Blog

When I was studying for GCSE history, there was a sudden class panic about revision guides. I think a job lot of guides had arrived at the library and were available to buy for about £2, but a rumour…

The best part of researching my new book, Teachers vs Tech, was getting to read a lot more about memory. Not just the academic research on memory – although this was fascinating – but the practical at…

The challenge of remote teaching is the challenge of all teaching: learning is invisible. How do you get students to understand complex material, and how do you know when they have understood it? You…

It’s clear that education needs to become more research-based. Too many fads and myths hold sway, and too little is known about large bodies of solid research evidence that have powerful practical imp…

Back in 2008, the business professor Clayton Christensen made a prediction that by 2019, half of all US high school classes would be taken online. It’s now 2020 and this prediction is not even close t…

Suppose a friend came to you and told you they wanted to visit Siberia for the whole of next February. They want to prepare for their visit, and to do so they need a precise weather forecast. They wan…

Recently, I started flicking through a book I’d read about ten years ago, Juliet Gardiner’s The Thirties: An Intimate History. I stumbled across the section on education, and was quickly engrossed. Bu…

My new book, Teachers vs Tech, will be published on March 5th by Oxford University Press. Technology has been promising to transform education for over a century – but it’s never quite succeeded. In T…

As long ago as 1913, people were predicting that technology was going to transform education. “Books will soon be obsolete in the public schools. Scholars will be instructed through the eye. It is pos…