Positive thinking

Matthew Riddle, University of Melbourne   How well are we preparing the typical primary school kid for life when they graduate in 2032? Current attitudes to education around cybersecurity and online safety skew towards caution at all costs. We often focus on schools’ duty of care rather than fostering skills and frameworks of digital ethics which empower students. There is a danger we are letting kids down with a fear-driven mentality instead of engaging their challenges head-on. Both parents and teachers can help kids in this capacity: let’s take a look at how (tips below). Fear can be a barrier We educational technologists often have cybersecurity discussions with students, parents and teachers with digital fluency levels ranging from expert to little-to-no knowledge. As parents and teachers we can understandably be fearful of the role of technology in kids’ lives, however this can sometimes be a barrier to student learning. Around six years ago, Wooranna...

Julia Badger, University of Oxford   The latest Statutory Assessment Test results (Sats) have been released and will reveal whether all the coaching and anxiety has paid off for schools and pupils. Sats have never been far from controversy. Introduced in 1989, the national curriculum aimed to ensure standardised teaching across all government funded schools – and Sats were the assessment of performance against expectation. The results provide schools with a way of monitoring children’s progress and can be accessed by secondary schools to help set their Year 7 pupils into ability groupings. The data, which is published by the Department for Education, also allows for comparison of schools – which can help parents with school selection. On top of this, Sats provide additional insight into school performance for Ofsted inspections – which allows the government to monitor whether schools are enabling children to show progression. The tests have become “high-stakes” –...

   Mandy Pierlejewski, Leeds Beckett University We know that when it comes to brain development, it continues throughout most of our lives – from infancy to adulthood. But unlike other more obvious signs of growing up, many parents underestimate how much a child’s brain changes from year to year. Research shows that during early childhood, the links within the brain are busy forming – this is a time when children are learning to learn. And their brains are gradually forming connections that enable them to organise their thoughts. For children to be able to learn new information, they need to relate the new learning to previous learning. They need to develop an awareness of their own thinking and to monitor their thoughts, emotions and actions. And these capacities develop best through play. Psychologist Pam Jarvis explains this in her blog The Psychological Historian , using an analogy of trying to put clothes into a wardrobe with insufficient hangers. T...