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Learn from unsung heroes
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How can we improve our school leadership?
All 160+ essays I’ve written online over the last 10+ years are on this page. All are free.
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What do we most need to know to lead schools well?
- What’s the point in schools?
- Problems we’re trying to solve
- The great brain battles
- Hornets, butterflies and workload
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Who can we best learn from?
- Daniel Willingham
- Tom Bennett
- Doug Lemov
- Viviane Robinson
- Matthew Evans
- Daisy Christodoulou
- Becky Allen
- Siegfried Engelmann
- Christine Counsell
- E.D. Hirsch
- Michel Thomas
- Luke Sparkes
- Rob Peal
- Jonathan Haidt
- Headteachers
- Teachers
- Supply teachers
- Athena!
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What can we learn from scientific research?
- Teachers lead the scientific revolution in education
- Cognitive science
- Cognitive psychology
- Why students forget
- Long-term memory
- Science of learning
- Science of memory
- Three applications of cognitive science
- Moral psychology
- Science of habits
- Science of sleep
- Science of self-control
- Cognitive science & learning
- Cheat codes to intelligence
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How can we create great school leadership?
- Dream big
- Overstretch: why and how to say no
- Strategy: a 2,500 year-old history
- Knowledge-led strategy
- Uplands
- Go upstream
- Blind spots
- Great staff culture
- Honest upward feedback
- Taking feedback well
- The wicked problem of learning
- Implementation as learning: 24 questions
- Ownership & support
- No more meetings
- QA must die
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How can we create a great student culture?
- Ethos
- Self-discipline
- Willpower
- Behaviour
- Gratitude
- High standards, high support
- Encouragement
- Stoicism
- Bootcamp
- Detail
- Enduring display
- Motivation and instruction
- Motivation and emotion
- Motivation and mindset anchoring
- Motivation and peer pressure
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How can we create great curricula?
- Curriculum design
- Knowledge improves teaching
- Which knowledge?
- The skills-knowledge debate
- Double helix
- Unit planning
- Unit evaluation
- Multiple choice questions
- Multiple choice design
- My assessment mistakes
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How can we create a great teaching culture?
- The clock and the compass: rethinking teaching
- Knowledge lessons
- Effective instruction
- Practice
- Renewable resources
- Knowledge organisers
- A 5 year revision plan
- Mnemonics
- Marking is a hornet
- CPD
- Initial Teacher Training
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How can we create great staff culture?
- Butterflies
- Overstretch: how and why to say no
- Great staff culture
- Difficult conversations
- Vibrancy
- SEX
- Research
- Cognitive biases
- Cognitive traps
- Leadership
- 7 levers
- End graded observations
- Formative-only observations
- The number one shift in education I hope to see in my lifetime
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How can we improve assessment?
- Four core insights
- Why didn’t AfL work?
- How is assessment shackling schools?
- Unshackling: assessment as subject-specific progression
- Life after levels: where SLT fear to tread
- Who’ll create a mastery assessment system?
- Three Assessment Mistakes
- Why MCQs?
- How to design MCQs
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What can we learn from teacher-writers’ thinking?
- Cognitive science crash course
- Staff culture crash course
- Student culture crash course
- Curriculum crash course
- Assessment crash course
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How can we teach English well?
- Is knowledge pointless in English?
- Why teaching skills without knowledge doesn’t work
- How knowledge is being detached from skills in English
- The double helix: how knowledge is vital for skills in English
- Reclaiming rhetoric
- The beauty of annotating
- The essay emporium: crowdsourcing English essay titles
- Macbeth
- Theatre
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What can we learn from great thinkers and unsung heroes?
- Daniel Willingham
- Doug Lemov
- Siegfried Engelmann
- E.D. Hirsch
- Matthew Evans
- Michel Thomas
- Daisy Christodoulou
- Becky Allen
- Katharine Birbalsingh
- Tom Bennett
- Luke Sparkes
- History of Education
- McKinsey
- Teach First
- Shakespeare’s Schooling
- Moonwalking with Einstein
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What can we learn from great schools?
- King’s Wimbledon
- A knowledge-led school
- Tradition & Innovation
- Dixons Trinity
- Schools succeeding against the odds
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What can we learn from new teachers and supply teachers?
- Disruption of teaching
- It’s your time you’re wasting
- I’m a teacher, get me out of here
- Hands up! Experiences of a new teacher
- Supply teaching in England
- Experiences of a supply teacher: On The Edge
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How are teachers using social media?
- Twitter CPD
- Blogging CPD
- The Blogosphere in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017-2021+
- System improvement
- Scrutinising OFSTED
- Stopping OFSTED grading teachers
- Reforming OFSTED
- Holding OFSTED accountable
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Since I first taught in 2004, I’ve been learning from unsung heroes: headteachers, school leaders, edubloggers, supply teachers, new teachers, successful schools, philosophers, cognitive scientists, cultural theorists, education psychologists, learning scientists, the best schools, sleep researchers, world memory champions, economists, habit scientists, choice architects, eduhistorians, broadcasters, strategists, iconoclasts, assessment experts, language specialists, global consulting firms, teacher recruitment charities, moral psychologists, athletes & sports coaches, behaviour tsars, ResearchEd founders, freedom fighters, preachers, reformers, chief inspectors, inspection rebels, heretics battling orthodoxies, even Shakespeare’s school and theatre… and applying the best thinking I can find, to help create the best schools.
Latest posts are at the very end of each page.