On Thursday evening I had the privilege of hearing ED Hirsch give the Policy Exchange education lecture. Hirsch in person was much like Hirsch the author: self-effacing, erudite, quietly compelling and wryly humorous. He spoke about what the best kind of early education should look like, and stressed the egalitarian effect of teaching knowledge to… Read more »
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I first wrote this post back in September 2015 and have updated it in June 2016. Over the last three years, I have written a number of posts about assessing without levels. Here’s a guide to them. First of all, what were the problems with national curriculum levels that led to them being abolished? And were… Read more »
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Every Research Ed I’ve been to has been brilliant, and every single one has been better than the one before. Great conversations, great people, fascinating ideas – I loved it all. Here is my summary of the day. Session One I spoke about replacing national curriculum levels. You can see my slides here: REd 2015… Read more »
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A recent essay in Changing Schools discusses the impact of social media on education policy. It got me thinking – what is Twitter good for? What is it bad for? How can it help us – not just in education and policymaking, but in our lives in general? Here are my pros and cons. Pro… Read more »
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Back in 2013 I wrote a lengthy review of Measuring Up by Daniel Koretz. This book has had a huge influence on how I think about assessment. Last year I read Principled Assessment Design by Dylan Wiliam, which is equally good and very helpful for anyone looking to design a replacement for national curriculum levels. As… Read more »
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In my most recent blogs about assessment, I’ve looked at some of the practical problems with assessment criteria. I think these practical problems are related to two theoretical issues: the nature of human judgment, which I’ve written about here, and tacit knowledge, which is what this post is about. In Michael Polanyi’s phrase, ‘we know… Read more »
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This psychological experiment asked participants to judge the following actions. (1) Stealing a towel from a hotel (2) Keeping a dime you find on the ground (3) Poisoning a barking dog They had to give each action a mark out of 10 depending on how immoral the action was, on a scale where 1 is not… Read more »
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On Thursday and Friday I went to Wellington Education Festival for the fifth year in a row. It’s an amazing event and I’ve come back from every one feeling inspired and excited. Back in 2011 the festival was on a weekend and I remember sitting in a talk with Katharine Birbalsingh trying to guess which person… Read more »
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In my last few blog posts, I’ve looked at the problems with performance descriptors such as national curriculum levels. I’ve suggested two alternatives: defining these performance descriptors in terms of 1) questions and 2) example work. I discussed the use of questions here, and in this post I’ll discuss the use of pupil work. Take… Read more »
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In many blog posts over the last couple of years, I’ve talked about the problems with prose descriptors such as national curriculum levels and grade descriptors. It’s often said that national curriculum levels and the like give us a shared language: actually, as I argue here, they create the illusion of a shared language. I’ve… Read more »
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