Progress in neuroscience is rapidly influencing the way we think about teaching and learning. Cognitive scientists and behavioural psychologists now claim to have a better understanding – based on new empirical evidence – of how our minds and memories work, how and why we make decisions and how we learn. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary fi...
EdBlogs
The short answer is, of course, that they don't. Not unless they get effective, structured feedback from their students. This is where 'formative assessment' comes in. Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, in their seminal work, 'Inside the black box: raising standards through classroom assessment' define formative assessment as encompassing: "all those act...
Professor Simon Burgess of the University of Bristol says: "Having a good teacher as opposed to a mediocre or poor teacher makes a big difference. Teacher effectiveness matters enormously. A pupil being taught for eight GCSEs by all effective teachers (those at the 75th percentile of the teacher effectiveness distribution) will achieve an overall G...
If there is a holy grail in education, then it is probably to improve the education outcomes of our most disadvantaged pupils and narrow the performance gap between them and their peers. It has certainly been a key objective of successive governments. To tackle the long tail of under-achievement, the Coalition government introduced the Pupil Premiu...
That's the easy part. Finding enough leaders to transform the school system presents a huge challenge and one that we don't appear to be meeting at the moment. What does a good leader look like? ... after all, good leaders come in all different shapes and sizes. Do you need someone possessing a basket of generic leadership skills (in other wor...