Reading Time: Approx 3mins
By Alex Quigley
Deep vocabulary learning is irreversible, irreplaceable and essential to learning and thinking. However, as it is so integral to all of schooling and learning beyond the school gates, it proves very difficult to assess and evaluate effectively. Simply counting up words in lists will never do the job adequately...
Reading Time: Approx 4mins
By Dr Chris Jellis, Research Associate at CEM
Any good assessment is a balance between reliability and validity.
A lot has already been written about this. Dylan William discusses the complexity of the relationship between reliability and validity in Reliability, Validity and all that Jazz, where he refers to the ‘tension’ between them....
Video Duration: Approx 40mins
By Professor Rob Coe, Director, CEM
At the Festival of Education 2018, Rob Coe’s presentation followed on from his recent blog post But that is NOT AN ASSESSMENT! by discussing some of the ways schools, and teachers, can use an evidence-based approach to get better at what they do, and he looked at what’s good and what’s not good in relation to assessment...
Reading Time: Approx 4mins
By Professor Rob Coe, Director, CEM
It has become common, although I still find it surprising, to hear teachers use the word ‘data’ as if it were a bad thing.
‘Data drops’ have come to epitomise a pointless exercise in collecting meaningless numbers and feeding them into a system that can have no possible benefit for learners. People even say that Ofsted is ‘too reliant on data’, as if a judgement process could - or should – rely on anything other than data...
Reading Time: Approx 2mins
By Mark Frazer, Teaching and Learning Lead, CEM
In my previous blog post, I considered some of the findings from the 2015 PISA study.
The data appear to suggest that independent or student led activities do not support outcomes as effectively as more traditional teacher led activities.
In reality, can either approach be solely relied upon?...
Reading Time: Approx 3mins
By Sue Holt, Vice Principal, New Cairo British International School
It would be an easy task to list the benefits of working in an international school.
Less easy would be finding ways to meet some of the unexpected and complex challenges that face senior leaders in an international education...
Reading Time: Approx 2mins
Believe it or not, there were bookcases before IKEA’s ubiquitous BILLY bookshelf.
We’ve been putting things on shelves for thousands of years. Archaeological remains from earliest times suggest that clay and stone tablets were kept in some arranged order by their authors or collectors...
Has the removal of national curriculum levels in England created a broader interest in assessment practices?
The removal of levels back in 2014 caused chaos, confusion and consternation amongst many educators. To some, levels were a secure, reliable, dependable way of scaffolding a child’s journey through school. To others, they represented the limitations of people’s understanding about learning and assessment practice...
Reading Time: Approx 4mins
By Mark Frazer, Teaching and Learning Lead, CEM
Since the publication of the results from the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), many researchers and educational bloggers have drawn attention to, and have questioned, the results. For example, Greg Ashman has discussed the implications of the 2015 study on several occasions.
The 2015 PISA study involved assessing the performance of over half a million 15 year olds in 72 countries using a series of computer-based tasks and questionnaires...
Reading Time: Approx 3mins
By Dr Deborah M. Netolicky
It makes sense that the most effective teaching methods are used in classrooms, and that the most effective leadership governance practices are used in schools, but how do educators decide on what evidence on which they should rely, to whom they should listen, and how they might engage meaningfully with research findings? How do we know what research is worth listening to, what is worth ignoring, and what has been debunked?
In my last post for the CEM Blog, I explored the dangers of educators accepting seemingly simple solutions to the complex problems of education. In this post I suggest five ways in which teachers, schools, and systems can meaningfully engage in research...