1. Following on from John Hattie’s new book on Tuesday, here’s a report in The Conversation on some more classroom research from down under, New teachers perform just as well in the classroom as their more experienced colleagues https://theconversation.com/our-study-found-new-teachers-perform-just-as-well-in-the-classroom-as-their-more-experienced-colleagues-200649

The research team from the University of Newcastle (in New South Wales in Australia, just up the coast from Sydney), led by Jenny Gore, analysed data from two major recent studies and found it did not matter if teachers had less than one year of teaching experience or had spent 25 years in the classroom – they delivered the same quality of teaching. The team’s conclusion is a positive one: “these results indicate teaching degrees are preparing new teachers to deliver quality teaching and have a positive impact in their classrooms right away”.

There are clearly all sorts of factor to take into consideration, but is anyone else just a bit surprised that twenty-four extra years of experience, on balance, make no difference?

2. Teachers change lives – but what makes a great teacher? is the title of another recent piece in The Conversation, this one by Zayd Waghid from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa https://theconversation.com/teachers-change-lives-but-what-makes-a-great-teacher-198313

Those (teachers) who stand out, says Zayd, “are devoted, imaginative, motivated and motivating, and eager to overcome challenging conditions to make a positive difference in the lives of young people”. See what you think of his five key characteristics.

3. Zayd’s piece mentions the UCL ‘Learning Designer’ https://www.ucl.ac.uk/learning-designer/, the full extent of which is best explored over a cup of coffee at the weekend.

There’s a free FutureLearn course starting today which explains the Learning Designer in more detail https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/blended-and-online-learning-design

and Diana Laurillard and her colleagues wrote an article about it for the British Journal of Educational Technology, Using technology to develop teachers as designers of TEL: Evaluating the learning designer https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/bjet.12697 PDF below.

If, like me, you weren’t quite sure what TEL stood for, it’s ‘Technology Enhanced Learning’.

4. Here’s the latest issue of HLT (Humanising Language Teaching) from Pilgrims, this time with a focus on Germany https://www.hltmag.co.uk/apr23/

Try Peter Lutzker’s two pieces from an unusual perspective, one on Concepts and Practice of Steiner/Waldorf Foreign Language Teaching https://www.hltmag.co.uk/apr23/concepts-and-practice and the other on The Teaching and Performance of Literature in a Foreign Language https://www.hltmag.co.uk/apr23/teaching-and-performance

5. And, finally, a Granta In Conversation piece in which Pico Iyer and Caryl Phillips discuss migration, V. S. Naipaul and the meaning of home from their different perspectives https://granta.com/in-conversation-pico-iyer-caryl-phillips/