Time out on classroom behaviour

Tom Bennett (the Behaviour Tsar) recently stated that, "behaviour problems crush learning." Few would disagree. Yet many teachers see managing and controlling behaviour in the classroom as their greatest challenge - and fear. Just one disruptive child in a class can have a negative impact on a teacher's ability to teach and on other students' abili...

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Achieving a research-focused education profession

Many teachers struggle with the idea of connecting their own practice to the latest educational research. How many consciously set aside time to discover and digest research, browse the latest education publications and research oriented blogs or discuss research with their peers? This answer is probably - not many. Even given the many time pressur...

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Gearing up for the new careers guidance strategy

With the Department for Education about to publish a comprehensive careers strategy (expected post referendum), articulating the careers provision responsibilities of each and every school from primary to age 18, how can schools gear themselves up for their new responsibilities? By 2020, the government has stipulated that it wants a system where yo...

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Bringing the discoveries of neuroscience to the classroom

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...

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Formative assessment. How do teachers know their students are learning?

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...

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