Teacher training

  • Diagrarting: theorising and practising new ways of writing and drawing

    To “diagrart” (my neologism combining the words diagrams, dialogue and art), one must write and draw, and believe you are creating art, no matter how crude you think your work to be.

  • Letting it all spill out: the benefits of venting for creative writing teachers and students. 

    Specific therapeutic pedagogies that help people ‘vent’ their traumas and issues, with lots of practical suggestions and a rationale for ‘letting it all spill out’ in educational settings.

  • Teaching 1984 in the surveillance culture of schools

    Teaching Orwell’s “1984” as a set text in an examination-obsessed and heavily surveilled school system.

  • How to use study guides in the classroom — TES Pro article

          Please click on these JPEGs twice in order to see a full size version of this article and then press Ctrl+ if you wish to zoom in further.

  • Academy plan to use untrained teachers is an outrage

    Why is Michael Gove instituting this policy when he has praised countries like Finland where teachers are intensively trained? The news today that the education secretary is to remove the requirement for academies to employ qualified teachers sent a shudder down my spine. For a teacher like me, who has taught for more than 20 […]

  • The classroom should be a place of learning – but not for teachers

    Michael Gove’s plans to move teacher training out of universities will provoke protest at teachers’ conferences No article on matters educational is complete without a disquisition on standards. So here’s one, right at the top. The coalition’s plans to replace teacher-training at university with on-the-job learning will mean that standards – standards in teaching, that […]

  • Training teachers at college is better than on the job

    University training sounds like a luxury, but is actually cheaper and more effective Not many people outside academia will protest about the axing of teacher training in universities — but they should. The new Education White Paper, which is due to be published this week, will stipulate that new teachers should be trained “on the […]

  • Education white paper: an assault on schools

    This week’s education white paper will seriously undermine standards of teaching in our schools On the surface the new education white paper, due to be published next week but widely leaked in the press today, appears to be all about promoting good teachers. Having a good degree and two decades of experience in the classroom, […]

  • Is class the place for a ‘culture of love’?

    It’s the role of parents, not teachers, to provide emotional nurturing for children Love is in the air. The latest big idea to emerge in schools during these summery months is that teachers like me should be loving their pupils more. The guru espousing this idea is Dr Andrew Curran, a practising paediatric neurologist in […]

  • Co-operative schools? The reality is a fright

    An educationalist warns that the evidence suggests the Tory proposal for teacher-run schools would lead to chaos What a great wheeze! Just think, if the Tories come to power, my teacher chums and I could be running our own co-operative schools. For a teacher like me, having struggled to teach under the iron grip of […]

  • What makes a great teacher?

    David Cameron thinks a good teacher is all about having a good degree but, says one member of the profession, that couldn’t be further from the truth David Cameron’s proclamation that the Tories will be “brazenly elitist” about the calibre of candidates entering the teaching profession betrays the fact that he doesn’t know anything about […]

  • Don’t judge teachers by their degrees

    I’ve seen too many graduates with first-class degrees die in the classroom. David Cameron’s ‘elitist’ policies would be destructive So what makes a good teacher? Suddenly, answering this question properly seems to be of crucial importance. Today, with much fanfare, David Cameron, trumpeted plans to stop graduates with poor degrees from so-called “poor” universities from […]