From standardised testing to living CVs

About PeterT

Professor of Education focussed on issues to do with the purposes of education, the management of educational change, and enhancing education systems, informed by understandings of learning, pedagogy and the potentials of digital technology. Views expressed are my own.

From standardised testing to living CVs

PeterT8 Sep 20208 Sep 2020Leave a comment

In the Industrial Age schooling was focussed on preparing folk for working on production lines - standardisation was the name of the game and standardised testing was an appropriate way to enhance schooling. Today, in the Automation Age, we need to prepare young people to tackle wicked problems - standardised testing is no longer fit for purpose. We need new ways to assess the knowledge, competences and dispositions that people need to succeed ... ...continue reading "From standardised testing to living CVs"

Starting to think about Additional Routes To Success 1

PeterT24 Aug 202024 Aug 20201 Comment

Schools tend to focus heavily on end of Year 12 exams (e.g. HSCs and the ATAR in Australia) that will enable students to progress to university. However, most students do NOT go on to university and of those who do many do not rely on an ATAR to get their place. It is time that schools focussed on the success ...continue reading "Starting to think about Additional Routes To Success"

From F2F to Online Courses – models of provision 1

PeterT15 Jun 20201 Comment

For over 20 years I worked at the Open University (UK) which is a world leader in online distance education. Over the last few years I have had the privilege of spending time at a number of predominantly face-to-face universities in Australia that were at various stages of developing their online provision, including over the last few months when most courses went online due to COVID19. I have been struck by the vast range of different approaches to online course provision I have seen, and thought it would be useful to try to categorise them. ...continue reading "From F2F to Online Courses – models of provision"

COVID-19 and the future of schooling 2

PeterT23 Mar 20202 Comments

Around the world governments are taking action to contain the spread of COVID-19, often in ways that are quite revealing about the purposes and practices of schooling, and the scope to which unchallengeable norms in education can actually be overthrown. ...continue reading "COVID-19 and the future of schooling"

Review of ‘Should robots replace teachers?’

PeterT11 Nov 201911 Nov 2019Leave a comment

This book by Neil Selwyn looks at the reality and rhetoric around AI in education. It feels like an easy read but it raises a number of complex critical issues and questions that anyone involved in education or developing AI based tools should engage with. ...continue reading "Review of ‘Should robots replace teachers?’"

Blog posts vs journal articles 7

PeterT2 Oct 201911 Nov 20197 Comments

As an academic who is focussed on having an impact on education policy and practice I struggle with whether to concentrate on publishing in journal articles or blog posts. Do both I hear you say, but that is also problematic. Here are the issues: ...continue reading "Blog posts vs journal articles"

Why traditional schools can never be effective 2

PeterT6 Sep 201920 Aug 20192 Comments

I have argued elsewhere that (human) learning is the process of becoming part of an enduring collection of people who are mutually engaged in a shared endeavour, they have shared purposes and shared ways of working. In this context, I argued that teaching should involve inducting young people into such communities. However, this clearly creates a problem for schools. ...continue reading "Why traditional schools can never be effective"

Radical change strategy

PeterT30 Aug 201914 Aug 2019Leave a comment

In previous posts I have talked about why school is a problem, how people learn and hence how we should teach, what should be learnt in school, and that we need to think more radically about the design of schooling. In this post I suggest a strategy for achieving this sort of 'disruptive innovation'. ...continue reading "Radical change strategy"

We need schome

PeterT23 Aug 201914 Aug 2019Leave a comment

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). ...continue reading "We need schome"

Moving to Australia 4

PeterT16 Aug 201914 Aug 20194 Comments

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?'.

...continue reading "Moving to Australia"