Category: Blog
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Problems | Education | Reflective | Preparing for Examinations: Why Studying Skills Need to Change
Examination preparation should change as the learner moves from understanding and guided practice to retrieval, selection, timed execution, checking and independent performance. This article follows that shift and the gradual removal of support before the examination.
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Problems | Education | Reflective | Students Say More When They Say Less
I have been thinking about something that happens quite often during tuition. A student gives me a very short answer. Sometimes one word. Sometimes: “I don’t know.” Sometimes: “Maybe because of this?” Sometimes they say something that is completely wrong. And strangely, those moments can tell me much more than a long polished answer. Because…
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Problems | Education | Reflective | Schools Versus Education
I think I have been mixing up two things for most of my life. School. And: Education. They overlap so much that it is easy to assume they are the same thing. A child goes to school. Therefore the child is being educated. A child does well in school. Therefore the child is well educated.…
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Problems | Education | Reflective | How We Think Tutoring Might Be On The Wrong Track
I have been thinking about something uncomfortable. Tutoring may sometimes be solving the wrong problem. Not because tutors are bad. Not because parents are unreasonable. Not because children do not need help. But because adults can become very good at standing on a high throne and explaining the view from the top. While the child…
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Problems | Education | Reflective | How Solutions Sometimes Aren’t Enough
Sometimes we find a solution. And the strange thing is: the problem remains. Or it disappears for a while, then comes back in another form. That is something I have been thinking about a lot in education. A child gets a question wrong. We explain it. The child understands. They do the next question correctly.…
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Problems | Education | Reflective | Why Tuition
The Problem We Have in Singapore I have been thinking about this for a long time. Not really about tuition. About the problem that creates tuition. Because if we start with tuition, we are already halfway into the story. We see the child struggling with Mathematics. We see the English composition that came back with…
