While I have been on professional leave, I have found myself with time to think and reflect. What has become very clear to me is that while we expect teachers to be continuously learning, reflecting and transforming the work, I don’t feel we have the same expectations of education systems. And that is a problem. … More Learning how to learn is the new currency
I wonder how many times we need to hear the OECD and Grattan Institute tell us that our education system needs to be performing over and above and not under and below international benchmarks! The link between our declining performance on PISA and teacher quality has been the subject of commentary from educational experts for more than … More What’s wrong with Aussie schools?
In 2001, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam published their seminal article titled Inside the Black Box: raising standards through classroom assessment. It focuses on formative assessment which according to the authors is at the heart of effective teaching. The article suggests that the practice of formative assessment has not been front and centre in most classrooms. In fact the link between formative assessment and … More The Black Box
The latest Grattan Institute Report, Making Time for Great Teaching, by Dr Ben Jensen is a must read for educators. In an age of teacher over-load and increasing external accountabilities, Jensen presents the case for removing the distractors so that teachers can spend more time on the things that really matter. He argues that if schools reduce … More Making time for great teaching
Two weeks ago, Professorial fellow and former Dean of Education, University of Melbourne Professor Brian J. Caldwell delivered our annual Ann D Clark lecture. It was timely for two reasons – Professor Caldwell and Jim Spinks’ book ‘The Self-Transforming School‘ is recently published and the book contains advice to our incoming federal government – stay … More Advice to our new PM
I noticed a number of news articles last weekend on school funding prompted perhaps by the announcement of a federal election in September. I’ve always stated that we need a common sense approach to school funding. Australia is not the only nation to be facing tough economic times so we need to become smarter when … More The great divide
There is a saying in martial arts that when a student makes it to black-belt, the real learning begins. We should be seeing teaching through the same lens. When teachers enter the classroom for the first time, the learning begins and it must never stop. Research shows that ongoing professional learning is critical to improving … More Beyond the black-belt
Why is it that so many students struggle with mathematics? It’s one of the questions I’ve been pondering after reading the work of MIT mathematician, Dr Seymour Papert. For me, Papert is becoming a modern John Dewey and his assessment of why children struggle is persuasive: I think part of the trouble with learning mathematics … More Extending mathematical understanding
I’m in Singapore this week, giving a keynote and doing a workshop for the 3rd International Project Based Learning Symposium. It is easy to see why Singapore is among the world’s top five performing school systems when there is such a strong focus across the education sectors on developing learner and teacher skills such as … More From the outside in
I’ve been waving the flag for some time about teacher performance and how the profession is addressing (or not addressing) this issue. If you haven’t already done so, download the Grattan Institute’s report What teachers Want: Better teacher management by Ben Jensen. It cites OECD figures in which 63% of Australian teachers believe evaluation of their work is undertaken for no other … More Want teachers want
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