Very grave concerns about 'Arrowsmith' but are people listening?

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Debbie_Hepplewhite
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Very grave concerns about 'Arrowsmith' but are people listening?

Post by Debbie_Hepplewhite »

Alison Clarke writes an important commentary on the state of play regarding the 'Arrowsmith' programme which is currently being heavily promoted, used and adopted in Canada and Australia. Whilst the education profession is demonstrating increasing interest in 'research' and the 'importance of research findings', are there still many parents, teachers and others who simply go with the flow and appear to believe everything they are told about usefulness/effectiveness/fit-for-purposeness of various programmes and approaches?

http://www.spelfabet.com.au/2017/03/arrowsmith/
Arrowsmith

The Arrowsmith program has been going for about 35 years, and had a research program for about 18 years.

In all that time, not one study has appeared in a peer-reviewed journal providing reliable scientific evidence that it works. Not one.

Perhaps the Australian Education Union didn’t realise this when giving Canada’s Barbara Arrowsmith-Young a platform to promote her program here last week.

Radio National also interviewed her but failed to ask her hard questions, like whether her program has actually been shown to work.

I’ve already written about my concerns about the Arrowsmith program here and here, so won’t repeat myself, or rehash excellent blog posts on this topic by Head of La Trobe University’s Rural Health School Professor Pamela Snow and Oxford Professor of Developmental Neuropsychology Dorothy Bishop. Just read them here and here if you haven’t already.
This is an extremely worrying scenario. There is a huge financial cost to parents and schools adopting this programme, but there is a huge cost to the pupils themselves if the programme is used at the expense of other, truly effective, research-informed programmes and practices.
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