I have a large collection of lesson plans from many years of observation work (thank you teachers!) One of the things I’m interested in researching is how well the learning outcomes have been written. Have a guess how many in my evidence base are written ‘correctly’. Spoiler alert: around 10%. It’s not surprising really, as many of us live our lives by writing ‘to-do’ lists; and that’s what most of the learning outcomes are too. Trouble is, if the objective […]

There’s a problem with Darwin – at least in terms of the evolution of humans. (Spoiler alert: non-evolution-theorist speaking here. But hear me out.) The ‘survival of the fittest’ is the engine behind Darwin’s theory: the fittest survive and breed, while the non-fittest don’t and so don’t. But with humans, at least before Rona came along, the medical miracles of today ensure the non-fittest now ‘do’, and so ‘do’. This mucks up the evolutionary gene pool a little don’t you […]

All of the problems start with the phrase: Teaching, Learning AND Assessment. Well, maybe not all, but a lot of them, certainly. There does seem to be a strong logic to the sentence – you teach, they learner, you check what they’ve leant – but that logic is as fundamentally flawed as it is widely accepted. I’ve been privileged to be able to ask hundreds of teachers to define assessment in order to check out my hypothesis, and almost every […]

Feedback on my training events keeps me going. I obviously love the good feedback, as I’m sure we all came into education to make a positive difference, but I also love when a delegate takes the time to offer thoughts about how I might improve the experience for future delegates. Today’s blog is to share a way of getting really colourful feedback that gives a real insight into a delegate’s learning experience. Have a look at these from last week’s […]

For many providers, November is the time of year for putting to bed their long and involved self-assessment process. Staff are happy that they’ve finally got through the panel interrogations, the quality manager has advertised the annual programme of QIP review dates, and all is well with the world. But is it? The self-assessment process can go wrong at so many stages, from the culture that surrounds it, to the precise words used in its text. Here are a few […]