Friday 22 March 2013

#badacademia

This letter appeared in the Independent.  It raises several concerns about Gove's new curriculum

"We are writing to warn of the dangers posed by Michael Gove’s new National Curriculum which could severely erode educational standards. The proposed curriculum consists of endless lists of spellings, facts and rules. This mountain of data will not develop children’s ability to think, including problem-solving, critical understanding and creativity." 
It was also signed by over 100 academics from universities across the country many of whom are experts in education and have published multiple books and papers on education.  
The academics state that Gove did not take on board the advice of experts when designing his curriculum and as such is sacrificing a good education for rote learning which will severely affect educational standards.
Gove's response was this was to shout at the academics for living in their ivory towers and being an example of bad academia.  How ironic!  

@ThomsonPat: So Gove read my 12 books  140+ peer reviewed journal articles in 2 days as well as those of my 99 colleagues? - Pat Thompson - Professor in Education


This led to  encouraging academics to take back the term by using  #badacademia on twitter to tweet about the good education that happens in spite of Gove.
Some great tweets below:



Right, off to do some . Or, as it's occasionally known, critical thinking.



in my downtime giving 84 students 100 word feedback on first drafts of essays, another example of


Developing and assessing a hands on research methods module to encourage practical skills and critical thinking

 
. I'm designing a questionnaire as part of my research into young people's critical information literacy skills


Caught up w/ Gove controversy: so the ConDem line appears to be "You're either with us or against us". How healthily democratic



I've done all week too. In schools, working with teachers/leaders, supporting research, govs meeting...



And next week I plan on writing NEW stuff that people might not already know, that must be REALLY



Today I'm reading and thinking, as I don't already hold the world's knowledge in my capacious brain



trying to understand how early modern non-elite (not Gove's 'significant') people understood and used legal courts:



I am updating the undergrad reading list to incorporate the developments in historiography after 2000



Another long day in the library, exercising my brain with some creative thought for my dissertation.



I'll be encouraging students & academics to turn the employability agenda in on itself in a critically reflective manner.






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