Who is Herbert Simon? Herbert Simon was one of the great scholars of the twentieth century, whose discoveries and inventions ranged from political science (where he began his career) to economics (in which he won a Nobel Prize) to computer science (in which he was a pioneer) and to psychology. Simon was one of the… Read more »
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One of the great things about the Research Ed conferences is that whilst their aim is to promote a sceptical, dispassionate and evidence-based approach to education, at the end of them I always end up feeling irrationally excited and optimistic. The conferences bring together so many great people and ideas that it’s easy to think educational… Read more »
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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 »
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Every single research ED conference I’ve been to has been amazing, but this one, for me, was the best yet. Mainly that’s because I got to hear new voices – either people who were completely new to me, or people I’ve read and heard a lot about, but never met before. I love the research… Read more »
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Today the Sutton Trust and the University of Durham have published a fascinating new report called What Makes Great Teaching? It sets out to answer that title question, as well as looking at ways we can measure great teaching, and how that could be used to promote better learning. Here is my short summary of… Read more »
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Over Christmas I read Nate Silver’s excellent book The Signal and the Noise. Silver runs the FiveThirtyEight politics blog and became famous for his uncannily accurate predictions of US elections. Before predicting elections, he predicted the success of baseball players and teams. Before that, he made money playing online poker. His book is a distillation… Read more »
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This week, the Institute of Physics have published a report on gender imbalances in certain subjects. They look at 6 A-level subjects: the typically ‘male’ ones of maths, physics and economics, and the typically ‘female’ ones of English, biology and psychology. In all six cases there are gender imbalances. The fact that girls are less… Read more »
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A couple of weeks ago the Greater London Authority published a fascinating resource for anyone interested in London schools. It’s the GLA London Schools Atlas. The GLA have overlaid a map of London with tons of data about all the state schools in London. You can see all the schools in London and click on each… Read more »
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A couple of weeks ago there was a controversy about when pupils should start school. A group of academics sent a letter to the Telegraph arguing that ‘an ever-earlier start to formal learning’ could only cause ‘profound damage to the self-image and learning dispositions of a generation of children.’ In the Telegraph, Peter Tait, the… Read more »
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The title of my speech was ‘Statistical significance and theoretical frameworks: how can we discover the root causes of successful teaching and learning?’, which is a bit of a mouthful, I know. Here’s a (relatively) quick summary. The first half of my speech leant very heavily on this ED Hirsch article. I really recommend you… Read more »
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