Tag Archives: education

Pedagogical romanticism

Posted on by
1

romanticism

Why trusting to the intuition (aka “professional judgement”) of individual teachers is wrong but wromantic*

Having explained in part eight that the failure of criterion referencing was due to poor implementation and not a mistaken ambition, in the next sequence of posts I shall explain why we still need to describe our educational objectives clearly and at a granular level. In this post (part 9 of my series on educational purpose) I shall explain why our current delivery model is failing and will continue to fail so long as we reject the explicit description of educational objectives.

Continue reading →

The rise and fall of criterion referencing

Posted on by
8

criterionWhy criterion referencing got itself a bad name and why this does not mean that it should be abandoned

My previous six posts have examined the position on educational purpose taken by Professor Biesta. I have concluded that when he (like many of his child-centred colleagues) says that we should focus more on purpose, he does not mean to clarify but rather to obfuscate that purpose. He means to place responsibility on individual teachers to decide what their various, implicit and often meaningless purposes should be. This leaves no possibility of taking systematic action to achieve such objectives or of giving any clear account to the rest of society on how effectively this has been done. It is a model that sits uncomfortably with Professor Biesta’s professed desire to improve democratic accountability. In this post, I turn to the reasons why Daisy Christodoulou also opposes the explicit description of educational purpose.

Continue reading →

Aristotle’s phronesis misunderstood

Posted on by
3

aristotle

When educationalists use the theory of phronesis to argue that teachers should determine educational purpose, they misrepresent Aristotle.

My investigation into educational purpose has so far focused on the mistaken assumptions of many progressive educationalists, starting from the position of Professor Gert Biesta at the recent Commons Education Select Committee conference. I cannot complete this first part without addressing the theory of phronesis, which has been widely used, by Professor Biesta among others, to argue that teachers should be left to determine the purposes of their own teaching. In this post, I explain why the modern version of the theory misrepresents Aristotle.

Continue reading →

Education as an intrinsic good

Posted on by
1

boatsWhy many academics think that education is an intrinsic good and why they are wrong

In part four, Professor Biesta and the chicken, I argued that the distinction between aims and purposes that had been made by Gert Biesta and John Dewey was without foundation. In this fifth part of my series on the purpose of education, I explain why the argument over aims and purposes is connected with the view that education is an intrinsic good, why this is the same as saying that education has no purpose at all, and why this view is mistaken.

Continue reading →

A troubled relationship

Posted on by
Reply

[ File # csp7413021, License # 1569209 ] Licensed through http://www.canstockphoto.com in accordance with the End User License Agreement (http://www.canstockphoto.com/legal.php) (c) Can Stock Photo Inc. / MassonforstockAn analysis of Nicky Morgan’s speech at BETT 2016, with reference to the ETAG report

This article first appeared in Terry Freedman’s Digital Education (formerly Computers in Classrooms). In it I analyse the Secretary of State’s excellent speech on edtech at BETT 2016, comparing the views she expressed with those of the ETAG report, and analysing what this might mean for the relationship between government Ministers and edtech. And I observe, along the way, that the course of true love never did run smooth.

Continue reading →

How edtech will revolutionize research

Posted on by
5

Researchers working at microscopesWhy the only realistic way of improving the quality of educational research (and of education itself) is by the intelligent application of education technology

I gave this talk at Research Ed 2015 on 5 September, the latest in a series of three national conferences organized by Tom Bennett.

Research Ed has grown into a vital event in the annual calendar for teachers interested in the theory of teaching. Nevertheless, my impression is that the centre of gravity of many of the talks at ResearchEd has veered away from an agenda that tries to promote sound, quantitative research, and is replaced with a softer account of both the role and methodology of research, as is suggested by the language of “action research” and “research-informed” teaching.

I believe that the problems with research are systemic and not just the result of incompetence. I argue in this piece that these systemic problems can (and can only) be solved by seeing teaching as a business which has a larger technical element than we commonly admit, and one that is less dependent on personal intuition (or what some call “tacit knowledge”). Such a realignment of our views on what teaching is, and how research into teaching should be conducted, will also underline a radical reevaluation of the role of technology in the classroom.

Continue reading →

Is Greenfield an alarmist?

Posted on by
19

Baroness Susan GreenfieldThe ed-tech community should listen carefully to concerns being raised about the effect on our children’s development of excessive time spent online

Baroness Greenfield recently wrote an opinion piece in the TES, restating her view that education technology is not just ineffective but may well be positively harmful. “More pseudo-science poppycock”, harrumphed one prominent ed-tech tweeter, who was quickly supported by others. “Actually, she makes some rather sensible points”, said I. “No, no”, said my interlocutors, “the Baroness has been completely discredited. But if you are going to blog about it, please keep it short”. “1,000 emollient words”, I promised.

I am not sure how well I managed to be emollient—I am afraid it is not a style that comes naturally to me—and I certainly failed to keep it short. But, if you are interested in ed-tech, then I think its intersection with emerging neuroscience, and the controversy that has blown up in this area, are worthy of careful consideration.

Continue reading →

Rescue ETAG—say no to FELTAG

Posted on by
18

FELTAG and ETAGThe DfE should reject the FELTAG recommendations in order to ensure that all the same mistakes are not repeated by ETAG

At the same time as the Further Education Learning Technology Action Group (FELTAG) got ready to submit its recommendations to government for action to support ed-tech in Further Education, a new group was set up to propose similar recommendations that would cover all education sectors. But the Education Technology Action Group (ETAG) has inherited all of the same flawed assumptions that were made by FELTAG and by BECTA before them. If Matt Hancock wants to be the man who ends the long history of failed government initiatives and the man who helps introduce genuine, transformative education technology to the UK, he needs to insist that the government is given a much clearer and more convincing rationale for action than the FELTAG report has offered.

Continue reading →

What ETAG should say

Posted on by
Reply

The first meeting of ETAG, attended by Michael Gove and Mat HancockThe Education Technology Action Group, set up by the DfE and BIS and announced by Matt Hancock at BETT, has made a shaky start. This is what I think they should end up saying to Ministers.

In my post “Land ho!” of 16 December, I welcomed the noises being made at that time by Matt Hancock, Minister for Skills & Enterprise at BIS, about the government’s new, more proactive approach to education technology. This led to the announcement at BETT on 23 January of a new advisory group, the Education Technology Action Group, to be chaired by Stephen Heppell. The most that could be said so far is that ETAG has had a slow start.We didn’t hear anything of substance until 23 April, when it published a series of questions that are to form the basis of a consultation, which is to run until 23 June. In my view, the questions are not particularly helpful. Nor have they attracted any significant response in the first couple of weeks, there having been only a couple of dozen substantive tweets using the #etag hashtag. But I am looking forward to engaging in the consultation and, by way of encouraging the debate, publish below my own views on what ETAG should say to Ministers.

Continue reading →

Private intuition: public expertise

Posted on by
7

Twitching the net curtainsAs well as debunking numerous teaching myths, Tom Bennett’s book Teacher Proof reasserts the common view that teaching is a sort of private craft. I disagree.

I was not able to attend ResearchEd2013 back in September 2013; but ever since then I have been meaning (and not finding the time) to comment on the outcomes of the conference, which were conscientiously videoed and posted to the web by Leon Cych. The conference was organised by Tom Bennett to highlight the importance of (and problems with) current research in education. This was a few months after he had himself published Teacher Proof, mentioned in my earlier post, Why teachers don’t know best. 

It struck me that while the attack on quack theories was sound, the conclusions reached in Teacher Proof about the nature of the expertise of teachers were not well justified. Indeed, they seemed to me to be bizarrely at odds with the advertised prospectus of the Research Ed conference.

Continue reading →