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Becky Allen

@profbeckyallen

Co-founder and Chief Analyst, Teacher Tapp, surveying over 12,000 teachers every day.

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13.10.2023
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Latest posts by Becky Allen @profbeckyallen

This is a well-written piece on how education should better cater to how knowledge actually exists in the brain.

15.02.2026 09:20 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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Curriculum Is a Localist Model of a Distributed Mind The problem with dividing knowledge into pieces

New on Substack: New post: Why does dividing curriculum into knowledge components feel so unstable? Because we're imposing localist structure on a distributed system. The brain doesn't store knowledge in pieces. profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/curriculum...

14.02.2026 22:06 πŸ‘ 25 πŸ” 12 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 5
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New post on Substack
Durable Mastery: How to design for knowledge that survives profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/durable-ma...

01.02.2026 11:18 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

What!?!? But Lennon is a such a dislikable and screwed up character. I'd much rather be McCartney please.

01.02.2026 11:17 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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The Curriculum Ghost in the Data Machine The hidden reason shared assessments fail in most secondary subjects

Excellent description and explanation from @profbeckyallen.bsky.social of why all the 'moderation' exercises organised by Education Scotland and local authorities have largely been a huge waste of precious teacher time. 1/2
100assessment.substack.com/p/the-curric...

02.01.2026 18:25 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

My view is that there are strong regularities in how ideas are best taught, but not a single β€œone true explanation” for every learner: a narrow design space with a canonical route + predictable repair branches. I suspect you and I differ on how far that can go. I’m planning to blog on this.

31.12.2025 14:52 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Happy New Year everyone! Here's a new Substack post. It's partly about the regularities of instructional design. And partly about the work of @krisboulton.bsky.social...

profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/regulariti...

31.12.2025 12:36 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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Will the Machine Ever Learn How to Teach? How perfect memory won’t help if the machine cannot know when it is right

Finally, a piece on whether AI can solve education's perennial problem of passing on the best instructional techniques by @profbeckyallen.bsky.social. The most thought-provoking blogs on AI and its impacts are coming from those in the education field.

open.substack.com/pub/profbeck...

22.11.2025 11:07 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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Another Substack post on the future of AI in education.

Reward Hacking the Classroom: Reinforcement learning wants to β€œteach to the test”, but that’s not what teachers do

profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/reward-hac...

09.12.2025 15:44 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1

CPD expert? Interested in programme design, delivery and evaluation?

Working freelance?

Why not join us on a six-month project from January.

Details below. Feel free to ask any questions.

Please share @informededucation.com @profbeckyallen.bsky.social

24.11.2025 20:56 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 1
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New on my Substack: Will the Machine Ever Learn How to Teach? (I'm afraid it's a little on the long side...)

substack.com/home/post/p-...

22.11.2025 10:12 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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New on 100% Assessment Substack: Does Your Test Really Measure Attainment? When summed scores mislead and how IRT helps
100assessment.substack.com/p/does-your-...

@head-teach.bsky.social

08.11.2025 18:26 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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With news that triple science offer may become a requirement for schools, here are current arrangements from @teachertapp.bsky.social . teachertapp.com/articles/tri...

02.11.2025 10:37 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Hey #EduSkyPrimary. I had a little bit of influence into yesterday’s @teachertapp.bsky.social questions on levelled readers which are very topical right now so if you haven’t answered yet, I would be very grateful. πŸ™ Really interested to see the results!

29.10.2025 08:06 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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New blogpost from me: The Progress of EdTech Depends on Our Tolerance for Error profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/the-progre...

22.10.2025 15:36 πŸ‘ 7 πŸ” 4 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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New on 100% Assessment Substack: Why Schools Don't Report Uncertainty in Test Scores 100assessment.substack.com/p/why-school... @head-teach.bsky.social

18.10.2025 09:09 πŸ‘ 4 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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New blog post from me: The Promises and Pitfalls of Personalisation.
In this post, I review how Learn Your Way with Google has introduced personalised examples into textbook content.
profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/the-promis...

09.10.2025 10:38 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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New blog post from me: The Promises and Pitfalls of Personalisation.
In this post, I review how Learn Your Way with Google has introduced personalised examples into textbook content.
profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/the-promis...

09.10.2025 10:38 πŸ‘ 5 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Typically excellent.

27.09.2025 08:50 πŸ‘ 15 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0

You are committing exactly the same aggregation fallacy that I talk about in the blog post. Your chart shows a relationship between averages!

30.09.2025 11:28 πŸ‘ 1 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0
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New on 100% Assessment Substack: Target Grades - Useful or Unhelpful? 100assessment.substack.com/p/target-gra... @head-teach.bsky.social

27.09.2025 08:20 πŸ‘ 13 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1
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Becky’s Substack | Becky Allen | Substack My personal Substack. Click to read Becky’s Substack, by Becky Allen, a Substack publication. Launched 4 minutes ago.

I'm also moving my personal blog onto Substack so do subscribe if you would like to. profbeckyallen.substack.com

18.09.2025 17:44 πŸ‘ 2 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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At lightening speed (for me), I've written up my talk from ResearchED this month. Can AI help with formative assessment? profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/can-ai-hel...

18.09.2025 17:43 πŸ‘ 12 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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The dangers of diagnosis Two years ago, at a conference I described the process my wife and I went through to get our daughter her EHCP. I used a phrase familiar to those of us with children who find life harder and need m…

New from me.
The Dangers of Diagnosis.
bennewmark.wordpress.com/2025/09/02/t...

03.09.2025 06:44 πŸ‘ 18 πŸ” 7 πŸ’¬ 5 πŸ“Œ 3

I know it’s just abridged and has to sound and it is swifty differentiated explained in the text. Alas: As long as we explain Β«AIΒ» w/ human analogies of understanding, addressing or supporting, we keep ourselves from thinking it different.

Worth reading the more complex text, #BlueLz. #lernenmitki

01.09.2025 17:11 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 3 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

Ha! I’m wildly more optimistic than you about whether AI can re-construct school-level curricula, when asked. It may reflect our subject differences - β€œEnglish” is very poorly specified. I’m talking about it at researchED- see you there!

02.09.2025 07:35 πŸ‘ 0 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0
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New on 100% Assessment: The Trouble with Progress Reports... The case for and against telling parents whether students are making progress.
100assessment.substack.com/p/the-troubl...
@head-teach.bsky.social

16.08.2025 15:10 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 2 πŸ’¬ 0 πŸ“Œ 0

We’re going to write a post very soon on confidence interval reporting pros and cons. I like that framing - most framing of CIs is unintelligible to parents.

20.07.2025 08:24 πŸ‘ 3 πŸ” 0 πŸ’¬ 2 πŸ“Œ 0
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Should Subjects Be Required to Report Attainment on a Common Scale? Why there is no perfect way to report attainment to students and parents

New on 100% Assessment Substack: Should Subjects Be Required to Report Attainment on a Common Scale?https://100assessment.substack.com/p/should-subjects-be-required-to-report @head-teach.bsky.social

19.07.2025 11:36 πŸ‘ 6 πŸ” 1 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 0

I’m really looking forward to my ResearchEd National talk this year:

'Of Gods and ideas: how intelligence became artificial’.

I’m going to chart how our conceptions of learning have evolved (or degraded) over three millennia β€” from communing with gods to acquiring and organising data.

16.07.2025 13:48 πŸ‘ 9 πŸ” 5 πŸ’¬ 1 πŸ“Œ 1