Posts like these 🥹 🥰

The changes made by Gove damaged secondary. Pupils dragged through double science and removal of things like Environmental and Land Based Science GCSE that actually have relevance to kids (teach in an area with a lot of pupils who will end up farming). It’s like kicking a puppy at times.

After a year of marketing my book, Difference Maker (for biology teachers), I'm just so tired of it all. All I want to do is work on my new book, Making Meaning (general audience). The fun is in the writing, not in the endless marketing.

Tech lobby may argue that teachers can be sort of learning coaches who motivate kids to do the computer work. This is impossible. My dominant tool for motivation is my knowledge of and enthusiasm about the curriculum.

“Today, we’re very similar to each other. Even the most different people are at most maybe 200,000 years separated, with little gene flow,” Reich said. “But 70,000 years ago, there were at least five groups far more different from each other than any groups living today.”

“The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.” ― Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind #BookSky

#UKEd #EduSky Researcher, Terry Pearson, has just responded to one of my morning's tweets on X, with this astounding admission about the SoL. Print this off and stick up on your office wall.

The US ever closer to 1984 "US vice-president encourages ‘calling out’ anyone who celebrates Kirk’s murder, including notifying employers" www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Finally got round to listening James Mannion's podcast episode with Richard Bustin and it's absolutely excellent: "What Are We Teaching?" soundcloud.com/rethinking-e...

"Meanwhile, teachers are using retrieval practice, creating questions of ‘last lesson, last week’ without an explicit link to prior learning. The result? Children are exposed to isolated episodes of spontaneity, or retrieving prior points in their learning, and are unable to see the relevance"

@rodjnaquin.bsky.social has recommended this book. Has anyone else read it yet? Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives. #EduSky

Yo tampoco sabía quién era Kirk. Ninguna de mis compañeras de trabajo, ningún amigo mío había oído nunca su nombre. ¿Sabéis quien sí lo conocía? Mi hija, a través de sus amigos, que rondan los 18-20 años. Ellos sabían quién era y conocían su discurso.

Definitely something to ponder. Core assumptions govern our actions.

@rodjnaquin.bsky.social has recommended this book. Has anyone else read it yet? Leveled Reading, Leveled Lives. #EduSky

It's that time of year again: introducing stock and flow models. #SciTeachUK #iTeachBio

In cellular automata, simple rules create elaborate structures. Now researchers are working backward — starting with the result to learn the rules behind it. @georgemusser.com, SFI’s 2025 Journalism Fellow, explores how this could reshape computation and self-organization in Quanta:

Our food is grown in toxic landfill leachate & 💩 How did anyone ever come up with a scheme so wrong? Is it even legal? Our system is not fit for purpose. I don't think I even want to teach young people some aspects of how badly we've been let down. But I can teach them how we can do things better.

It's that time of year again: introducing stock and flow models. #SciTeachUK #iTeachBio

Horrifying reading. When will it end? Shot dead for retrieving the bodies of their family. No remorse. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

Our mission at Big Biology:

This is infuriating. What is the point of a Marine Protected Area if trawlers are allowed to keep ploughing it? Yet again, the government has succumbed to commercial lobbying. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

New post: Science students don't get experiment variables? Try causal diagrams instead. Link ↴ cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol... #SciTeachUK #iTeachBio

Here's my handout from my ResearchEd talk yesterday about the origin of the computational model of knowledge (and how this view contrasts with the normative view of the Sumerians-Aristotle-Wittgenstein) I tried to show different strands of thought: technologial, psychological, neuroscientific etc.

This is a thoughtful and great write up about teaching science. Science educators- give it a read. #EduSky 🍎🧬🎢⚒️

This is a game changer!! Definitely going to introduce this to the team!

We've been going over Independent and Dependent Variables with our 9th graders this week and it's always a bit of a struggle. I like this way to visualize the relationships between variables graphically. I think I'll share this with our team and see what they think!

If schools could reduce down to 2 hours of instruction a day and still have students gain all the knowledge they need to graduate and go on to college if they choose, we would've switched years ago. We don't keep them there all day just for the hell of it. It's not about speed but thoroughness.

wtf is this!?

Why should things that merely exist be more real than those that don’t, asks polymath and mad genius G Spencer-Brown in The Laws of Form.

@profcoe.bsky.social and Raj Chande at #REd25 There are a *small* number of teachers who we can currently say are statistically (with 95% confidence) better or worse than average for student results… but even the ‘best’ teachers have individual classes who have negative progress, and vice versa!

I found this a really interesting explanation of why students struggle with experiment variables and a possible solution. Will be of interest to #EduSkyPrimary as well as secondary given that these terms are usually introduced in upper primary.

New post: Science students don't get experiment variables? Try causal diagrams instead. Link ↴ cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol... #SciTeachUK #iTeachBio

I see parallels with this and some EduCogSci discourse. There's obviously way more to any words. All the analogue communication beyond them: Body language, tone, cultural and contextual sensitivity, topic expertise, willingness to adapt, etc, but apparently it's simple: just three words. #EduSky

I kept waiting for her to reference some study, scholar, research, theory, etc. in an attempt to give this shameless edu-grift the *slightest* veneer of legitimacy—but nope. Her only point of reference for the entire episode was TONY FREAKING ROBBINS. 🫠💀

📢Is Jonathan Haidt right about smartphones and screens? Months of research and interviews (including with Haidt) went into this investigation. Critics are clear Haidt has gone beyond the data; he says he's speaking the truth. You decide who's right. www.tes.com/magazine/tea...

Autism: The Truth is (not) Out There www.wiringthebrain.com/2014/10/auti... - it really is genetic and we really haven't been great at explaining that

“We know what works” is thinly veiled accountability - more stick than carrot. Attendance & behaviour are multi-causal (poverty, SEND, health, transport). Pretending there’s an infallible fix risks blaming schools when reality resists tidy solutions. "Do more” is deficit talk, not partnership.

So, what could help? How about we put climate, nature and sustainability education at the heart of KS3. Children know that their futures are uncertain, why not make them a vital part of the solution?

I know we don't speak of the 'bad place' here, but it is really worth talking about and thinking about what has happened to discourse on X/Twitter since the exodus of UK teachers from it.

'The oversimplification trap' "When it comes to students in the classroom, we can simplify an explanation of a concept into PPT where complex phrases become glossy icons. Books can become short booklets. Subjects become revision guides." alexquigley.co.uk/the-oversimp...

After many alternatives and receiving valuable feedback, I've begun to settle on this title. What I love about self-publishing is writing what I want, when I want. This will be my first general-audience work. Hopefully, this will be ready by Easter. Thoughts on the title? #EduSky

It really is such a toxic place. I'm not normally one to declare an "-ist" word about most people, but there is an overwhelming amount of people who fit a lot of the "-ist" definitions on there if you stray out of your curated follows...

All I can say is: An Edu fad's purpose is what it does (post ↴) cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiol... How is it that Ofsted, can fall into such fads so easily and ruthlessly? #UKEd #EduSky

Just bought "El Sentido de lo Humano" for my first venture into Humberto Maturana's writing in Spanish. @gregvigneaux.bsky.social #EnactiveCogSci

📢 New Post 📢 Reflecting on the 2023 paper, "Communication miscalibration: The price leaders pay for not sharing enough", read my thoughts here: Too Quiet at the Top? What Happens When School Leaders Don’t Say Enough: researcherteacher.home.blog/2025/08/24/t...

As a former translator, the crucial thing AI will never be able to replace is the ability to discern specific personal or cultural meaning in a person’s choice of word or phrase, and incorporate that depth and richness of meaning in the translation. This applies as much to court as it does to poems.