. “Psychologists from Piaget to Sweller couch learning in terms of the acquisition and...
View ArticleOne year of blogging
On Wednesday 18th June the Evidence into Practice blog had its first birthday. I’d originally intended to write something on this earlier in the week, but on Tuesday our school got a call from Ofsted …...
View ArticleReasons to be cheerful about research
The hard problems of education Education is faced with many hard problems. Perhaps two of the biggest at the moment are: Which teaching methods lead to the greatest gains for our students? How do we...
View ArticleWhat is active learning?
“The art of remembering is the art of thinking . . . our conscious effort should not be so much to impress or retain (knowledge) as to connect it with something already there” William James, 1890...
View ArticleWhat’s important about subject knowledge?
I had the great pleasure to spend the day finding out about University Learning in Schools (ULiS); a two-year project investigating whether partnering up teachers and PhD research students could...
View ArticleMore nonsense for teachers to avoid
I recently ran a staff survey asking for comments and suggestions about our peer-coaching programme. Within this questionnaire, I also asked what teachers would find interesting to read on this blog...
View ArticleDoes visual mapping help revision?
Visual maps, whether in form of mind maps or the more complex concept maps, are a mainstay of revision advice given to pupils in secondary schools. People use such mapping techniques for many other...
View ArticleTalking about the behaviour in our lessons
With the start of a new school year, behaviour management is a worthwhile focus. Whether one is a new teacher or simply new to a school, getting to grips with the behaviour management system of a...
View ArticleA refreshing lack of certainty: Reflections on researchED 2014
Yesterday, I had the enormous pleasure of attending researchED 14 and giving a talk (indulging in a rant) about the prevalence of pseudoscientific ideas within education. The talk appeared to be...
View ArticleThe worrying rise of soft-psychotherapy in schools
What is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)? “… for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” Hamlet, Act 2,...
View ArticleThe Ultimate List Of UK Education Bloggers Version 2
Originally posted on The Echo Chamber:This is a new version of my attempt to list all the education bloggers based in, or from, the UK. There may still be mistakes, but I have added many blogs that...
View ArticleDeveloping research leads within schools: ‘the good we oft might win’
‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.’ Measure for measure, Act I Scene IV ResearchED Research Leads Network Day, 13th December 2014 It is perhaps...
View ArticleValidity and Values: The debate about education research.
“It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to...
View ArticlePersonality – just what is it our students lack?
In 1899 William James collected together a series of lectures he’d given to teachers over the years. If you’ve never read it, I’d recommend it; there are many debates within education related in his...
View ArticleCan we teach students effective ‘revision skills’?
There’s some interesting evidence to suggest that well applied study skills can have an important influence on student outcomes. Indeed, perhaps the key reason that girls tend to academically...
View ArticleGrowth mindset: What interventions might work and what probably won’t?
Whether discussed under the guise of ‘resilience’, ‘grit’ or ‘character’, there appears to be a great appetite for psychologically manipulating pupils’ personalities or their attributions about school....
View ArticlePseudoscience has nested in schools
A rather belated find on my part! A short piece in the TES on my contribution to researchED last year: ‘Pseudoscience has nested in schools’ If you’re interested in reading more about some of the...
View ArticleIs there a ‘cargo cult’ approach to school improvement?
“… I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you...
View ArticleHas the marshmallow melted? Interventions involving executive functioning may...
What are executive functions? Executive functioning is, in some ways, a pesky cognitive ability to define as it’s implicated in so many different functions. It’s a hypothesised capacity for things like...
View ArticleDeveloping research leads in schools: The Janus-faced role of a research lead
researchED: Research leads network day, Cambridge. March 14th 2015 source: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Janus_coin.png In a brief stop-over between Sydney and Dubai, Tom Bennett was surprised and...
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