Teaching students skills is possible and necessary
I read on blogs and on twitter, that teachers should only teach knowledge and should not teach generic skills. I believe this is wrong and dangerous.  This blog looks at how to teach skills, and examines the arguments for and against skills teaching.

Educational reform in the UK over many governments has been systematically irrational: policies have been imposed that directly contradict the most authoritative evidence. This has puzzled and angered me for some time. I’d like to know why this happens and look forward to your comments below.

Experimenting with new approaches to teaching is the only way to improve.
I’m a great fan of Professor Dylan Wiliam, and his  book on how to embed formative assessment into your teaching is a stunner. It has some brilliant teaching methods for you to try.

The downside of grading
Most people reckon that grades motivate, creating healthy competition and something to aim for. But one of the surprises from educational research is that grading has a negative effect on at least half of students.

Geoff’s does his sums, and awards FE teachers a £50k bonus.
If you are a teacher or trainer in the Post-19 Further Education sector, you are worth in the order of £500,000 a year to the national economy, according to a recent government research paper.

The strategies used by exceptional teachers
This is a very under-researched question but we are beginning to get some answers. What makes brilliant teachers brilliant is not who they are, but what they do in the classroom, and some of the techniques they use anyone could adopt.

The best evidence is flawed, the rest is worse. But there are ways to navigate this uncertainty
Summary
No evidence or advice is perfect, but some sources of evidence are much more trustworthy than others. You can often tell a better source from a worse one, as I will explain.

According to my students, one of the most successful strategies I used as a teacher was getting students to help each other. I was astonished by how much helpers and helped enjoyed this process, and by how much time it saved me.

Feedback means fixing – not marking
Many teachers interpret ‘feedback’ or ‘formative assessment’ to mean commenting on students work, and annotating it with ticks, crosses, and comments and so on. Some think this includes grades or marks.

Teaching skills is vital: why God doesn’t agree with ‘Seven Myths about Education’: A response to Daisy Christodoulou’s book.