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
Daniel Muijs retweeted
Why I don't believe in scripted approaches to teaching: On Direct Instruction and direct instruction, and why the distinction matters. danielmuijs.substack.com/p/d…
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Daniel Muijs retweeted
Replying to @GAHargan
Dr Gallagher is also the architect of the NI Curriculum that is being replaced, so the new curriculum is certainly going to challenge the values on which she built the 2007 curriculum. But the PISA results for NI have not shown that curriculum to be successful. Change is needed.
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Those responsible for the awful 2007 curriculum should probably take a backseat in this…
A former director of curriculum in Northern Ireland has delivered a scathing assessment of the Department of Education's plans for curriculum reform, which she believes was “pre-determined” and “rushed”. belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/… belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/…
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Why I don't believe in scripted approaches to teaching: On Direct Instruction and direct instruction, and why the distinction matters. danielmuijs.substack.com/p/d…
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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…
You can only speak eloquently about things you know well. Honing speaking skills is about as useful as attempting to teach reading comprehension skills: there are a small number of useful strategies, but by far the best way is to teach subject knowledge exceptionally well. 1/
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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/…
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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…
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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…
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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-…
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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…
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Good. The treatment of Suzanne Kington was appalling and unacceptable.
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Daniel Muijs retweeted
I done another meme in honour of the government
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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...
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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
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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
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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.
It's interesting, though perhaps unsurprising, that standard educational "progressive" lines about future skills, tech, projects etc are all ending up in outright extreme capitalism
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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…
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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:
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Dumbing down maths is a terrible idea for the future of the country. These leaving cert reforms are very concerning and should be paused.
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