As in any other profession, there are fashions in education. There new theories, studies and band wagons that people jump on. As generations change, so do pedagogies. I am glad that the Learning Styles ‘theory’ is not bandied about anymore. Thankfully we no longer pigeonhole students as a verbal, visual or kinesthetic learner. No one talks about left vs right brain activities. The next challenge is to debunk the ‘boys vs girls’ paradigm. Yes, they are different, but there are as many differences in a group of girls alone as there are between boys and girls. Below is a summarised article about some of the pseudo science of ‘gender differences’. Time to finally move away from this male/female dichotomy and accept each student as an individual.

The male v female brain: is it all in the mind?

• The idea that biological differences in male and female brains give rise to different behaviours, aptitudes and learning styles has recently become firmly lodged in the public brain, thanks to reams of research endorsed in scores of popular science books. Continue reading “Fashionable Theories and Assumptions”

At the bottom of this page are my highlights from an excellent post by Karl Fisch. He writes about how being on Twitter can give you a distorted view of reality; you either feel ‘like crap’ because all those people seem to be doing better and more amazing things than you are; or you feel inspired, ahead of the game and able to reach for the stars.

That made me reflect on teachers’ self image and  insecurities in general. Continue reading “Teachers’ insecurities and the Twitter Distortion Field”