Sharon Murphy May 2021 A recent article by Nick Covington of the Human Restoration Project raises questions about how discourse about evidence can be harmful to the profession of teaching because it tends to create a what Gert Biesta calls "causal" and "technological" models of professional action. Instead, Covington says we must consider that teaching is value-laden. He cites the work of Yong Zhou on the shortcomings of direct instruction, a model of teaching that is a prim

Sharon Murphy November, 2015 This fall, media and governments in the United States are awash with commentary about the scale and role of standardized testing in education. Some are arguing that standardized testing is not out of control. Others are arguing for streamlining of standardized tests. Others comment on standardized testing’s failure while yet others are getting ready to implement new standardized testing in Kindergarten. And, of course, the Obama administration rec

Sharon Murphy May, 2015 Closing the achievement gap between children with high and low incomes is an aspiration that few would quibble with. According to Richard Allington and Anne McGill-Franzen there is evidence to indicate that, during the school year, children from low-income families learn at about the same rate as those from high-income families. So, you might say, if that's the case, we shouldn't have an achievement gap. Well, it turns out that, over the summer months,

April 2015 Sharon Murphy We have all heard of the Colbert Report's idea of truthiness. Well, I am borrowing from Colbert to create the term poofiness--a term that describes something that has been so blown up and "poofy" that is seems out of reach; yet, if you prick it a bit, you will find that it explodes, that there really isn't much of substance behind the poofery. How does poofiness relate to PISA--the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment? Well, an Apri

May, 2013 Sharon Murphy Here's a link to an article I wrote a couple of years ago for the blog, Our Kids, that discusses how the Fraser Institute's analysis of EQAO data misses the mark: http://www.ourkids.net/blog/tag/report-card/