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Acting out of Fear

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  The things people do when they're afraid.  A strange thing that's emerged from my EdD studies, but perhaps an important one.  I've been writing about it in my thesis this week.  But something else happened this week on a personal level that I wanted to take time and document.   I'm not good with endings.  I'm terrible at saying goodbye.  I'm much more the kind of person who, when faced with a situation like that, I'd often prefer to fade into the background than be confronted with loss or change.  I mean it's stupid the lengths that I go to.  This will probably sound stupid, but n December 2019, when the old college building I worked in for so many years was closed for the final time and made ready for demolition, I sat in my car and cried at length over a building.  Maybe because it represented the end of an era, or maybe it was expression of my fear of what lay ahead being different from the familiarity of my surroundings. ...
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What makes for a "good education"?

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As I've gone about my research for my EdD, one of the things that I've come across a lot is people telling me they wanted to make a difference.  I've spoken to numerous people who told me that they want to make a difference to the lives of others.  Many of them were inspired to do so by amazing teachers who changed their lives either by inspiring them or by providing them with the tools they needed to help themselves.  A common themes was the idea of paying it forward.  But today I was troubled by one story.   I was troubled by the story of a man who gave up his post as a university professor because, "Our universities are no longer interested in their original purpose. They are no longer prioritizing the search for truth, learning, and evidence over dogma. They are no longer protecting and promoting things like free speech and academic freedom. They are no longer opening and challenging the minds of their students. And they are no longer Ivory Towers." In ...
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Lessons from Emily Charlton

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  Anyone who knows me knows I love a good movie.  Its not just the excitement of the action movies or the scare factor of the horror movies that I enjoy.  Sometimes it's those one liners, those little moments that hit you right in the feels.  You know what I mean?  But tonight I went to the cinema to watch the newly produced sequel to the 2006 sensation that was the Devil Wears Prada and of all the people that stood out for me it was Emily Blunt reprising her role as Emily Charlton. Without giving away too many spoilers, at the end she realised she screwed up and in her interaction with another character someone made the the comment, "We all screw up sometimes.  Its ok."  That got me because we do.  We all screw up. It made me think of all the professional and personal screw ups I've made over the years.  The bridges I've burned and the endless hours I spent kicking myself for being so stupid.  But we are hard on ourselves.  And we'...
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Positionality, Ethics and Narrative Course Correction... A Reflection

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As a researcher you're told to consider your positionality in relationship with ethical guidance and in relation to the people, the organisations and/or the institutions that you're researching.  You spend a lot of time journaling and thinking about your own research practice and you're warned about gatekeepers.  But I don't think anything quite prepares you for the experience of discovering that people begin to see you differently.  Inside you're the same person you always were.  But I learned there's a naivety to that because what others see is someone who has changed in status, someone who has grown in power and someone who has the potential to do considerable harm which, from their position of being researched, is a frightening realisation.   ("You've Changed" by Michael-Albert Herrera is licensed under CC BY 2.0.) The thing is, I can pinpoint the memory of when I realised that people see me differently.  I was at home and I contacted someone t...
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Thinking about AI through the lens of Bloom's Taxonomy

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Education is a field full of acronyms and I remember having a bit of a giggle to myself when I first saw these two.  Lower order thinking skills (LOTS) or Higher order thinking skills (HOTS) are were made famous in Blooms Taxonomy, a model that really helps educators to create learning outcomes which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound (SMART)... there's another acronym.  It gets especially confusing when we try to support our students as they develop lots of SMART HOTS.    But, as with many teachers, generative AI (artificial intelligence) has caused me to pause and rethink.  And I don't generally think about AI that much beyond teaching my students to address the question of: (a)  Should I use it?  (b)  How do I use it?  and (c) Should I trust what it tells me?  However, in this blog post, I wanted to explore something different.  I wanted to explore my big fear - are students using AI to cheat?  Or ...
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