Education consultant, writer & blogger. Co-author of the Huh project with Mary Myatt. Erstwhile head teacher of Huntington School, York. All views are my own.
York, England
Joined July 2010
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I have returned to @CrownHousePub for my next two books, where I analyse what we can learn from 19 in-depth profiles of truly great teachers, with a foreword by @ProfCoe #GreatSecondaryTeachers #GreatPrimaryTeachers
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In this week’s episode of The Amol Rajan Connection: @daisychristo on how we’re messing up Education; the danger of the Stupidogenic Society; what technology does to our minds; long-term vs working memory; and how AI affects what children should learn. Out now on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music.
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Day 3 of teaching with a script for the first time.
Today, I used a script to model how to rank the 10 oil-rich countries in Southwest Asia we have been studying based on the degree to which they have reinvested or concentrated the windfall from their oil wealth. The script guided my think-aloud, making explicit the questions I ask, the evidence I weigh, and the reasoning I use to arrive at a ranking.
Two observations from today:
1. Scripts can help make expert thinking more explicit and repeatable.
Today’s think-aloud connects directly to some reflecting I’ve been doing on making expert thinking visible, informed by Collins et al.’s research on cognitive apprenticeship and @johntomsett book Collins et al’s Cognitive Apprenticeship in Action.
One of the challenges of teaching disciplinary thinking is that experts often perform complex mental processes without realizing how much they’re doing or how invisible those processes are to novices. When I rank countries, I’m drawing on knowledge, asking questions, weighing evidence, and making judgments that can easily remain hidden if I only model the finished product.
The script helped me deliberately model those questions and decisions rather than simply explain the steps. It gave me a structure for making the thinking visible so students can begin to recognize and eventually use those same processes themselves.
2. Scripted thinking can risk making complex reasoning feel too linear.
Ranking countries involves judgment, weighing competing evidence, and recognizing that a country’s position can change depending on the lens being applied. A script provides a clear pathway through that thinking, but I need to be careful that the modeling doesn’t make the process appear more straightforward or definitive than it actually is.
My goal is to scaffold students’ thinking, not imply that there is always one obvious answer or a single correct path to a conclusion. Expert thinking needs to be made visible, but students also need to see how experts navigate uncertainty, competing evidence, and difficult decisions.
Three days into the experiment, I’m thinking more about the relationship between scripting and cognitive apprenticeship. A script may help me make expert thinking visible and deliberate, but the test is whether that scripted modeling helps students develop the knowledge and thinking processes to do more of the work independently.
John Tomsett retweeted
“It’s really important that you don’t just present pre-prepared examples. Dare to fail, so that students can see that it is hard work, that it takes time to hone the skills.”
“Remembering to give this kind of detailed metacognitive commentary about how you got to the correct working, before starting to present it, can really help students learn what they should be thinking (and doing)…”
These are such important points about making expert thinking visible from Liz Dunbar and Tom Norris in Collins et al.’s Cognitive Apprenticeship in Action.
I know I’ve certainly fallen prey to the worked-example trap of showing students what the finished expert product looks like and assuming they can make the massive leap from point A to point B. But making expert thinking visible isn’t just about showing students what an expert work looks like. It’s about showing them how the expert got there: the decisions, the reasoning, the knowledge, the seductive details, and all the messiness along the way.
We need to model the process, not just present the product. If we wanted to teach someone to paint like Michelangelo, we wouldn’t show them one of his finished paintings and tell them to get to work. We’d make the process visible, demonstrating the techniques, explaining the decisions, and showing them how to work through the challenges that arise.
And that means being willing to make mistakes in front of our students. Not because we need to manufacture failure, but because expert work is rarely as effortless as it appears in its finished form. Our students need to see what expertise looks like in action, not just what it looks like when the work is done.
@johntomsett
John Tomsett retweeted
“We take no shortcuts. We work as hard as the students need to in order to make our expert thinking visible.”
I really love this mindset from @HughJRichards in Collins et al.’s Cognitive Apprenticeship in Action.
There’s the curse of knowledge, but there’s also the curse of expertise: we become so familiar with thinking within our domain that we lose sight of the knowledge, connections, and reasoning processes we draw upon to do the work.
As experts, the work may feel relatively easy to us, and we can make critical assumptions about what students should know and be able to do without our guidance. We take for granted how much thinking we do automatically, how many steps we skip, and how many connections we make without even realizing it.
My job is to make that thinking visible. To slow down, model the process, explain the decisions, and show students how to work through each step. I need to make explicit what expertise allows me to do implicitly.
@johntomsett
John Tomsett retweeted
My mum died alone. My brother took his life. They didn’t care at all, all I’ve had is lies. #CovidInquiry #NeverForget bbc.co.uk/news/live/cmy4xk1d…
John Tomsett retweeted
Although many people see DI as only a fast paced call and response classroom approach, my book explores its approach to curriculum sequencing and design
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Exploring confusion around modelling: "I do, we do, you do" vs "Guided and Independent Practice" teacherhead.com/2025/11/21/e… via @teacherhead
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NEW POST: The Untold Story of Bloom's Taxonomy and the Pyramid That Never Was.
- link in reply ⤵️
🤖 Made with AI
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5 key lessons from research on schools where disadvantaged pupils beat national averages for reading and writing at the end of key stage 2
tes.com/magazine/analysis/pr…
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Defence Sec, Pete Hegseth promises the live streaming of an execution by firing squad. How much darker does the US get?
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👌Next week on HEPs Leadership 55 Mary will speak for Free live about the key principles of KS3 building on the ideas of the KS3 Alliance. The session will also include updates from the DFE and Ofsted @johntomsett @kst_trust @NetworkEDEM @NorthLondonRS
@ProfCoe
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I think it’s worth posting this because Farage is already posting on here about Burnham taking away the triple lock.
Here’s Tice saying they won’t rule out doing exactly the same thing.
@MarinaPurkiss
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Let me ask a direct question - why do some people see these two men as bastians of society, leaders of a vital movement to make the UK a better, safer, more prosperous place?
Danny Tommo tried to kidnap someone at knifepoint because he believed they had £10,000 worth of the cocaine he was dealing. There are also strong allegations, and court records, that he was also involved in a domestic abuse case against his former partner, along with recordings of him saying he mistreated her so badly she became a crack addict. He is currently facing multiple charges dating back from April, along with his current charges. He is a career criminal.
Tommy Robinson is a known drug addict, who boasted about being able to score drugs everywhere he went. He has been convicted on multiple occasions of violent crime, along with fraud, and several other offences.
This isn't some conspiracy or rumour. These are facts about these men. Violent serial criminals.
So, to anyone who supports these men, including elected MPs: explain how they are making Britain safer for women and children. What exactly about attempted kidnapping, drug dealing, violent crime, fraud and drug addiction represents the values you want for this country?
Do you condone that conduct, or do your standards not apply when the criminal shares your politics?
Tell me what makes these men role models. Would you want your own children to grow up like them?
John Tomsett retweeted
What a BRILLIANT book to complete the In Action series! Thanks @Tom_Needham for bringing DI to us with clarity, insight,+practical ideas to use tomorrow!
Sincerely hope every school's (C)PD library has this EXCELLENT set - thanks @teacherhead!
Summary:
itsalearningcurve.education/…
So, so true.
One conclusion from my travels - UK, US, Canada, Australia - is that our global profession remains deeply scarred by decades of poor accountability-driven scrutiny dominated by delusional 'teacher evaluation' processes. The default teacher position is to be sceptical and resistant to observation processes and often PD itself. 'Just leave me alone' is a common starting point.
It's requires a massive effort to build momentum around sustained PD and feedback cycles that people trust, opening themselves up enough to explore habit change.. Where it's happening it's magnificent; it feels like a triumph - but it also feels precarious; it doesn't take much to knock people off course. We're paying the price for all those years training up leaders to adopt the role of compliance checkers and 'quality assurers' rather than being true leaders of learning and teacher development. Takes real focus and changes in attitude to create the cultures of PD teachers crave.
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"Ultimately, never forget that the best pastoral care for students from the most deprived socio-economic backgrounds is
a great set of examination results." @johntomsett
John Tomsett retweeted
I'm going to say this again in clear, simple terms so there can be no equivocation:
Prior to Brexit, immigrants very rarely came to the UK in small boats because it is an extremely dangerous mode of transport. They came in lorries. Organised smuggling gangs knew that because there was free movement of goods between EU countries that there was a high chance that a lorry concealing immigrants would not be searched.
I am sure you all remember that terrible case of a lorry-load of migrants from China and Vietnam that was abandoned in Essex. 31 men and 8 women died.
The onset of Brexit meant that gradually, from approx 2018 onwards, more and more stringent checks began being carried out on lorries, as well as increased security at ferry ports - even Newhaven-Dieppe are surrounded with high barbed wire security fences, and every vehicle leaving Dieppe is opened and checked, so I imagine it must be pretty much the same at Calais and Boulogne as well.
We have no idea how many people a year arrived in the UK unlawfully by lorry. The reason for this is because they were literally untrackable. Occasionally you would see a lorry stopped by the M2 or the M25 with a handful of people standing behind the safety barrier while the police had the blue lights on. But they certainly could not track what they didn't know about.
The likelihood is that there were a great many more people getting into the country. The overwhelming majority of them would disappear into the undergrowth, never to be seen again until either
a) they committed an offence
b) they were caught in raids working illegally
c) they either walked into a police station to claim asylum almost immediately or
d) they popped over the parapet several years later because they wanted to regularise their status, either by marrying, or because they had children, or under the Long Residence rules - it used to be 15 years but is now 20 years. If you can prove you have been in the UK continuously for 20 years and have otherwise kept your nose clean, you are entitled to limited leave to remain. Eventually you might get settlement after 30 years - again, if you can prove you have always been in the country in that time. You will not get nationality if you entered the country illegally these days, though, unless you can show that there is something exceptional about your contribution to society.
The small boats are different. The small boats are highly visible. The small boats - and their passengers - are very easy to spot, and very easy for the Coastguard and Border Force to track. A man from the BBC used to spend all his time stood on a cliff counting them post-Brexit.
Yes, there will be the occasional one that slips through undetected. But that is the opposite of the way it was with lorry smuggling, where it was the occasional one that was actually detected, and the majority slipping through un-noticed.
The irony of Farage, Lowe, Robinson, Tommo and all the other far-right screechers claiming we are unsafe because of "fighting age men" arriving on these boats is hilarious if it wasn't so desperate. When the boats arrive, every person is fingerprinted, screened and vetted as best we can, although another irony of Brexit is we no longer have automatic access to Europol except if we have grounds to suspect someone is a criminal rather than just an asylum seeker, so well done Brexit for that as well.
Also, as we are no longer party to what's called the Dublin Agreement, whereas before we could make an application to France to take them back, and take responsibility for the asylum claim, now we are out of the EU we can't do that either.
But at least we know who is here, we have their fingerprints, and we know who they are.
In short, we are arguably safer from the "fighting age men" now that at any time in the past 30-odd years. The numbers are reducing. The numbers of crossings are reducing.
I hold no candle for Labour these days, but at least they are processing the backlog the Tories (deliberately?) built up and those who don't have the right here are being deported as well.
Boris Johnson is as full of shit as he always was.
Feel free to share this.
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15 events in three weeks… Melbourne Sydney Manitoba St Louis. A true privilege to do this work. So many astonishing people in the education community. Now for a drink and …. then home!
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Let this be a salutary lesson to every voter out there. Reform will impoverish you, their base. Take away your ability to work if you’ve young children, and take away any benefits you might need to sustain your family. Your children won’t get preschool ed. It’s how they like it.
John Tomsett retweeted
This book is going to be a hit. Important reading for all teachers! Congratulations, David. 👏 @Inner_Drive
It’s publication day! 📚
What Are They Thinking? is officially out today!
A huge thank you to everyone who has supported me along the way, contributed to the book, shared a review or pre-ordered a copy. I’m incredibly grateful.
🔗 Get your copy: amzn.eu/d/04yXXJsE
