For many of us, our first awareness of the intended curriculum or in other words, what students are expected to learn, is when we bump up against something at school we really aren’t interested in or find hard to do. Answers to questions like ‘Why do we have to do algebra?’ and ‘Why do I […]
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Nicola Morgan highlights a selection of points from her Big Ideas talk at the Cambridge Schools Conference. She has also provided a handout which she created for that talk so you can investigate the supporting science. She covers all those points – and more- in her training sessions and talks. I’ve always loved knowing how […]
The post Understanding the teenage learner appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
We’ve had over 26,000 visitors to this site in 2016 (so far). Thank you! Of all the education blogs we’ve published, the ones below have been the most popular. We hope you enjoy these posts and subscribe to our blog to receive even more great posts about education throughout 2017. Why do we need creativity? […]
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Ready The other day I was looking through some of my old school exercise books from the 1980s. I’d remembered how my teachers had insisted on neatness and order, titles and dates but I hadn’t appreciated the extent to which they regularly taught and expected us to set out notes in a particular way. Mr […]
The post Creating the conditions for learning to take place appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
In our UK offices we have recently introduced ”Dress Down Fridays” My experiences of ”dress-down” days are all within the UK school system where uniforms are the norm. About once a term, usually to raise money for charity, students are allowed to ”dress down” and wear their normal clothes to school. As a student, dress-down […]
The post What classroom culture are we creating? appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
I was recently asked a tricky question in a workshop I was running: ”Surely you can’t be really advocating creativity? You work at an exam board!” Creativity and high stakes examinations are not topics that we usually think about as being related. Professor Melvin Tumin, a Princeton sociologist sums it up by saying, ”Nothing is quite so […]
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Cambridge is designing curricula and assessments for an increasingly digitalised world. Uppermost in my mind at the moment is the role we have to play in ensuring that the positive aspects of online resources are recognised, and responsibly developed. Students will then be able to benefit from well designed learning and assessment experiences, and ultimately […]
The post Empowering students: Safely using the internet for learning appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
For many of us, a new year is an opportunity for reflection – a time to evaluate and identify areas for improvement. It is no coincidence that this is also one of the times of year when our inboxes are full of messages from organisations suggesting methods for self-improvement, not all of which are related […]
The post Some advantages of online learning appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
When you’re editing a magazine, things go wrong. People who you’ve arranged to interview are suddenly unavailable; a contributor wildly overshoots the word limit; a spelling mistake isn’t spotted. We experienced some of the above while we were working on the most recent issue of Cambridge Outlook. Some problems were out of our control (technical […]
The post How to learn from failure appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
If it’s not broken, why fix it? I recently attended a parent orientation for a primary school in Delhi. One parent asked me: ‘Why should we change our education system when our children are successful on the global stage?’ You might be thinking ‘what a good question!’ and in many ways you’d be right. Why […]
The post Changing mindsets: Teacher professional development appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
Our Chief Executive, Michael O’Sullivan, used his keynote speech at this year’s Education World Forum to deliver a simple message. He talked about the value of good quality questions – something we care a lot about at Cambridge. Why are ‘good questions’ so important? In his speech, Michael highlighted the following: Good questions give students […]
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Being seen The city of Cambridge is full of interesting characters. There’s a man with a white beard who dresses from head to toe all in red or blue, there’s another who strides purposefully around the city with a cane wearing a top hat and platform boots, and there’s another who busks in the summer […]
The post Neurodiversity – celebrating being different appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
The joy of planning As a teacher I loved planning for classes. I loved the possibilities the new academic year held but most of all I loved inventing and planning schemes of work that I hoped would challenge and engage my students. Planning for a lesson is as important to me as face-to-face engagement with […]
The post Active learning – planning for the active classroom appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
As Head of Technical and Vocational Pathways at Cambridge, earlier this year I had the pleasure of attending the kick-off meeting of a large EU funded project for vocational education reform in Egypt. The project’s objective will improve the quality of technical and vocational education and training (TVET) curricula, and will support the introduction of […]
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In some parts of the world, it’s a time of year when both teachers and students are thinking about exam preparation. Even the most relaxed students decide it’s time to study hard, and teachers are often focusing on revision in lessons. Here are a few of my favourite strategies for helping students to revise effectively. […]
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In March 2017 I had the pleasure of attending our third annual Pakistan Schools Conference in Karachi. Over 200 educators from almost 180 Cambridge schools were there and the atmosphere at the event was one of collaboration and exploration. Building on the theme from 2016, ‘Learning how to learn’, this year’s event focused on ‘Reflective […]
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When I was new to working in Higher Education, I was taken aback by a colleague’s surprise when I mentioned a comment made to me regularly when I was at school: ‘What’s the point of telling you when you have done something right? If I have not told you you’re wrong then you must know […]
The post To praise or not to praise, that is the question appeared first on Cambridge International Examinations.
When you’re reading a book you can’t put down, watching a famous actor in your favourite film, listening to a moving piece of music, or admiring an artist’s painting it can appear as if some people were born to be creative. But their apparent creativity probably hasn’t come as easily as it seems. You might […]
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A persistent challenge for education authorities is providing equity of professional development opportunities amongst diverse teaching populations. There are significant logistical and cost implications in taking teachers away from classrooms to attend workshops, such as providing cover when they are absent. A solution to this is to develop blended programs of professional development where in-person […]
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We know that Cambridge International AS & A Levels are well respected by college admissions staff in the US, but the latest research I have been involved in shows Cambridge qualifications are also a good indicator of students’ ability to complete a degree. Tracking over 600 Cambridge students in the US who completed high school […]
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