Yesterday I went to a brilliant day of professional development at Ark Globe Academy called Teach Like a Top Athlete: Coaching and Mastery Methods. I went to a workshop run by the amazing Jo Facer on Mastery Planning, and one by the equally amazing Dan Lavipour and Michael Slavinsky called What Can Teachers Learn From… Read more »
Read more
I spent yesterday at the Michaela Community School Debating Education event, which was absolutely brilliant. I spoke against the motion ‘Sir Ken is right: traditional education kills creativity’, and Guy Claxton spoke for it. Here are some of my notes from this debate, and the day. It’s about methods, not aims I agree with Sir… Read more »
Read more
In my previous posts I have looked at some of the flaws in traditional teacher assessment and assessments of character. This post is much more positive: it’s about an assessment innovation that really works. One of the good things about multiple-choice and short answer questions is that they offer very high levels of reliability. They… Read more »
Read more
My last two posts (here and here) have looked at how teacher assessments can be biased, and how tests can help to offset some of these biases. I’ve been quite sceptical of the possibility of improving teacher assessment so that it can become less biased: the more you try to reduce the bias in teacher assessment,… Read more »
Read more
In my last post, I spoke about how disadvantaged pupils do better on tests than on teacher assessments – and also about how many people assume the opposite is the case. It’s interesting that today, we seem to think that teacher assessment will help the disadvantaged. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the… Read more »
Read more