Dylan Wiliam

An excellent keynote by Dylan Wiliam from this year's 2012 SSAT conference.



It includes a range of information on the importance of preparing students for the world of work.

There are some good quotes in the talk, some of which are from familiar people and places....

Seymour Papert talks about there only being one skill that really matters in the 21st century:

"We need to produce people who know how to act when they're faced with situations for which they were not specifically prepared" (1998)

There's a list of PRESENTATIONS on Dylan's website - plenty of research based inspiration for teachers who want to develop themselves...

It matters which teacher you get. Are you one of the teachers that students need to get ?

I liked the phrase 'policy tourism' - let's go to Singapore and Finland for example to learn from them - except it is done selectively...

I was also interested in the work of Taleb, and the phrase 'fooled by randomness' which is useful for our I-USE project as is the failure to look at the baseline...

Also on teacher observation - 'you can't look at a teacher and see how good they are'... Check Heather Hill from Harvard's work on this

"We don't know who is going to be a good teacher before they get into the classroom..."
"Most important question you should ask new teachers is "do you like young children" ? If not, the next forty years are going to be a bit of a drag for you..."

Good teachers make the teachers who teach their kids in future years look better...
Can't look at value added scores either as the value isn't always added at the end of the year....

Lots to think about, and points to make to SLT who want to observe you for a short while and then make judgements on you.... but also a responsibility to continually improve your practice... which means trying new things and taking risks... at a time when that is proving more difficult...
Happy New Year to all teachers :)

Comments