Twitter has become increasingly divisive recently, I am sure we can all recognise this.
I read the comment from the title of the blog this morning and it has stuck in my head. I won't say who tweeted it, but it was probably someone who should have known better (it always is in my opinion).
The main cause of the arguing of the past week and a half has been the conflagration over 'Mantle of the Expert'.
Yesterday I actually bothered to see what this was all about and I will admit I was shocked to see that schools actually use this as a whole school approach to learning. To me it is simply laughable. True, role-play is an important part of many subjects at primary, but having looked at some of the planning it still looks ridiculous to me.
My tweets of derision for this approach were picked up by a Tory peer and a number of others. I went away and did more research. I still hold my position above - and I will explain why.
Teaching has to be grounded in reality and rigorous research, not simply: "I tried it in my class and it was great, it will work for you." Too often bad ideas spread this way and us teachers have been guilty of this in the past. It is precisely the "DaisyWillingHirsch® effect" which has challenged these frankly stupid ideas and asked for evidence of their efficacy. Where this has been lacking, ideas have been rightly ridiculed. At ResearchED during Tom Bennett's talk someone had the balls to put their hand up and say they believed 'brain gym' worked and fair play to them, but it was maybe with their group of kids at that point in their education. There is absolutely no 'proper' evidence Mantle of the Expert is as effective as any other teaching strategy. For schools to adopt it as a whole school approach despite this is really, really bad.
Those may sneer at the DaisyWillingHirsch® effect, but I find it is generally those who simply do not like the fact that everything they once knew and relied on might be bollocks. People do not like to hear this, especially those with big egos. I would urge these people to recognise this and to deal with it themselves, rather than sneering at those who are prepared to do so. After all, teaching is a reflective practice isn't it?
