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On board this issue: Peps Mccrea is a teacher educator,designer,author and Dean of Learning Design at Ambition Institute Dee Conlon is headteacher of Sir Frederick Gibberd College PeterNelmes is a senior manager in a special school and isthe authorof TroubledHearts,Troubled minds:MakingSenseofthe EmotionalDimensionof Learning BeverleyMaloney is a teacher of design & technology at Royal Hospital School, Ipswich Chris Curtis is an English teacherand authorofthe book HowtoTeach English DrJoanna Rhodes M.Chem,D.Phil,MRSC is Head of Sixth Form atWakefield Girls’High School FROM THE EDITOR ... to the first issue of Teach Secondary under its second editor. As regular readers will know, my predecessor Helen Mulley is a pretty tough act to follow, but I hope this issue reassures you that the magazine’s useful advice, diverse perspectives and sometimes forthrightly expressed opinions aren’t going anywhere. As I was putting this issue together, it seemed to me that much of the wider news conversation and online chatter I was seeing concerned notions of truth – people either trying hard to pursue it, or arguing furiously over the veracity or otherwise of a particular event, action or process. But then that’s just the age we live in now, isn’t it? Spend any time at all on social media and you’ll quickly encounter the robust rebuttals, the devious dissemblers and … alliteration abusers, but I saw two things this month that seemed particularly on the nose. One was a trial conducted at the very highest level of the world’s pre-eminent superpower by people who decided they didn't want to hear what any witnesses had to say. (We won’t be around to see it, but whatever the equivalent of a KS4 history textbook turns out to be in 150 years’ time is going to make for fascinating reading). The second was a cheeky demonstration of fake news for teaching purposes conducted by regular TS columnist Vic Goddard, which you can read all about on page 22. Questions of truth, what we mean by it and where it lies get to the very nub of what teaching is supposed to be about. It’s been said that schools should aim to teach ‘The very best of what has been thought and written’ – but who gets to decide which thoughts and texts qualify? Even if we can point to a collective consensus, values and cultural sensitivities naturally change over time, and what happens in schools has big part to play in that. Notions of truth aren’t just fought over when it comes to curriculum content. Evidence based teaching will always require a yardstick against which to measure its effectiveness – as explored by David Spendlove on page 15 – and we can quickly get into some very murky waters indeed when we start to consider the impact of short-term government policy goals on rules around absence, safeguarding and pedagogy, as noted by Ian Mitchell on page 12. There’s always the possibility of today’s truism becoming tomorrow’s shibboleth. Of course, that’s not to say we shouldn’t contest ideas, or philosophies. It feels like a naive sentiment when you consider the turn that popular discourse has taken in recent years, but it’s impossible to conduct an exchange of views, and who knows, even uncover a higher truth or two along the way, unless we can at least agree on what the battleground looks like. Enjoy the issue, Callum Fauser editor@teachsecondary.com 03 “Welcome… WHATDO YOUTHINK? Head online to Teachsecondary.com/ readersurvey complete our quick survey, and we’ll send you a FREE CPD BUNDLE! teachwire.net/secondary Apply to mark GCSEs & A-levels www.aqa.org.uk/apply examine@aqa.org.uk tel: 01483 556 161