Jan 25When it comes to the curriculum, we don’t know what we’re talking aboutThis blog begins with a disclosure, that I really have no idea what I’m talking about. That’s not just a figure of speech. My main motivation for thinking and writing about teaching and learning is as follows: I want to explain why the way we often try to understand education…Curriculum8 min readCurriculum8 min read
Jan 12We need to stop talking about dual coding; let’s call it blank canvassing instead.We’ve all heard how drawing diagrams while narrating a thought process gives students a better chance of remembering what we want them to remember. As Adam Boxer points out, teachers often confuse this teaching practice (drawing and narrating) with the learning process typically called dual coding. …Education5 min readEducation5 min read
Nov 23, 2022How acquiring knowledge is like learning a languageThis is a blog about the mental models with which teachers make sense of teaching and learning. Tom Sherrington has argued that a schema-building model is the best we currently have available. …Knowledge8 min readKnowledge8 min read
Oct 11, 2022Developing Curriculum Intent— A Guide for Senior LeadersThis is a practical guide for senior leaders in schools. It aims to give advice on how to support heads of department in developing the curriculum in their subjects. The first step is to clarify the intent. Strong departments have a shared sense of what they’re doing this for, a…Curriculum5 min readCurriculum5 min read
Sep 13, 2022Why is modelling effective?In my last blog, I highlighted the dangers of relying too heavily on the cognitive model to explain what makes for good teaching and learning. I argued that cognitive explanations overlook the normative aspects inherent in education. In this blog, I aim to show some of the conceptual confusion that…Education4 min readEducation4 min read
Aug 30, 2022Should we really try to picture students as if they are brains?It is clear from much contemporary literature about teaching and learning that we lack an adequate model with which to theorise these practices. The most popular model at present is the one offered to us by cognitive science. In very simple terms, this posits the existence of a working memory…Education5 min readEducation5 min read
Jul 12, 2022Why school leaders cannot go on thinking about curriculum and pedagogy in isolationThe question I have been exploring in this series of blogs is as follows: does contemporary curriculum theory rest on a mistake? It’s been pointed out that the theory is fine; the problem lies with how it has been interpreted in practice. I accept this argument. The problem is that…Education6 min readEducation6 min read
Jul 8, 2022Why Ofsted’s account of disciplinary knowledge in science falls shortIn my last blog, I attempted to highlight some of the problems that arise from disciplinary knowledge being treated as if it is just another category of substantive knowledge. I used the example of history, perhaps unwisely, as the history subject community has already done a lot of work to…Science5 min readScience5 min read
Jul 5, 2022Embedding disciplinary knowledge into a history curriculumThe theme of this series of blogs is that we cannot divorce curriculum thinking from pedagogical thinking. The example I focused on in my last blog is the distinction between substantive and disciplinary knowledge. Failing to understand that disciplinary knowledge is different in kind to substantive knowledge, and that it…History4 min readHistory4 min read
Jul 1, 2022How Future 3 thinking could shape our curriculum choices — an historical approach to chemistryIn my last post, I challenged those with an interest in curriculum theory to think more deeply about their conception of Young and Muller’s Future 3. I argued that many commentators ignore the epistemological aspect of Young and Muller’s work, focusing instead (for understandable reasons) on its social justice element…Chemistry6 min readChemistry6 min read
