Cards on the table: I fully believe that joining Twitter, and engaging in terms of my professional development has been one of the best strategies for my personal learning in recent years. It has led me in to fascinating conversations, exploring excellent ideas, and debating with brilliant and wise people – all of which has shaped my learning immeasurably, and hopefully impacted on my school, colleagues and students too.

Each week; new voices are added to the debate and discussion – and this week, for example, I celebrated the end of the first month back by buying more education related books. I now have had to rearrange my space to accommodate them. I don’t mind – I think there are more fascinating books being written than I’ve ever seen at any point in my teaching career.

But I’m not sure what to make of this.

Is it a Golden Age for education thinking and research in education? Are we genuinely seeing a renaissance in the role of pedagogical thinking and learning – or is it a bubble perpetuated on Twitter? Certainly, I know that in my own school, there are plenty of people who haven’t even heard of some of these names; let alone read their books – and I fully accept that I am in a privileged position to be able to have the luxury of time and thinking space to explore this. I recognise that it’s just as likely to be a bubble – and I am only seeing the world from inside of it!

Are there wise educators and commentators out there – like those elder statesfolk of our staffrooms – who can nod sagely and say that we have seen this all before? Or is it genuinely something different and new? Are there studies and analysis out there, in the world of education science?

I am genuinely curious, and would love to know!