Greg Ashman
@greg_ashman
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School leader. PhD in Instructional Design. Writer. Podcaster. Part-time Professor. Honorary Fellow. Views entirely my own.
Ballarat, Victoria
Joined June 2012
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Last Seen Profiles
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A Little Guide for Teachers: Cognitive Load Theory
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We are currently inducting some teachers from the UK. Apparently, book looks are a thing there. Senior staff randomly select student exercise books and check they have been marked by the teacher and using the right coloured pen. What a complete waste of time.
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The study showing handwritten notes are superior to typed notes fails to replicate
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This morning I learned that my PhD thesis has been accepted. I don't think I technically have a PhD until the conferral date of 28 July or something. Anyway, that's done now.
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Some people in education are more interested in leadership and being leaders than they are in education.
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Try being 20 minutes late clocking on, 20 minutes late to teach a class, 20 minutes late for an interview, 20 minutes late for a train, 20 minutes late for a court appearance etc.
Although I’m glad Naomi Fisher can be 20 minutes late for meetings with no negative repercussions.
This morning I made a mistake. As a result I was 20 minutes late for a meeting. No one gave me a behaviour point. I apologised and we moved on. I’m not in detention now. That’s because I’m an adult and I live in the real world. Why should our teenagers be treated so differently?
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Whole class strategies to benefit students with ASD and ADHD
1. Predictability
2. Routines
3. Structure
4. Explicit instruction
5. Breaking things down into smaller chunks
6. Students in rows facing the teacher
7. Clear classroom expectations that are taught
9. Use of praise /…
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I truly admire
@Miss_Snuffy
. She runs an exceptional school doing great things for disadvantaged young Londoners and collects so much abuse for it from people who clearly think *they* are the good guys. Yet she handles it with far more grace than I would.
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I am astonished at the number of people who loudly proclaim the opposite of what is true, such as that rules and routines are somehow not only bad for kids with ADHD and autism but possibly discriminatory. Rules and routines are an intervention to *help* neurodiverse kids.
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From January, I will be a Deputy Principal at my beautiful school. Thanks to everyone who has supported me on this journey so far, including and especially the Twitter and blogging hive mind.
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@TheNewEuropean
@Miss_Snuffy
Funnily enough, The New European is on mine for the poor quality of its research. Your reporter called KB’s school ‘nothing special’ despite having the highest value added score in the country.
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The six stages of belief in inquiry learning
1. Students learn better this way
2. Students learn better but not in a way that shows up on standardised assessments
3. OK explicit teaching is better for some basic things but inquiry learning is more motivating, right?
4. I have…
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Look what has arrived (unfortunately, I could not make the ceremony).
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One of the advantages of free speech is that it allows people to show us exactly who they are
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Very proud Dad this morning. My 12-year-old daughter ran 10:51 in a women’s 3km race at Box Hill last night, coming third. It was raining, but she shaved nearly a minute off her PB and under 11 minutes is a nationals qualifying time.
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The intimidation and violence shown in this video has no place in a liberal democracy and is not a legitimate way to contest ideas.
It is hard not to conclude that authorities such as the police are applying a standard they wouldn’t apply to anyone else.
This video is upsetting to watch (and to make)
Sign the letter
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There is no such thing as a general purpose skill of critical thinking. Being able to think critically about history does not help us think critically about science. Instead, both largely depend on subject knowledge.
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'Major distraction': school dumps iPads, returns to paper textbooks
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The rules of progressive maths teaching.
Pay attention
1. Students doing what the teacher has shown them = mimicking = bad
2. Students doing what another student has shown them is not mimicking. It’s productive, joyful, constructive etc
3. Students struggling with doing maths…
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Note: Just because you’re left wing, it does not mean you have to believe silly and impractical things about education. In fact, a commitment to genuine social justice implies quite the reverse.
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I recommend everyone read Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire. In doing so, you will realise how simplistic it is, how little Freire has to offer teachers today and, by extension, how little those who bang on about Freire have to offer us.
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Knowledge is not something we can just look up when we need it. Knowledge is what we think *with*.
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I often disagree with
@calvinrobinson
on politics but I like him. Not only is that possible but it's easy for grown-ups. Institutions need to be able to tolerate a diversity of (pretty mainstream) opinions, or they'll lose the plot. from
@churchtimes
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The slow death of 21C skills
PISA results for Scotland, Wales, NZ and to a lesser extent, Australia are highly suggestive that building a curriculum around generic skills that don’t exist is a bad plan. 1/2
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Explicit Teaching
Definition: Concepts are fully explained and procedures fully demonstrated before novices are asked to apply those concepts or procedures
Features that increase effectiveness
- highly interactive
- new material presented in small steps with practice after…
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It turns out that I am more of a free speech enthusiast / fundamentalist than many of you. I’m sorry if this is a disappointment, but it is a reasoned position which I’m not about to walk away from. Let me explain, if I may 1/10
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Rather than hating on Michaela Community School on Twitter, why don’t those so opposed to it set up their own alternative school and demonstrate their values in action? Then, we can all judge it and pour over its website like they do with Michaela.
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I feel sorry for
@RogersHistory
and what happened on TikTok. However, I have immense respect for how he has put himself out there and raised awareness. No doubt, his actions will help lots of other victims.
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Direct Instruction Works. So Why Is It Controversial?
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Look at the biases that everybody else suffers from
Absolutely fantastic poster outlining cognitive biases. This should be compulsory to study before studying anything else. Or registering on Twitter. Or reading anything. Pls RT
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Why do my parents’ generation want plates to be red hot? Why do they heat them up in the oven then issue stark warnings about not touching said plates? What’s with that?
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Secondly, we must dispel this myth that everything worth learning must be joyous and fun. There are lots of things that are worth learning that are drudgery. Multiplication tables are a good example. Teaching can inject some fun but it’s not inherent 4/5
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NEW TODAY A little guide for teachers: Cognitive load theory
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Society for the Teaching of Psychology - In Their Own Words
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So my daughter is the Australian U17 3km track champion. Very proud dad.
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I love it when amateurs like
@ProfBrianCox
weigh in on education. It reminds me that expertise is domain specific.
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@miss_mcinerney
Disagree. Being a popular blogger will not make you a regular in the mainstream press. Being an unpaid internet, on the other hand...
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If you don't like the phonics check because you are worried about the impact on students who can already read, you are looking through the wrong end of the telescope. Focus, instead, on the least advantaged.
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Michaela's inner city kids from disadvantaged backgrounds are fifth in England on a measure of progress at GCSE. Imagine the difference this school is making in these kids' lives. Shame on those who joined in the hate campaigns, including Australian academics.
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It is not developmentally inappropriate to teach history in early primary school. Kids actually enjoy strange stories about faraway lands. See children’s fiction, for example.
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I have nothing but admiration for
@Miss_Snuffy
. She has had to deal with some appalling abuse on Twitter from people who should know better. I condemn this. We do not have to agree in order to treat each other respectfully. We need more
@Miss_Snuffy
’s in the world.
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A comment on my post about Alfie Kohn's critique of cognitive load theory that is worth more widely sharing.
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'Algebra for none' fails in San Francisco
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Doug Lemov
@Doug_Lemov
has written books that are far more useful to teachers than 99% of the flatulent emissions of education faculties. He’s not focused on neoliberalism, he’s focused on how to do our important and difficult job. Haters gonna hate but we know the truth.
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Next time you are told that nobody is against teaching knowledge, you can point to this article published in the
@tes
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So, some new copies of my latest book arrived. I’m not quite sure why but it’s a good opportunity to point out that I have this book out there.
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The problem with a curriculum based on student interest:
Teacher: Do you have an interest in atomic line spectra?
Student: No, what’s that?
Teacher: [Crosses atomic line spectra off list]
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I’m not surprised that Jo Boaler can charge a disadvantaged school district $5000 an hour. She has no record of improving anything, her research methods are flawed, but then equity, growth mindset, look-at-this-cool-activity jazz hands.
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Year 10 punctuality. A typical example.
A school is struggling with the fact that up to a third of Year 10 students are turning up to class after the start time, disrupting the starter activity and causing the teacher to have to repeat instructions.
A policy is brought in to…
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Is it now time to take his stuff off the physics syllabus?
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You favour inquiry learning but the evidence supports explicit teaching. What do you do? Try this.
1. Argue using personal anecdotes that nobody can refute
2. Suggest inquiry learning is better for vague things that cannot easily be measured
3. Argue, without evidence, that…
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We are Australian non-government secondary school of the year. It is a credit to the hard work of all our staff.
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The evidence is clear: direct instruction works
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Watching the Michaela kids getting their results is a beautiful thing.
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I noticed a US professor calling on people to downrate
@Doug_Lemov
’s Teach Like A Champion on review sites. It’s a brilliant book so I’ve just written a positive review on Amazon and am heading to Goodreads. Please do the same.
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@miss_mcinerney
What about my lack of a Guardian or anything else column? Didn’t you have a pretty conventional Oxbridge route into journalism?
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"We call for an urgent halt to the imposition of ‘evidence-based’ education on Australian teachers"
Bonkers. Only in education...
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All these people saying private companies are free to ban whoever they like miss a number of points, not least that if the private company was a bakery refusing to make a cake for a gay wedding, they’d probably take a different line. Better arguments please.
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I’ve never read anything by Jordan Peterson and the only thing I’ve seen is that interview with Cathy Newman which was quite funny. Why are people losing their minds over him visiting a school?
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Anyone who says schools are like prisons should be forced to spend the next two weeks either at school or in prison, their choice.
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Here’s a thought. Why don’t some schools have quiet corridors and other schools have unquiet corridors. Parents can then decide which ones to send their kids to and teachers can decide which ones to work at. Everybody’s happy. Simple.
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Ban them. You will never look back and you will wonder why it took you so long to do it.
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“Hello, I am a privileged person campaigning against school exclusions to demonstrate on social media that I am also a good person. Obviously, I would never consider working in a challenging school but those who do should be held to account.”
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New report on Cognitive Load Theory aimed at teachers
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So guess who is coming to live with us in a few weeks. His name is Alfie.
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Just saw an advert for Monday’s
@QandA
promoting
@pasi_sahlberg
’s appearance on the grounds that Finland’s schools are thriving. They are not. They are in long term decline on the same measures that made them famous.
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Just went to the senior school office to pick up a few items. One was a card from two leaving Year 12 students thanking me for my engaging and fun lessons. You weren't expecting that, were you?
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Can we all at least now agree to stop going on about Finland?
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It’s fine to disagree with the findings of this report, but it’s important to disagree with what it actually stated, not some imagined version. And the abuse directed at a number of the authors has been sickening.
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If we follow the contours of fun we leave children without critical and basic understandings. We trade a short-term gain for a long-term loss 5/5
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Struggle is not productive. Intentionally causing novices to struggle with solving mathematics problems is unethical, given the predictable frustration it will cause and the likely negative effect on mathematical self-concept.
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Study confirms what teacher always suspected - fidget spinners decrease the attention of kids with ADHD
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“...any school leader that encourages teachers to work on unproven ideas like educational neuroscience, lesson study, grit, or differentiated instruction is, in effect lowering student achievement.”
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I really like this article's ideas about teaching maths, but let's just back up here a second and ask why we never frame this problem as one of fixing the problem of boys being bad at English.
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Constructivism as a learning theory
Basic premise: We learn by relating new knowledge to stuff we already know. We ‘construct’ schemas of interconnected knowledge in the mind — think concept maps.
If true, this is how we learn, regardless of how we are taught. If I explain a…
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Explicit teaching is inclusive
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The truth about inquiry-based learning
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NEW TODAY A Little Guide for Teachers: Cognitive Load Theory
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This is very good: Cognitive Load Theory: mind the gap(s) – Blog On
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Points I never thought I would have to argue:
1. Free speech is generally a good thing
2. Prejudging people on characteristics such as their skin colour is always wrong
3. Lying about what people have said is a bad thing
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Oh dear. Another amateur commenting on education by deploying well worn tropes under the misconception that these are in some way original or interesting.
So many teachers provide an excellent education in spite of the curriculum rather than because of it.
Education policy is shaped to please baby boomers who suffered through rote learning and everyone else should have to as well, rather than the students it’s supposed to engage.
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Cognitive load theory: Teaching strategies - Teacher
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Providing Instruction Based on Students’ Learning Style Preferences Does Not Improve Learning
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Greta Thunberg is amazing. She may be wrong and, if so, you should point out where she is wrong and explain why. However, if you want to attack her for being 16 or for any other personal attribute then get in the sea.
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A Little Guide for Teachers: Cognitive Load Theory | Corwin
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When I visited Michaela, I asked my guides how it compared to their primary schools. They agreed that the difference was that there was no bullying at Michaela.
Totally invented.
Michaela is the ‘strictest school in Britain’ and we don’t do this.
Fabians say kids across the country are out of lessons for not having pens.
Kids out of school because they are terrified of bullying though.
Why not make a poster about that?
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From the discussion around this, it seems that some people think ‘memorisation’ is a specific teaching method whereas others, like me, think it means committing something to memory.
Kids need to KNOW their times tables, but they DON’T need to MEMORIZE them. Do you agree? 🤔
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It's taken me 26 years of teaching to learn to *always* collect up the assessments myself and check each one has a *name* on it.
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Educational progressivism is subtractive
It looks at schools and education systems and seeks things to take away
- guidance
- teacher authority
- the timetable
- memorisation
- tests
- homework
- rules
- writing
- facts
- walls
- the canon
- school itself
It is a…
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“Hate crime can take any shape and isn't always illegal behaviour...”
Say what?
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