Resources

19 Apr

Posted at 08:52h in Uncategorized

This is a book everyone involved in education should read whether they be in early years,  secondary schooling or post-school education and particularly these days in university education. Too often education is not about learning but about instruction or even propaganda and not about empowering individuals to make their whole life a learning experience rich in its variety and usefulness. Too often learning is impeded because it is too controlling and conformist. And in some areas of life such as health education, it is little more than bad advertising. Learning should lead to internalisation - that is understanding and capability. It is also a very personal book because...

28 Mar

Posted at 08:49h in Uncategorized

I once heard a distinguished physicist describe Quantum Theory as a major problem because: It accounts for all the known facts. It makes no sense. His error was to attempt to live in a Newtonian world and not recognise the paradigm shift necessary to appreciate Quantum Theory. I experience the same issue when we talk to traditionalist teachers and educators about the idea of using a Self Managed Learning approach for learning purposes. It is a problem to them because: The approach responds fully to all the existing knowledge about learning. It makes no sense – to them. Knowledge about learning Here are just a few things...

11 Feb

Posted at 08:50h in Uncategorized

I meet many parents of school-age children. Most seem to worry about the progress of their child. The pressure from Government and from schools tends to be to expect neat linear progression. The requirement seems to be for a steady upwards curve of learning. But experience (and research) shows that this can be unrealistic. Here are some examples of different trajectories. Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society Sir Venki Ramakrishnan was being interviewed on Desert Island Discs. Here is someone who is about as respectable as you can get. Yet being questioned about his education he was happy to say that...

13 Jan

Posted at 08:57h in Uncategorized

FROM TEACHING & LEARNING ONLINE - NEW MODEL OF LEARNING FOR A CONNECTED WORLD, VOL 2, EDS SUTTON, B. & BASIEL, A.  2014, ROUTLEDGE. I had thought that I might call this chapter ‘Explorations in the South East’ – but that would have been, perhaps, too elliptical and mystifying. My thought about the title was influenced by the model below from Coomey and Stephenson (2001). Put simply, they postulate two dimensions in relation to learning – one about who decides the process (shown as the horizontal axis) and one about who decides the content and tasks (shown as the vertical axis). The...

30 Dec

Posted at 09:12h in Uncategorized

We made the strong case that children should have increased rights including the right to choose their own education – as we provide in SML College “Children should have the right to an education of their own choosing. This is the most significant problem at present. For instance, many children do not find the state provision meets their needs. There is discrimination against working class, BAME, autistic, disabled children in many countries, for instance. In the UK children born in the summer do not have the same right to fair treatment in the exam system so at least 10,000 every year get...

30 Dec

Posted at 09:01h in Uncategorized

The Guardian newspaper reported a conference speaker who challenged his audience with the comment: “Any job that can be exhaustively defined – for instance in a job description or a manual of procedures – will eventually be subject to automation.” He asked his audience for examples of jobs that would not be affected by this – and most of the examples he was given he could easily refute. The most interesting thing about this story is that the report appeared on August 22nd !979. The article pointed to the need for education to respond to this coming change. It’s not apparent...