The words below are the opening paragraphs of  a sacred scripture describing the second age of the elder race of man. The elder race of man, were an ancient civilisation who inhabited middle earth in a long forgotten age. These extracts are from a larger text found in an earthenware pot in the desert. It… Continue reading On the discursive gap: a story about why stories are so scary in education

I wanted to try and thread some recent twitter debates together and make the point that,  often, random different arguments are related. I’m going to touch upon the Sugata Mitra debate. Mitra is accused of poor research. I would describe it as “discursive research”; it generates the potential for change but it is empirically weak. You could… Continue reading On Mitra’s “no holes in the wall” and the DT Willingham meme: weak research needs clever discourse to survive

I’ve been pondering whether multiple choice questions assess “higher order thinking“. Daisy Christodoulou thinks they do: It is true that many selected-response questions do measure only shallow learning, but well-designed selected-response items can probe student understanding in some depth.’ Citing Dylan Wiliam: Wiliam gives some good examples of these types of question This example is… Continue reading Do multiple choice questions assess “higher order thinking”?