The first 100,000 words: Writings on Education by a Teacher

Whose Curriculum? Mastery or Personalisation Steven Kolber As teachers, we all stand below a broad curriculum umbrella as well as a subject area umbrella, yet how we approach these big concepts is the realm of the ‘enacted curriculum’. It’s informed by our own personal beliefs, views of our content, context and our broader worldview. In this piece, I will explore two different approaches to curriculum and their enactment: mastery and personalised learning. Personalised learning has been criticised as being the ‘edu-babble’ de jour, so it is timely to explore it further and compare and contrast it against mastery learning. In his presentation at RESCON 2018, Steve Griffiths (@sciencesteveg) described two different views on Mastery learning: firstly, in the sense of classical artists and secondly in the more commonly held view of achieving a high standard (say 90 or 100%) before being able to progress. I will address the first conception of this later in the piece when ...

2019 – Proposal for Policy regarding Information Communications Technology in Education A Human-centred agenda Consistent with the ILO, we propose a human-centred agenda for the future of work (and specifically education) that strengthens the social contract by placing people and the work they do at the centre of economic and social policy and business practice (ILO, 2019). The three principles required to achieve this are: 1.        Increasing investment in people’s capabilities In regard to investment in people’s capabilities, we propose that lifelong learning being an expectation and requirement of the future world of work means that the role of teachers and educators more broadly will continue to be important to the conditions of work. This includes funding and supporting the work of organisations involved in upskilling people and especially those providing transitioning support for people as they move between careers across their life. Acti...