Roy Cross's Blog

1. Thanks to Robin Skipsey for this one in response to the piece in last Thursday’s message comparing newly qualified teachers with their more experienced colleagues. Teacher quality: What it is, why it matters, and how to get more of it is a piece that Dylan Wiliam from UCL wrote recently for Impact https://my.chartered.college/impact_article/teacher-quality-what-it-is-why-it-matters-and-how-to-get-more-of-it/

Wiliam is adamant that we can neither identify good teachers by observing them nor identify good teachers from changes in test scores; he suggests how teaching quality might, nonetheless, be enhanced.

2. Despite President Macron’s willingness to speak English in public, it’s maybe not so very surprising that this French government publication, Le poids des langues dans le monde, has only been published in French https://tinyurl.com/52r5pnuj Lots of links to interesting websites in the article, many of them English-language ones.

PDFs below of the article discussing the barometer and the Excel spreadsheet of the data underpinning the barometer.

Also below a PDF of Google Translate’s excellent translation of the article, done in less than thirty seconds – which left me well and truly abasourdi! (French for dumbfounded, says Google.)

3. I found the link to that last one in the new issue of the ECML’s European Language Gazette https://www.ecml.at/News3/TabId/643/ArtMID/2666/ArticleID/2821/European-Language-Gazette-63-enjoy-the-latest-issue.aspx

which is where I also found this newly updated Inventory of ICT tools and open educational resources https://www.ecml.at/Resources/InventoryofICTtools/tabid/1906/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

4. Currently trending on TED talks three years on, Bright Simons’s talk, To help solve global problems, look to developing countries https://www.ted.com/talks/bright_simons_to_help_solve_global_problems_look_to_developing_countries

5. And, finally, “a compelling and thought-provoking story about a community’s response to an escaped lion in a city (Tallinn)”, The Lion, the winner of the Best European Drama Award at the 2022 Audio Drama Awards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kx9b

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/

1. John Hattie has just published Visible Learning: The Sequel, the sequel (yup!) to his hugely influential 2008 book, Visible Learning: here’s a good piece about the book from The Conversation https://theconversation.com/education-expert-john-hatties-new-book-draws-on-more-than-130-000-studies-to-find-out-what-helps-students-learn-201952

and here’s Hattie himself talking about the new book and how his thinking has developed https://youtu.be/hFcuT-U57Yg

Hattie’s UK publisher is Routledge and they’ve published a free guide to the concept of visible learning which you can download from this page https://www.routledge.com/blog/article/what-is-visible-learning (PDF below just in case you don’t succeed with the download.)

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2. Here’s Sal Khan from the Khan Academy describing how they’re making use of ChatGPT-4 https://youtu.be/rnIgnS8Susg He covers a whole range of subjects, starting with ‘algebra basics’. If you’re allergic to equations, scroll through to 4’24” for ‘activities for teachers’ or to 15’30” for ‘Vocab fixer’. Quite something!

3. The Empire podcast (from Gary Lineker’s company, Goalhanger) in which William Dalrymple & Anita Anand “explore the stories, personalities and events of empire over the course of history” is very listenable and covers a whole range of imperial topics https://www.goalhangerpodcasts.com/

4. And, finally and poetically, Lee Stockdale’s winning poem from this year’s National Poetry Competition, My Dead Father’s General Store in the Middle of a Deserthttps://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/mar/29/poem-of-beauty-wit-and-grace-about-fathers-and-sons-wins-national-poetry-competition

1. Visible Thinking Routines in the English Language Classroom​ is the intriguing title of the National Geographic Learning webinar with Alex Warren at 09:00 and 17:00 UK time on Wednesday, 5^th April.

As the event blurb has it, “the role of the teacher is multi-faceted – not only do we have the responsibility of developing our learners’ language knowledge and skills, but also the cognitive, social, and interpersonal skills they need in order to be successful in school, work, and life in the 21st century. Not least is the need to get our learners to start thinking for themselves and asking questions”.

More info and registration here https://webinars.eltngl.com/5-aprilvisible-thinking-routines-in-the-english-language-classroom/

2. The next free IATEFL webinar is to be performed (word chosen carefully) by Tom Godfrey at 15:00 UK time on Saturday, 1^st April. Tom will demonstrate how to develop drama facilitation skills in ELT and will “suggest that teaching needs to be conceived more as a performative art requiring practitioners to develop skills of a performer rather than a scientific discipline prioritising subject knowledge and procedural techniques”. More info and registration here https://www.iatefl.org/events/365

I’m ever so slightly suspicious of this one. ‘Teacher as guru’, I’m firmly against, but this may be different.

3. Victoria Collis put me on to this one, TheTeacher.ai which uses “cutting edge AI to provide support through WhatsApp to teachers in the poorest schools” https://theteacher.ai/

Here’s some of the bot’s example answers https://theteacher.ai/examples/

and you can sign up for the beta version here https://theteacher.ai/sign-up-for-beta/

You might like to bear this note of caution from the not usually very cautious Elon Musk in mind at the same time, though https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/29/elon-musk-joins-call-for-pause-in-creation-of-giant-ai-digital-minds

4. Something a little different at 18:00 UK time on Tuesday, 4^th April, Overreach: how China derailed its peaceful rise, from the Asia Scotland Institute with Rana Mitter and Susan L. Shirk. More info and registration here https://asiascot.com/events/overreach-how-china-derailed-its-peaceful-rise

That ‘overreach’ depends on your perspective, clearly.

5. And, finally and ubiquitously, the soy bean https://www.ted.com/talks/francesca_bot_the_ingredient_in_almost_everything_you_eat

I’ve just subscribed – no, not an ‘early adopter’, more of a ‘laggard’! – to the TED Talks Daily mailing list https://www.ted.com/talks and today’s selection of four short talks was a pretty good start, I thought, with some good stuff for out-of-class learning tasks for your more advanced students, too.

1. Landgeist maps are fun, and you can easily lose an hour or two exploring their site: https://landgeist.com/maps/

Which country in Europe drinks the most coffee? Not Italy … https://landgeist.com/2022/04/19/coffee-consumption-in-europe/

And which country consumes the most cheese? Not France … https://landgeist.com/2023/02/25/cheese-consumption-in-europe/

Which country in Africa smokes the most tobacco? https://landgeist.com/2022/09/13/tobacco-use-in-africa/

Where in Asia are potatoes more popular than rice? https://landgeist.com/2022/07/05/potatoes-or-rice/

Which country has the worst roads in South America? https://landgeist.com/2023/01/24/the-best-and-worst-roads-in-south-america/

2. A new project competition for secondary school teachers of English from OUP, How would you spread wellbeing around the world? which asks students to imagine they are wellbeing superheroes, with the power to improve health and wellbeing, and to design a poster promoting good health and wellbeing. More info and registration here; closing date is 31^st May. https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/project_explore/competition?cc=gb&selLanguage=en

You can see last year’s competition’s winners – from the Czech Republic, Turkey, Slovakia and Thailand – here https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/project_explore/last_year_competition?cc=gb&selLanguage=en

3. Here’s a conversation from Radio New Zealand with the UK Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, on why poetry matters https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/2018881411/simon-armitage-the-uk-poet-laureate-on-why-poetry-matters

Mention is made of Armitage’s very-well-received poem commemorating the Queen’s death last year, Floral Tribute https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/sep/13/floral-tribute-poem-queen-elizabeth-simon-armitage-poet-laureate – check out the first letter of each line of the poem

When you have a bit of time to spare, you can listen to all of his lectures as Oxford Professor of Poetry here https://english.web.ox.ac.uk/professor-simon-armitage-professor-poetry-lectures Try this one from 2017, We Need To Talk About Robert: Bob Dylan and the Nobel Prize for Literature’ https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/we-need-talk-about-robert-bob-dylan-and-nobel-prize-literature

4. And, finally, a recent letter to The Guardian from Alan Gray of Brighton:

With Partygate back in the news, I’m reminded of a comment passed on to me by a Greek taxi driver: “Politicians are like babies’ nappies. Both should be changed frequently, and for the same reason.”

1. The first of two webinars early next week is an exciting-sounding National Geographic event at 16:00 UK time on Tuesday 28^th March with explorer and tropical biologist Carmen Chavez, who’ll be talking about her work using camera traps to spy on the wildlife in the Amazon,  I See You! Amazon Camera Traps and more! More info and registration here https://www.nationalgeographic.org/tickets/explorer-classroom/event/ISeeYou1/

It’s intended for 11-18-year-olds, and you can register your whole class for the live event or watch the recording later. This event is part of their ‘Explorer Mindset’ series – worksheet here https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F45pE-vel0SspWAeJke9Ec1ZwXnPeH6lkMtAs0Rjpbk/edit and copy below.

2. The second event, the following day, Wednesday 29th March, also at 16:00 UK time, from NATESOL offers a different kind of excitement: Digital language assessment: the good, the bad and the yet to be decided with Emma Bruce and Heléna Stakounis. More info and registration here: https://forms.gle/Ci6qhQ8aa3jft9177 and copy of flyer below.

3. Here’s a bit of serious weekend reading, courtesy of Rob Gibson: Toward Parsimony in Bias Research: A Proposed Common Framework of Belief-Consistent Information Processing for a Set of Biases https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/17456916221148147 The article starts with a splendidly comprehensive list of different types of bias – hands up if you suffer from false consensus bias or self-serving bias? – and suggests that many of those biases originate in the same set of widely-held underlying fundamental beliefs. PDF below.

4. A gift article from The New York Times that you may not thank me for, A 19-Minute HIIT Workout for Beginners https://tinyurl.com/47b7abxr Not quite sure about that ‘for beginners’ though!

5. And, finally, a pair of interesting and frank podcasts this week from The Rest is Politics team, Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart, on the Second Gulf War, twenty years on: The Iraq War https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-iraq-war/id1611374685?i=1000604227142 and Iraq: The Legacy https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/iraq-the-legacy/id1611374685?i=1000604422909

1. There’s been a lot of discussion here in the UK recently about ‘updating’ books to reflect current sensitivities and sensibilities, in particular Roald Dahl’s. Ed Cumming and his team in The Daily Telegraph broke the story, but here’s the free-to-read Guardian account https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/feb/18/roald-dahl-books-rewritten-to-remove-language-deemed-offensive

Also from The Guardian, a good podcast on the topic with David Baddiel https://www.theguardian.com/books/audio/2023/feb/27/rewriting-roald-dahl-podcast

plus a piece by Ursula Le Guin’s son from Literary Hub – well worth dipping into occasionally – on re-writing his mother’s books https://lithub.com/why-i-decided-to-update-the-language-in-ursula-k-le-guins-childrens-books/

2. The 2023 edition – the twenty-third – of the Edelman Trust Barometer has just been published https://www.edelman.com/trust/2023/trust-barometer

Here’s a brief summary of their grim findings: “A lack of faith in societal institutions triggered by economic anxiety, disinformation, mass-class divide and a failure of leadership has brought us to where we are today – deeply and dangerously polarized, with business the only institution seen as competent and ethical, 53% of respondents globally saying that their countries are more divided today than in the past, and an obligation on CEOs to improve economic optimism and hold divisive forces accountable.”

In business we trust? PDF below.

3. I guess this had to happen! AI makes plagiarism harder to detect, argue academics – in paper written by chatbot https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/mar/19/ai-makes-plagiarism-harder-to-detect-argue-academics-in-paper-written-by-chatbot Thanks to Mark Henebury for bringing this to my attention.

4. And thanks to Kelly Beaver for bringing the Early Intervention Foundation to my attention.

Two short videos: What is early intervention? https://youtu.be/1TdNbOco9jU and Why does early intervention matter? https://youtu.be/liPtHMa7WCY

and an introductory article https://www.eif.org.uk/why-it-matters/what-is-early-intervention

I well remember being told in Edinburgh some years ago by Alan Sinclair that post-natal intervention was very often too late.

5. And, finally, a video highlighted on Seth Godin’s blog the other day, The gap between impossible and normal https://youtu.be/gnEIeVWLtbU

Here’s the blog post https://seths.blog/2023/03/the-gap-between-impossible-and-normal/

1. Voices of the First World War is a remarkable podcast series from the Imperial War Museum in London, based on their large, rich archive of recordings with survivors of that war from both sides https://www.iwm.org.uk/VoicesOfTheFirstWorldWar

Start at the beginning with The Shot That Led To War? https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/voices-of-the-first-world-war-the-shot-that-led-to-war

Episodes are typically eight or nine minutes long, and there must be lots of ways the series can be used in (and outside) class, mustn’t there?

2. If you think that last assertion of mine is just a bit too insouciant, maybe these six short videos from Tyson Seburn on Lesson Planning will help https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/teachers/taking-responsibility-professional-development/english-teaching-7

3. No fewer than 5 Pearson English webinars next week, one a day starting Monday, 20^th March, comprising their Be Yourself in English: Personalising Language Learning series. Register here; attendance certificates available https://www.pearson.com/english/events/webinars/upcoming-webinars/personalising-learning.html

4. The I Podcast is usually worth a listen. Here’s the latest episode, on What science tells us about the Covid lab leak theory https://pod.link/1655186150 Scroll down the page for other episodes.

5. And, finally, kora (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kora_(instrument) + setar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setar + percussion = bliss! Here’s Ablaye Cissoko (kora), Kiya Tabassian (setar) and Patrick Graham (percussion) in concert https://youtu.be/E1kFxpNR6Jc

1. OUP (Oxford University Press) now run four editions of their ELTOC (English Language Teaching Online Conference) a year, and the next one is this coming Friday and Saturday, 17-18^th March. There are four four-hour sessions – you can dip in and out – covering a wide range of topics, with the first session starting at 09:40 on Friday. Full programme and registration here https://elt.oup.com/feature/global/eltoc/?cc=gb&selLanguage=en and (colourful) PDF of programme below

2. Of direct use to teachers of Economics and English for Economics but also useful for the rest of us when we next come across an economics term we’re not sure we understand, The A to Z of Economics from The Economist, promises “economic terms, from ‘absolute advantage’ to ‘zero-sum game’, explained to you in plain English” https://www.economist.com/economics-a-to-z

I wouldn’t want to bet too much on my being able to explain ‘zero-sum-game’ correctly …

3. The most recent episode of the TeachingEnglish podcast – How can peer-led training and mentoring support teachers’ development? – investigates an activity I’ve always felt to be both highly effective and an indication – where it flourishes – of a healthy institution or organisation. You’ll find more information and downloads here (plus PDFs below) of notes on the episode, transcripts in English and Arabic, and activity booklet here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/podcast/teaching-english/how-can-peer-led-training-and-mentoring-support (There’s also a download of the audio file, which I’ve not included.)

Earlier episodes in the series here https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professional-development/podcast/teaching-english

4. You probably need to be a little bit of an ‘aid nerd’ to read this ICAI review of UK aid to India in full, so you’ll find a PDF of only the executive summary below, in addition to the full report and the literature review (which is a BIG file). With an amber-red rating of the programme’s efficacy, ICAI continues to live up to the ‘I’ in its name, and long may it do so https://icai.independent.gov.uk/review/uk-aid-to-india/review/

5. And, finally and exceptionally, something you have to pay for: Fault Line  – Writings for Turkey and Syria, a collection of poems from 34 poets around the world, edited by Alan Maley, created to raise money for victims and survivors of the earthquake which struck Turkey and Syria on February 6, 2023, at 4:17 a.m. https://payhip.com/b/vnewZ

Has illustrations for each poem generated by AI, prompted by a line or verse from the poem.

1. Two weeks ago, the research group Autonomy published a report on the trial by a number of UK companies of a four-day working week which got a lot of publicity, not least because the results were so emphatically in favour of a four-day rather than a five-day working week: here’s The Guardian piece at the time https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/feb/21/four-day-week-uk-trial-success-pattern

Michael Sanders, however, has just published a post on the What Works Wellbeing Centre’s blog which sounds a more sceptical note (and re-emphasises one or two basic evaluation principles, including ‘best (only) you don’t evaluate your own work’) https://whatworkswellbeing.org/blog/findings-from-four-day-work-week-trial/

PDFs of the whole Autonomy report and of the three-page executive summary only below.

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2. “Our children spend their days being passively instructed and made to sit still and take tests—often against their will. We call this imprisonment schooling yet wonder why kids become bored and misbehave. Even outside of school children today seldom play and explore without adult supervision and are afforded few opportunities to control their own lives. The result: anxious, unfocused children who see schooling—and life—as a series of hoops to struggle through.”

That’s a reasonable summary of the thinking of Peter Gray, who’s a professor of psychology at Boston College in the USA and a lifelong advocate of ‘unschooling’, an approach to education which emphasises learner autonomy and self-directed learning. His blog, Freedom to Learn, investigates the roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/freedom-learn

and here’s a short video by Peter outlining his beliefs https://youtu.be/-OMYesA1nQo

3. Three distinctly challenging pieces (for us non-scientists, at least) for your weekend reading and listening from The Conversation, in the belief that an occasional mental work-out is good for us:

Four common misconceptions about quantum physics https://theconversation.com/four-common-misconceptions-about-quantum-physics-192062

Quantum mechanics: how the future might influence the past https://theconversation.com/quantum-mechanics-how-the-future-might-influence-the-past-199426

And the first episode of their Great Mysteries of Physics podcast series – Is time an illusion? https://theconversation.com/great-mysteries-of-physics-1-is-time-an-illusion-201026

4. And, finally, a piece from Granta by Amitava Kumar about a recent visit he made to India, Many Words for Heat, Many Words for Hate https://granta.com/amitava-kumar-many-words/

It includes the following paragraph: “The week before I arrived, there were accounts in the news, and especially on social media, of bulldozers being used to demolish Muslim homes in Delhi and elsewhere. The visiting British prime minister, Boris Johnson, appeared on my timeline, because he had jumped aboard a new JCB bulldozer (at a JCB) factory in Gujarat. The JCB bulldozers were the ones being used in the demolitions. Did he not know that people’s homes were being destroyed?”