The Learning Spy Monthly Round-up #1
After only a month on Substack, maybe now feels too soon for a retrospective but, as The Smiths cryptically sang, how soon is now? (I’m afraid I don’t understand that either.)
For ease of reading, and my own mania for sorting and categorisation, I am presenting you here with a suggested way in to the posts so far in case you’re new or in case you might have missed anything that looks interesting.
Teaching
Attention, meaning & mastery - an overview of the questions every teacher should seek to ask and answer every lesson
Q1: How do I know if all students are paying attention? (Attention)
Q2: How do I know all students are making sense of what’s been tauhgt? (Meaning)
Q3: How do I know all students are mastering the skills I want them to learn? (Mastery)
Q4: How can we teach in a way that leads to all children experience success? There’s also a video of me presenting this at researchEd Scandinavia.
It’s always better to know - why teachers need to collect answers to the questions above.
What approaches work best for children with special educational needs?
Skill = knowledge + practice - why we can’t teach skill directly
What is teaching? In which I argue that assessment is the most important element that distinguishes teaching from other forms of imparting information
Why I can’t use ‘cold call’ anymore - on definitional orthodoxies, their benefits and drawbacks
What should be the balance between student-led and teacher-led activities? (Paid) A discussion of the relative merits of student and teacher led approaches to education
Subject Knowledge
Part 1: The dangers of ‘educational seduction’
Part 2: Are teachers ‘cursed’ with knowledge?
Applying Systems Thinking to School Leadership
(These posts currently have a paywall)
Part 1: A system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets - why systems don’t always work as intended, why they go wrong, and some brief ideas for putting them right
Part 2: Getting technical with Donella Matthews - A more in-depth look at systems structures: stocks & flows, feedback loops and leverage points
Miscellaneous
Knowing the names of things - channelling Richard Feynman to argue why knowledge begets knowledge
Does reading develop empathy (spoiler, maybe not)
“It’s all about relationships” Why good relationships in schools - and wider society - depend on good systems
A response to the the Curriculum & Assessment Review’s Interim Report
The dangers of optimism: the best case fallacy
Video
What is group work and why does it matter? Martin Robinson and I discuss what we think are the best approaches to group work in schools