I am still here, sort of. Here's an update to prove it.

Blimey, where to start? I've spent a few days mostly AFK, as we parents have to sometimes, and come back to find I've missed quite a lot. The main things, as far as I can tell, have been Simon Webb's spitefully demonic little flourishes in the Independent (the comments are the best part, especially M FW's near the bottom of page 3) and also in the TES, although fortunately his piece was expertly rebutted there by Jeremy Yallop. I've read quite a few of Simon Webb's posts to various HE lists, which also consisted mainly of attacks on the autonomous learning method, and various other elaborate but dogmatic justifications (to himself?) of his own decisions. My position is the same as many I've read on the issue: I wouldn't seek to restrict his family's choices, so why would he seek to restrict those of mine? I think he's been removed from all of the HE lists now.

In other [shocking] news, the DCSF has published a review into 'self-regulated learning' [opens pdf] - which looks something like autonomous to me. Oh, apparently:

Autonomy is an important dimension of self regulation. Students who own their goals – because they enjoy the activity or because it fits with their values - devote more time to their tasks, show greater concentration, process information more deeply, and show greater levels of persistence (Ryan and Deci, 2002). On the other hand, when individuals feel coerced to achieve a goal they do less well, scoring lower on a number of academic outcome measures (Lemos, 2002; Nolen, 2003).

- and so on, although it's still very much set in terms of 'teaching' and 'classrooms'.

I found this excerpt quite funny:

Studies of interventions designed to increase self-regulation..

! Um.. doesn't self-regulation require an absence of interventions? And can this government conceive of anything at all that doesn't involve some kind of an intervention? Evidently not.

Also, just in case you haven't been reading Carlotta recently (of course you have!) we now have a Home Educated Youth Council, with a very snazzy website. I am impressed.

Is that everything? I think that's just about everything. As for my plans here, well I've nearly finished the excruciating grind that is critiquing the Badman report [opens pdf]. For some reason it's got increasingly more difficult, which is perhaps why jobs like cleaning the kitchen floor have suddenly looked quite attractive. But I will get to the end of it one day, and then be free to move onto other things.