Tag Archives: researchEd2013

Private intuition: public expertise

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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.

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Its the technology, stupid!

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wheelThe consensus is that we should not mind the technology but that we should focus instead on the learning. The consensus is wrong.

This is the transcript of a presentation I gave at the EdExec conference, held by ICT Matters in London on 6 November 2013. The ostensible argument in my talk is that “procurement matters”, which I will admit, probably isn’t going to set your heart racing. But perhaps it should. The reason why procurement matters is that technology matters – and this is a point that much of the ICT community do not generally admit. Time and again, you hear the old saw being repeated, “never mind the technology, where’s the learning?” Most of my talk addressed addressed this point—and in doing so, I take on (as is my wont in this blog) a lot of shibboleths. I summarise some arguments with which those of you who have read previous posts may be familiar, and I also shadow some arguments that I will develop in greater detail in future. And I return to a promise that I made in my first post to this blog in January 2012, which is to discuss in rather more depth than I have done before why Becta’s approach to procurement was so lamentable. Continue reading →