The search for educational wisdom

This is wisdom: it is the coming together of experience (being-in-the-world), knowledge (finding-out-about-the-world) and judgement (thinking-about-and-action-within-the-world).

Martin Robinson (Curriculum: Athena versus the Machine)

By seeking and blundering we learn.

Goethe

This website is an attempt to draw together some of the things I have learned over the years and perhaps to impart some ‘wisdom’ that I may have acquired ; certainly I hope to indicate where visitors may look for educational wisdom.

My specific interests are academic and more broadly educational innovation, strategy and leadership, curriculum, global education and the professional development of educators.

On this site you will find (under different tabs – see menu) information and reflections on all of the above as well as links to useful reading, viewing and resources.

The Philosophy tab will give you a flavour of where I am coming from.

The Contact tab also contains information about consultancy.

About me

I am still learning

Michelangelo

I have run sports teams, produced plays, run societies, undertaken and managed research projects and sat on educational committees and written reports. I have visited schools both in the UK and in various parts of the world and have read and read about education. Through all this I have always sought to improve as an educator and do the very best for those in my charge, both pupils and teachers. There have been mistakes, obstacles and challenges along the way but also successes and opportunities taken… I hope I have gained some wisdom but I know there is so much still to learn …I am with Dylan Wiliam on teaching:

This job [teaching] you’re doing is so hard that one lifetime isn’t enough to master it. So every single one of (us) … needs to accept the commitment to carry on improving our practice until we retire or die. That is the deal.

Dylan Wiliam, December 2013

Why Odin’s Eye?

All things good to know are difficult to learn.

Greek proverb

In thinking about a ‘theme’ for my website, I wanted to find something that expressed the hard graft and sacrifices needed to learn and become better, to become wiser. It seems to me that the mythology around the Norse God, Odin and his search for wisdom, and the sacrifices he made to gain it, encapsulated this as well as anything. He suffered in his quest to find the Runes and gave up one of his eyes as the price of gaining wisdom at the well of Mimir (‘The Rememberer’). An interpretation of the story can be found here. The short video below relates a version of the tale.

Hence my website is called Odin’s eye….