Keeping you (teachers) informed // Director of Education @Steplab_co & author of Evidence Snacks → weekly 5-min email read by 30k+ teachers 🎓
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Jul 6 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Composite Planning (vs solo planning).
Leveraging specialisation & scale for better education:
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The quality of any lesson plan (or sequence) is limited by the expertise of the planner and the amount of time available for planning.
Also, the things we teach are often largely similar across many classrooms and schools.
Jul 3 • 24 tweets • 7 min read
Despite best intentions and significant investment, England’s SEND system is failing too many students and their families. To fix it, we need to understand why.
Mega-thread summary of my presentation at #FestivalOfEducation today:
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This story has 3 parts:
- 5x signs that the system is under strain
- 5x potential drivers of system failure
- 5x principles for more inclusive teaching
IMPORTANT: These school-oriented principles are only ONE PART of a much wider solution to a very serious challenge.
Jun 29 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
A large part of being an expert planner is about having specific knowledge in 3 areas:
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Getting the process of lesson planning right is important when it comes to optimising student learning and teacher workload.
However, it's only a small part of what’s required to actually produce a highly effective plan (and lesson).
Jun 1 • 15 tweets • 2 min read
Distractions consume more learning time than we tend to think.
Here's the lowdown:
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We (and our students) can only pay attention to and think about a very few number of things at once.
Managing this precious attention is important because what our students attend to is what they end up learning about.
May 18 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
🔥 15 hottest edu-research papers from the last 15 weeks:
(all open source 🔓)
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1/ Study on teacher enthusiasm
→ finds that teachers who see themselves as enthusiastic use more positive lingo, but students don’t always pick up on this.
The most important idea when it comes to AI & education:
WHOEVER DOES THE THINKING GETS THE LEARNING
More:
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AI is coming—thick & fast.
LLM’s like ChatGPT are outperforming humans at an ever-increasing range of tasks, their adoption is spreading quicker than any technology before, and they are the least intelligent they will ever be.
Apr 27 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
Many students recognise the power of spacing their study.
However, few manage to make it work consistently in practice.
@examstudyexpert suggests that spacing rituals can help students overcome this knowing-doing gap.
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Our brains are selective when it comes to building knowledge.
We typically forget most academic content we encounter... unless we take proactive steps to remember it.
Apr 6 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
One of the most effective ways to drive effective inclusion is to make our teaching ‘accessible by default’.
Let's dig into what that means:
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‘Accessible design’ is a well-established concept in other sectors.
Ramps in buildings, braille in lifts, websites that work with screen readers—these all help more people access what's already there.
Classrooms should be no different.
Mar 30 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
The double-edged sword of SEND labels:
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Labels play an important role in education. They help students access targeted support and guide us in responding to particular needs.
However, they can also have unintended downsides—they are a double-edged sword.
Mar 23 • 13 tweets • 3 min read
*Diagnostic overshadowing* can thwart inclusive teaching.
What's useful for teachers to know:
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Diagnostic overshadowing is a term originating in medical contexts (and introduced to me by @Barker_J).
It describes the phenomenon where doctors inadvertently place too much emphasis on a patient's diagnosis, overshadowing other significant health concerns.
Mar 16 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Two core ideas underpin effective inclusive teaching: