In a series of earlier posts based on my OU inaugural lecture I outlined why school is a problem, how we should teach and what young people should learn. This implied far reaching changes to schooling as we know it today. However, I suspect that I didn't go far enough. In this post I suggest that we need to think even more radically about schooling (see Figure 1). (more…)

After nearly 24 years working at the Open University in the UK - most recently as Professor of Education (Futures) - I have decided to move to Australia (as Professor of Education (Innovation in schooling and educational technology) at the University of Newcastle (in NSW). Several people have asked me 'Why?'.

(more…)

During my inaugural I asked participants to rank how important they thought a number of different possible 'learning outcomes' would be in 2033. The results are shown in Figure 1 below. As you can see the highest ranked item was (more…)

As nobody wanted to give me a review copy I went out and bought this book, and I’m glad I did. It is a good book – it is an important book – indeed I think every researcher (whether coming from a positivist or interpretivist standpoint) would benefit from reading it. (more…)

In my last post I set out why I thought schooling as it currently exists is a problem. In this post I start to explore possible solutions - specifically by looking at how we ought to teach.

(more…)