iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

1. Fade Into You. STTIMS. Mazzy Star. 2. Black Dog. LZ4. LZ. 3. In the Flesh. The Wall. Pink Floyd. 4. Gasoline Dreams. Stankonia. Outkast. (If we are excluding silly intros) 5. Five Years. Ziggy Stardust. Dave Bowie. and honourable mention for Random Rules by Silver Jews

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What haven’t I grasped?

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… revolutionary insight, but broadly accepted practice that is right there in Pritesh’s blog. Apologies that ended up being a very long post!

So to return to my earlier post, yes checks for listening are not enough - but these deeper, “checking for flexible understanding” questions are not enough either. You need both, deployed skilfully. And I suppose the frustration (and I think this is what David is getting at) is that this isn’t a

Clearly just asking students to repeat how many times a day Muslims pray would be insufficient. But they really need to know that in order to do the deeper thinking. CFL helps that - in my experience and my experience of observing others.

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… the stars and prayer in Islam. I have found that asking the sort of checks for listening questions during this phase of the learning is highly effective in getting students to pay attention. This means that knowledge is secure and then we can ask the deeper questions.

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… in Islam prayer is astronomically determined. Asking them questions about why it’s astronomically determined in Islam and not Christianity or how would the religion be different if the prayer was different would be counter-productive at this point. I just need them to take away this link between…

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… the Middle East and the political expansion of the Abbasid empire and the ambitions of al-Mansur. Once they know these things then we can have a really in-depth conversation about relative importance of causes and so on. But they do need to pay attention whilst they’re learning about how…

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…his own name. I really want them to think about those counterfactual questions that Christian describes. However, before they can do that, they need to know some things! For example they need to know about Islamic prayer belief and the importance of Mecca and the geography and climate of…

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…of questions above, that knowledge needs to be established. Here’s an example: We are learning about the Islamic golden age and eventually I want students to wrestle with the reasons for this and why instruments like astrolabes would developed in Baghdad whilst Charlemagne struggled to write…

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For me, there’s not that much to disagree with here. My counter would be that it is in itself insufficient. In my subject, students need depth of knowledge to make sense of the past, otherwise they fall back on uninformed reckons (the currency of our age…). So before we can delve into the type…

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Ok so as far as I can make out, the argument is that CFL is socially awkward and insufficient to help students understand things and that instead we should be asking questions like this to hold attention:

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The Three Phases of Questioning

And I’d add to this that the example of CFL m in the OP is literally from a series of blogs describing a broader approach to q’ing: bunsenblue.com/2023/04/22/t... Maybe let’s talk about that rather than just take one part and say “that’s not enough” - which it clearly isn’t - that’s the point!

bunsenblue.com

Have you ever delivered a really clear teacher explanation and used lots of checks for listening to ensure your class was paying attention, only to find that when you ask your class a question to c…

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Reposted by Ed Durbin

Emmy @msquinnhistory.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Early bird booking for the @histassoc.bsky.social conference in Newcastle/Gateshead ends today. Come to our wonderful city and experience brilliant history CPD! www.haconference.com

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Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

Yeah. I worry that this is where the big bucks are going to be in the next few years.

Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

How will the challenging and adapting of the AI output happens with what knowledge will the children be critiquing the LLM? At some point they need to actually know something and, you know, be able to recall it fluently

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Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 15/02/2026

I have to say I find this alliance of well-meaning progressivism and AI pretty terrifying. Beyond how weakly formulated it all is - what is critical thinking? What is grappling? - it doesn’t seem to want to meaningfully engage with the issue of knowledge at all, apart from reheating Blooms taxonomy

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Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Sensible. I suppose the point I would make is that these are not arguments for abandoning a pedagogy that requires students to think hard a lot but rather for flexible adjustments for some students within that, based on need.

Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 01/02/2026

Just to be clear, are you saying learning is cognitive labour that sone young people should be doing less of?

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I’m sure - I was thinking more about my future self!!

I think partly it’s about the cognitive load of novelty - once you’ve got established routines it’s not exhausting - I liken it to the difference between driving for an hour as a learner and driving your commute for the 1000th time

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I don’t think so - only in the sense that thinking hard is harder than not thinking hard

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And tbh I’m not sure I’ve got an answer to that!

Right. When I first went to Ark Soane I was completely convinced but major concern was “how are we going to get teachers who are 60 doing this for 5 hours a day?”

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I think it is also underrated how much more intense (for teachers) “explicit direct instruction” is as a mode of instruction - especially if you are new to it

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Right. I found this study when I was looking for data about something else but then saw the teacher numbers! Hard to imagine things have got better since 2017 either

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There is good data to support this: www.cardiff.ac.uk/__data/asset...

cardiff.ac.uk

Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

Kneel downs and Hail Marys looking for DPI

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Ed Durbin @edurbin.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

New England should take a knee on every play from now on

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Reminds me of RH Tawney: www.education-uk.org/documents/ta...

I’m sure are you right. I guess I take the old-fashioned view that senior journalists at respected publications should think somewhat hard about things before putting them in the public domain!

Right. Which isn’t to say that schools can’t do a better job of so many things - like, for example, making sure kids remember the things they do get taught into adulthood.

Robert Hempsall @rdfh.bsky.social · 17/01/2026

As I get older and crankier, I’ve come to view any take that starts with “this thing that is very important to me in my adult life or career should be on the national curriculum” as immediately disqualifying. You get it from all across the political spectrum and it’s enraging

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Think it’s more depressing than that. It’s about convenience. No, I don’t want to have to help my child learn stuff at home. No, I don’t want my child upset because you put them in DT for no HWK I’ve suddenly discovered something that’s important to me, why didn’t you say something sooner?

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Haha yes this is a perfect summary