Too often new, beaut ideas are grabbed and planted into schools in a faddish manner. This may satisfy romantically inclined educators but can reduce children in schools to being educational guinea pigs.

One of the things many educators find anathema is sticking with proven approaches. Methodology which is foundationally solid needs to be built upon in incremental terms. That guarantees that teaching and learning will go from strength to strength.

Sadly, the preference seems to be that of consigning what is working to the WPB. With that done, new beaut systems are brought in as replacement technology. It seems that educators get bored with ‘same old, same old’. They toss out good, proven and working programs to push new, innovative and largely untested practices onto schools and into classrooms.

While change is important, it should be both considered and incremental. Throwing the baby out with the bath water can create learning and knowledge vacuums. Neither should children and students in our schools and places of learning be treated as experimental control groups.

I believe it is essential for classroom teachers to consider changes that might be made carefully. Taking students with you through discussion and pre-consideration should be part of the process.