Questions That Will Define 2026
There’s a predictable rhythm to education. Every few years we rediscover an idea we abandoned a decade earlier and insist it’s revolutionary. The only constant is the pendulum swing: one decade it’s all soft lighting, beanbags, and “let the children lead”; the next it’s rigid scripts, highly structured lessons, and the kind of certainty usually…
Teaching: Better Paid, Still Broken
Teaching is a 9–3 job in the same way parenting is just birthday parties and Instagram photos. In a previous post on Becoming a Teacher and the work of a teacher, I wrote about what teachers actually do beyond the hours the public sees. It was anecdotal. It was based on my lived experience and others’, tired…
TikTok Kids, Burnt-Out Teachers, and the Illusion of Reinventing School
Every few years, we’re told the classroom has to be reinvented. Gen Z students learn differently. Gen Alpha will need something else entirely. Now Gen Z teachers are arriving, and apparently, they’re a new challenge too. The result is what I call generational whiplash. Gen Z supposedly required “21st century skills” (as if critical thinking…
Stop Acting Surprised: Teachers Don’t Have Time for Your Research
Last month, AARE released a blog post with a shocking revelation: teachers aren’t reading academic research. Groundbreaking stuff. I haven’t seen such a pointless discovery since someone realised toddlers aren’t into Nietzsche or that cats don’t follow instructions. Apparently, classroom teachers, you know the ones that are overworked, underpaid, and one broken photocopier away from a nervous…
On grades, hypocrisy, and the delusion that students love learning for its own sake
A new study tells us that over 65% of students either ignore feedback completely or do not improve as a result of feedback – is anyone surprised? Ask any high school teacher how effective feedback is and you’ll get the same answer… somewhere between a tired chuckle and a soul-crushing sigh. Sure, we provide feedback. We may…
Why Every Fix for Education Makes Something Else Worse
There’s a certain look you develop after a few decades in education. A kind of squint. Part suspicion, part fatigue, part “Please don’t say ‘21st century learning’ again.” It’s the look of someone who has taught with passion, researched with hope, and been burnt by the same five ideas recycled every ten years with new…
All Hail Explicit Instruction – But Don’t Drink the Kool-Aid
Education loves a holy grail. The current one? Explicit instruction. You can’t swing a lanyard in a staff meeting without hitting someone proclaiming the virtues of teacher-led, step-by-step lessons. According to the new orthodoxy, if your lesson isn’t drenched in learning objectives, success criteria, worked examples, and the sacred “I do, we do, you do,”…
Why Australian Education Feels Stuck – Part 2 of 2: Digging Deeper into the Dysfunction
Welcome back to part two of this slow, frustrating waltz through the reasons Australian education feels like it’s running in place—polished reforms on the outside, same old problems underneath. In Part 1, we looked at the front-line issues: the illusion of standardisation, content overload, research misused as doctrine, professional development that feels more like detention,…
Why Australian Education Feels Stuck – A Two-Part Reality Check
Spend enough time around Australian education policy and you’ll notice a pattern: constant reform, endless reviews, shiny new acronyms—and yet, the results barely move. If anything, they’re sliding in the wrong direction. It’s like watching someone rearrange deck chairs on a ship that’s slowly turning in circles. We’ve been told the next initiative will fix…
Doomscrolling in the Classroom: Why Schools Must Reclaim Attention in the Age of Digital Distraction
I’ve written about all this before, but I was previously focussed on mobile devices in the classroom and the digital revolution – a half-century revolution in the making. The Labour Party has finally emerged from its grieving loss in the referendum (I wrote about it here) to pass a social media ban for under-16s, one…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Maximising Student Potential 