This article discusses the issue of the sustainability of educational change, in the light of findings from research undertaken in tandem with a development project initiated by a Scottish Education Authority, The Highland Council. The project aimed to promote self and peer assessment practices, as well as other participative pedagogies associated with Scotland's new Curriculum for Excellence, in secondary schools. The article reviews some of the key themes that have emerged from recent literature on educational change, before drawing on the project data to address two key issues: the factors that have helped to promote and sustain changes within the schools; and the barriers to innovation experienced in these schools. We conclude the article by identifying a range of considerations that should be taken into account by those seeking to innovate, and we suggest that, while the Highland model for change has enjoyed a degree of success in inculcating change, more needs to be done to address systemic issues, such as the pervasive influence of a narrow attainment agenda in shaping classroom practice.
Humans are both brilliant and idiotic, write Steven Sloman and Phillip Fernbach at the beginning of the Knowledge Illusion. Having glanced at the newspaper before sitting down to write this, where a tribute to the late, great novelist, Toni Morrison, appears alongside an article about Boris Johnson's Brexit "plans", this seemed all too obvious. Sloman and Fernbach themselves concede that, for the most part, their book is simply stating the obvious: we don't know as much as we think we do; we mistake the knowledge of others for our own; our reasoning is primarily causal, but our causal models are shallow and often wrong. Nevertheless, like many ideas, they say, these ones seem obvious only because we've been made to think about them. When we don't think about them which is to say, most of the time we fall prey continually to these "obvious" errors. Most of these errors are largely inconsequential discovering we don't really know how a zip, a flush toilet or a bicycle work won't stop us from using them effectively (although it's a bit more of a problem when we need to fix those that are broken) but sometimes the consequences are dire (nuclear testing accidents, plane crashes, and anti-vaccination campaigns all feature). So, what to do? Sloman and Fernbach don't pretend to have all the answers, but their exploration of our cognitive shortcomings, where they come from, and why they matter is thoughtful, provocative
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