For years before and post-retirement, I have been fascinated by how educational development seems to be predicated by fashions and trends.

It often seems that systems and their schools hop like frogs from the ideas inherent in one lilypad of thought to the next.

Systems and their schools seem to quickly tire of particular practices – often before they have had the chance to consolidate and confirm their benefits to student learning.

They prefer, instead, to play the game of “out with the -not so- old and in with the new”.

Education is about ‘fashions’ or ‘hobbyhorses’, and students become the guinea pigs who lose out.