What if ...?, What if ...?

Foreword by Robert Bjork. What would you do differently if your most cherished beliefs about education turned out to be wrong? This is a book about teaching but is not a manual on how to teach. It's a book about ideas but is not ideological. It is a book about thinking and questioning and challenging. Much of what we believe about education is unexamined. In iconoclastic style, David Didau scours current thinking on education to expose bad ideas masquerading as common sense before presenting an alternative view on how we might think about teaching. The main thing Didau believes we're wrong about is the belief that we can see learning. Like many other beliefs in education this is so deeply embedded in the way we see the world we don't even think about it: it is a self-evident truth. Pretty much every lesson taught by every teacher in every school depends on the idea that we can see learning happen. But if we're wrong about this, what else might we be wrong about? If it's true that learning is invisible, where does that leave Assessment for Learning, lesson observation and the whole concept of 'outstanding' teaching?Didau suggests an alternative to the quick fix culture so prevalent in schools: making learning deliberately difficult. He considers the perceptual and cognitive illusions that keep us in the dark. And presents an alternative understanding of learning and progress. He also introduces the science of how people really learn and suggests ways to implement this approach in schools. And examines the consequences of shifting our understanding of how learning occurs and discusses some of the mistakes we've made about marking, differentiation, motivation and creativity.