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Education without metaphors?
We love metaphors don’t we? They can help us to express new or complex ideas in term of more familiar ones. They can add richness and drama to our explanations. Good metaphors can help us to...
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Education as a whole and in its parts
Creating a successful learning community Our college mission is to ‘create a successful learning community’. While this only applies to our small part of the education system it’s not a bad aspiration...
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The keyboard and the music
We spend much of our time in front of keyboards. Our computer keyboard is an essential interface with the world as it appears to us on our screen. We use keys to input letters, form our words and...
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Valuing student research
The continuing growth of the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) in England’s sixth forms is a sign that students, teachers, universities and employers value what it offers. However, less than 10% of...
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Learning is dialectical
An attempt to start from first principles… There is now, there is before and there is after. Whatever time is, our awareness of it helps us distinguish between past and future. Within our own lived...
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Gulliver’s levels
Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’, first published in 1726, mocks the travel journals of its day with their increasingly fantastical adventures. It is also brilliant social satire, mercilessly...
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Listening to our post-16 conscience.
Frank Coffield is the conscience of the post-16 sector. When faddishness or instrumentalism threaten, he is there to remind us of our values and our purpose. A decade ago, Coffield was one of the first...
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The skilled learner DOES
Our mission at Newham Sixth Form College is ‘to create a successful learning community’. Each of the three ideas; success, learning and community are important to us and we make sure we define what...
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London: a global learning city
Next May, London will elect a new mayor and Greater London Authority (GLA). The mayor has no statutory education powers but the fact that they are directly elected by the people of London gives them a...
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Sharing the secrets of success
This is what I say to all new students at Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) after welcoming them on their first day: Now you’ve enrolled and you’re about to start your first year as a sixth form...
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The outstanding lesson
We were lucky enough to have Harriet Harper deliver a NewVIc lecture at Newham Sixth Form College on 14th October. Harriet is a former HMI and now helps to train teachers for the post-compulsory...
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Learning by walking about.
It was just a walk; teachers and students following a circular 20 mile route around central London. It was also a personal challenge for each of us; to keep going, to keep up, to map-read, to learn new...
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Blogging as learning: review of 2015.
What went well… I’ve enjoyed my second full year of blogging and have continued to write about whatever interests me, resulting in a fairly eclectic collection of posts on a range of topics with...
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Primo Levi on work and education
In his wonderful La chiave a stella (The Wrench) published in 1978, Primo Levi shares with us an exchange of stories told by Faussone, the itinerant Piedmontese rigger, and a narrator who, like Levi...
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Capital as metaphor
The economy of ideas #4 We talk about social capital, cultural capital, creative capital, even ‘emotional capital’. It seems that capital can stand in for almost every human capacity. Why is this?...
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Design for Learning.
Newham Sixth Form College (NewVIc) celebrates its 25th anniversary this year and we are delighted to be unveiling a wonderful new building for our Silver Jubilee. In nearly a decade this is the only...
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10 things which could improve education
I'd like to offer the following tentative 10 point charter to improve education at all levels as an initial contribution to the debate about the future of education in England. 1. Build a comprehensive...
View ArticleRebecca Solnit on Hope.
In a crisis, it is easy to despair. ‘Don’t mourn, organise!’ is a good mantra in such situations. Mourning has its place, but our response should be neither blind despair nor blind hope. We need to...
View ArticleSeven ways to avoid a Frankenstein education.
Seven ways to avoid a Frankenstein education – Philippe Meirieu. The French educationalist, Philippe Meirieu, in his 1996 book ‘Frankenstein Pedagogue’ reviews popular accounts of attempts to fashion a...
View ArticleOvercoming the barriers to learning
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at WorldSkills November 2021 These are a few thoughts about how teachers can help learners overcome some of the barriers to their learning. This is not a comprehensive...
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