While looking for something else...: Items to Share; 21 December 2014

22 December 2014

Education Focus

Teaching and subject expertise: let’s not fall for genericism again | Clio et cetera The author discusses the subject-specificity of teaching in relation to the welcome interest in practitioner research. It's an issue of particular interest in the post-compulsory sectors, where teaching courses and qualifications are generic, with both benefits and costs.

MOOCs and the distance-learning mirage | ROUGH TYPE [Nicholas Carr] 'Now that we’ve begun to talk of MOOCs retrospectively, I think the time has come to update my previously published survey of the history of hype that has for more than a century surrounded distance-learning technologies. I am adding a new entry to the list. I suspect it won’t be the last addition.'

Christine Rosen for Democracy Journal: Automation for the People? 'Early in the book, [Nicholas] Carr describes his youthful experience of learning to drive a standard (manual) transmission car. After many stalls and slipped clutches and grinding gears, he gained competence and, eventually, mastery. Unlike the explicit knowledge one obtains from step-by-step instructions, the tacit knowledge he acquired exists in a “fuzzy realm” far different from but no less crucial than the well-defined processes that characterize explicit knowledge. Tacit knowledge is the reason you can still remember how to ride a bicycle after a 20-year hiatus.'

Teacher Use of Academic Research | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice 'The central question that drives "From the Ivory Tower to the Schoolhouse" is straightforward: what explains that some scholarly ideas, and not others, appeared in classrooms practices?' It's clear that it has little to do with their validity.