In previous blog posts I’ve written about the way that HE ITE tutors are caught between practice and theory – and at home in neither, and about the central problems of initial teacher education that interact with the marginal status
What’s the point of me (2) – what’s my position in HE?
I’m using this series of posts as a way of thinking through the development of my professional identity and position. In my last post I talked about moving from teaching to HE. In this post I’ll consider this a little
What’s the point of me, a HE lecturer in Inital Teacher Training?
Moving from school to university as an ITE tutor is an important personal and professional change. Apart from the weirdness of no-one giving a monkeys about you telling them about what time you go home, or what you’re doing from
Review: A Philosophy of Schooling by Dr Julian Stern
Review and Welcome of A Philosophy of Schooling by Dr Julian Stern(1) This is the ‘welcome’ to Julian Stern’s thought-provoking book that I gave at meeting of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain at Leeds Trinity University on
A review of Education – An Anatomy of the Discipline by John Furlong (part 1)
I found this book to be really informative, and in many ways empowering – it’s especially helpful to me as a relatively new entrant to the job of overseeing the work of Initial Teacher Educators, and it has given me
Michael F.D. Young, Graduate Teachers and the Hero’s Journey
Just over a year ago I started reading books that I thought I wouldn’t agree with. One of those books was E.D. Hirsch’s ‘Cultural Literacy’, and although I didn’t agree with it (as feared), I will be forever grateful that
Writing to Argue
My undergraduates are unwilling to argue, in person, or in writing. Their essays are often surveys of a scene, descriptions of a landscape. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with a survey if that’s what you’ve been asked to do – but
Undergrad Day
Today is undergraduate day. I’m teaching a module on SEN in the secondary school to my undergrad PE and Secondary Ed students in May, and I want to be well prepared. I read an interesting study by Benjamin Bloom earlier
The “Writing Lives” project*
*(or why following twitter historians can be as rewarding as following history teachers) I was thinking about teaching A level coursework the other day, specifically OCR’s interpretations and investigations coursework. For years the examiner’s reports have emphasised that students should
Re-drafting to support learners
This is something that, in my practice as a history teacher, I’ve been resistant to over the years. I went to a great SHP talk on using longer, original contemporary texts this summer (the blog post will arrive, honestly!), and