Current Affairs
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Prospect theory & the panopticon of debt
Last night, after Nick Clegg's semi-apology over student loans (see comedy version with honesty subtitles below), I got involved with a twitter chat with an economist from Demos. He argued (very intelligently) that the loan scheme would actually save the tax-payer $2.5K per student, and that it should be viewed as a progressive tax, and not debt. I don't know enough about economics to really counter his claim about the savings. It certainly appears that the Coalition were caught out by all universities charging the full fee, which would suggest it isn't being quite the financial success they had envisaged. But the fact/misleading rumour that it was unaffordable was only…
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The network ate my newspaper
(So what do you think of David Cameron then Gordon?) So the UK televised Leaders Debates have now finished. I have to say, it’s been a blast. Not because they were good television (after the first one and the surprise Clegg factor they quickly reverted to saying the same things), but because of the back-channel on twitter. In 2008 I suggested that the Eurovision song contest was the perfect TV twitter event because “It is, in fact, quite boring (none of the songs are any good), so there is plenty of time to Twitter. At the same time, it is quite enjoyable and provokes comment, so there is a desire…
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When reflection goes AWOL
<Image http://www.flickr.com/photos/eryda23/284475315/ by eryda23> I was talking with a colleague the other day about the difficulties of integrating reflection as practice into education. We know being reflective generally makes for a good practitioner, but it's difficult to force people to be reflective. Schon's observations could be result of correlation, not causality, ie good practitioners tend to be reflective, but making someone reflective won't necessarily make them a good practitioner. Anyway, there was much furore at the time about bankers and their bonuses. In much of the discussion that followed and particularly the types of statements that came from bankers and their bosses, it struck me that reflection is almost the…
