Category: Education
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Education Exposed, by Samuel Strickland
Why I read it – I’d seen a couple of talks by Sam Strickland, and follow him on Twitter, where he voices his views about school culture with clarity. I initially pegged him as ‘no nonsense’ – a Headteacher with high expectations of students’ behaviour, attitude and respect; given that I worked in a school with…
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The Thinking School, by Dr Kulvarn Atwal
Why I read it – during the staff wellbeing research project I ran last year, my colleague Rachel and I were interested in Self Determination Theory, and one of its three pillars in particular: autonomy. We wanted to explore how, in professions with high accountability measures, you could still enable staff to thrive by giving them…
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Putting Staff First, by John Tomsett and Jonny Uttley
Why I read it… Over the years, I’ve seen plenty of school staff succumb to the seemingly inevitable notion that workload is high and many tasks are arbitrary, but you just keep chipping away and hobble along. You get the holidays, and teaching is fun; so you’ll tolerate the other crap. But the tide has…
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Retrieval Practice, by Kate Jones
Why I read it… Quizzing and retrieval practice was, I suppose, an instinctive part of my teaching without knowing much about the benefits, or how to properly use the concepts. In 2016, I became exposed to a wave of research through conferences and books, which I’ve been pursuing ever since. The elements of retrieval practice…
