#EduSky #UKEd Want to see me live notesketch @jonohey's best-seller Big Ideas, Little Pictures? Plus my attempt to explain how I did it. Sign in here: sketch-your-mind.com/2025/session... Thursday 16th October, 18:30 – 17:30 London times.

#EduSky #UKEd I'm creating a live sketch note on the global Sketch Your Mind week of seminars. I'm attempting to capture Jono Hey's session (author of Big Ideas, Little Pictures) Sketchplanations. Here's a promotional video: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncxI...

#UKEd #EduSky Rigid sitting posture — however well intentioned — for children is not good. The old "sit up straight" is counter to what we know we need for relaxed alertness. No, I am not advocating slouching. We must transcend such infantile dichotomies. AT refers to the Alexander Technique.

#UKEd #EduSky Wrong prediction — especially with high confidence — is preferable regarding its learning potential. Ouch! I see this objectively, but subjectively, it hurts. Of course, and rightly so. Thanks, as ever, to the wise @EfratFurst .

Yes something I was trying to highlight in this paper www.researchgate.net/publication/...

#EduSky #UKEd An oldie from 7 yrs ago; a #rED event somewhere in Europe from the astoundingly wise & productive @P_A_Kirschner. Quite appropriate timing given the recent launch of Instructional Illusions.

#UKEd #EduSky Various concepts & studies I've encountered that I've revolved around Merlin Donald's notion of the External Memory Field. To me, it makes for a coherent, deeper than normal, concept of using images for understanding other's communication & generating your own thoughts.

#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.

#EduSky #UKEd When a discipline has less than 0.5% replication studies, can it legitimately claim it is yet a developed science?

#UKEd #EduSky Until educational studies are replicated & boundaries specified, should be drop the (way too confident) Science of Learning tag and for the meantime just call it all the Heuristics of Teaching?

#UKEd #EduSky Metacognition and cognitive load. Just how do you execute difficult thinking and have enough 'cognitive resources' (that's the phrase, isn't it?) to take notice of what's going on? Beats me; I can't do it.

#EduSky #UKEd Reif says novices can't organise new knowledge. Others say they get more out of graphic organisers if they create them themselves. What? Read on.

#EduSky #UKEd Who benefits most from graphic organisers (my word-diagrams)? Those with most or least prior knowledge? No agreement among the studies it seems

#UKEd #EduSky How to reconcile (desirable) difficulties and access to knowledge for all?

#UKEd #EduSky The paper Decomposition, Recomposition & Modularity (Grossman et al., 2009) occupies an important place in the history of teacher education research. But this singular focus on one technique does not map onto the reality of teaching. So coach for clusters with Coaching WalkThrus

#UKEd #EduSky Incorporate Mental Models and Schema in this word-diagram I invented. The FlowChart is the temporal, situated MM — the horizontal spine.. At each node/moment/step, elaborate into a mini-schema with concepts, info, even mini-steps. From the Organise Ideas book.

#UKEd #EduSky The just-launched Coaching WalkThrus book has a section on coaching: New Teachers | Experienced Ts | Struggling Ts | Resistant Ts | Stuck Ts | Large teams | Specialisms | Pairs. Which is this one? @WALKTHRUs_5

#EduSky #UKEd I'm very clear on the power of distinguishing Schema from Mental Models in the new Coaching WalkThrus, and the resulting confusion in not doing so.

#UKEd #EduSky Had fun talking through & depicting the concepts in @SCottinghatt & @mradamkohlbeck's Hunches & Hypotheses @WALKTHRUs_5 in the just-launched Coaching WalkThru book.

#EduSky #UKEd Willingham's quip of stories being cognitively privileged doesn't apply to case studies. In my #rED25 The Professional Mind slot, I demonstrated how presenters of case studies often kill off its story from the very start. So easy to do — "I'll just set the context".

Inspired to hear @olicav.bsky.social talk on The Professional Mind at Research Ed yesterday. He offered so many interesting provocations, my favourite being ‘Are you allowed subjectivity in cognitive science?’

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.

#EduSky #UKEd rED25 Nat Conf | The Professional Mind | 9:40 | M05 Not at all sure my slide deck will play from the cloud or email (15MBs!) so have also captured the main points on 4 sheets of flip chart paper (placed on the floor as aide-mémoire). So it may be a slide-less presentation. Why not?

#UKEd #EduSky I've been cutting out some slides from my The Professional Mind presentation at #rEDNatConf this Saturday, so I can read a passage or two from Jerome Bruner — Mr Scaffold to many nowadays.

#UKEd #EduSky Follow Dorling Kindersley, not John Sweller, when it gives to split attention. Cramming labels inside the diagram would make it harder, not easier, to read. Why would one think psychologists know better than expert practitioners when it comes to visual explanations.

#UKEd #EduSky I've 2 copies of the Coaching WalkThrus book to give away at the #rEDNatConf next Saturday — one in the morning, one afternoon. Just approach me, telling me the 5 stages of the S|T|A|R|T model, as used in the @WALKTHRUs_5 Case Stories. First with correct answers get the books.

#UKEd #EduSky #rEDNatConf | The Professional Mind in five parts: Problems / Predictions / Mindset / Strategy / Stories. Do come along & investigate how to apply the scientific method to complex environments with no control of variables — then tell its story so others learn from it.

Had a wonderful conversation with Rosie, owner of a 2nd hand book shop in Bridport AND one of twins who were 'the' Biba models. Below is a dedication — in a recently published history of the unique company — from Biba's creator Barbara Hulanicki.

From @sarahesilverman.bsky.social: Another one for "Learning science findings are complicated by neurodiversity" — "...redundant information increased cognitive load for non-ADHD participants but decreased cognitive load for ADHD participants." www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Leafing through Kevin Brownlow's book in the epic Abel Gance film in Napoleon, I noticed my father's name in the acknowledgements page. My father had seen the original screening (1920s), and Brownlow's 5-hour remastered version (with orchestra) in the 1980s.

#UKEd #EduSky This, from @MaryMyatt to my mind shows the danger in a zealous adherence to CLT. eg the feared Redundancy Effect would stop you adding images if students didn't need them? But how do you know this? And what if 2or 3 did need them? Do you sacrifice their learning for the majority?

I think this sums it up. Basic (fundamental), obvious (uncontroversial) and vague.

#EduSky #UKEd This is one of the wisest pieces of advice for designing learning. A syntax-only access to knowledge is counter to all that's claimed about knowledge being every pupil's right. Not to be confused with desirable difficulties.

#EduSky #UKEd After the Popes list, Pascal has moved onto what will be several months' listing of... composers.

@mrbates.bsky.social Look Lee! Donald Clark on transience. I can't believe CLT authors & self-appointed authorities didn't & don't see this. Just the overly clever-clever bits — that are contentious anyway.

#UKEd #EduSky When my son with Down S was 2, a S&L therapist told me all about his probable v. short auditory loop. That was 1988, decades before schools learned of CLT. Seeing the impact of this one manifestation of the transient info effect, affected my view of learning its challenges.

#UKEd #EduSky How to draw diagrams. Posted in response to seeing Richard Mayer's bicycle pump diagram used whenever diagrams are mentioned. It isn't great; really. The blue colour poses questions: what does 'blue' signify? And being 'flat' isn't the best representation. See toilet below.

#UKEd #EduSky @C_Hendrick is doing such important and useful work in analysing research papers and prodding our too comfortable understanding of their principles. Without this, we're susceptible (guilty even) of the charge of being ('evidence-sort-of-informed') true believers.

#UKEd #EduSky Here's another little thing I found. Situations | Solutions | Theories | Functions | Execution Yes, I'd do it differently now, but most I'd keep as is.

#UKEd #EduSky Just found a poster for a course I used to lead: Dual Coding With Teachers. Three sessions (90 mins each): Explain | Organise | Design. Sounds good! Alas, I'm no longer leading it.

"I've been to the Oval" said my wife on my return yesterday from watching the Test match there. "Oh yes. Who did you see?" I ask. "Yes, The Who. And The Faces with Rod Stewart. Quintessence were groovy that day."

#UKEd #EduSky I'm at the Oval which houses a great example of wisely not following the CLT advice concerning split-attention. Look at the diagram of the related photo. Putting the names in it would make it unreadable & unusable. So even sound principles have limits. Still got to think.

📢 New Post 📢 How can we ensure that schools and trusts remain "learning organisations" ? Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline" may have something to offer. cc: @olicav.bsky.social What Senge Can Still Teach Schools and Trusts? have a read below. 👇🏽 researcherteacher.home.blog/2025/07/30/l...

#UKEd #EduSky Today, I was invited to 3 of my former special school pupils' 50th birthday party. I'd attended one of their weddings a decade earlier.

Fourth book arrival of the week: a pleasant divergence from cognitive science. Mod Art: music, graphics, fashion, art, design from the 1950s to 1960s. And still not dated.

For followers of Pascal my 39yo son with DS. He has finished his several months' listing of global film locations & has embarked on listing the history of popes: their birth names, the adopted ones, dates & nationalities. And why not?

#EduSky #UKEd It looks at the duplication of info in 2 formats; say, text & imagery. But ignores the computational efficiency of both, as Larkin & Simon's 1987 paper did. In their study, those facing text & diagram fared better than the text-only group. 1/2

#UKEd #EduSky Re the use of AI. I wonder if this remark by Charles Baudelaire might resonate. When asked if people took opium (as he did), would they have similar artistic revelations as he had had, he replied: shepherd boys will just dream of sheep.

#UKEd #EduSky Did you realise split-attention is transient info in disguise? Just as a movie frame disappears from view (causing trans info effect) so does a map as you turn your head to read the key. Same simple principle:out of sight, out of mind.

#UKEd #EduSky It's good/encouraging that CLT updates itself. But, really, who wouldn't have known that the transience of a spoken narrative of a static visual would overwhelm many listeners' WM? Anyone? What... no one in the team had a clue?