What is the Golden Triangle in education, and how can it aid school / parent communication? Dave Waddell explains.

If you’ve never heard of what many an educational establishment’s marketing material calls ‘the golden triangle’, then you will certainly know what it is. Each corner is theorised as representing one of a given school’s three stakeholders: child, parent and teacher. Linked up, they constitute that triangle, the lines of which are imagined as channels of communication. It is ‘golden’ because it is seen as being both ideal and benchmark, which when in fine working order makes for a happy, purposeful and child centred learning community.

Games based learning is an area that offers education fascinating possibilities, and different methods are explored daily. However, are certain games, such as Candy Crush, based on a format too addictive to be used in schools? ReadingWise writer Dave Waddell discusses the matter, and considers how games can be used for promoting literacy.

The relative virtual popularity of Dana Smith’s This is what Candy Crush does to your brain - recently posted on the Guardian’s online Notes and Theories science desk – may mean one or two things: either people are genuinely interested in the idea that it is, as Smith says, a by-design addictive game; or any article with the words ‘candy’ and ‘crush’ in its title is certain to get a degree of misdirected traffic.