Monthly round-up #4
15th June - 13th July 2025
Welcome to the third edition of The Learning Spy Monthly Round-Up, a curated digest of the the past months reflections on education, culture, leadership, and learning. You can find the previous edition here:
There are now almost 3,000 of you subscribing which is terrific. A reminder that I post at least one essay per week for paid subscribers (here’s the most recent on the power and pleasure of re-reading) and that you can upgrade you subscription for just £3.50 per month or £30 per year.
Here’s summary of everything you may have missed over the last month.
Short post on the difference between plot and form, according to James Wood.
A deep dive into Project Follow Through and Direct Instruction
Martin and I discuss what’s wrong with the way we assess young people in schools.
Weekly paid essay on the issues sourrounding mock exams. There’s maths in it!
A response to the furore around research into the eefects of GenAI on our brains.
On the dangers of ‘cognitive offloading’ and the reason why intellectual preparation for lessons is so important.
A critique of impatient approaches to school leadership. This one resulted in an unprecedented ammount of correspondence from people who’ve run afoul of callous school leaders.
Weekly paid essay - on the dangers of therapeutic approaches to education
More on the dangers of reckless school leadership, this time with some suggestions for doing it better.
Martin and I discuss the current vogue for mindfullness and the dangers of pathologising normal behaviour and emotional responses.
How, in the end, what is most likely to make most difference to the culture of engagement in a school is the quality of school leadership.
Weekly paid essay - on the Fundamental Attribution Error.
Putting the case for CLT and critiquing some of the more egregious attacks on it.
Following my defence of CLT, a forensic trawl through Alfie Kohn’s citations to establish that he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
Weekly paid essay - why good intentions are not enough and why we are so prone to blame individuals instead of acknowledging system deficits.
Martin and I discuss the ‘engagement crisis’.
