News

In Matthew Syed’s excellent book “Black Box Thinking,” the author explores why some professions, like airline pilots, react and respond so well to mistakes and how having a positive attitude to this has led to huge increases in passenger safety, whereas other professions are much slower and less inclined to respond to the mistakes made and therefore improvement is extremely slow. I would definitely put teaching in the second category but what are the reasons for this and what can we do about it?

By Graham Dakin

Thanks to the recent books, blog posts and Twitter feeds, the mystery behind how to retain knowledge best and most effectively has been simplified to a few very simple techniques. However there is still a lot of work to be done in ensuring that these techniques are taught to all teachers and most importantly to all students.

By Graham Dakin

The usual approach to planning a year, or a two year GCSE course, of teaching is to look at the topics and teach them one after the other. For example, in science we’ve always simply taught biology 1, then chemistry 1, then physics 1, one after the other, then revise the lot at the end for the exams.

By Phil Wilson

I don’t know about you, but I’ve often wondered why computer games are so compelling, so addictive to so many of our young people. To pin it down: they are just the right difficulty.

By Phil Wilson

Every day, I practice driving. To and from work equals almost an hour. Sometimes I even put in massive bouts of practice and drive a solid four hours. So why aren’t I a world rally driving champion?

By Phil Wilson

It is probably fair to say that the idea that a good teacher can pick up almost any material and deliver it successfully to a class is heading out of fashion, but it does linger in the idea that teaching methods are more important than the teacher’s knowledge and understanding of the content.

By Phil Wilson

The teachers at Nova Hreod Academy have, for some time now, been paying increasing attention to the cutting edge cognitive science of learning and how we might be able to use its teachings in our classrooms.