Whilst relatively few in the education world are aware of it, the impact of the American educator and academic Professor Eric Donald Hirsch Jr on the UK government's education reforms since 2010, has been profound. Reformers have claimed that 'progressive' child-centred education from the 1960s has been 'curriculum-lite' and damaging to children's ...
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by Eric D Hirsch How can knowledge-based curriculum be integrated into K-12 schooling? What are other ways to equalise educational experiences across various demographics? ... asks Dr E D Hirsch Jnr, in his latest book. In Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children from Failed Educational Theories published by Harvard Education Press in Sep...
A new guide from US-based Mathematica Policy Research's Center for Improving Research Evidence, explains to educators how to tell which type of research evidence supports claims about effectiveness, ordering them from the weakest (anecdotal) to the strongest (causal). The guide gives examples of common sources for each type of evidence, such as mar...
Spurred by perceived inefficiencies in centralised education systems, school choice has in the past decades gone from a mostly fringe academic theory to a mainstream policy option worldwide. The idea is that the expansion of choice – through, for example, open enrolment and private-school vouchers – will increase market incentives in the school sys...
As much of the world clamoured to define the term "21st-century skills" and explain how teachers could instill them in their pupils, Daisy Christodoulou took a step back. In her 2013 book Seven Myths About Education, she identified, addressed and subsequently demolished seven assumptions that pervade teacher training and classroom practice but don'...