Professor and Head of the School of Social Sciences, Education and Social Work, Queen’s University Belfast @QUBSSESW @QUBelfast
Bangor, Northern Ireland
Joined July 2012
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Daniel Muijs retweeted
And oracy enthusiasts don’t often explain that effective spoken language, to argue or persuade, draws on the conventions of *written* language. This is language not commonly used in ordinary speech.
To learn to speak well requires learning the specialised language of writing.
As Sealy says: talking floats in a sea of ‘write’. primarytimery.com/2024/06/21…
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Imagine if the Executive parties treated the Lough Neagh scandal with even half the effort which they expended on Drumcree: Crisis meetings, emergency court cases, constant pressure - even breaking the law to achieve a goal. Instead, there's simply no urgency as the lough dies.
Factory farming is killing Lough Neagh – and despite Andrew Muir’s opposition to this, he’s incentivising it. Muir is a radically different minister - yet his ‘kill them young’ scheme is squeezing out traditional farming and encouraging US-style megafarms.
belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/…
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Ik heb hier geen woorden voor en vooral geen goede woorden. Ik heb geen hoge pet van Agora maar dit! Dankzij de verruiming van Artikel 23 zien wij steeds meer van zulke excessen met de leerling als dupe. Het is hoogste tijd om in te grijpen. parool.nl/amsterdam/leerling…
The problem with this argument is that there is no evidence for it whatsoever, and none presented in the paper. Shouting ‘skills’ and ‘the North’ is not actually a policy for growth, or anything else.
The PM is now talking about reforming the education system to power the innovation nation he wants to be world leading and prosperous. I wrote last night (how convenient 😉) about how this might infuriate a huge number of education people in England. tomforth.co.uk/educationinen…
Kinahan to be defended by ‘human rights lawyers’. What a surprise, not. belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/…
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Outside the school context, the overwhelmingly dominant mode of teaching people things is to use Direct Instruction — you literally show them what to do and make them practice it — but education theorists insist this is bad.
slowboring.com/p/math-needs-…
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Free QMEG masterclass by Dr James Hall of our School. Highly recommended.
QMEG Masterclass: Longitudinal Growth Modelling with SEM
Date: 21 oct • 13:00
eventbrite.co.uk/e/qmeg-mast…
Good. The treatment of Suzanne Kington was appalling and unacceptable.
Education Minister orders his officials to boycott Stormont committee over ‘inappropriate treatment’ belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/…
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Hundreds of people have now signed our open letter about the state of maths education in Ireland.
They include many of Ireland's leading startup founders, maths professors, the author of the most widely used applied maths textbook, our IMO medalists, parents, teachers...
Important research on the impact of changed measurements of SES on PISA scores. 👇
One of the most striking conclusions from PISA 2025 may be wrong. A new analysis suggests that the apparent sharp decline among more advantaged students may largely be the result of a change in measurement.
wp.me/p2nWPo-6dY
Important research on the impact of canned measurements of SES on PISA scores. 👇
One of the most striking conclusions from PISA 2025 may be wrong. A new analysis suggests that the apparent sharp decline among more advantaged students may largely be the result of a change in measurement.
wp.me/p2nWPo-6dY
Daniel Muijs retweeted
The education techbros at places like Alpha Schools and this new "Academy" aren't interested in books. They aren't interested in art, culture, history or great works of literature. They aren't interested in knowledge or learning for its own sake.
Instead, they are interested in entrepreneurship. They are interested in AI, not because it's a fascinating technological marvel, but because it can help us "build" products and become wealthy.
This is a sad, desiccated view of education. I'm not a purist, and I think that a child who leaves education without the ability to join the world of work has been failed. But I am also something or a romantic. I want children to be exposed to amazing things that might have no commercial utility at all. I want them to be enthralled by great art, culture and science. I want them to leave school not with a CV that boasts of the products they have developed, but of the things they have learnt that changed them as human beings.
Call me a silly old philosopher all you like, but I suspect I'm not alone.
Daniel Muijs retweeted
The draft embodies many regrettable trends: insistence on an unworkable political commitment to 40% "continuous" assessment, the veneration of "skills" over actual knowledge, and a shady consultative process that has marginalised real expertise. Link: thefitzwilliam.com/p/leaving…
Daniel Muijs retweeted
The government has released its draft mathematics curriculum for the Leaving Certificate, the main qualification that Irish teenagers leave secondary school with.
It is astonishingly bad. For @_fitzwilliam, we have written about why:
Dumbing down maths is a terrible idea for the future of the country. These leaving cert reforms are very concerning and should be paused.
Trouble brewing in the maths curriculum... thefitzwilliam.com/p/leaving…
Banning screens is a daft overreaction to their overuse in some cases. There is no evidence for a ban, and use of screens in schools and classrooms long predates the issues we are seeing with reading at present.
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Wij zijn het hartstochtelijk eens met het pleidooi om kritisch denken te bevorderen in onze scholen maar durven van mening te verschillen over de aanpak die eerder deze week werd gesuggereerd in deze krant. demorgen.be/meningen/kritisc…
Interesting: it’s best when teaching phonics to get beginning readers to only read texts that use grapheme-phoneme correspondences they have already explicitly learned. Useful summary of this large scale study by @thebandb
This is not another round in the reading wars. A large French study with over 90,000 pupils asks a more specific question: does it matter how you teach systematic phonics? The results suggest it does. theeconomyofmeaning.com/2026…
