Data Literacy is the ability to read and make sense of data. With data being ubiquitous, this is a fundamental skill for our times. The emergence of cloud technologies, real-time dashboards and the expectation of making data-driven decisions is something that affects most professions. Forbes, 2020. In education, we can…

When I was consulting for NoTosh, I noticed that many early years teachers found it challenging to envisage how Design Thinking might look for their age group. I often had questions such as, ‘But, how do we know it works?’ It does work. And, although I would model various strategies…

The greatest crimes in the world are not committed by people breaking the rules but by people following the rules. BANKSY Something has become apparent lately. There are a lot of “rules” in education. No. I’m not writing about the Ten Rules of the Classroom — that’s a totally different…

I’ve been in the education profession now for 20 years. Most of that time, I taught in semi-open-plan or fully open-plan schools. In fact, I went to an open-plan school for my own primary school education. I find the debate about open-plan schooling laughable. …

What is it? Recently, there was an interesting conversation on Twitter instigated by @MrCrawfordEng about how we might know our curriculum has an impact. What a brilliant provocation! As I read through the responses, I felt… unsatisfied. I’m not convinced that anyone quite captured what makes 12 years of learning…

Actually, the credentials of now should be extra. I’ve been doing a lot of digging in the credentialing and recognition space lately as part of a Social Lab with Learning Creates and I’ve noticed something that I should have cotton-oned to long ago… The way in which we credential young people is incredibly binary. In a recent interview…

And that goes for teachers, too. I noticed something intriguing when I was visiting a school this week. It’s not unique to this school but on this day, it became very apparent to me. We must remember that we need schools so that we can learn together. What does learning…

To be honest, I’d not heard the term ‘front-loading’ until I arrived in SA. For those unfamiliar with the term, it describes the explicit teaching done to young people before they can practice. The premise is that young people must have a mental model that’s taught to them by a…