Stuart Rowntree

374 posts

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Stuart Rowntree

Stuart Rowntree

@primarythink

Primary teacher & leader. Dad & husband. Seeking clarity, calm & honest scholarship in education. Wanting space for teachers to deepen as thinkers in our craft.

North East, England Inscrit le Temmuz 2025
169 Abonnements142 Abonnés
Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
3) The arch above - disciplinary thinking & enactive work - is where pupils begin to think as historians, scientists, writers and reach for more through experience. Reaching it requires scaffolds, adaptive teaching and opportunity - structural supports to ensure equity.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
2) On that foundation we build a floor of substantive knowledge. This is the secure base pupils walk on daily. Upon it rises the pillar of agency & application - the means by which knowledge is used, tested & made purposeful.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
1) Too often we treat cognitive science as the ceiling of teaching. It isn’t. It’s the foundation - the non-negotiable ground of memory, attention and load. Without it, everything else collapses. But it cannot end there.
Stuart Rowntree tweet media
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
3) If professional identity depends on never conceding ground, then it’s a fragile identity. True conviction doesn’t fear nuance - it should be strengthened by it.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
2) In school corridors, teachers compromise daily - it’s called teaching. But in bigger debates, compromise gets dressed up as weakness. We need to learn from the classroom: nuance isn’t capitulation, it’s craft.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
1) Perhaps the test of intellectual maturity in our field is the ability to compromise without feeling diminished. In larger arenas, the fear of loss of status often outweighs the gain of shared understanding.
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Stuart Rowntree retweeté
Lekha Sharma FCCT
Lekha Sharma FCCT@teacherfeature2·
‘Great schools take a different route. They start with purpose before anything is planned. They ask, “What do we want pupils to know, understand and be able to do by the time they leave us?’ Purpose before process! Yes 🙌🏼
Mark Enser 🌍@EnserMark

*** NEW POST *** With the Curriculum and Assessment Review on its way, @greeborunner and I look at the mistakes schools make with the curriculum - and how great schools get it right. This also the focus of part of our forthcoming book How Do They Do It? tes.com/magazine/teach…

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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
Humanities so often miss out in CPD because compliance (safeguarding, SEND) and core subjects absorb the oxygen. But when history, geography & RE are undernourished, pupils lose breadth, cultural capital and intellectual curiosity. Narrow CPD = narrowing minds. @TeacherTapp
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
Helping children distinguish reading for pleasure from reading for purpose matters. One nourishes identity & joy, the other secures knowledge & discernment. Teaching both frames ensures reading not performative drudgery, but a habit of mind that flexes between delight & inquiry.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
Six week school breaks at age 8 was 3% of your life. Six weeks at 40 is 0.3% of it. Childhood summers felt endless because they were vast slices of our lived time. Adulthood shrinks them not by days lost, but by proportion. And it stinks.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
Hmm. "Censory smearing" is real. Words like fascist/racist get thrown around too easily to close debate. But hyperbole doesn’t erase fact that some behaviours are reprehensible. Being humbled is sometimes necessary; dismissal of all critique as smear is a dodge for some...
Katharine Birbalsingh@Miss_Snuffy

Lots of us have had this done to us - ⁦@Adrian_Hilton⁩ gives us a phrase for it: censory smearing. They try to shut you down by calling your whole moral being into question. Use this to push back against the practice! 💪🏽 spectator.co.uk/article/the-ri…

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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
@DrAimeeQuicks And the fact I even reach for “women’s work” as a shorthand (semi-derogatory) is embarrassing in itself. It shows how deep the cultural grooves of gendered attitudes run, even today.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
@DrAimeeQuicks What strikes me most is the infantilisation of primary teaching in England. In other nations it is seen as intellectual, civic work. Here it’s too often framed as childcare, ‘women’s work’ or policy delivery. That gap between cultures has been bitterly disappointing to witness.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
Ownership & politics of legacy media matter. It's lazy, but easy. A few billionaires shape coverage. Demonising immigrants deflects anger from structural crises - housing, health, wages - onto scapegoats. Look over here...not at us.
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
@MoreMorrow Immigration stories are “high-yield” for clicks & sales. Outrage sells. Older, whiter, anxious audiences = loyal readership. Legacy titles know how to stoke their market.
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Dan Morrow
Dan Morrow@MoreMorrow·
It baffles me that the mainstream news are okay platforming a few hundred racists as if they represent the zeitgeist or critical mass of opinion. It’s a manufactured issue and yet further evidence that the U.K. press is a huge part of the problem
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Stuart Rowntree
Stuart Rowntree@primarythink·
@DrAimeeQuicks That's one I've only ever heard once from someone a long time ago. I was absolutely enraged.
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Stuart Rowntree retweeté
Dr Aimee Quickfall
Dr Aimee Quickfall@DrAimeeQuicks·
@primarythink I think it’s even worse in early years. Male student teachers often have their motives questioned.
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