Mark McCourt

Gary and I followed up our recent interview of Thomas Guskey, below, with a conversation with Mark McCourt, CEO of La Salle Education. Gary and I have both worked with Mark and learn something every time we talk to him.

In this interview Mark discusses:

• His moral purpose in doing what he does
• The mastery model of schooling
• His thoughts on Inspection and Curriculum (including the recent announcements about Education Scotland)
• Developing professional knowledge
• What ‘Interleaving’ really means
• The Teach, Do, Practice, Behave model and his thoughts around deliberate practice.
• Why there is more to mathematics teaching than ‘performance’ and the mimicking of teacher action.

Access the audio file here: You can listen to it here or download it using the link below…

Thomas Guskey

Gary Lamb and I recently had the privilege of interviewing Emeritus Professor Thomas Guskey – a hero to both of us for his work on mastery learning and formative assessment. His book “Implementing Mastery Learning” is a must read for anyone who wants to make assessment work. That is only one of his 25+ books and many hundreds of papers.

In our opinion, one of his most important papers, can be accessed here.

In this interview Tom discusses:

• His time collaborating with Benjam Bloom
• Why there is no debate about what “mastery” means.
• The history of mastery learning.
• Why mastery learning works.
• The history of formative assessment.
• The evidence for mastery learning.
• Dealing with the issues that arise when implementing mastery learning

Access the audio file here: You can listen to it here or download it using the link below…