Skills cannot be taught. Discuss.
Recent government rhetoric would seem to suggest that skills are back on the agenda. For some years now, the emphasis in the education debate has been on knowledge, and, at [...]
Articles by Michael Fordham
Should pupils be given choice over what they study?
Economic liberalism has long exalted the role played by markets, and the notion of consumer choice sits at the heart of this idea. If I want to buy a new computer, I can [...]
What sorts of substantive knowledge are needed to get better at history?
As I set out in my last post, substantive knowledge concerns knowledge of the past, and in history curriculum theory can generally be seen as the counterpart of disciplinary [...]
Types of knowledge in a history curriculum
In my previous post I focused on ability statements (which take the form “pupils can x”) and argued that it is problematical to incorporate these into progression models [...]
The problem with general ability statements in history education
Progression models are frequently constructed from ‘ability’ statements. Put simply, if you have an ability, it means you can do something. It is therefore quite [...]
The curriculum as progression model
What does it mean to get better at history? One of the problems we have in answering this question is that history is an incredibly diverse discipline: there are thousands of [...]
Should progression in history be modelled hierarchically?
I argued in my previous post that existing models of ‘getting better’ at history have tended (a) to look for generic features of historical practice and (b) to break [...]
Where have progression models in history gone wrong?
The dominant approach at present to defining progression in learning history is to make use of ‘disciplinary’ or ‘second-order’ concepts such as ‘causation’, [...]
Teaching: a very natural act?
In 1971 the philosopher of education Paul Hirst published a paper titled “What is teaching?” in which he set out, in the style of RS Peters, to conduct an analysis of the [...]
Have you taught it? The problem of the list curriculum
One of the problems of the various iterations of the National Curriculum is that the statements they included were very broad and open to interpretation. This is true of the [...]
Should teaching methods be prescribed?
Arendt’s observation that ‘the most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution’ is pertinent in a number of contexts, and we can see [...]
Helping children understand the Age of Trump
Every now and then I write a post in which I look at current affairs and ask the question “what does someone need to know to make sense of this all?” I wrote a similar [...]
On curiosity
One of my aims as a teacher is to get my pupils to cultivate their curiosity. This stems from my belief that the reality we inhabit is full of wonder and beauty and that we, [...]
Knowledge: independently necessary or collectively sufficient?
I have a little game for you to play today, and you must do as I tell you. Read each of the following sentences and, at the end of each one, either shrug your shoulders and [...]
Reconsider and Compromise: real pragmatists do not ignore disagreement
I really do understand why people get so frustrated by the idea that there exists a never-ending conflict between two broad philosophies of education, namely [...]
“Use all the sources and your own knowledge”: is it time to move on?
I have written a few times now that I think we need a radical change in how we set source-based questions in exams. Some relevant earlier posts are Less generic analysis and [...]
Who is best at communicating research to teachers?
Teachers have famously found little use for educational research. I think this is for three principal reasons. First, they have been stung too many times in the past, having [...]
Clio et cetera 