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Back to the Future

Ensuring something happens in the future is potentially rather easier to achieve if you possess a time machine. In theory such a contraption facilitates your travel back in time to amend things that are wrong with the present before they happen, or enables you to leap forwards to tweak moments in the future for the better. However, as Marty and Doc humorously demonstrate, this isn’t always as simple as it might seem! For the rest of us non-time-machine-owning folk, our main hope for ensuring things happen in the future lies in the effectiveness of our ‘prospective memory’. As opposed to ‘retrospective memory’ (where we are trying to remember something from the past), the concept of prospective memory refers to our ability to remember something in the future. Will you remember to wish Lucy a happy birthday tomorrow morning? Will you remember to send Jack to the office at 12.20pm for their appointment? Will you put out the garden waste bin instead of the food waste bin next week? T...
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Subject Symmetry

Some subjects appear to be awash with books on how to teach them and writing on what constitutes a ‘good’ curriculum in terms of that subject. Wise subject leaders who are engaged in curriculum design would of course do well to read such material to help aid their thinking, as would senior leaders who are responsible for quality assurance.   But what if little or nothing appears to have been written about the teaching of or curriculum thinking in relation to a particular subject? Where does a subject leader go for inspiration? How do they know if their curriculum is any ‘good’ or how it could be improved? How might senior leaders attempt to quality assure that curriculum?  The answer is that the curriculum thinking must be done from scratch. Before any work can be started the parties involved need first to educate themselves in the underlying principles and concepts of curriculum theory. These generic principles then need to be tentatively applied to the subject. There is n...
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Turn over a new leaf...

“What is interleaving?”  Answering this question is rather like answering the question, “what is healthy eating?” It’s complicated. Eat Your Greens Answering that eating vegetables is likely to be healthy would be correct in the eyes of most. Propelling the cabbage soup diet? Probably not. The core and important ‘vegetables are healthy’ message can become warped when taken to an extreme. The best answers to the question involve balance and sense, but there is no single answer and interpretations vary. And so it is when understanding interleaving. The core ‘mixing up topics is useful’ message of interleaving can unfortunately become seriously contorted beyond recognition and bereft of value when applied without careful thought. Only precise understanding and delicate application appear to deliver the benefits of this interesting, research-based and valuable strategy and thus these are what I encourage you to pursue. So, let me take you on a journey. Let’s explore ...
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