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"
Tag: national curriculum
Moving to Australia
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?'.
Why is a knowledge based curriculum no longer fit for purpose?
What is a knowledge based curriculum?
I was in a school recently that described itself as having a 'knowledge-based curriculum'. Walking round the school with the head the key elements of this, which seem to be common across most secondary schools that I have visited, were: ...continue reading "Why is a knowledge based curriculum no longer fit for purpose?"
The Innovative Pedagogy Framework
One of the challenges facing the NP3 team was how to describe and differentiate between the pedagogical practices in the classrooms that we were researching. In essence, what were the key features of practice that needed to be considered in order to differentiate between the teaching in each setting? The obvious answer seemed to be to use core theories of learning and development as the basis for a framework to help us compare pedagogy across contexts. ...continue reading "The Innovative Pedagogy Framework"
What do you mean by digital literacy?
Digital literacy is another of those slippery terms which we use frequently but which are open to very different interpretations. Thus we are frequently talking at cross purposes.
At one end of the spectrum digital literacy is seen as ...continue reading "What do you mean by digital literacy?"
Educational alignment (and sociocultural theory)
We know that alignment matters in education (Butler et al 2018), particularly between purpose, policy, practice and your educational vision, as represented in the diagram above. However, ...continue reading "Educational alignment (and sociocultural theory)"
Backlash against computing curriculum misses the point
This article was originally published in The Conversation on the 4th February 2014
Computing is an important subject, but it is only one of many that schools have to teach, and few would argue that it is more important than English, maths, or science. But ...continue reading "Backlash against computing curriculum misses the point"
Gove departs just as disaster looms for computing in schools
This article was originally published in The Conversation on the 17th July 2014
Back in January 2012, the now-departed education secretary Michael Gove said, “ICT in schools is a mess”. He went on to argue that what was needed was a rigorous computer science curriculum. Now, from September 2014, when the new national curriculum ...continue reading "Gove departs just as disaster looms for computing in schools"
Is teaching still a profession?
This article was originally published in The Conversation on the 4th March 2014
Even teachers need to learn something new every day. Education Plus, CC BY
We assume that digital technology can improve education and that the challenge is how to bring innovative technology and educational professionals together. But the evidence shows that ...continue reading "Is teaching still a profession?"
We should teach computational thinking in schools
Back in 1990 I wrote a piece called 'What's wrong with Logo' in which I argued that we should teach programming (with Logo) in primary schools. However, ...continue reading "We should teach computational thinking in schools"