Personally I think any methods which are imposed end up being problematic because it means that teachers don't get to use their professional judgement for *individual children*. Even if you believe that everything in education *must* be evidenced (like medicine) side effects still exist. 3/4
Nobody 'needs' a salary of over £10k a month like Moynihan. This idea that 'great people' will only do a job if the pay is high enough is insulting to the majority of people in education on normal wages. A football manager mentality has no place in education.
schoolsweek.co.uk/over-180-aca...
Teaching Meaning's already earned 4.83⭐ from 17 ratings.
This is a disruptive book.
The EduCognitivist movement read research on study techniques & recreated the lesson in their image.
I dig wider into cognitive science to create a model, not of study techniques, but of the lesson itself.
This is exactly it.
We judge schools too much as isolated units, not as actors in a local system...
A school that holds complexity, includes vulnerable pupils & does hard work of keeping them meaningfully in education is doing something accountability barely sees.
Another insightful read…as well as the contextual control vs autonomy issue wouldn’t it be useful to consider generating an environment where teachers want/ are able to spend more time reflecting, planning and tweaking- as well as training on the intellectual underpinnings of curricula design?
Hard to do this when many teachers feel undervalued, when school leaders can’t challenge underperforming staff because they’re better than the “cover” and can’t spend the time supporting them with their more inspirational colleagues because there isn’t the budget to allow surplus in timetables
Hey you must pop by and do something with Bylines Network sometime soon. Perhaps a podcast type thing with @mikegalsworthy.bsky.social, or just a girls thing?
Experts at hand to come for a little bit of and tell us what we need to do to be more inclusive and then leave again with no accountability for whether what they tell us to do works.
Brilliant.
SEND: DfE sets out how 'experts at hand' service will work share.google/a6ust0hSusjK...
Systems should be judged by what they do, not what they say they’re for.
If inspection rewards performance, compliance and fear, schools will learn to perform, comply and fear.
The alternative isn’t less accountability, it’s intelligent accountability: open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...
Handwriting isn’t just “slower typing.”
EEG studies show writing by hand recruits broader sensorimotor, visual, memory, and attentional networks than typing the same words.
The brain learns through movement too, not only through information. 🧠✍️
#neuroskyence#neuroscience#brain#EEG#words
Talking to more and more Heads that are struggling to cope with the demands of the job. I'm convinced we need to redesign our roles, acutely assess how we spend our time, re-evaluate priorities and change. We can't work the way we did 5 or 10 years ago, the game has changed.
Another great article provoking whilst highlighting an important thought process we should all remember to revisit.
marymyatt.substack.com/p/from-cover...
There are aspects of the EduCognitivist movement that reflect Taylorism: "Every second counts".
This is defensible within the assumptions that schools function like production lines: the goal is the most efficient transmission of knowledge from head to head.
But, learning doesn't happen this way.
Imo there has to be a recognition that teachers cannot be 'on' 100% of the time because it's too exhausting. I've just seen someone saying that everyone must be learning 100% of the time in class. This kind of fervent, unrealistic claim is not good for staff or children's wellbeing or mental health.
Imo there has to be a recognition that teachers cannot be 'on' 100% of the time because it's too exhausting. I've just seen someone saying that everyone must be learning 100% of the time in class. This kind of fervent, unrealistic claim is not good for staff or children's wellbeing or mental health.
Absolutely brilliant article that rightly brings self-reflection, complexity and uncertainty back into pedagogical discourse. Not to mention a healthy dose of Wittgenstein style language perspectives thanks @cmooreanderson.bsky.social
Sad to see that Australia is now going through the same sad period of dogma from an "evidence-based" group of people. LinkedIn suggests that is, once again, a lot of discontent. This post offers a way out of the mess, and into more productive dialogue:
christianmooreanderson.com/evidence-bas...
League tables, Ofsted, narrow conceptions of curriculum, emphasis on testing, misguided focus on 'competition', plus sadly some deliberate playing of the system. Maybe we need to rethink what is meant by 'top performing'?
🚨 NEW: Top performing secondary schools are effectively shutting out disadvantaged pupils with special educational needs.
Our new polling suggests this is often a deliberate strategy to limit the numbers of these pupils coming through their school gates 🧵⤵️
I've just set up a couple of 'pay what you can' online events for next term. The Ultimate Guide to Adaptive Teaching is on 28th April at 4.30pm and you can book tickets here. ⬇️
www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1985806308...
I think there's a very important lesson in this for educators. I always mention aphantasia when I'm doing sessions on adaptive teaching. Quite a lot of people don't even realise they have it.
Once a year I ask my students to imagine a red star.
It’s cognitive psychology and we are about to talk about whether “imagery” is the same or different from “perception”, but first, I like to check in on what our class experience when we imagine something.
Friends, the results NEVER disappoint!
Horrendous story not just because of the arbitrary and unwarranted book banning, but the complete lack of regard that seems to have been paid to neurodivergent staff and pupils too.
Some of the book banning stories from the UK I have seen have been a bit over-dramatised but this one is thoroughly documented and absolutely horrendous.
Not just the book banning but the hounding out of a dedicated librarian on spurious safeguarding grounds.
There must be consequences.
This is why I love the discipline of History and why it is so important in today’s society- which other discipline so clearly demonstrates how flawed assumptions, lack of a complete picture and retelling can erroneously shape millions of people’s facts!
BIG history news this morning
Harold Godwinson’s famous march where he sped from Stamford Bridge to Hastings in four days is a tale as old as time
But now it looks as though the march never happened
www.thetimes.com/article/a4b9...
Part of being a headteacher is knowing when to ignore the noise.
Staying positive, focusing only on the children that you serve, and not letting other things taint your day.
#edusky#TeachersOfBluesky#TeacherLife#Teachers#BlueskyTeachers#TeacherCommunity#Education
Oak’s value is access and coherence under constraint. But state made curriculum at scale without proper consultation risks centralising power, distorting the market and narrowing professional agency.
Keep it lean, transparent, optional and evidence led.
Exclusive: Kevan Collins has been appointed as the education secretary’s delivery adviser with a focus on SEND reform and reviewing how the department engages with councils
https://schoolsweek.co.uk/kevan-collins-to-be-phillipsons-send-delivery-adviser/
Educators are caring adults who can establish relationships with children who have experienced trauma, BUT… teachers are not therapists.
Schools can be a safe place, BUT… schools are not treatment centres.
We need to stop pretending that classrooms can replace real mental health support.
An important shift in focus -for professionals attempting to help young people labels aren’t helpful but for the young person and their family- an important aspect that needs to be explored
🚨 NEW POST 🚨
‘The psychology of SEND labels’
“Receiving a diagnosis with a name and a status that medical experts validate can give children and adults a story, and an explanation, that renders their experience comprehensible.”
alexquigley.co.uk/the-psycholo...
All children deserve good teaching. Some need it more than most. If support replaces thinking, it isn’t support.
Our aim must be independence.
open.substack.com/pub/daviddid...
Are we interested in evidence informed education or not? If we are then we need to be interested in the impact on the whole child. ⬇️ @bphillipsonmp.bsky.social
Pressure to achieve at school at age 15 is linked to depressive symptoms and risk of self-harm, and the association appears to persist into adulthood, finds study led by Prof Gemma Lewis, UCL Psychiatry.
www.ucl.ac.uk/news/2026/fe...
Couldn’t agree more a secondary teacher with 15-20 classes each containing 10 passports with specific strategies and guidance is unmanageable and 15+ teachers for Year 7 students is overwhelming. Time to revisit a middle school model?
I don't think there's any secret about the best ways to meet additional needs in the classroom. High ratios, lots of staff knowledge about best practice, good quality resources, adaptive environments, working in partnership with families. But all this takes time, energy and needs funding.
Variation is absolutely key to learning.
However, I'm going to guess that if retrieval practice isn't working in a context, it might be because in that context people treat learning as storing and retrieving.
#EduSky
@tesmagazine.bsky.social Could your retrieval practice be working much harder than it is already?
Mark Roberts thinks that with a little variation it could be....
A really interesting and helpful piece below
www.tes.com/magazine/tea...
Increasingly, the complexity of modern education; inclusion, belonging, attendance, trauma, growing SEMH need… makes me believe considered, context led responses to challenges are the only way to improve things for children. Top down programmes will miss the nuance.
www.ascd.org/blogs/rethin...
Completely agree with both the article and the assertion. Is the conclusion that schools need to continue to “reward” ,in the broadest sense, the successful responses to previously unimportant stimuli & where does this leave some types of neurodiversity in our mainstream set ups?
Teachers, let's stop referring to students as storers and retrievers. They're not. And when we use this language, we bring forth an epistemology that shapes our practice.
This article misses that enactive cognitive science (not cognitivism) has been saying this since the 80s
aeon.co/essays/your-...
You don’t grow by pretending you know everything.
You grow by being brave enough to admit when you don’t… and learning anyway.
Mistakes aren’t failure… they’re proof you’re doing the work. 💥
#CalmLeadership#LeadershipGrowth#LearnAndLead#ProgressOverPerfection#StayGrounded
This whole debate prompted a re-read of @stulock.bsky.social’s superb blog, ‘Kevin’
mrlock.wordpress.com/2018/07/14/k...
There are consequences to reducing consequences. And we do need to recognise them.
Braverman says she's been "politically homeless" for over 2 years, which means she was reelected in 2024 as an MP for a party she didn't want to be a member of.
And she says Tories "failed Britain [on] Brexit and immigration". She was Brexit minister and Home Secretary. Twice.
But "vote for me!"
*** NEW POST ***
Is the curriculum turn turning back again? Is curriculum still a priority in education? @greeborunner.bsky.social takes a look.
teachreal.wordpress.com/2026/01/19/s...
3. Am pretty sure this isn't what's meant though. Suspect means don't externally exclude for what is often called "persistent disruption" or "defiance." In practice this usually means children flat refusing to do what they are asked to by any adult. This is incredibly hard to manage..
I have some sympathy with BP's first point here which is often straightforwardly true. A rebalancing in some schools from suspension to internal exclusion might be a good idea.
But agree with Ben's overall point that DfE fiddling with the minutiae of how schools are run is rarely a good idea.
9. BP making same error here - would be more accurate to say "potential lost learning." Also seems unfair to say that because children are now more online the balance of harm about suspension has changed to slant more against without talking about the consequences of this for schools.
Couldn’t agree more on the reductionist nature of this view although the clarity this focus has given to performative elements can be a useful tool in a coaching model. Often discipleship to a particular model without appreciating nuance undermines the usefulness of the model!
Absolutely!
"A focus on teaching as performance isolates a view of ‘the teacher’ from a view of ‘the students’ ... contrasting with the notion that good quality teaching is based on shared understandings and co-operation between teachers and students that iterates over a period of time."
The current use of the term "to land" is a poor way of capturing communication, as it stems from the notion that it's a one-way stream. One doesn't just lob a sentence or two 'over there' and hope it 'lands'. That is performance, not communication.