Curios of the week #105

Clippings, endnotes and other ephemera

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I was planning to use this week’s Curios as a last call for tickets to researchED Ballarat. However it sold out a few weeks back and has a waiting list. That’s even after we were able to push the capacity a little to make it the largest researchED ever to take place in Australia. If you have a ticket and your plans have changed then it’s important to let us know so we can release that space on the waiting list.

The Sewell Pavilion, where we will be hosting the keynote, is looking fine in the autumn sunshine, so I just hope the weather holds. I will be delivering that keynote. Here is the blurb:

“Is there a miniature person in your head, pulling levers and turning dials to control what you do? No? Then why do we often act as if there is and why is this a paradox? What can cognitive load theory tell us about the mind and how it makes use of the knowledge we hold in our memories? What does this model tell us about jokes and what can jokes demonstrate about the way we understand what we read? In this existential session, Dr Greg Ashman will explore these questions and more. Bring your pet homunculus.”

Does that sound interesting? Maybe I could speak at your place.

This week’s Curios include Latin, malinformation, a thoroughly decolonised Ireland and much more.

Training events of the week

This week saw me post a free article about one set of training events run by Peter Sullivan on cognitive load theory and the new Victorian teaching and learning model. I am sceptical about these.

I am less sceptical about Tom Bennett’s return to Australia in May and the series of training events he will be running. For those who don’t know, Bennett is the big boss of researchED but also an expert in improving school behaviour policies and building positive cultures. This session will be great. Last year, he spoke to staff at Clarendon and to leaders from a range of local schools who were highly positive about their respective sessions.

You can find a link to all Bennett’s Australian events here.

New podcast episodes of the week

Emily Hanford has released new episodes of her seminal Sold a Story podcast:

You can find episode 13 here:

Pundit of the week

It’s me!

Lucy Carroll and Chris Harris quoted me for a story in the Sydney Morning Herald about a New South Wales initiative to bring in maths screening assessments in early primary. I noted:

“When you are testing kids on number bonds, you don’t want them counting on their fingers. You don’t want them using working memory because that is going to take a lot of time…

[the] single biggest improvement you could make in maths would be to have a state-mandated times tables test before kids leave primary school…

You get the impression from teacher training that memorising facts is not a groovy thing for kids to do. Making sure all kids know their eight times tables seems low down the list of objectives, so a lot of them don’t.”

I was challenged about this on Twitter/X by none other than Dylan Wiliam who rightly pointed out that the end of primary school is too late for a times tables test. I was thinking more of, say, Year 4, but the point is taken. Still, a test at the end would have some positive upstream effects.

Systematic review of the week

Over on X, news broke of an intriguing systematic review shedding new light on reading comprehension.