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How Successful Valedictorians Are After High School. PISA TIMMS. International tests don't tell us about the quality of Australian education? At the end of last year, the results of two international tests – the Trends in International Maths and Science Study (TIMSS), and the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) Australia – were released and both showed Australia had fallen a few rungs in the international education league tables.

International tests don't tell us about the quality of Australian education?

The attacks on Australian education began immediately. Opinion columns and letters to the editor accused schools and teachers of failing their students and suggested ways to fix the 'crisis'. It is clear that the international tests comprise the sole evidence for the claim that standards in Australian education are slipping in comparison to other countries but what do they test?

John Hattie's Eight Mind Frames For Teachers. Edutopia. Student: I opened it up, and there was a root inside.

edutopia

Anne: What's exciting about the inquiry models that we go far and above what the curriculum expectations are. Kids are invested in their learning, and they're able to transfer and apply what they're learning in school to the real world. Lindsay: Inquiry based learning allows the students to be the thinkers. Leading school improvement: It’s difficult isn’t it? Being the leader of a school is a demanding and complex enterprise.

Leading school improvement: It’s difficult isn’t it?

A critical agenda for any school leader is improving the learning of students. Why can it be so hard to generate improvement that is sustainable? If the solution was straightforward, all schools would be on a trajectory towards strong academic achievement. A focus on innovative learning environments. ‘Developing innovative learning environments is necessary today, as traditional educational approaches will not be able to deliver 21st Century competencies for learners.’

A focus on innovative learning environments

That's one of the key findings of an OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) policy report on school reform. Education Policy Outlook 2015: Making Reforms Happen, explores successful approaches to growing and sustaining innovative learning environments (ILEs). It draws on research carried out by the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation across 23 countries.

Visible Thinking

Teaching & Learning. Four Strategies To Create A Culture of Success in Middle School. If you’ve ever taught middle school, you know it can be challenging.

Four Strategies To Create A Culture of Success in Middle School

But you also know what a special place being in the middle can be. Middle schoolers enjoy laughter. They’re curious. Parent Teacher Interviews. Five Planning Tips for Successful Parent Conferences. By Amber Chandler Until I had school-age children of my own, I did not understand the mixed emotions that parent-teacher conferences evoke from the parent perspective.

Five Planning Tips for Successful Parent Conferences

The incredible weight of walking into the classroom to discuss either of my children, Zoey or Oliver, was staggering, and as a parent, I was completely taken aback. I already had dreams mapped out for these little people. They were a huge reflection of my husband’s and my philosophies, our parenting skills, our desires, and, yes, our shortcomings.

Data

The Learning Innovation Cycle. The Learning Innovation Cycle: How Disruption Creates Lasting Change by Terry Heick Disruption is an interesting topic for the same reason that cowboys, gangsters, and villains are interesting.

The Learning Innovation Cycle

It’s unpredictable. Problematic. Against the grain. Library: 10 Learning Models & Frameworks. TeachThought Library: 10 Learning Models & Frameworks by TeachThought Staff For professional development around these ideas, contact us.

Library: 10 Learning Models & Frameworks

As with any publication, blogs and websites are only as thoughtful as their design. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, no matter how “good” the content is, it’s useless.

TED talk

Brain Training. Study Skills. Learning Areas. Homework. How Open Badges Could Really Work In Education. Higher education institutions are abuzz with the concept of Open Badges.

How Open Badges Could Really Work In Education

Defined as a symbol or indicator of an accomplishment, skill, quality or interest, Open Badges are not only a hot topic as of late, but are also debated by some critics as the latest threat to higher education. A closer look at this emerging trend reveals benefits for traditional institutions and alternative learning programs alike. Some advocates have suggested that badges representing learning and skills acquired outside the classroom, or even in Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), will soon supplant diplomas and course credits. Badges in Higher Education For higher education institutions interested in keeping pace, establishing a digital ecosystem around badges to recognize college learning, skill development and achievement is less a threat and more an opportunity.

Accredited higher education institutions already possess significant advantages.

Differentiation

Downside of Grit. April 6, 2014 The Downside of "Grit" What Really Happens When Kids Are Pushed to Be More Persistent?

Downside of Grit

By Alfie Kohn [This is an expanded version of the published article, which appeared in the Post's Sunday "Outlook" section. It has been adapted from chapter 7 of The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom about Children and Parenting.] Cognitive ability isn't the only factor that determines how children will fare in school, let alone in life. But a funny thing has happened to the message since then. Emblematic of this shift is Paul Tough's recent bestseller How Children Succeed, which opens with a declaration that what matters most for children are qualities like “persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence.” Nor is this emphasis unique to Tough. The hard-line inner-city charter school chain known as KIPP has integrated the idea of grit into its teacher training.

Doesn't grit enjoy empirical support, though? The 6 Types Of Assessments (And How They're Changing) Testing, especially any sort of standardized testing tends to get a bad rap. Teachers complain that they spend too much time teaching to a test. But assessments do have value, and an important place in our learning structure. By measuring what students are learning, we as teachers can look at how we are approaching different subjects, materials, and even different students. The handy infographic below takes a look at different types of assessments and their attributes and questions. Keep reading to learn more. There are many types of assessments: diagnostic, formative, summative, norm-referenced, criterion-referenced, and interim/benchmarked are the types overviewed here.

80 Time-Saving Social Media Shortcuts. Deeper Learning: Highlighting Student Work. A student self-portrait from Ron Berger's student work portfolio Photo credit: Ron Berger.

Pedagogy

21 Century Pedagogy. Videos, Common Core Resources And Lesson Plans For Teachers: Teaching Channel. 4 Different Visual Guides To Bloom's Taxonomy. I recently received a question from a reader who wasn’t clear about what exactly Bloom’s taxonomy is. It got me thinking that perhaps not everyone is a Bloom’s taxonomy expert, and a little bit of a refresher might be helpful. In later posts, we’ll look at a variety of iterations and interpretations of the traditional Bloom’s graphic, along with apps and tools that address Bloom’s objectives in our modern classrooms. In a nutshell, Bloom’s taxonomy is a grouping of educational objectives that first came about in 1956 in an attempt to classify educational objectives.

The original looked like this: Bloom identified four principles that guided the development of the taxonomy. Based on student behaviorsShow logical relationships among the categoriesReflect the best current understanding of psychological processesDescribe rather than impose value judgments.

Electives

Presentation tools. Flipped Classroom. Formative Practice. Your Classroom Management and Student Engagement App. Learning Mentors. Assessment.