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Goodbye to all that … for now.
I have just resigned as Director of Key Stage Five and requested to work a 0.6 contract. I am left with mixed emotions about it all, so I thought I …
Homage to the fromage: lessons in school leadership.
In normal times, education leadership is complex and nuanced as we navigate the ebb and flow of constantly changing educational landscape. Governments and ministers come and go with different ideologies and …
researchED Loom Durrington: The virtual one.
What should I do with my time during the Covid-19 pandemic? Having realised I am hopeless at DIY tasks and that I am annoying my nearest and dearest; I decide …
ResearchEd 2019: The Return.
April may be the cruelest month, but September has to be pretty close in the teaching calendar. The excitement and fear of the few first few days of term are …
One Year In.
My goodness, it is nearly a year since I started in post as Director of Sixth Form at a new school. In many ways, this is my perfect job as …
CPTSA Conference 2019: Rebuilding Curriculum and Assessment (2)
This Saturday saw a welcome return for this gem of an edu-conference, choreographed by one of the most well-connected couples on edu-twitter, the ‘Batman and Robin’ of education research …
Go Johnny go go: starting anew.
I have just started in a new school and it feels both familiar and strange at the same time. The rudiments of the job are the same; classroom, kids and …
ResearchEd 2018: The revolution continues.
September is a cruel month in many ways but one if its more established delights is that ResearchED is at the beginning. The jewel in the edu-geek’s conference crown. 2018, …
BPS Digest: How to study
This is all a bit brilliant so had to repost. Bravo BPS. Can psychology help us to learn better? Our presenter Christian Jarrett discovers the best evidence-backed strategies for learning, including …
A-level Results Day 2018: Some Reflections.
With the last envelope collected, torn open and contents revealed, I wanted to reflect on my experiences and thoughts surrounding A-level Results Day 2018. I am not wanting …
Exam clashes, crashes and conflicts: some thoughts on the 2018 A-level exam season.
What on earth happened to this year’s GCE A-level exam timetable? I do not remember ever having such a challenging exam series, not even at University. I am not ‘anti-exam’, …
Why we should not surrender to unconditional offers.
I get it, I really do. Students are anxious, it is the second year of the new specifications, the task of revision seems impossible, undoable, insurmountable. With a click of …
Grief, loss and change.
“To live is to endure loss, repeatedly. Without the ability to bear this nothing new would exist. Once something has died, we can mourn it, making space within ourselves for …
Reformed A-levels: more rigorous or more rigamarole?
Well the dust has settled on the first year of the reformed A-levels and whilst it was not the omni-shambles we had feared thanks to the concept of comparable outcomes, …
My researchEd 2017
My goodness, it was a struggle to get myself to this conference. Along with first week exhaustion, engineering works on the Met line and the onset of a cold, I …
Why we need more sociologists not less
I am quite used to being the butt of other teacher’s jokes about my subject. I am lucky enough to teach both sociology and psychology and whilst people often wilfully …
It is the hope that kills you.
“It’s not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It’s the hope I can’t stand. ~ John Cleese (as Brian Stimpson in the film Clockwise) The polling stations open …
6 ideas for elaborative interrogation
I have been attempting to review how successful I have been at implementing the Learning Scientists Six Strategies for Effective Learning in my lessons. The strategies provide a sound evidence-based structure for …
The unconscious curriculum at Loftus and Friends Conference. Emmanuel Centre. Tuesday 28th March 2017
Today a colleague and I accompanied our Year 13 students to an A-level Psychology conference today and I wanted to snapshot and share the experience. We have been bringing students …
The problem with revision
Re-vision Mid 16th century word meaning to ‘look again or repeatedly (at)’): from French réviser ‘look at’, or Latin revisere ‘look at again’, from re- ‘again’ + visere (intensive form …
For the love of blogging
It has been a year or so since I started blogging about professional issues and I wanted to reflect on what I have learnt and how I felt about the …
Enthusiatic skepticism: the problem with becoming more research aware, research informed and research engaged.
De omnibus dubitandum. All is to be doubted. Rene Descartes Oh dear, once you open the Pandora’s box of becoming an evidence-based practitioner, it seems impossible to close the …
The problem with data
It is January and I’m up to my eyeballs in data and feeling a bit grumpy about it all. Meetings are consumed with the analysis and woeful predictions about what …
Minding the gap between research and practice – Saturday 12th November 2016
I attended the Canons Park Teaching School Alliance conference on Saturday 12th November 2016 and here are my reflections on the day. The Hive. I must admit I have only …
Post-Trump teaching
27 years ago today the Berlin wall fell. It remains one of the very few lessons I remember from school, our teacher got very excited and passionate about the significance of the day. …
The problem with growth mindset.
I think I might be a little late to this party but I want to reflect on my thinking about growth mindset and resilience. Views about the usefulness of growth mindset seem to be polarised as it is seen as either a magic wand or a passing fad. It is probably neither and it’s usefulness may be weakened by an inconclusive evidence base.
Everyone needs a Hilary
In my first few years of teaching I was honoured to share an intimate office, some might call it a broom cupboard with a colleague called Hilary Matthews. We were …
Hopes and fears for a new term.
My new school shoes sit in the hallway, staring at me. Summer is all about being barefoot but September is about slipping your toes into new leather. They are a …
UCAS 2016: A buyer’s market?
We have survived A-level results day, despite my worst fears it was a sunny end to an emotional day. Our results were a mixed bag with some surprises but no …
The unconscious curriculum at researchEd 2016.
Some reflections on how the unconscious works its way into our classrooms, staffrooms and school processes. This session will follow the tradition of Melanie Klein, Anna Freud and Wilfred Bion …
The myth of gained time
One of the many lies we tell ourselves about the summer term is the one about ‘gained time’. For teachers, struggling through the spring term and faced with the inhumane amount …
Being a teacher with a chronic illness.
Illness is other people. Really sick people, not me. I have been a teacher for 16 years and an AS sufferer for 28 years. I have other roles in life; …
The problems with becoming an evidence-based teacher: science and pseudoscience in education
A scientific approach to our teaching methods is a commitment to a systematic way of thinking, a healthy skepticism about ones own ideas and those of other people. It is …
The problem with SCLY 4: Crime and Deviance option.
Dear AQA, I wanted to take this opportunity to give some teacher feedback on the SCLY 4 paper that our students sat this summer. I have been a social science …
Brexit in the classroom.
Like many in our profession, I am gutted. The Brexit result has knocked me for six and I still cannot quite believe it. Clearly, I am in Kubler-Ross’ denial stage …
Hickman out
Our final class is done and the ink is dry on your exam papers. It will be strange to think that we will not be part of each others lives anymore, I will never mark another one of your essays nor will you have to put up with my appalling jokes and long-winded stories.
The problem with linear A-levels: more for less?
Sometimes, teaching can feel like an eternal hard labour of sisyphean proportions. It can be a bit frustrating, unrewarding and repetitive. I guess it is difficult to feel as …
On wishing my students good luck
Well, here we are again. It feels like yesterday when we were just meeting and sussing each other out. Like two large walruses upon first seeing each other; suspicious but …
Predicted grades: Between Scylla and Charybdis
It is predicted grades time and I am agonising more than ever. It has always been a task that has filled me with dread but this year it is at best overwhelming. My anxiety about the new specifications and the unknowns about grade boundaries has sent me into a spin.
The beginning of the end: student stress and anxieties
Phew, I had a tough first week back after half term. I seemed to spend most of my time talking to students who were experiencing quite raw emotional difficulties. Some …
It is time to talk about young people’s mental health.
Children’s Mental Health Week 8 – 15th February 2016 The theme of Children’s Mental Health Week this year is ‘building resilience’ and teaching children to ‘bounce forward’ from life’s challenges. …
Why attachment matters
Young people’s ability to form relationships is shaped by their early childhood experiences. I have found that some of the puzzling behaviour we face as teachers can be understood by …
Robbing Peter to pay Paul and other educational dilemmas.
It used to be easy to read the landscape in education. The horizon seemed a long way away but there were clear markers along the way and obstacles that would …
Linear A-levels: Hobson’s choice or Morton’s Fork
The DFE announced that the reform would not dictate a particular model for AS and A-Level programmes, but I think they do. We have a classic example of a Hobson’s Choice or a Morton’s Fork.
I try to be objective. I do not claim to be detached.
Like it or not, teaching is a political act.
If the personal is political, then teaching is a political act.
The stories we tell ourselves about education
I love a good story, well who doesn’t? Good storytelling is good for the soul, helps us make sense of ourselves and connect to a wider world.
Reciprocal vulnerability
This term I have been trying to notice things a bit more. I have tried listening, not the usual head-nodding and jumping to conclusions listening. But I have been really …
Beginnings and endings
Beginnings and endings punctuate life in a school, not only the big beginnings and endings in September and June; they also remain a focus of each term, topic and assessment. I have always felt a mixture of both excitement and terror at all of these junctions.
Muddling through somehow
Simon Foster: It’ll be easy peasy lemon squeezy. Toby: No it won’t! It’ll be difficult difficult lemon difficult! In the Loop Teaching is not fun at the moment, it is difficult, difficult lemon …
the unconscious curriculum 