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Bernard Andrews

@bernardandrews.bsky.social
505 followers 488 following 671 posts

Philosophy teacher. Immigrant. Valencia, Spain bernardandrews.wordpress.com

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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Thanks Claire!
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Claire Harley @claireharley.bsky.social · 10/10/2026
Excellent piece from @bernardandrews.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/bernarda...
open.substack.com
Tackling the enduring ignorance of the knowledge vs skills debate
Let’s try to make education debates less rubbish.
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Dr Abeba Birhane @abeba.blacksky.app · 09/08/2026
"But there is no honour for the humanities in regaining their standing through the attention of AI companies, if they engage only on the technology industry’s terms. In that case, they will have become important in exactly the wrong way." www.ft.com/content/bdb3...
ft.com
Why this philosopher turned down Anthropic
The AI industry is courting the humanities — but it is asking the wrong questions
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Rachel Sylvester @rachelsylvester.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
New Scandinavian wings at Wandsworth and Pentonville jails have seen a 45% fall in assaults, 57% drop in self harm and halving of staff absence rates - fascinating results from trial into a more rehabilitative approach to prisons observer.co.uk/news/nationa...
observer.co.uk
‘Scandi wings’ offering pianos, pool and tea parties coul...
A unit in London’s Wandsworth prison has been transformed using methods from Sweden and Norway that prioritise rehabilitation over retribution
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
How to reform the education system when no one can agree on what it's for... open.substack.com/pub/bernarda...
open.substack.com
Education reform 'in the meantime'
“One keeps forgetting to go right down to the foundations. One doesn’t put the question marks deep enough down.”–Wittgenstein, Culture and Value
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 06/08/2026
By day five of my labour, I didn’t want an ‘ideal birth’. I only wanted to survive | Natalie Morris
theguardian.com
By day five of my labour, I didn’t want an ‘ideal birth’. I only wanted to survive | Natalie Morris
Yvette Cooper’s maternity reforms must change a system that too often fails women when they’re at their most vulnerable, says journalist and author Natalie Morris
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Wahey - I'm the featured @teachertapp.bsky.social blog! bernardandrews.substack.com/p/learning-i...
bernardandrews.substack.com
Learning is not invisible
The idea that ‘learning is invisible’ is a lazy and sloppy dogma which we should probably reject.
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The Guardian @theguardian.com · 30/07/2026
I’ve spent years researching what it means to be alive. This is what I’ve learned | Melanie Challenger
theguardian.com
I’ve spent years researching what it means to be alive. This is what I’ve learned | Melanie Challenger
To understand the experience of life, don’t look to the mind. Look to the body
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Leo Hickman @leohickman.carbonbrief.org · 30/07/2026
++BREAKING++ The UK and Spanish governments have issued a joint statement overnight: "[We] agreed that this summer’s wildfires demonstrated that climate change was now a national security emergency facing Europe and threatening our way of life." www.gov.uk/government/n...
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 02/07/2026
@cmooreanderson.bsky.social is someone I really admire. Rather than just beating the drum for a particular approach, he's always willing to dig into the details and go back to first principles. Edu-chat would be greatly enriched if his stuff were read more. christianmooreanderson.com/understandin...
christianmooreanderson.com
Understanding isn’t just knowledge (& how we can teach it) – Christian Moore-Anderson
The knowledge-understanding problem is perennially debated. Many sense a difference and argue that we should ensure students learn knowledge and understand it.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
so completing the Syllogism: 1) S is M (middle term) 2) M is P 3) ∴ S is P
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Episteme for Aristotle is all about seeing the connection between the subject and predicate: what kind of thing is the S? What kinds of thing can be described by P? Is S the kind of thing that can be P? so it's about finding the general rules that connect the subject to the predicate.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
No, I didn't spot that, but that's very much like Aristotle's distinction between Nous (grasping the rule) and Episteme, I think.
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 01/07/2026
You never told me what you thought of this: christianmooreanderson.com/understandin...
christianmooreanderson.com
Understanding isn’t just knowledge (& how we can teach it) – Christian Moore-Anderson
The knowledge-understanding problem is perennially debated. Many sense a difference and argue that we should ensure students learn knowledge and understand it.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Or perhaps people might also refer to wisdom as a kind of understanding (Christian would know what to do in this situation). But certainly in the first case, I think 'knowledge' is better, since it's something acquired (past tense) - I have grasped what an X is.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
I think the thing that confuses people is that there's quite a distinct kind of knowledge - sometimes called 'conceptual understanding' which basically means grasping the norms/rules ('I know what an X is' - *which isn't the same as I know X*).
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
And I absolutely agree that 'understanding' is often used in the sense you talk about ... which is like 'reasoning' or 'making connections'. What they used to call 'finding the middle term'.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
Yeah, I think I basically agree with this. 'I know' (as in I know that...') acts basically like a present perfect - 'I know that...' means 'I have heard/read/been told etc. that...' Hence why it doesn't make much sense to say, 'I struggle to know'.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
(or I can even imagine that they may have memorised it as a way of developing their virtuosity, and then that essay happened to come up, and the wisest thing was to reproduce it word for word)
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Yes, absolutely. That's why the history is important. A student's exam essay might be great - but they might have just memorised it and got lucky with the question. The examiner can't know - hence such an exam can't test virtuosity.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The point about Nina Simone was only that she adapted to fit the context. She certainly conserved some aspects of her performances.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
Yes, of course doing 'the same thing' might be the virtuous action. I don't deny that at all. The point is that it's context-dependent and requires some thought. If someone thinks about something and concludes that the context requires the same thing, then they should do that.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
The point about virtuousity isn't that it's romantic, it's just that it's polymorphous - adapts to the context - hence is incompatible with doing anything 'mechanically'.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
I'm trying to construct a table of all the concepts and different senses we have related to knowledge and i think that will kind of answer your questions. I think there are quite a few logically distinct notions of knowledge/understanding. I'll try to finsih my table.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I'm not arguing with that. I don't think there's a remotely clear dichotomy here. And I've no idea what it's got to do with my post.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I think that's a pretty dodgy dichotomy, but I don't know what that would be a problem regardless.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 28/06/2026
I don't understand why the music example is problematic.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
Absolutely... A quotation that I think is most insightful is that of GH Von Wright-" the path of virtue is never laid out in advance. It is for the [person] of virtue to determine where it lays in each particular case"
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 27/06/2026
More fantastic stuff by Bernard. *And, if I may, it points to the fundamental role of variety.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 27/06/2026
On knowing how to play a song... open.substack.com/pub/bernarda...
open.substack.com
Knowing how to play a song
My 7 year old son recently wanted to learn how to play ‘Peaches’ (a song by Jack Black from the Super Mario Bros film).
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Tes magazine @tesmagazine.bsky.social · 05/06/2026
In the UK there is an ‘unspoken rule’ that nothing at school events should look too polished – but parents at international schools in other cultures have different expectations, writes principal Jill Cowie
tes.com
The tricky art of satisfying parents’ expectations for school events
A leader with experience in the UK, China and now Nigeria reflects on why leaders have to be flexible over the different ways communities host and engage with parent-focused school events
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Jon Severs @jonsevers.bsky.social · 04/06/2026
"A child isn’t born with SEND. They aren’t born knowing that they don’t fit," says the writer. "This is something they learn; something that they’re taught." This piece is one of the most beautiful mediations on SEND I have read. www.tes.com/magazine/ana...
tes.com
Why working in SEND made me reluctant to diagnose my son
A decade of working in alternative provision led this teacher to question the usefulness of labels and the benefits of having his autistic son diagnosed
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 24/05/2026
It can rapidly become difficult to understand what people actually mean by these technical terms. @bernardandrews.bsky.social talks about it extensively. I think many normal language terms, such as knowledge, understanding, meaning, sense-making, distinguishing, and practising, do the job fine.
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Sue Cowley @suecowley.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
This question about whether AI can understand has interesting parallels with narratives in education. Some people claim that understanding is made up of more bits of knowledge. I don't think that's right because embodiment matters (which means AI can't understand). HT @cmooreanderson.bsky.social
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 28/05/2026
...also because meaning requires intentionality, caring, and two-way powers. None of which are accounted for in the information transfer view. And secondly because this view leads to all the paradoxes of learning: open.substack.com/pub/bernarda...
open.substack.com
The biggest problem in education
the paradox of underdetermination
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 23/05/2026
New post! ● Direct Instruction’s Limits: ⇒ A Nuanced Look at Engelmann’s Ideas #EduSky #UKEd christianmooreanderson.com/direct-instr...
The mind as seen by a behavourist. A stimulus is an input, the response is the behaviour. What happens in between isn't important.An adaptation of von Foerster's non-trivial system. He showed how systems can be perfectly fine, yet completely unpredictable as a counter to behaviourism. 

The following text is from the linked blog post:

in von Foerster’s diagram, the person’s intent depends on more than just their perception; it also depends on the meanings they’ve already made. At the same time, the way they actively make sense of the situation draws on those very same meanings.

Meanings, then, are central to the model and point to a key distinction. Engelmann argued that students were logic machines; thinking perfectly logically with the logical environment. In this model (and that of enactive cognitive science and variation theory), students think perfectly rationally with the meanings they’ve made.

The most interesting bit comes next: notice how the sense-making actively updates the meanings people hold.

According to the model, then, when our students perceive something and act in response, we may then think, “hey, they learnt it, they should now respond in the same way if I give them the same stimulus”. This was Engelmann’s idea.

But every time the student perceives something, their meanings are updated in some way. The next time we ask them the same question, we may get something different, something we didn’t expect.

On the outside, there’s another loop to consider. As students act, they perceive new things. For example, as they answer a question, they perceive our response to them: our body language, our words and tone. They also perceive their classmate’s responses. They make sense of this and continually update their meanings.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 22/05/2026
Cheers Christian!
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 22/05/2026
A delight to read @bernardandrews.bsky.social 's new post this Friday morning: "The biggest problem in education: Underdeterminism" bernardandrews.substack.com/p/the-bigges...
bernardandrews.substack.com
The biggest problem in education
the paradox of underdetermination
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 18/05/2026
As a prominent authority in educational academia, and a fan of his work, I was really happy with Michael Reiss's endorsement.
Are your teaching "rules of thumb" actually half-truths?"Christian gets to the heart of how well-designed teaching can transform student learning."
Dr Michael Reiss, Professor of Science Education, UCL.
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 14/05/2026
Education has explored a science of memory... But what about a science of meaning? This is what @creativehigg.bsky.social thought when she offered to endorse my book ↓↓↓ Book: mybook.to/teachingmean...
The brain is a beautifully complex organ, and humans are inherently social beings. While education has recently embraced the science of memory, Christian’s book supports educators in taking the next crucial step: helping young people make meaning.
As an experienced, practising teacher, Christian guides the reader through the carefully curated moves of the ‘Meaning Making Game.’ This application of enactive cognitive science gives teachers a way of acting that generates deep understanding.
Every page is rich with insight. As I was reading, I felt compelled to talk to Christian about what I was learning – a perfect reflection of the coordinated meaning-making the book itself is about. As a vital addition to our educational dialogue, I wholeheartedly recommend this to readers in all areas and phases of education.The book cover of Teaching Meaning: What Works When Telling Isn't Enough.
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Paul Le Comte 🇳🇿🇨🇦📷 @paullecomtephoto.nz · 02/05/2026
I'm not crying, you're crying - wife asked me if I had a cable. Yes, yes I did!
Cartoon

The Best Day of My Fathers's life

"Did you say you needed a six-pin-to-eight-pin FireWired for a 2006 MacBook?

Man holding up a cable out of a box of tangled cables.
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 01/05/2026
The beauty of this book cover isn't AI. My talented wife created the look to match my words. She made the strip herself (see the shaded bit where it was glued on the left). Then sought the background colour she liked (it was notebook cover) and took a photo to form a shadow from the sun's rays.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
I think that this single point leads to lots of the problems mentioned in the other replies (including the downgrading of FE - as I mention in that post).
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Our need to close every open learning objective. open.substack.com/pub/bernarda...
open.substack.com
Lemov, Pondiscio and the closing of the academic mind
1. There was an interesting article in the Athletic recently about how Michigan Basketball coach, Dusty May, had been learning from Doug Lemov.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
That sounds very interesting! Thank you. I'll look it up!
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Christian Moore-Anderson @cmooreanderson.eurosky.social · 25/04/2026
Wanting to write a blog post about the limits and problems of Engelmann's behaviourist theory, I began reading again. And, good god, look at this paragraph and realise why science education in the UK has gone to soul-destroying transmission and mini-whiteboards:
If the learner does not respond in the predicted manner to a faultless communication, the assumed “fault” lies not with the communication, but with the learner. Therefore, we must switch
our focus. This switch involves a complete change in orientation, from a concern with the analyses of communicating quality and sameness in a precise manner, to the laws of behavior. These laws provide us with specific guides about the amount of practice, the massing and distribution of trials, the schedules of reinforcement, and other variables that cause the growth or strengthening of the learner’s response to take place. For example, if the learner apparently forgets the word red and cannot respond to various examples in a faultless presentation that asks the learner, “What color is this?”, we modify the learner’s capacity to “remember” how to produce the name. When the learner reliably remembers the words, we return to the original communication. The learner is now assumed to be an adequate receiver, capable of responding according to the predictions of the stimulus-locus analysis.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
There's a now rare use of the verb 'to question', which means 'to hold a conversation with; (also) to discuss or debate with'. You'd say, 'I questioned *with* the children today...' I think it's a lovely way to use the word and is a much nicer pedagogical notion of questioning than we're used to.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
WHen people write about 'questioning' for teachers, it's basically just about how to use questions as formative assessment - as part of some form of training towards a closed goal. But you can also ask questions to find out what the students actually think and take an interest in their answers!
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Sue Cowley @suecowley.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Possibly controversial opinion. This 'I do, we do, you do' thing that is everywhere now is about instruction rather than education. We are being too adult controlling about learning atm. Whatever happened to a bit of open endedness, lateral thinking and self-expression? Glad I teach in early years.
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Bernard Andrews @bernardandrews.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Yep, training not teaching.
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