Terry Pearson
11.6K posts
Terry Pearson
@TPLTD
Meta-researcher. Advocate for research informed thinking and evidence supported practice. Enjoy seeing people and organisations develop.
[email protected] Katılım Şubat 2014
50 Takip Edilen727 Takipçiler
It shouldn't be an argument or debate. That it is is an impediment to progress. It should be a dialectic conversation about what is true, what works for what, when, and why. The reductive argument and debate is continually rigid and narrow in scope, but tribally rewarding.
Adam Boxer@adamboxer1
If you thought we had "won" the argument about inquiry/discovery vs explicit instruction, go check out linkedin.
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@smashEDITT Ah. I thought you were suggesting that effect sizes from RCTs ‘are not necessarily showing effectiveness but efficiency.’
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@TPLTD For example, if I told you I had an intervention that had a zero effect size so won't improve outcomes but gave you 1 hour of lesson time back per term. I'd think teachers would be interested in that as you would use that time effectively.
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I’m thinking of using the attached ‘thought experiment’ to open the door to conversations about the fundamental protocol and assumptions underpinning the use of rct’s to identify and measure the effectiveness of interventions in education. Any thoughts would be much appreciated.
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@smashEDITT Thank you for the useful feedback Gareth. How intervention effectiveness is identified and measured in education is an interesting topic for sure. I can’t recall any studies that have discussed using effect sizes for efficiency. Do you have any links to share?
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@TPLTD We've adopted the wrong language in educational RCTs. They are not necessarily showing effectiveness but efficiency. RP has been shown to be more effective than reading. However, reading is also effective. RP is just more efficient, so we need to talk about efficiency more.
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Inquiry works best when students have enough knowledge to inquire with. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
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@amanda_spielman In case you missed my response Amanda, there is much more research in this area than this piece implies: x.com/TPLTD/status/2…
Terry Pearson@TPLTD
@tonysammon @PepsMccrea I took a quick look at the first topic and within a few moments found the important meta-analysis below missing from the references, if that is any use Tony. You might find others just as quickly: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
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Excellent in a very under-researched area. Not wasting children’s time and adult resource on wasteful interventions is almost as important as doing the right things.
Peps@PepsMccrea
🚨New paper released today: 10 Common SEN Mis(Interventions)—An Evidence Summary steplab.co/news/common-se… Supporting students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is a vital and growing challenge for schools. But it’s not straightforward. Learning is complex, marketing claims are confident, and the evidence is often hard to access. As a result, we can sometimes end up adopting approaches which are less effective than we initially think. For some, this may well be uncomfortable reading. As a profession, many of us have put time, effort and belief into these things, and lots will have seen students who looked like they were getting something from it. However, it’s essential that we temper our intuition with evidence, because ultimately: our most vulnerable students deserve it. This new paper co-authored with @Barker_J is an attempt to raise the visibility of the best available evidence around several commonly used SEN interventions. For each, we provide an overview of what the research says, offer a more informed approach, and provide a suite of rigorous links to help you get started. We hope it will serve as a useful resource and over time: push us to be even more 'evidence demanding' as a profession. As ever, let me know what you think. If you have pushes or suggestions for how this paper could be better, hit reply and give it to me straight. 👊
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@Yorkshire_Steve @peterejkemp @Ofstednews Thank you Steve. I have to leave the conversation now (which will give you some well earned peace). Take care.
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@TPLTD @peterejkemp @Ofstednews Secondary school, expected achievement. It's not rare to find one which has an odd data point here or there that is in the below category (inspectors appropriately using 'typically' from the toolkit as long as the rest are average or better).
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📊 New analysis: the ‘achievement’ grade, attainment data and schools in challenging circumstances
We’ve shared some early insights from the 921 school report cards published since November.
Read the full report 👉 gov.uk/government/pub…
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@Yorkshire_Steve @peterejkemp @Ofstednews Thank you for responding so quickly Steve. You have included quite a bit of working out details. As an overall statement, what would you give as indicators of number of schools with below average performance statistics being graded:
expected
strong
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@TPLTD @peterejkemp @Ofstednews And, to be fair, a disproportionate number of these are schools that have very high/high levels of FSM6
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@tonysammon @PepsMccrea Not a problem. The meta-analysis report contains some useful references too, but I guess you will probably be aware of that.
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🚨New paper released today:
10 Common SEN Mis(Interventions)—An Evidence Summary
steplab.co/news/common-se…
Supporting students with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is a vital and growing challenge for schools. But it’s not straightforward. Learning is complex, marketing claims are confident, and the evidence is often hard to access. As a result, we can sometimes end up adopting approaches which are less effective than we initially think.
For some, this may well be uncomfortable reading. As a profession, many of us have put time, effort and belief into these things, and lots will have seen students who looked like they were getting something from it. However, it’s essential that we temper our intuition with evidence, because ultimately: our most vulnerable students deserve it.
This new paper co-authored with @Barker_J is an attempt to raise the visibility of the best available evidence around several commonly used SEN interventions. For each, we provide an overview of what the research says, offer a more informed approach, and provide a suite of rigorous links to help you get started.
We hope it will serve as a useful resource and over time: push us to be even more 'evidence demanding' as a profession.
As ever, let me know what you think. If you have pushes or suggestions for how this paper could be better, hit reply and give it to me straight.
👊
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@peterejkemp @Yorkshire_Steve @Ofstednews Further to the questions raised above I notice Lee shared this claim "And I assure you that we have seen schools with below average performance statistics presented in the IDSR being graded expected and strong for achievement." Please direct me to the reports for these schools.
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@Yorkshire_Steve @Ofstednews The external sharing seems a rather odd addition. Maybe more secondary teachers are on twitter...
assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/690b26c6…
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@tonysammon @PepsMccrea Although this Open Access report is not for a large study it does highlight some interesting points too: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC91…
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@tonysammon @PepsMccrea I took a quick look at the first topic and within a few moments found the important meta-analysis below missing from the references, if that is any use Tony. You might find others just as quickly: link.springer.com/article/10.100…
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@cbokhove Also worth noting than genAI can produce misconceptions too! generative-ai.leeds.ac.uk/intro-gen-ai/s…
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I used to think that you'd best know your research from first hand reading research, and critical of those who used genAI to compensate a lack of knowledge. But TBF maybe it's better that novices at least use genAI to prevent misconceptions taking hold.
Christian Bokhove@cbokhove
It is quite difficult to debate with people who have limited knowledge of an academic field.
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@Yorkshire_Steve @greeborunner @FrankWNorris Sounds to me pretty much like the kind of 3-dimensional spin Ofsted will provide. Denial of issues with the framework, dismissal of any concerns expressed by schools and others, diversion of the debate onto the rhetoric of a balance between published data and inspection data.
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@greeborunner @FrankWNorris I think they'll say that the changes to the toolkits are just 'tidying up' and 'adding clarity' and that similar schools is just 'another helpful piece of information for inspectors' rather than fundamentally changing things.
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Bearing in mind Ofsted's duty to report to Parliament each year, I assume they will explain why inspections from Nov 25 to when they actually amend the Toolkit are not entirely reliable and what they are doing to address the issue for those schools affected. Dont hold your breath
Dr Siobhan Sanders@SiobhanParker11
This issue was pulled up in the 2025 draft. Further pulled up in the 2026 release. Yet we’re only now starting to have a little bit of common sense. All could have been avoided. A substantial amount of inspections have already taken place … 🙄
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@gorge_lilley 2/2 Are you looking for more studies with a design that has introduced bias or those that have reported variability in results? Or something else?
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@gorge_lilley Thanks for your reply George. Yes. The aim of scenario is to stimulate open conversations of multiple aspects about the use of controlled studies in education. Your point about variability is a good one to note and thanks for providing the example. 1/2
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@greeborunner @FrankWNorris In order for that to happen Ofsted would need to admit to making a major mistake. I can't recall Ofsted owning up publicly to any kind of mistake. So the answer from me sadly is NO! at the moment.
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@FrankWNorris Do you think they might review previous inspections and use their monitoring system to potentially change grading for achievement? That would be significant
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