Items to Share: 16 June

Education Focus

• Factcheck: Is the latest Ofsted report based on sound evidence? | Full Fact (That's the report about "bright" children not achieving as they should at GCSE)

• A Maths Teacher writes… | Scenes From The Battleground Ofsted is now the problem rather than a solution 

• What Everybody Ought to Know About Teaching "is not about tips for teaching, but more about the nature of education in a democratic society." 

• Cameras in the Classroom: A Good Idea? More from the same blog.

Other Business

• Malcolm Gladwell: Albert O. Hirschman and the Power of Failure : The New Yorker An introduction to an economist and radical thinker I had never heard of. 

• The Problem With Psychiatry, the 'DSM,' and the Way We Study Mental Illness - The role of culture in the presentation of mental distress, and the limitations of exercises such as the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, from the American Psychiatric Association), the fifth edition of which has recently been published.

• How charitable are you supposed to be when criticising the views of an opponent? Advice from Daniel Dennett

• Slaves to the Algorithm | More Intelligent Life "More and more of modern life is steered by algorithms. But what are they exactly, and who is behind them?"

On rehabilitating learning styles?

The latest word is in a special section of the British Journal of Educational Psychology: "Styles, approaches, and patterns in student learning" guest edited by Carol Evans and Jan D. Vermunt in the June 2013 issue (vol 83, issue 2) consisting of an editorial overview and six more specific articles.

The editorial concludes;

"Taken together, the articles in this special section demonstrate that the boundaries
between the research fields of styles, approaches, and patterns in student learning begin to fade. Breaking through the walls of one’s own conceptual models and opening oneself to the limitations, challenges, and insights of related fields make it possible to move forward to better understand individual differences in student learning and their implications for teaching. A one-size-fits-all approach may not be the best way to help all students learn. Recognizing the rich variety in the way students learn (best), as well as the various ways in which teachers may take these differences into account in their teaching (e.g., by adapting, circumventing, creating frictions, stimulating, developing), is in our view the best way forward to do justice to individuality in human learning." (pp. 192-3)

Interestingly, there is no reference to Coffield et al (2004) (presumably insufficiently academically respectable), although there is to Paschler et al (2009).

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Evans, C and Vermunt, J  D (2013) "Styles, approaches, and patterns in student learning" British Journal of Educational Psychology vol 83: 2 pp.185-195. DOI: 10.1111/bjep.12017 (Requires Athens or Shibboleth access)

Items to Share: 9 June

Education Focus

• The way of truth | websofsubstance 'A social science such as education research [...] is frustrated by many confounding factors that are absent in the physical and biological sciences. However, even when high quality research is able to be performed, or when techniques are used to draw truth out from large numbers of studies, we still only have little snapshots and samples. The vast bulk of what passes in classrooms is left unanalysed...' 

Other Business

• More Money makes you Bad at Work: The Myth of Performance-Related Pay. | Doctor Stu's Blog  So why does this not apply to bankers?

• Tatsuo Horiuchi: the 73-year old Excel spreadsheet artist | Spoon & Tamago  Extraordinary! Original files available to work out how he does it.

• Medical school dark side: The third year makes students less empathetic. - Slate Magazine : comment in preparation.

• Brazilians, ctd: More perplexing Portuguese | The Economist  What Brazilians say; what foreigners hear; what Brazilians mean. I wonder what this says about Freire? 

• David Ogilvy 10 Tips on Writing 'In 1982, the original “Mad Man” David Ogilvy, sent the following internal memo to all employees of his advertising agency, Ogilvy & Mather, titled “How to Write.”...'  

• On Being an Octopus | Boston Review  'In a famous 1974 paper, the philosopher Thomas Nagel asked: What is it like to be a bat? [...] If we want to think about something more truly alien, the octopus is ideal. Octopuses are distant from us in evolutionary terms, have a nervous system of very different design, and bodies with no bones and little fixed shape at all. What is it like to be an octopus?'

Items to Share: 2 June

Education Focus

• Is this an education? | Tabula Rasa A thoughtful piece on the unintended consequences of a target-driven system, limiting pupils' life choices.

• Learning styles, science, practice, and Disneyland - Daniel Willingham  A useful and nuanced contribution to the learning styles debate (in response to a query from Sue Cowley). Not so sure about Disneyland, though...

• Understanding the Role of Intuition in Teaching | Faculty Focus

Other Business

• Explainer: what is epigenetics?  Excellent and comprehensible account--recommended if only because the term is becoming broadened to apply to non-biological systems in which variation can occur in a number of stages as a result of the interaction of both internal and external factors. Even Maslow's hierarchy of needs is referred to an an epigenetic model. The idea is useful but needs to be treated with caution, so it's good to be reminded of its origins.

• Moving On - NYTimes.com  Stanley Fish on retirement and disposing of one's library.

• The Nature of Explanation  and the role of mental models (introduction).

• Cereal Box Design: New Closure | New Republic

• sp!ked review of books | What’s worse than bullying? Anti-bullying intervention  Typically thought-provoking contrarian piece from Spiked  

 

On valuing staff...

 (This post has been deliberately delayed by a couple of months)

Earlier this afternoon, I managed to grab a moment with a colleague from one of our associate colleges to arrange a visit and to contribute a guest session to the course at her centre. We agreed the date and how my session would fit into the overall scheme of work. Straightforward. And then to the logistics--routine and trivial, of course.

Not any more. Not only have I been unable to observe students' teaching practice on several occasions because I have not got a CRB* clearance--I haven't "failed" it, but the university won't pay for it, and I don't see why I should do so from my own pocket... But at a completely different level, my colleague informed me that the date we had just agreed was also that of her routine annual "performance review". Without going into detail, this is all about targets. And if she does not satisfy the inquisition  panel she may no longer be employed by the time I get there.

(She continues to be employed, but this kind of punitive approach to management is getting ever more common in colleges--I was prompted actually to post by this reminder of an alternative vision, albeit in the school sector.)

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* Now the even more Orwellian "Disclosure and Barring Service"; isn't it oxymoronic (or just moronic?) to call such an agency a "service"?