Stocking a teaching and learning library

[Piggywaspushed]

Hi All

For some not immediately obvious reason I have been out in charge of research in my school.

One thing I want to do is restock the pedagogy section of the library which consists of about 20 books from circa 1998.

So, I am after recommendations from the good teachers of MN. My school is a secondary school.

If you can recommend, then I can have a look.

So far, I have

Cleverlands by a woman whose name I have forgotten

Getting The Buggers To Behave

You Know The Fair Rule

The new David Didau book

Various of the Pocketbooks

and one called Talk For Teaching.

Books are very pricy so my little research group would benefit from a well stocked up to date library!!

I, personally, would set Getting the Buggers to Behave on fire and use it to heat my classroom in winter. Awful book, especially the cringeworthy dogfood eating bit. Get a Tom Bennett book on behaviour instead, like Behaviour Guru (I think the NUT gives NQT teachers a copy for free so you could probably blag one off someone?), or a Bill Rogers one.

Daniel Willingham's Why Students Don't Like School is fab.
Daisy Christodoulou - I've seen her Seven Myths of Education recommended a lot, or the assessment one which I've got but not read.
Doug Lemov's Teach Like a Champion is very American, but some of the tips in it are really useful. I know the No Excuses bunch love it because of the training kids into routines, finger clicking stuff, but actually, it is a lot about teaching techniques which aren't really taught on a PGCE.

Just seen you've already got Bill Rogers :)

Haha . Hi noble . I just won my own private sweepstake as to who would reply first!!

Thanks for the tips. I had seen all those books you mentioned so I'll look closer. I was trying to avoid Americans!

I actually quite like Sue Cowley but know what you mean and agree Bill is better.

Oh I am so predictable

There's a summary of Teach Like a Champion here, so you can get an idea of what it's like. www.childstudysystem.org/uploads/6/1/9/1/6191025/teach_like_a_champion.pdf I'm not sure if there's an English book that's similar that just tells you how to teach, maybe Michael Marland's Craft of the Classroom which I love, but was written in 1975!

Bit off topic but for more research-focused stuff you might want to look at the EEF toolkit (a website which summarises research) educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-toolkit - with the caveat that it is imperfect- it privileges particular types of research and suggests that findings are transferable and generalisable (which you might argue is never wholly true in education) and you need to look at it closely and follow through to reading about the individual studies it cites rather than just looking at the very broad headlines. It's a good start on making 'proper' research accessible to teachers who have limited time though!
(And I have serious reservations about Didau after he misunderstood and misrepresented some research I was involved with- even claiming it was funded by a private body with vested interests when it wasn't. But anyway...)

Teaching Backwards :- Andy Griffith and Mark Burns

Watch this video by Dylan Wiliam about Why Teaching Will Never Be a Research-Based Profession about how a lot of the research out there is crap. Then treat the EEF with caution! m.youtube.com/watch?v=6ajXJ6PbDcg

Books-wise, I know it's for initial teacher education primarily, but the latest edition of 'Learning to teach in the secondary school' is good- wide-ranging, research-based and huge. Also consider getting a good Action Research guide mainly to support teachers in doing some research in their own classrooms? I used an older edition of this when I was teaching in Secondary: Hopkins

Following

serious reservations about Didau

That's interesting. He always comes across as a bit of a cock on twitter, and he got himself in a right mess over the summer when he linked IQ unfavourably with race.

Tom Sherrington has written some fab blog articles about teaching - could you print some off?

Teaching backwards and another book from the same publisher engaging learners. Also how to teach. Sounds basic but it's a great book. Visible learning John Hattie.

Agreed Noble!
Actually Dylan Wiliam on formative assessment would be a good idea: [https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/1945349220/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile]

Respect! noble

I thought I was the only person in the world who thought 'Getting the Buggers to Behave' was the biggest load of shit I have ever read. And I've spent a great deal of my career in seriously challenging schools. Tom Bennett is great. Firm sensible and no nonsense.

Link fail- sorry: try again

Watch this video by Dylan Wiliam about Why Teaching Will Never Be a Research-Based Profession

Bit confused sine Wiliam has written so many books!

Ok, all - just to be a bit clearer. These are books to spend money on (huge budget) so no need to print stuff off. Am familiar with EEF . The books are to show we want teachers to be able to develop and learn and to put some funding behind it. It's not actually personally for me to do some research.

I do want he NQT type books, but they aren't the primary audience. it's more for developing teachers rather than newbies...

But thanks for all the great suggestions and debate!

Didau can't spell or punctuate either, although I am enjoying his book

Oh and noble , I mentioned you in a meeting today!!

You did what now???

I read this over the summer and found it very useful.

From a research POV I would definitely recommend the Daisy Christodoulou book on assessment for anyone in middle or senior leadership.

And The Learning Scientists blog. But that's not a book.

With a big budget for secondary I'd probably think about more specialist and subject-specific books too, dialogic pedagogy, using technology to enhance learning etc. I massively rate anything by Neil Mercer on talk.
I was suggesting an Action Research guide to be used by everyone- not just you!
If you join the Chartered College of Teaching you can access a lot of publications that way too btw- (I know, again not actually what you've said you're looking for but as it's new I just thought it might not be common knowledge).

How did you get a huge budget?

Thing is, I think that blogs are as good and sometimes even better than books for teacher development. Short, punchy and easy to read. Teachers often don't have the time to sit down with a whole book.

That teacher toolkit guy has just published Mark. Plan. Teach which people seem to think is quite good.

If you've got a budget big enough for subject-specific books, Yes, But Why? by Ed Southall is brilliant for maths.

I agree with Noble re blogs. Is your budget ring fenced for books?

How to talk so that kids will listen and listen so kids will talk. Imo a lot of theory books are full of shite but I liked that one!

If you are going for subject specific as well, then 'Reading Reconsidered' by Doug Lemov is worth a read.

I've heard good things about 'Making Every Lesson Count' by Shaun Allison too. And there seem to be subject specific versions too.

I'd second the Learning scientists website too.