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Teaching observations
“Tread softly, because you tread on my dreams.” (Keats) Teaching, by definition, is an activity that is observed, (McMahon, Barrett and O’Neill,2007), and during my career as an initial teacher educator and CELTA trainer I have probably observed literally thousands of hours of teaching practice. Teaching is inherently a very personal activity, since classroom decisions…
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Step away from the data
I am a governor of a secondary school which is in the process of becoming “good”. To be clear, I mean here the “good” that is measured and measurable by Ofsted. I actually think the school is already good: the staff are hard-working and committed, the pupils are motivated and well-behaved, and everyone who is…
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Greater than the sum of its parts?
Reflecting on multidisciplinary working Last month, a group of staff from across the University began working on a public engagement project involving Virtual Reality, Psychology, Biomedical Science and prosthetics. The Wellcome Trust Society Award which funds this work describes the project as follows: Virtual Reality Prosthetics- Body and Mind will engage the public in cutting-edge…
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Three horses and a mule: Developing effective team communication skills
Within education we are commonly advising our students’ to reflect on their experiences, to learn from those experiences to support their learning. It is easier to give rather than heed this advice, and perhaps we need to make sure we practice what we preach. All this came to mind when considering the change and developments…
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Autism Awareness – How Donald’s story shows attitudes are changing
In the 1930s a young boy called Donald Grey Triplett was the first person to be diagnosed with autism. Now in his 80s, he is regarded in a celebratory fashion, and not as a curiosity or a statistic. He drives a car, a Cadillac no less, and is well-liked by those who know him. His…
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Widening participation in higher education – the view from a city
In 2013 the All-Party Parliamentary Group on social mobility stated that ‘we were looking for communities, schools, programmes or business sectors that could be said to buck the trend of poor social mobility in Britain. Time and again, that search led back to London’. It is not surprising that London is lauded as such…
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Anonymous Marking and Learning to Drive: Unconscious bias in assessment
The students’ union at Sheffield Hallam University passed a policy paper in May 2015, which emphasised that all students should be treated equally and this would best be achieved through anonymous marking. Currently, exams are anonymously assessed at Sheffield Hallam University but not course work. One reason that course work is not anonymously marked is…
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Are teacher educators the ‘ragged-trousered philanthropists’ of the academy?
In their 2015 book ‘Transforming Teacher Education: Reconfiguring the Academic Work’, Viv Ellis and Jane McNicholl describe a process of ‘proletarianisation’ in which the exchange value of teacher educators’ labours (their academic capital) has declined over time. This, they say, is limiting the potential to contribute new ideas and innovations to schools and the wider…
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Be interesting. It’s on the Syllabus.
Those terrible twins curriculum and assessment often leave science teachers frustrated at the compromises they are forced to make. We would like our students to be deeply engaged and learning about the applications of the science. But in practice we have little time for deviating from the straight and narrow. What if things were different?…
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An alternative perspective on the physics teacher shortage
At present there are two issues in physics education making media headlines. The first, the critical shortage of specialist physics teachers in England; the second, the persistently low number of girls choosing A level physics. Is it possible that these two, seemingly separate issues might, in fact be linked and that by making inroads into…
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