Josey De Rossi Jennie [Vine] and I working with the teachers in a similar way to the way we expect the teachers to work with the children. We have coaching conversations according to what we know about them as teachers and where they are in their thinking and in their skills and in their abilities.
The 1998 primary arts publication I worked on, which brought together a number of cross-curricular arts project for primary schools, is pictured on the right. As the resource was commissioned by five arts education associations, it was my role as chair of the joint committee to oversee the collection of exemplars of arts projects in … Read more
What do you think is meant by ‘doing the basics’? A debate rages around what constitutes essential knowledge and skills at every level of schooling – from early years to higher education. I want to propose that the arts sector has the ability to shift the debate by showing how there is no knowledge, … Read more
The size of data, the ‘knowledge economy’ and just about anything we can imagine in a Web 2.0 age feels overwhelming. This is why it’s useful to view case studies of what others are doing in applying technologies creatively, to see what is possible and how you stand it relation to the fast evolving scene. I recommend … Read more
I want to consider what it means to do ‘high-order thinking’ in arts education. The terms ‘high’ and ‘low order’ is commonly associated with Bloom’s Taxonomy, the basis of many marking keys for courses and exams in primary, secondary and tertiary education since the 1950s. In the past, I believe that its hierarchy of six … Read more
I find the categorisation of people into ‘thinkers’ and ‘doers’ rubbish: depending on the context, you can be damned or praised for being either. More significantly, the separation diverts us from dealing with a more important question of how thoughts and actions are inevitably, even if inexplicably, related. According to cognitive linguists George Lakoff and … Read more
There would be little disagreement on the importance of drama and literacy, including broadening and deepening the vocabulary of young people. In the preface to Teaching effective vocabulary , the 2008 Chief Adviser on School Standards in the UK, Sue Hackman, compares having a good vocabulary to ‘an artist’s palette of colours’. Vocabulary is more than a … Read more
The project around the Trivia Night was based on investigating ‘faith’. We picked up from where the kids had left off the year before, looking at how things had changed through time. From there, we moved onto examining how ideas change the world.
Parents are frequently the focus of media and academic reports linking academic success or failure to a child’s home life. This is particularly true in debates on learning literacy. Scholastic recently published the seventh edition of Kids And Family Reading Report which made the case that parents should continue reading aloud to children beyond the … Read more
There’s this big disparity between people coming from Spain to see us and people down the road not even knowing we exist. If we passionate about changing the way things are taught then we need people to know what we’re doing.