Author: aeodeneal
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Maximising Progress in KS5 Physics
Prompted by a round of ChatPhysics on Twitter recently, I thought this could be an opportunity to write about ways that we maximise progress at our school, and some methods I want to try from some other Twitter Physicists. Feedback This links to another post I’ve written, relating to the college-wide project I’m running introducing…
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Learning conversations with KS5 students: independent target setting
Context for the project This academic year (2021-22) I’m leading a college-wide research project at my school aimed at improving independent target setting (and hopefully therefore progress) with KS5. The main aim is for students to lead conversations with their teachers setting their own targets based on how they’ve done in an assessment, and then…
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What is self-determination theory, and how might it help me in the classroom?
Sometimes I’m reminded (either through Twitter, day-to-day conversation, or another way) that a fair few teachers don’t see much (any) value in the use of educational research. Whilst it is true that a lot of it is very contextual, I don’t agree that it can’t be helpful. What is unhelpful is educational research that is…
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Research Proposal: Students’ Experiences of Target Grade Use as an Extrinsic Motivational Tool
After a wee break whilst my supervisors, David and Dillon, marked my proposal, I’m absolutely elated to say it passed, and I’ve been allowed to continue to the thesis stage of the EdD. Woohoo! I’d like to add at this point that both were instrumental in helping me develop my thinking, and provided really helpful…
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Marking and feedback for workload reduction
It’s no secret that teacher workloads are generally pretty high. Those who haven’t been in a school since they were in school might suggest it’s a cushty 9-3 job with tonnes of holiday. The holidays are nice, sure, but I tend to spend most of my holidays working on research stuff, and I usually have…
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Opinion: Ideas for the retention crisis
In this blog I’ll give my two cents on the teacher recruitment and retention crisis. Part of me wonders who will care what my opinion is, given that I’m a third-year teacher with little (read: no) experience in any leadership capacity, but this is my blog, so I’ll share my opinion anyway. Workload One of…
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Proposed research methods poster
In this post, I upload the poster I’ve ‘presented’ as part of the proposal for my EdD thesis. I put presented in quotes because it wasn’t a traditional presentation; since most of my course is part-time (since we are mostly teachers or other education professionals full-time), we sent our posters and a voiceover recording to…
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“How did your systematic review go?” Well…
I didn’t fail! So that’s good. For the uninitiated, I spent my Easter break from school (about six weeks ago now) writing a systematic literature review about the use of target grades in schools as a method of motivation for secondary-age pupils. It became clear early on (but perhaps not early enough) that this links…
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Imposter syndrome
Imposter syndrome isn’t a new thing. It’s clear from my Twitter timeline that it’s far more common than a lot of people think it is, and I’m certainly in that group. In this post I’ll talk a bit about where I’ve experienced imposter syndrome, and how I’ve tried to overcome it. Experiencing imposter syndrome as…
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Training students for practical work
There are loads of reasons why training students for practical work is important. The biggest of these, in my opinion, is so that they’re more engaged in the scientific process, and know how it works. Clearly, scattering some iron filings round a magnet doesn’t match professional lab research. However, the general process is pretty similar…
