Challenge beyond Bloom’s

What makes one question hard and another one easy? When I trained, Bloom's taxonomy was everywhere. Personally, I haven't really paid it much attention in quite a while, but I was reminded recently that it is still used extensively in...

What to do after a mock? Assessment, sampling, inferences and more

A common question in the #CogSciSci email group is what to do after students have done an assessment or a mock. Most commonly, people spend a lesson "going over" the paper, where the teacher goes through each question and students make...

All the SLOP you need

I have finally finished updating my booklets. The page where I used to keep them got a bit messy so I'm starting a new one here. In terms of changes, I have fiddled the sequencing on a bunch of them,...

The generic and the disciplinary: finding a balance

Yesterday, I posted a blog arguing that "teaching and learning" is dead. It generated some really fascinating conversations online, and I wanted to pick up on something a couple of people raised: it may be the case that curriculum comes...

Modelling Curricular Thinking: Inspired by Ben Ranson

I was just settling in for a well-earned evening playing video games on my laptop when I saw this thread by Ben Ranson: https://twitter.com/ThatBenRanson/status/1092498480445227009 The reason why Ben's thread is important is because it models curricular thinking. Most of us...

Core and hinterland: What’s what and why it matters

In 1918, the Nobel Prize for Chemistry was awarded to a war criminal. In the early years of the 20th century, German scientist Fritz Haber developed a process to artificially synthesise ammonia, a vital component of agricultural fertilisers. A reaction...