Rethinking Education

S3E1: Sarah-Jayne Blakemore - The GCSE is misaligned with adolescent brain development

Oct 14, 2022

Ask episode

Chapters

Transcript

Episode notes

Making the Existing Education System Work as Well as It Can

The Third Cause for Concern

Rethinking Education Conference

The Inaugural Rethinking Education Conference Was a Wonderful Thing

Head Teachers and on Schoolers Never the Twain Shall Meet

The Rethinking Education Podcast - Episode 3

The Rethinking Education Podcast - Sarah Jane Blakemore

What Was School Like for You?

I Was a Late Learner, You Know?

What Are Your Interests in a Levels?

Psychology Degrees

What's Going on With Your GCSE Psychology Degree?

What I Learned About Experimental Psychology

The Brain and the Symptoms of Schizophrenia

Learning Mind Lessons for Education

The Learning Brain That I Wrote With Uta

The Interest in Schizophrenia in the Adolescent Brain

Inventing Ourself in Adolescence

What Have You Been Working on Adolescence?

Rethinking Education Podcast

01:01:52 • 2min

What's Happening in the Human Brain?

01:03:37 • 3min

Myelination of Axons

01:06:42 • 4min

The Inverted U-Shape Curve of Gray Matter

01:10:39 • 4min

Is There a Period of More Intensive Synaptic Pruning in Adolescent Development?

01:14:12 • 2min

Synaptic Pruning in Human Adolescence

01:16:37 • 2min

Adolescence Is a Period of Vulnerability and Opportunity

01:18:59 • 3min

Adolescent Mice Drink More Alcohol When They're With Their Cage Mates

01:22:01 • 2min

Adolescence and Risky Decision-Making Processes

01:23:36 • 4min

Young People's Cognitive Development Is Changing

01:27:18 • 3min

Young People and Self-Monitoring in the Education System

01:30:28 • 3min

The Wasted Years Key Stage Three

01:33:24 • 2min

The Mental Health Crisis in Teenagers

01:35:50 • 3min

Is There a Mental Health Crisis?

01:39:09 • 2min

Are You Seeing an Uptick in Mental Health Among Young People?

01:41:04 • 3min

Is the Assessment System Really Crucial to Education?

01:44:27 • 2min

The Mental Health Crisis Is Not Just Young People

01:46:53 • 2min

Is Social Media Creating Positive Narratives About the Future?

01:48:38 • 2min

I Think the GCSE Is a Huge Part of the Assessment System and I Think It's a Big Part of It

01:50:15 • 2min

Are There Alternatives to National Exams?

01:51:45 • 3min

The Individual Differences in Education and Mental Health

01:54:21 • 2min

Is There a Bottom Up Accountability System for GCSEs?

01:55:54 • 2min

The Three Questions About Rethinking Education

01:58:18 • 5min

Adolescence and the Pandemic

02:03:17 • 2min

Enhanced Neuroplasticity in the Adolescent Brain

02:05:30 • 2min

What Do You Think We're Doing Right in Schools?

02:08:00 • 2min

The Assessment System Is Not the Only Way to Address It

02:10:29 • 2min

How Do We Get From Here to There?

02:12:54 • 2min

The Times Education Commission

02:14:45 • 3min

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore is Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge and co-director of the Wellcome Trust PhD Programme in Neuroscience at University College London. She has been awarded a number of prizes over the last 20 years or so, including the British Psychological Society (BPS) Doctoral Award, the BPS Spearman Medal for outstanding early career research, and the Royal Society's Rosalind Franklin Award. She was also the winner of the 2018 Royal Society Prize for Science Books for her brilliant book 'Inventing Ourselves: The Secret Life of the Teenage Brain'. I’ve wanted to speak with Sarah-Jayne for a really long time - not just about her brilliant work on the teenage brain, but because of her work with Rethinking Assessment, and a fascinating blog she wrote recently about how GCSEs are misaligned with what we know about how teenage brains develop (see below). LINKS SchoolsWeek review of the Rethinking Education conference: https://schoolsweek.co.uk/the-review-the-rethinking-education-conference/ Tina Farr blog: Mainstream educators and Unschoolers: Never the twain shall meet? - https://headlearnercom.wordpress.com/2022/09/26/mainstream-educators-and-unschoolers-never-the-twain-shall-meet/ Sarah Jayne’s book ‘Inventing ourselves - The secret life of the teenage brain’ - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Inventing-Ourselves-Secret-Teenage-Brain/dp/1784161349/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1524214280&sr=1-1 Sarah Jayne’s TED talk ‘The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain’ - https://www.ted.com/talks/sarah_jayne_blakemore_the_mysterious_workings_of_the_adolescent_brain Sarah Jayne and Tamsin Ford's 'Neuroscience, adolescence and GCSEs - a misalignment?' - https://rethinkingassessment.com/rethinking-blogs/neuroscience-adolescence-and-gcses-a-misalignment/ The Rethinking Ed Conference (>90 videos): https://www.rethinking-ed.org/reconf22 Rethinking Education Mighty Network: https://rethinking-education.mn.co Become a patron: www.patreon.com/repod Buy me a coffee: www.buymeacoffee.com/repod The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at www.rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter.