On Sunday, I posted my musings on some of the books I have been reading lately. As I was writing that, I was inspired...
I think we’re at an interesting point with educational reads at the moment. There are vast swathes of accessible educational books coming on to the market. By accessible I mean they are pretty easy to read, have bright covers, funky titles and might even dedicate an entire page of the book to a buzzworthy phrase in a graphically eye catching font. I don’t have a problem with that, although if a book has 250 pages and 10% of those feature buzzy catchphrases in buzzy fonts, would it be too much to ask for the price to be lowered slightly? Their intent to inspire, to affirm to risk taking educators that there is another way, to share what has worked for them, in their classroom. I do have a problem with the back of the book, where the bibliography and citations would normally be. In essence, there’s a lack of them. I got in hot water when writing my dissertation because it was too anecdotal and I had to work my behind off to develop quantitative data that would support the qualitative information that I was writing about. It concerns me that this is how we’re trying to reinvigorate education, with educators who can tell a great story and tell you what they do well, but who can’t (don’t? won’t?) provide additional guidance that will help you transfer that good practice to your own classroom or even better, your own school by supporting it with reference to research. Give me more than an entertaining extended keynote, give me the enduring lessons, inspire and energize me, then point me in the right direction so I can see for myself how a truly transformative education can be achieved at scale. I have never been a data junky, far from it! I used to run from spreadsheets and then hide until they went away. That is slowly changing- more on that in another post sometime in the next 12 years. My current school is bringing in the Adaptive Schools practices and their 7 norms of collaboration cite providing data as something that should be common practice. If you go to the trouble of writing a book about teaching and aimed at teachers, help them step beyond a cool fun activity they can do in their classroom and provide them with the data needed to encourage wide scale educational change.
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About the AuthorPassionate about learning, creativity, innovation and tech. Brit Abroad keen to work with others to make the world a little kinder. Archives
April 2019
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