Author Archives: calebpattinson

In contemporary education there is a need to consistently question the place of a school and a classroom when there are computers in our pockets. The rise of Google in the 21st century is well documented. This blog will not aim to unpack the ethics of data, as the new global commodity, but rather seekContinue reading “You Should Google That”

Commentators in many sports will discuss obscure and seemingly unimportant statistics. To the average punter this may seem like a waste of time. Though there is nuance in the conversation. To the trained eye (or ear) it is clear how those small 1% efforts are shifting the tide of the game. Lately I have beenContinue reading “It is in the 1%”

A dramatic person may say that mathematics is the closest we will ever go to living out our dreams. Whatever the feelings towards the topic – there is intergenerational polarisation that comes from maths. Most people fall into a camp of love or hate. What has been inspiring over the last decade since leaving highContinue reading “To Infinity and Beyond”

On Tuesday the 28th of January, I faced my new class for the first time. Over the coming few blogs, I intend to share some targeted professional reflections from the year. At the start of the year we had no anticipation of a disrupting pandemic, a global movement for racial justice, or on a localContinue reading “1071 Reasons to be Grateful”

If a week is a long time in politics, how long is a week in a school? A good mathematical estimate would be twice as long as half its length. Heading into a second year as an educator there are moments to reflect on, areas of growth to identify and goals to achieve. What IContinue reading “31 536 000 Seconds”

One of my favourite sayings from an old Dean of Education (or somebody before them) is that when communication breaks down, imagination takes over. It is easy to forget how impressionable we are as educators. How as we communicate each day in the classroom, our tonality, body language and chosen words can impact the reactionContinue reading “Culture to Rival Yoghurt”

Even early in a teaching career it is already to identify some of the greatest philosophical battles that take place in academic corridors. Recently at a gathering of mathematical educators I started a robust conversation over the merits of learning timetables by rote learning. Questions on the intent of education, specifically mathematically based, are notContinue reading “That’s All We Wrote”

I have recently been exposed to the Brightpath assessment tool as a measure to assess student writing. Brightpath allows, ‘[teachers to] compare their student’s work to calibrated exemplars to arrive at a scaled score,’ and notes that, ‘these judgements are comparable across teachers, schools and over time.’1 We can consider a Thurston Paired Comparison. ThisContinue reading “Blending Two Flavours”

It would be an understatement to say the world is changing. For years to come, there will be opinions, analysis and conjecture about how a pandemic swept across the world and impacted the ways humanity existed. Bringing the scope into a narrower focus, there is an opportunity here to consider the changes through a lensContinue reading “A New Blog”

There is a colloquial expectation that teachers will know the students in their classroom. While it is dangerous to step into the realms of the politically savage spaces of race, gender, culture, sexual orientation or class, it is almost impossible to ignore the influences these things may have on education outcomes. Teachers are constantly challengedContinue reading “Something Plato Said”