You're a teacher who wants to stay ahead of the curve?
LinkedIn Asked:
You're a teacher who wants to stay ahead of the curve. How can you keep your knowledge fresh?
Where do you find knowledge online?
EEF Toolkit, Evidence4Impact, Visible Learning, The Learning and Forgetting Lab, The Learning Scientists, Naylor's Natter podcast, any of the teaching school newsletters: Durrington, Bradford, Greenshaw, Huntington and many more.
Bloggers, so many bloggers. How do you know if they are any good?
Use the DfE peformance tables for their schools and departments. If their department P8 is not higher than the school P8, bring pinches of salt. See how their school does compared to the 50 most similar schools on FFT Schools Like Yours. If it does very well, take back that salt.
You will be shocked by how many bloggers, and big name bloggers at that, are soon drowning in salty seas. Remember, just because an idea seems to make sense and meet our view of what teaching ought to be like, doesn’t make that idea any good.
What should you look for?
Studies which suggest students will make great progress.
Expect these to fail when you try them. Try them anyway. Evaluate quickly with actual assessments to measure actual progress. Iterate. Improve. Keep assessing and measuring. Almost no teacher or school leaders do this, which is why most bloggers and research schools get no extra progress, year on year. Yes, students in research schools make almost no extra progress.
Make a difference first. Then make a noise. Not the other way around.
If you want to read the types of techniques which helped at Progress 8 of 0.5 to a school, try my book The Slightly Awesome Teacher.
Or if you want to see techniques which have so far added Progress 8 0.9 to English departments, try my book The Full English.
