Creativity and education

Ewan McIntosh is a Scottish educator who who produces a blog on Education, ICT and other related matters. He has recently written in response to a new book by Sir Ken Robinson on Creativity in Education which raises some challenging ideas about the role of the teacher and schools in promoting creativity. To read more go here.

Distributing innovation

Professor David Hargreaves has been writing perceptively about education for many years and has recently been focused on the changes linked to the new curriculum and personalised learning. For him one of the key factors is sharing the responsibility for innovation amongst as many people as possible. Below is one example of his common sense approach:
Those who pioneer radical innovations need to keep track of
the lessons they learn during the innovation, and these lessons need
to be transferred to the recipient as an inherent part of the innovation.
Distributed innovation is effective in part because members of the
innovation network are constantly sharing the lessons learned and so
easing the innovation and transfer processes. There is always a
danger that innovators offer an innovation in too polished a form to
others. When innovations are 'good enough' , with some rough
edges, and not too far from a recipient's current practice, they are
easier to transfer.
Read more here.

Developing and accrediting personal skills and competencies

Futurelab is an organisation that aims to develop innovative resources and practices that support new approaches to learning for the 21st century.

The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) commissioned Futurelab to carry out a review and consultation project which aimed to:

• draw together a review of current projects and initiatives which provide insights into different approaches to developing young people’s skills and competencies (broadly classified as ‘21st century skills’) through non-subject led approaches
• identify how these different approaches might be developed and supported at a national level by QCA
• make recommendations as to assessment and accreditation practices which could be used to promote and develop personal skills and competencies.

The project ran between January and March 2007 and comprised desk research, meetings and interviews with lead practitioners. They have produced a report that provides guidelines and strategies for delivering and accrediting the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills that are a key part of the new curriculum at KS3 and beyond.


Download the report by clicking here.

Character strengths and virtues for the learning age

Professor Guy Claxton has written a stimulating article on the subject of personalised learning and has outlined what he considers to be the eight character strengths and virtues for the learning age that we should be encouraging in schools. Read it here.

Formative assessment and Personalised Learning

There are a couple more stimulating programmes over at Teacher's TV on the subject of Formative Assessment.
There is a useful 15 minute introduction to the subject here.

There is a 30 minute programme here on how John Cabot Academy in Bristol is using Formative Assessment with ICT to promote Personalised Learning.

System redesign

Teacher's TV has produced a half hour programme that looks at how some different schools have redesigned their curriculum and pastoral systems to help deliver more personalised learning. You can view the video online here.
If you're not familiar with how to view the programme online, just click where it says Windows Media to the right of the main image.

There are some more resources on the subject available here.

Learning Futures: Next Practice in Learning and Teaching

The Paul Hamlyn Foundation, in partnership with The Innovation Unit, are promoting an exciting project that aims to look at Next Practices in curricular or cross-curricular models of learning and pedagogy.
They have published a booklet that sets out the reasons why innovation in pedagogy is needed in order to inspire young people, and enable all of them confidently to meet the challenges of the 21st Century. It argues that some key emergent (and some well-known) practices, taken together, might transform learners' (and teachers') experience of schooling. Learning Futures proposes a way of thinking about these approaches. It is offered both as a contribution to the increasingly urgent debate and it also issues an invitation to secondary schools wishing to develop and extend their work in this direction more profoundly, to engage with the Learning Futures project, commencing in 2008.
You can download the booklet here.
Schools who are interested in participating in the project can sign up for one of two one day conferences. For further information go here.

Personalised learning - Scottish style

Scotland is leading the way again in the use of Progress Files to help pupils monitor and advance their own progress. Details here.