Gogwit's Blog

“A better world – equal, democratic and just; through adult education the WEA challenges and inspires individuals, communities and society”.

This is the WEA’s vision. Many people and organisations are working for the same aim and we’re often invited to collaborate with others so that we can make a bigger impact by working together.

I’ve been involved in three separate events in the last couple of weeks with people who recognise that adult education helps to address inequalities for families and communities. These wider aspects of lifelong learning show that education isn’t just for children and young people and isn’t only about preparation for employment – important as that is.

Cooperative Problem Solving

The first event focused on cooperative problem solving. Youth and community organisations, cooperative champions, educators and academic researchers from the UK, USA, New Zealand and Sweden met at the Cambridge University’s Forum for Youth Participation & Democracy. We shared…

Here’s another reflection about a thinker whose work influences teaching, learning and assessment in adult education. This time it’s Carol Dweck’s work on the theory of motivation.She has researched the effects of students’ beliefs about their own intelligence and how their views can affect their progress. She describes students who think that their intelligence is static as having an ‘entity’ view or a fixed mindset. She suggests that others, who believe that they can increase their intelligence through effort, have an ‘incremental’ view or a growth mindset.

In practice, her research suggests that teachers motivate students more effectively when they give feedback on the processes of learning and don’t link their assessment to the person’s assumed ability.

“That was a good way of working”, is more effective than, “You’re very clever.” A good teacher makes the link between effort and success instead of reinforcing the view that there’s a limit to what any student can achieve.

We learn by experiment and experience. We learn from what doesn’t work as well as from what does – so long as we’re not…

(satire)

Education Minister Michael Gove has been dubbed ‘too scary’ for children under 12 years of age by the British Board of Film Classification.

It is the first time that the BBFC has classified a government minister, after it assessed Mr Gove following feedback from a testing panel.

However, the BBFC’s decision has been criticised by experts and psychologists, who say the cabinet minister is too scary for anybody even under the age of 97.

One child development expert explained:

It is clear that children need to be protected from any education minister who is as creepy and deeply disturbing as Michael Gove is – and it is absolutely imperative that people of all ages are protected from the risk of being seriously traumatised by him. In fact he should probably be banned altogether.

After the assessment of Mr Gove by its panel of experts, the BBFC recommended the Education Secretary…

Birmingham NUT have called for people to assemble on High Street at 11am as originally planned and to march up to Victoria Square for 11:30am, a call that we support, and ask everyone to go to the High Street, and for those at Victoria Square to wait until 11:30am to leave. Following is the message from Birmingham NUT:

This Sunday should see a good demonstration against the Tories in Birmingham and will be a major regional focus in the fight against austerity, privatisation and profiteering and we hope that unions and campaigns will turn out in force in this stepping stone to the 20th Oct London demo

A report by parent Mohammed Ashraf

Earlier this year I led the campaign at Montgomery Primary School against forced academy conversion. We campaigned for parents to have a say in the future of the school. Sadly, despite overwhelming opposition from the school community, governors took the decision to proceed with conversion, choosing  AET (Academy Enterprise Trust) as the sponsor in March this year.

AET held a consultation meeting with parents. Like many others I had concerns, but I was reassured at the meeting that AET would be working very closely with the school, parents and the community through the transition. Many questions and worries were raised but reassurances were given. For example parents were concerned about changes to uniform and to the school name. They were assured any changes would by fully consulted with parents first. Reassurances were given that AET wanted to work with parents as partners.

Not long…

A guest blog by Alison Iredale, Senior Lecturer at Oldham College

I am grateful for Ann’s previous post on John Dewey’s influence on learning (http://annwalkerwea.wordpress.com/2012/08/29/educational-thinkers-hall-of-fame-john-dewey/).

In this post I want to offer a personal perspective related to his work on democracy and education. Some of this post appears in an article about Routinised Practices, part of my PhD thesis.

While researching Dewey at the start of my doctoral studies about 4 years ago I came across an address by Richard Pring, the soon to be retired Director of the Oxford Department of Educational Studies, to an Escalate conference in Glasgow in 2003. He recalled being blamed by Keith Joseph for the low standards in schools, due to teachers being introduced to the works of John Dewey in his department. Having just been knocked sideways professionally by Dewey’s writing myself after 20 years in vocational training and teaching I…

The destruction of the NHS is not going to be Nick Clegg’s worse legacy. He’s done something even worse.

Language really, really matters.

Don’t worry, I’m not talking about being snobby over misspelt words or wrongly placed apostrophes. I’m talking about language affecting us in real ways which can have real-life repercussions on massively important things like our health, our well-being, our happiness.

Words really can change things in concrete ways. 

There are recent examples in politics where just one little word has destroyed a political party for a generation.

In Labour’s case, in the 80s, it was the word ‘loony‘. The ‘loony left‘ haunted every Labour politician until Blair and New Labour sunk it forever by being worse than loony. They became ‘moderate‘.

In the Tory’s case it was the word ‘nasty‘ – a term coined in 2002 but which…

Parents who have been campaigning since May 2012 for a say in the future of their community school, learnt last night that the Secretary of State signed an academy order for the school months ago, despite there having been no consultation of any kind, and despite there being no sponsor or funding agreement in place.

Parents at West Heath Primary in south-west Birmingham have been campaigning since the spring against proposals to convert to a sponsored academy after it emerged that their school had been targeted for forced conversion by the DfE.  Parents soon learnt that plans were well-advanced despite not having been informed, but at no time did the Headteacher or Governors tell them that an Academy Order was already in place. The parents,  who have the support of their MP Richard Burden and local Councillor Brett O’Reilly, appealed to Governors and the Headteacher to stand up to the…