Blog version: https://roycross.blog/

This post is late because of my nine-month-old grandson, Mateo. We’ve just spent five days together with his mum, Emily, making a trip from London to Yorkshire to see his great-grandmother, Pam. Those five days have been hugely demanding, hugely enjoyable and deeply shaming. The demand and the enjoyment are perhaps obvious to all of you lucky enough to have children and grandchildren, but why the shame? That’s because I buggered off back to work as soon I could after Emily was born, working stupidly long hours, and left Boba to cope on her own – and I’m now very ashamed of having done so and painfully aware I can never make it up to her.

This is my last post until Thursday 17^th September: I’m off to Croatia, arriving two days before Mateo and his support team arrive, with four days en route to think about what I might have done better thirty-eight years ago.

1. From The Guardian last Friday, African Union joins calls to end use of Mercator map that shrinks continent’s size https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/15/african-union-true-size-world-map-replace-mercator-version

The African Union has backed a campaign to end the use by governments and international organisations of the 16th-century Mercator map of the world in favour of one that more accurately displays Africa’s size. Created by the cartographer Gerardus Mercator for navigation, the projection distorts continent sizes, enlarging areas near the poles like North America and Greenland while shrinking Africa and South America. “It might seem to be just a map, but in reality, it is not,” the African Union Commission deputy chair, Selma Malika Haddadi, told Reuters.

2. A not unrelated post on the UKFIET blog by Susan Marango from the REAL Centre at Cambridge, The role of education in decolonisation, climate and conflict: A call to action https://www.ukfiet.org/2025/the-role-of-education-in-decolonisation-climate-and-conflict-a-call-to-action/ Susan’s post includes a video of the panel discussion if you’re not in too much of a hurry.

This blog post provides key takeaways and insights from the panel discussion on ‘Decolonisation, climate and conflict’ at the REAL Centre’s 10th anniversary conference held on 12 June 2025. Intriguing questions and themes explored on this topic included: What does decolonising education mean? What makes climate change a wicked problem? What is the role of education in mitigating the effects of conflict? And how is it exacerbated by inequalities and conflict? How can we address climate change adaptation in education during a time of complex organisational crisis?

3. Here’s the latest episode of the BOLD podcast, Ed-Technical, in which Libby Hills & Owen Henkel speak with assessment expert Dylan Wiliam, Emeritus Professor at UCL Institute of Education, about how formative assessment and AI are reshaping classroom practice. https://boldscience.org/assessment-in-education-to-ai-or-not-to-ai/

They cover:

1. Why formative assessment remains underused despite its proven impact
2. How AI is reshaping summative assessment and teacher workload
3. The limits of AI in delivering meaningful feedback
4. Rethinking homework in the age of AI
5. Oral exams, conversational assessment, and the future of grading
6. The potential for AI to shift the teacher-student dynamic for the better

4. The British Council’s annual Master’s Dissertation Awards promote those dissertations with the best potential for tangible impact on English language teaching worldwide. This year’s winner was Chathuska Undugoda from Coventry University with An explorative study of classroom practices for cultural inclusion and integration of refugee and migrant students in ESOL adult classes in the UK. Here’s the titles of the other dissertations that were highly commended this year, nearly all of which I think I understand https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/publications/elt-masters-dissertations/elt-masters-dissertations-winners/2024-2025-winners

5. And, finally, from Tuk South https://www.youtube.com/@Tuk-South, who are circumnavigating the world in tuk-tuks for charity, The Longest Tyre Roll in the World! https://youtu.be/tLpQ5bcxouw?feature=shared

See you on 18^th September!