6 Quotes by Dylan Wiliam

The first fundamental principle of effective classroom feedback is that feedback should be more work for the recipient than the donor.

A bad curriculum well taught is invariably a better experience for students than a good curriculum badly taught: pedagogy trumps curriculum. Or more precisely, pedagogy is curriculum, because what matters is how things are taught, rather than what is taught.

Feedback functions formatively only if the information fed back to the learner is used by the learner in improving performance.

The teacher’s job is not to transmit knowledge, nor to facilitate learning. It is to engineer effective learning environments for the students. The key features of effective learning environments are that they create student engagement and allow teachers, learners, and their peers to ensure that the learning is proceeding in the intended direction. The only way we can do this is through assessment. That is why assessment is, indeed, the bridge between teaching and learning.

As soon as students get a grade, the learning stops. We may not like it, but the research reviewed here shows that this is a relatively stable feature of how human minds work.

Most of what our students need to know hasn’t been discovered or invented yet. “Learning how to learn” used to be an optional extra in education; today, it’s a survival skill.