A few readers kindly got in touch over the last week or so to complain I was writing too much and that they couldn’t keep up. Instead of shutting me up, this merely served to start me wondering about producing a digest of the month’s posts to make my output easier to swallow.

And here, in all its relative glory, it is:

1st April – Dipsticks: It all depends on what you mean by ‘engagement’

This was both a response to comment and criticism of an earlier post which questioned the importance of students being engaged in lessons. In this post I tried to unpick how engagement is commonly understood and critiqued the example of ‘dipsticks’ intended to be more engaging than useful. And nary an April Fools prank in sight, I’m afraid.

13th April – Curiosity: the knowledge gap

A brief post on curiosity in which I argue that it’s innate and cannot usefully be taught.

15th April – What to do about literacy

A shameless plug for my services.

16th April – The best case fallacy or, why we balls things up

An examination of the ways in which optimism leads to poor decision making with a handy checklist to help you avoid making some of the grosser errors.

18th April – Is differentiation a zero-sum game?

An attempt to apply the zero-sum fallacy to differentiation, setting and selective education. I really do think one child’s success comes at the cost of another’s failure.

20th April – Right brain/left brain bollocks

I hate being pestered to publish random people’s infographics and usually refuse point blank. But I made an exception for this exceptionally awful take on the right brain/left brain myth.

22nd April – Whose research is it anyway?

John Hattie’s apparently dismissive approach to teachers conducting small scale research projects rather got my goat.

24th April – Chicken or egg? Thoughts about thinking

This is yet another rehash of the knowledge/skills debate, but I do think I’m slowly getting somewhere. For all those who say we should stop talking about this: fie! And for shame.

25th April – Slow Writing at #researchED primary literacy conference

Me talking about Slow Writing at Tom Bennett’s primary literacy event.

26th April – A review of The Beautiful Risk of Education by Harry Webb

Why write a review of Gert Biesta’s progressive bible when someone else has already done one. Particularly as Harry’s site is now defunct.

27th April – A few thoughts about character education

Following the Character vs. Knowledge debate the previous weekend, I decided to weigh in with my own thoughts on the subject.

29th April – Trust, accountability and why we need them both

Earlier in the year I wrote a series of posts urging school leaders to place more trust in teachers. This post looks at how best to temper that trust with accountability.

30th April – The fetish of marking

Teachers mark because it makes them feel righteous. And because someone’s threatening to beat them if they don’t. But does it really make sufficient difference to justify all those lost hours and misery?

And that was the month that was. If you feel this was in any way useful, do please let me know and I’ll make it a regular feature.

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