Exploring History Through Dramatic Inquiry
24th May 2013
This article first appeared in the May 2013 issue of Creative teaching & Learning Magazine, it incorporates a number of photographs and other images and is therefore best read as a Pdf. To view as a Pdf click here. Exploring History Through Dramatic Inquiry Mantle of the expert has always been an enigmatic approach, not least because of its name, which is hardly catchy, but also because it seems to contradict many of the assumptions of how a classroom should work. Some have called it nothing more than a drama convention, others like to label it as a return to...The tolerance of ambiguity
28th April 2013
This blog started life as a comment on Debra Kidd's article for #blogsync - Progress? It’s more complicated than they’d have you believe! however, as it grew I thought it might deserve a place of its own and so have decided to also publish it here and add it to the #bogsync list. Brian Edmiston prefers complex to complicated and I think I agree. Complicated is what the data-trackers, progress mapping charts and APP assessment forms (unintentionally) make of the process of evaluating progress. They are tools of empirical science that want to take shifting, complex processes and re-interpret them...A system where good people, do bad things, for the right reasons
23rd March 2013
This morning I read a post on the Guardian website from another ‘Secret Teacher’. The article was a heart-felt groan of frustration and professional angst from someone who was doing bad things, for good reasons, and watching children suffer as a consequence. Later in the comments section, a contributor (@jadedjogger) asked: “Yes. It's an own-goal by the teaching profession. How did we get here?” This also sounded heart-felt and made me think. This is my answer. I don’t think people in education do bad things for bad reasons, but our education system is poorly designed and built on internal inconsistencies....Dispatches from Palestine
11th March 2013
Luke Abbott has been working in Palestine for the last three years with the Qattan Foundation, training teachers and teaching in schools to develop exciting and meaningful experiences for students using imaginative-inquiry. Working with very limited resources and through a translator involves unique challenges and experiences. In this blog Luke describes one day’s work in a primary school in Jericho. It is 5.00 in the morning and I am awake, listening to the Mullahs outside my hotel in Ramallah. I am also planning my day to work in a school in the desserts of Jericho that is famous to Palestinians....Inequality is a part of the system
2nd February 2013
This blog has been written as a response to the Guardian debate: "Closing the inequality gap in education" It seems like inequality is built into the education system. I believe all right-minded people in education, including Michael Gove, are motivated by a desire to close the achievement gap, but we are all hamstrung by an education system that disadvantages children who do not benefit from a rich learning environment at home. Apparently (according to the work of Prof. Alan Dyson), the most significant single factor in the likelihood of a child succeeding at school is the level of education of...20 Great books on education
1st February 2013
A collection of twenty great books on education. Well , strictly speaking nineteen great books on education and one great book on Social Science. All are definitely worth a read. Some you can but through Amazon, others are out of print but available on the internet, either through the Google Books project or elsewhere as Pdfs. Follow the links... 1. Fines, J. and Verrier, R. (1974) The Drama of History: an experiment in co-operative teaching. (PDF) London: New University Education. 2. Heathcote, D. and Bolton, G. (1995) Drama for Learning: Dorothy Heathcote’s mantle of the expert Approach to education. (Amazon)...Let’s imagine
31st January 2013
Article for the BlogSync Initiative : “The Universal Panacea? The number one shift in UK education I wish to see in my lifetime” This is one of my favourite stories from Stephen Covey. There’s a team cutting their way through the jungle. At the front are the producers with their machetes. They’re the problem-solvers, the ones who get things done; they’re clearing the path. Behind them are the managers, sharpening their machetes, writing policies and procedure manuals, holding muscle development programmes, bringing in improved technologies, monitoring and checking the efficiency and productivity of the producers. Finally there is the leader,...Free education from political meddling and hand control to teachers
5th January 2013
Article: The Guardian - Wednesday 17 October 2012 Last week I was chatting to my dad. He's a retired head teacher who taught for 50 years (starting in 1957), I'm a teacher who started 17 years ago. We were, as teachers do, putting the world to rights. The conversation included Gove (of course), Ofsted (how annoying Wilshaw is), the exam mess, funding, unions, SATS, and so on, the usual topics. This is, on the whole, the same conversation we have been having for nearly 20 years. Swap Gove for Baker, Wilshaw for Woodhead. But this time the conversation ended differently....A fresh look at behaviour management in schools
1st January 2013
Article: Written with Dr. Geoff James and published in the Guardian - Thursday 6 September 2012 Recent comment and news - see the Secret Teacher and the Guardian story on levels of school exclusions - has made me realise how stuck the debate on developing children's good behaviour in schools has become. Teachers are judged by how strict they are. Everyone who has been to school thinks they are an expert and many policies are based on half-baked ideas about emotional intelligence and reptile brains. Meanwhile, thousands of children are not going to school, teachers are under increasing pressure to...