Gove v Teachers – Round X

Have you read the weekend papers? If you’re not a young teacher but an older-type one then perhaps you’d better not. The article in the Sunday Times is grim and an example of incredibly biased reporting. Ah, perhaps I should take in for my KS4 lot to tear apart??

The glove are off: our dear friends Michael G is after teachers’ pay because good teachers – no, sorry – good young teachers should be rewarded for all their hard work and efforts and extra hours by getting the pay they deserve. They should be able to move from approximately £21,000 pa to £50,000 in six months if they are worth it. All young teachers, it seems are worth it and shouldn’t be constrained by out-dated modes like pay for experience and age; or the hard won teachers’ pay scales.

Mm? So, where are the good older teachers – do we not exist? In Michael Gove’s world and the Sunday Times, it seems not. Clearly they envisage a world of Teach –first’s and young, enthusiastic teachers, all with passion and energy, willing to work extra hard, motoring up the food chain to be in charge of everything by the time well before they are thirty. Well, good luck to them.

There is a serious flaw here, and those of us who have been teaching for years know. In fact, those teaching for a few short years with a degree of awareness and intelligence know too. You need to put in the hours to develop your skills and your craft. Teaching is a craft. There is a reason for the pay progression by years and experience – most young teachers aren’t that spectacular in their first couple of years. Many have flashes of brilliance but good teachers become so through experience. Good teachers, no matter what their age, should be rewarded.

In fact, my own utterly delightful Teach-first reminded us all of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hour theory in his Outliers book. The idea goes that to reach expert level in your field you need to spend 10,000 hours mastering that skill. So, the theory about work says you need five years to become proficient in your field. Interestingly enough when I worked in the Northern Territory of Australia that was their line in the sand about applying for promotion. You would not be considered ready for your promotion assessment until you were in your fifth or sixth year of teaching.

It made sense: the first year of teaching you make all sorts of rookie mistakes, the second year, if you’re smart you don’t make those mistakes, you make others! By the third year you’re developing well and probably ready to take on year 12s and by the fourth you’re actually adding to your school and department, so by the fifth – your 10,000 hours, you have mastered your field and ready for the next challenge. Although, I would be very hesitant to say that it is possible to fully master such an fluid and every changing profession as teaching.

So, why is there such a rush to take young teachers to leadership when they are not ready? Why is there such an emphasis on young teachers being the only ones of value in schools these days? What’s happened to experience and wisdom, to a calm steady hand; one that knows what’s important and what’s ephemera?

How can an inexperienced head-teacher really judge fairly and objectively the worth of a teacher to the profession? Because, let’s be clear here, many head-teachers on the basis of the rush-through Teach-first, Future Leaders programs have not had the requisite 10,000 hours at the various levels on the way up to be prepared to run a school or make valid judgments.

Talent, hard work, dedication, spark and flair – all these things should be rewarded. But to overlook wisdom, experience, gravitas in the headlong rush to break unions and push teachers out of the profession, will only weaken the schools that need strengthening and will not deliver anything for the kids.

 

The pay-scales are there for two very good reason:

1.Experience matters and is worth it and is hard won

2.Head-teachers are not always objective rational beasts: they have their favourites; they have their ‘to die’ list – they are like all of us; fallible and flawed. I am on my 17^th head-teacher – I speak from experience.

 

Again, I can only wonder at a government and a minster hell bent on ripping into teachers once more, blaming them for all the ills of education in this country for the last 30 years. Ironically, teachers know that to help students make progress you emphasis what they can do, show that you believe in them and tell them they are worthwhile human beings.

A shame that governments and too many head-teachers ignore this bit of truth about the world. (Images courtesy Google Images)

Don’t Stand so Close to Me

So sang the Police many years ago about a young teacher and a sexy pouty teenage student. He was tempted, there was gossip and tension, wet bus-stops and warm cars, and it was a great song. But it’s not a great story in the real world.

As we watched the story of the Maths teacher and the 15 year old student unfold we knew it could only end badly. It is not the thing of great romance or tragic suffering: an intimate relationship between a teacher and student is always wrong. Every time, no matter the situation, the orientations of the players or the reasons. All wrong. All ways.

A teacher’s role is one of privilege, of responsibility, of care and due diligence. It is normal for students to have crushes on teachers. God knows, my daughter has had a crush on her wonderful English teacher for three years. My best mate at school had one on our hockey playing, Holden driving Science teacher, such that we trawled the A block corridors at lunchtime hoping for a chance encounter and a smile. It all came to naught, as it should.

Yes, some teachers marry their students. Yes, affairs do happen. Remember the case from the States several years ago where the PE teacher became pregnant by her 14 year old student lover? She ended up in jail. At the moment there is another teacher-student relationship storm brewing in the USA and the case of the runaway Maths teacher from Bournemouth is yet to run its sorry course.

What was he thinking? He’s twice her age. He’s in a position of responsibility – in loco parentis, it’s called, where teachers act in place of a parent. To wit they care for the child, keeping them safe and relating to them appropriately. Let’s leave aside the fact that many parents do not relate appropriately to the their own children and look at why cases of student-teacher relationships are and should be taboo.

You can’t get away from the immense imbalance in power. A student is young, vulnerable, highly impressionable. They may not be all that innocent, and they may be very compelling and sexy and tempting but they are young, unworldly and unknowing. The teacher is the adult and must remain so at all times. If you don’t understand that a distance must be kept and that you cannot indulge in an intimate relationship then you are in the wrong job.

Parents, students and the wider community trust teachers with the young people in their care. It is an awesome burden, but one we should be proud of. Remember that the public rate us in the top 3 of trusted professions: this matters. It matters because it is about the future of our society, that we do make a difference. Thus we cannot abuse that trust.

That’s not too say that it can be hard keeping that professional distance. When you teach in deprived areas, or have students who are more vulnerable than others it can be all too easy to form close attachments to students. Sometimes they need an adult in their life who cares for them, who goes the extra mile: someone upon who they can rely and trust. It is right that teachers fill that role. But at the end of the day, the teacher must go home to his/her life and so must the student. Phone calls, text messages, FB etc are not on. The line in the sand must be observed: the relationship has to remain professional, even if extremely caring. The teacher is the adult and must remain the adult, in control of the situation, aware of their own feelings and the students.

As I’ve blogged before relationships are what matter most to students, what affects their learning and their lives. But teachers who go beyond the ‘rules’, the expectations of a caring teacher, do a great deal of damage: to the student – now and later in life; to the school and to the profession at large.

 

 

How do you avoid the trouble Megan’s Maths teacher got into?

1. Be aware of your feelings, know they have become inappropriate and deal with it – transfer, or get help from someone before it’s too late

2. Never be in vulnerable situations – don’t see students alone if you suspect their feelings or your own; never ever meet them out of school

3. Do not share your contact details with students – work emails for assessment purposes is one thing, private contacts another altogether

4. Thus avoid being friends with students – current and recently former on FB – be wary of how the student is connected to others who may be in school still and privy to private info about you that can compromise you

5. Do not share Twitter accounts for the same reason, or home emails, or blog connections. Remember the electronic world can be an evilly connected place –who knows who is watching and for what diabolical purposes??

6. Finally, if you know or suspect something unseemly regarding a colleague you have to report it. There will be someone in the school looking after CP (child protection matters) who can advise you and ensure something untoward does not happen, either to the student or to your colleague.

We know teaching is a minefield. Students can and do lie about teachers. Teachers can and do abuse their positions of trust. Many of us deal with needy and vulnerable young people every day. They do not need to come from impoverished backgrounds to be needy. We need to know the lines in the sand. We need to observe them at all times, to reflect on our interactions with young people, to ensure they are safe and able to navigate their way (often with our help) through some challenging times.

Remember, never stand too close to them… (Images courtesy Google Images)

Teacher Bashing: A National Sport?

Is there something in the air? Is a post-Olympic slump that’s brought out the Teacher Bashing Season? Or were we merely beyond the radar for the summer holiday – which is simply too long, as all right thinking people know.

My favourite Michael – Sir ‘I am Clint Eastwood Wilshaw’ has once again shown his distaste for the profession he is meant to represent. We should all work longer days to get pay rises and furthermore Ofsted must enforce this.

The truth is, for as long as I’ve been teaching, some staff have always left on the bell but a great many others left later, or what most did was choose the time and place of their non-contact teaching time. To pretend teachers don’t work out of school hours is a nonsense: you can’t do the job effectively if you don’t.

For years I lived and worked in the tropics. School finished at 2:30 and yes, on several days we were out the gate by 2:45, down to the beach to go fishing or walk the dog. The sun was gone by seven, the evenings cooler and I did my preparation and marking then. Actually I spent hundreds of Fridays sitting on a beach at Drimmie Heads marking year 11 essays while my beloved fished. Ah, the difference between being and English teacher and a Maths teacher!

These days I am at school around 7:30 and leave around 6 most evenings. This weekend I immured in numbers as I ‘crunch data’ and sort out my departments KS4 Schemes of Work for another meeting. I am working this weekend, Michael, because my week is too crowded with sudden demands up the food-chain; the manic ‘I want this yesterday’ from someone who seems to be ticking boxes.

Is that what teaching is about – ticking boxes? Is that what Wilshaw has – a list of provocative statements he wishes to hurl into the public domain to undermine the teaching profession?

 

Here are some truths, based on nearly 30 years of doing this sodding job, in no particular order.

1. Teaching is demanding work; children drain your energy and you need time and space to recover, to be able to think and revitalize. In Shanghai – where students do exceptionally well – teachers teach less hours because the powers that be want them to have time to think and plan imaginatively, effectively.

2. Some teachers are inefficient and need to work all hours to do what others can do in half the time.

 

3. Some teachers work better at home, prefer to work at home; some prefer to have everything done at school and separate their life from work

4. You need all sorts of people in a school – we have all sorts of kiddies, they need a variety of adults to interact with – we’re not ‘Stepford Wives’ and we shouldn’t be!

 

5. Most people I know care enormously about their students, they invariably go the extra mile.

6. There are more good teachers than bad, and I do agree with the former Ofsted head, the odd limited teacher is not the end of the world for a student

7. Learning goes on outside of school, longer hours at school does not mean better educated

8. University is not the holy grail of education – decent, thinking human beings who can look after themselves and contribute to society should be the aim.

9. You don’t have to examine and test everything

10. Character is as important as results

11. Most adults would not choose to spend their day in a room with 30 teenagers: most adults can’t bear to be near more than 6 teenagers at a time – well 3 really, and only their own, on a good day

12. The two counties in the world with the biggest social mobility issues are the UK and the USA and they examine and test the students to death and blame teachers for it all

13. Teachers need to be valued

14. One size does not fit all

15. There are too many egos in British education and schools

16. All new principals/head-teachers think they know the way, the truth and the light

17. Good teachers are offended by the likes of Wilshaw because of his blanket generalizations; poor teachers don’t care what he says

18. We all deserve a decent life-work balance; the kiddies want people who are real, who know about life and can guide them as well as teach them.

19. Most of us remember an inspirational or caring teacher that made a difference to us

20. Relationships are what matter most in a school

 

A final note: in the paper last week there was a small column about the amount of respect the public had for various professions in the community. Doctors and nurses were at the top, followed by teachers on around 70%. At the bottom, the very bottom, were politicians on 1%.

Remember that the next time Gove and Wilshaw (who is just a politician these days – ‘look at me, look at me’) make a pronouncement about education. (Images courtesy Google Images)

Don’t Blame the Teachers; Think of the Kids

Isn’t it sweet how Gove and Clegg look so chummy in their recent publicity shots for their grand announcement about the revamping of the exam system? Isn’t it wonderful how they’ve worked together to over-come the malaise in the education system to rescue standards and improve kiddies’ chances?

Did you read the twaddle in yesterday’s papers? They know about education, about the scandal of re-sits and re-takes and all about English course-work, which actually, boys, no longer exists. It was flushed away in the recent over-haul of English courses, leaving us with the travesty that’s just occurred.

Yet again politicians are interfering with education. Gove has already imposed his will on Primary school curriculum and now he is doing the same for the exam sets for secondary students. Has he talked to a teacher? Does he know what it’s actually like in schools in the UK? No, is the answer. He thinks we are the problem and we have failed the children. We have dumbed everything down in a search for the bottom, in our desperate quest for improved grades and places on the league tables.

Here’s the thing: teachers don’t have a say in what happens in schools. Some collection of people miles above them in the food-chain make the decisions, usually without consultation, or with that faux consultation where your choices are all bad. We just get to carry out orders. It’s more like a warzone, where the generals and commanders sit miles back from the action but tell us what to do, especially what we’re doing wrong. We’re the ones who go out to be shot. Remember Gallipoli?

I’ll tell you what we’re doing wrong- we’re failing generations of kids by this constant measuring and examining. What other country is as obsessed with testing and examining as the UK is? All Gove’s research should have told him that social mobility is not improved by exams. We’re now going to fail oodles more by this retrograde step – the EBacc – which will push the poorest students further away from uni or decent choices about their futures. We will have a 2 tiered system, where some subjects are valued, and therefore some skills, and some subjects are not.

Wither Music and Art, DT and ICT? Where are the creative, making subjects in this brave new education world? Gove and Clegg have thrown us backwards, not taken us forwards. Young people need to think for themselves, be equipped for a changing, evolving world, not just know facts or recite poems (although all of that is nice). They need to be creative, resilient, tough. They should be able to enjoy a range of subjects at school to know what they’re good at, to make choices about their futures based on interest and skills. They should be able to learn without everything being about an exam at the end of it.

Have Gove and Clegg thought of the current batch of students who have just suffered through the latest exam debacle, only to be told their qualifications aren’t actually worth anything? That, really, as everything’s been dumbed down, they are just dumb, dumber than those who were educated in the good old days, when rigor and standards meant something? Seriously, why do we listen to these men?

These fools are busy telling me I’m responsible for the failures of their system. They tell me my students are dumb and unworthy. They’re telling me my daughter’s GCSE’s aren’t worth having, not to mention her choice of A level subjects.

These fools haven’t the first idea and as soon as people realize Education is simply a political football, a way for politicians to grandstand and stay in power and we ignore them, we’ll actually be able to look after the students, teach them things worth knowing and be much better off.

Parents, teachers, students: we’re all in it together, not the politicians. It’s time to tell them where the fuck to go.

Education does not need to be in a classroom-sized box

Have you read the Sunday Times piece (14 July 2012) An online class apart? It discusses a US firm’s plan to set up a Free School offering lessons over the web. On the one hand it’s claimed it could transform education in the UK, on the other, it is the end of the (education) world as we know it.

As always, the truth lies somewhere in between. Mention Free Schools in some quarters and the pitchforks come out. Mention importing anything educational from the US and the lynch party will be there before you’ve finished your sentence. Yet, we know Free Schools thrive in Scandinavia and that Ark Academies are based on the US based Kipp Charter schools and the Ark Network is one of the biggest academy chains in the country, boasting enviable success.

Predictably politics is right in the middle of the latest educational buzz. The unions see on-line schools as a threat to teachers, believing Gove will use it as an excuse to employ less teachers as a virtual school would need less staff. This time round the application failed, but there is no need for fear here; in fact this sort of schooling is not unique to the US and should not sends tremors of anxiety through us all. It should add to what is available and give a whole range of children and families more choice.

Do you know that over 80,000 British children are home-schooled? There are out of mainstream education for a variety of reasons including religious, health, bullying and for ideological reasons.

Did you know that in places like Australia many children can’t get to a mainstream traditional place of education and that many of them are educated at home through distance education? I’m sure you’ve heard of the School of the Air – which broadcasts primary education out of Alice Springs and Katherine in the Northern Territory. These institutions have been educating children in some of the remotest parts of the world for years, initially over the radio, now through a range of on-line and super-duper technology. For secondary and post-primary education there is the NT Open Education Centre in Darwin.

These three schools have been delivering high quality learning outside the classroom box to generations of happy students – students who go on to university and careers just as traditionally educated children do.

I worked as Head of English, ESL, Literacy and the Library at NTOEC for five years. They were some of the most interesting years of my career. As well as the usual imperatives from succeeding governments who were all going to make education – especially Aboriginal education – better, we were at the forefront of technological endeavours in Education. We had our own print based materials based on the curriculum, teaching students from grade 8-12, so right up to university entrance. We were moving into a stronger on-line presence (I’m sure they’re there now!), using email as well as other emerging technologies to interact with our students.

Students did not suffer from not being in a classroom. Students had a weekly phone call with each of their teachers; small classes could be set up across the miles through the wonders of technology where poetry could be taught, discussed and debated. Students could email (if they had access) as and when; were entitled to visits; as well as coming into town for a yearly residential week of classes, to be in the ‘big city’ of Darwin and to meet other students.

Let me detail the range of students such an establishment can cater for. And this is highly pertinent to the UK situation as well. Students come in all shapes and sizes with a plethora of needs. Traditional education can’t hope to effectively cater for all: in fact, we know it doesn’t.

Distance – or on-line – education does a great deal for many students. Not only those for whom mainstream school is not available, to wit, distance ed’s traditional audience, the student out on a station, helping mum and dad run the place, or on a remote Aboriginal community where mum and dad work. But also for students who travel, who have been expelled, or who can’t cope in mainstream for whatever reason; girls who got pregnant and couldn’t go back to school with a baby; prisoners; RAAF personnel needing to up-grade their qualifications; Aboriginal students who need to move beyond primary education. We also had students who were travelling overseas, or who were ill and couldn’t cope at school. We had some who were being deliberately home-schooled, but not as many as you might think.

Some interesting things happen in this type of educational setting. Students, free from the off-task, time wasting antics of their fellow classmates, make better progress. They can complete subjects quicker than within the traditional time allocation and be accelerated through their studies. Or they can take longer, go deeper, ensure understandings. They can do nothing but English or Art for a term, then go onto History and Maths and Science. Students can make informed choices about their own pathways through the KS3 & 4 (equivalent) quagmire. They know what has to happen in order to get to KS5 and beyond, but they can make their own choices, supported by parents and school.

Our young mothers were able to take the maximum time allowed for KS5 subjects, coming in to the building on days they could get child-care to study intensely in the library with on-hand teacher support and guidance. We set up interest groups and extra-curricular stuff for local students who had fallen through the cracks of ‘real schools’.

Class sizes were smaller, due to the more intense relationships and one to one contact. My department was no less qualified, or devoted to their students. Student-teacher ratios still applied and we were not a significantly smaller department for our numbers compared to traditional schools.

Fear of the unknown stops us moving ahead. Students thrive in a variety of educational structures. Distance education, or on-line learning, is one that offers much to many. It can be a challenge to teach in that environment, to not see the shiny faces in front of you – although I guess Skype will have sorted that out – to not have the interaction of a whole group. But the intensity of the experience for some students is reward enough. You’ll be more challenged as a teacher here, the students are more independent, more likely to know what they need and how to get it.

The on-line future is here. It will be part of the UK teaching and learning experience very soon. It should be now. It’s time for all involved in education in the UK to move into the 21^st century –put students first, their needs, their differences and stop trying to make education a one-size fits all. Who knows, perhaps one day they’ll stop examining everything that moves in the belief that it’s the only way to know if a child has learnt anything???

http://www.ntoec.nt.edu.au/site/

http://www.assoa.nt.edu.au/

http://www.schools.nt.edu.au/ksa/

So, what do we mean by Gifted & Talented – as posted in the Guardian this week

My daughters are both exceptional at Art; my son has always been a Mathematical genius. My girls have won prizes for Art; my boy has won an academic prize every year of his life, including university scholarships, the latest being a PhD scholarship to Oxford. Are my kids G&T?

What do we mean when by Gifted? Gagne (2003) says: Gifted students are those whose potential is distinctly above average in one or more of the following domains of human ability: intellectual, creative, social and physical.

Talented students are those whose skills are distinctly above average in one or more areas of human performance.

Gagne’s key word is potential. He believes in the power of environmental factors, that being natively smart isn’t enough; a child needs support and guidance to achieve his/her gifted potential. Supporting and encouraging gifted kiddies is exactly where home and school collide.

 

How do you know if a child is Gifted?

Teachers, but mostly parents, can identify gifted children through their own observation and instincts. Often we know if there’s something ‘extra’ about a child: their questions, their insights. For my son it was his instant grasp of patterns and numbers, such that his Kindergarten teacher had to stop him answering so other kiddies had a chance. For guidance Betts & Neihart(1988) list 6 types of gifted students (link below), with particular needs. This identification grid can be a useful starting place for conversations between parents and school.

If we fail to identify G&T students we risk damage to individuals who are so turned off by rigid education that they opt out, sitting well below the attainment radar, on their way to dropping out. We risk damage to society by not encouraging these students to fly and value add to society through their exceptional abilities.

Be clear – giftedness is not necessarily found in attainment or a steady march through the top of the grade/level bands, or in exam results. Attainment levels can mislead on many fronts, a clear example is EAL students. Top performance in your school may not match with top performance in another school and IQ scores do not automatically equate with achievement. As a parent you need to know what being on the G&T register actually means…

Sadly schools often ignore the needs of students with exceptional potential, or miss the under-achieving gifted child due to inadequate identification and pressure on resources (money, time & staff can only go so far). We can’t afford to assume G&T students will be all right, are easy to spot, just need more work, and don’t need the nourishment that other SEN students need.

I bet there are inner city kids who are G&T but, while they are identified primarily on attainment, won’t be accurately identified or supported and therefore will miss the much vaunted social mobility boat. To that end, the growth of Academies could spawn a growth in rigorous identification of students to better facilitate student’s achieving their true potential, which is what Academies claim to be about.

 

What can you do as a parent?

Encourage their interests; focus on reading. Play games such as Scrabble, Articulate, Boggle; lateral thinking games are excellent. Extra classes, personal tutors, clubs, travelling. Valuing, understanding and supporting your child is essential.

Fighting on their behalf may be necessary too.

A story is appropriate here.

Jo was a high achieving student with a particular flair for English. In year 11 she had a teacher who found her challenging questions to be under-mining and as a consequence humiliated her in class. Jo began failing English and started bunking school. Noticing this, her parents got in touch with the school, agreed to an independent English program tailored to her interests and needs. Jo returned to excellence in her work and was happy to return to school.

 

What can schools do?

Schools must show the G&T child they are valued, giving them appropriate academic challenge; and chances to be together, to feel less isolated. The following strategies do work!

Acceleration. Students can be accelerated across the year or within subjects.

Differentiation – an over-used term, it means creating something to extend the child in your class; richer or more challenging tasks

Teacher – student matching. Matching personalities as well as learning styles

Mentoring/cross age tutoring – Matching younger or older students with similar interests/abilities to enhance learning of both

Independent Negotiated Programs – Student interest and skills determine the scale and scope of the project, negotiated with staff regarding resources, etc

Competitions – individual, team internal external – there are heaps of them!

Gardner says: “I don’t care what intelligence people have. I care whether they can do things we value in our culture. What good is it to know if you have an IQ of 90 or 130… if, in the end you can’t do anything?” We must make sure G&T kiddies get the chance to do something fabulous.

 

Further reading:

Betts & Neihart (1988)

http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10114.aspx

Practical Tools – Understanding Giftedness (the link to Gagne doesn’t work but the PDF files do and provide useful information and strategies

http://www.learningplace.com.au/deliver/content.asp?pid=31758

Gardner and Multiple Intelligences

http://www.tecweb.org/styles/gardner.html

http://www.infed.org/thinkers/gardner.htm

http://www.thirteen.org/edonline/concept2class/mi/index.html

Gagne and Differentiated Models of G&T

http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/policies/gats/assets/pdf/poldmgt2000rtcl.pdf

http://www.curriculumsupport.education.nsw.gov.au/policies/gats/assets/images/dmgtcolor.PDF

Plus

Levels of Giftedness

Mildly Gifted –                          IQ 115 – 129

Moderately Gifted –                         IQ 130 – 144

Highly Gifted –                         IQ 145 – 159

Exceptionally Gifted –            IQ 160 – 179

Profoundly Gifted –                         IQ 180+

 Some Gods in the G&T Pantheon

1905 Binet – Introduced the idea of ‘mental age’ & created the first structured intelligence test

1978 Renzulli – Developed the Three-ring Conception of Giftedness: the interaction between above average general intelligence; high levels of task commitment; and high levels of creativity.

1981 Gardner – Developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences; linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, body-kinesthetic, the ability to notice and make distinctions; and access one’s own feelings about life

1983 Tannenbaum – Developed the Psychosocial Definition of Giftedness: giftedness = potential; talent = developed abilities. Five factors interact: general ability, special ability, non-intellectual factors, environmental and chance factors

1985 Gagne – Developed the Differentiated Model of Giftedness & Talent: the child progresses from giftedness (high potential) to talent (high performance) through the learning process, assisted by intra-personal and environmental factors

+ Bloom and that invidious taxonomy – ignore it at your peril!

This appeared in The Guardian on Monday 9 May 2012 – http://www.guardian.co.uk/teacher-network/teacher-blog/2012/may/09/teaching-gifted-and-talented-pupils