Rethinking Education

This is a cross-post of an episode of the Flourishing Education podcast, in which Fabienne Vailes interviewed James Mannion about, well, Rethinking Education. Fabienne is a brilliant, intuitive interviewer who lets the conversation go where it will. Which made for a fascinating and, in places, quite emotive conversation. I would like to express my thanks to Fabienne for taking the time to speak with me. I’ve really enjoyed listening back to this conversation, and I hope you do too. The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted by Dr James Mannion, the Director of Rethinking Education. You can contact him at https://rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter. To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed

Dr Amelia Peterson is an LSE Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science, where she teaches social policy, and she is soon to become a founding member of faculty at the London Interdisciplinary School. She completed her PhD in Education Policy and Program Evaluation at Harvard University, where she was an Inequality and Social Policy fellow. During her studies she was a junior visiting scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford and holds a masters degree in Human Development and Psychology, also from Harvard. Amelia studies education and skills policies and their interactions with wider societal processes. Her dissertation traced the institutional changes associated with the de-vocationalization of upper secondary education, in the context of increased income inequality. She is interested in how political and social factors impact policy implementation and recently co-authored an absolutely brilliant book with Valerie Hannon, entitled: THRIVE - the purpose of schools in a changing world, which we discuss at length in this episode. LINKS Two brilliant Rethinking Assessment blogs by Amelia: ‘Moving beyond grades will be key to rethinking assessment’: https://rethinkingassessment.com/rethinking-blogs/moving-beyond-grades-will-be-key-to-rethinking-assessment/ ‘We need a more flexible and useful assessment regime that will motivate young people’: https://rethinkingassessment.com/rethinking-blogs/we-need-a-more-flexible-and-useful-assessment-regime-that-will-motivate-young-people/ A recent Rethinking Education campfire conversation that involved Amelia on self-directed learning - "Dare to give young people autonomy": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yh2qgFo2C6c The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted by Dr James Mannion, the Director of Rethinking Education. You can contact him at https://rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter. To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: rethinking-education.mn.co/feed

This is a cross-post of an episode of the podcast 'From Page to Practice', featuring the book Fear is the Mind Killer by Dr James Mannion and Kate McAllister. The 'From Page to Practice' podcast features audio clips from readers who have translated the ideas from books in their practice. This episode is an international affair, featuring Freya in Italy, Dean and Mark in Shanghai, Caryl in Cambodia and Gina (not sure where in the world she is!) Enjoy!

Welcome to episode 6 of the Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations. The theme of today’s episode is around supporting children and young people with mental health issues, and with barriers to school attendance more widely. In this episode, we are joined by: Fran Morgan - Founder, Square Peg (https://www.teamsquarepeg.org) Ellie Costello - Director, Square Peg Lydie (Ellie’s daughter) - age 12 Will Carter - a FullBright Scholar and a PhD student at Berkeley, California who recently appeared on This Morning with Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby in a piece entitled - ‘Boy Who Overcame Severe Dyslexia Now Studying PhD’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLnUjgM7Pvk&ab_channel=ThisMorning Bea Herbert - A psychologist and the founder of States of Mind, an organisation dedicated to providing young people with the psychological skills, knowledge and self awareness that is required for them to thrive in the world (https://www.statesofmind.org) Lucy Lovett - a college student with an interest in autism and mental health Anna Allen - a Speech & Language Therapist, and the parent of a child who has struggled with school attendance Heidi Mavir - an Autistic Parent to an Autistic Teen. Heidi is also a public speaker, activist, advocate and mental health first aider, with a particular interest in supporting families whose children have barriers to education. (https://www.facebook.com/seNDSupport) Lottie Cooke - young journalist a student and member of Pupil Power Debra Nelson - Football Beyond Borders - an organisation that uses football to change the lives of young people (https://www.footballbeyondborders.org) Campfire Conversations are hosted by Dr James Mannion, the Director of Rethinking Education and the host of the Rethinking Education podcast. To view the video version of this conversation, visit: https://youtu.be/Ql9plUKXFUs To join future live-streamed Campfire Conversations, join the (private) Rethinking Education Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rethinkinged To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed To explore the Rethinking Education podcast, visit https://soundcloud.com/rethinking-ed-podcast - or search for 'Rethinking Education' wherever you get your podcasts :)

Episode 5 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today's conversation features: Naomi Fisher - author of Changing Our Minds: How children can take control of their own learning - https://twitter.com/naomicfisher Amelia Peterson - co-author of Thrive: The purpose of schools in a changing world - https://twitter.com/AKMPeterson Naomi Clarke - home educator - https://www.instagram.com/intersectio... Yumna Hussen - Youth MP for Birmingham. Member of Pupil Power. And former campfire guest! - https://twitter.com/Yumna_Hussen Asma Maloumi - Member of Pupil Power. Lox Pratt - Home schooler Aliyah York - Founder of Pupil Power - https://twitter.com/aliyahiyork Artemis D. Bear - Freedom to Learn Lead, Phoenix Education and Founder of The Garden (http://www.thegardenbristol.org/) - https://twitter.com/ArtemisDBear Kate McAllister - Principal, The Hive, Dominican Republic - https://twitter.com/Rethinking_Kate Rose Arnold - Home educator and editor, Suitable Education - https://suitable-education.uk/ Kath Pratt - Founder, Soweni - https://twitter.com/kathsoweni James Myklebust-Hampshire - PYPCo and homeroom teacher, Norway - https://twitter.com/MrJames_MH Dr James Mannion - Director, Rethinking Education - https://twitter.com/RethinkingJames LINKS: https://www.big-change.org/about/mission/ To view the comment feed, join the (private) Rethinking Education Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rethi... To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed

Welcome to this special, shorter than usual episode of the Rethinking Education podcast featuring my recent conversation with two previous guests - Tom Sherrington and Adam Boxer. As with so many things these days, this episode came about because of a Twitter exchange I was involved in, in which Adam wrote: “as you know, I accept that there are many "prog" methods that can be excellent. the discussion though is about how easy it is to implement those, and whilst I have seen trad done bad, that's the vanishing minority of trad lessons that I've seen (and I've seen quite a few now). compare that to prog ones, there's a vanishing minority of ones that I've seen where I've thought "yeah that was ace.” This made me think of a blog that Tom Sherrington once wrote, entitled ‘The groovy prog isn’t the issue; it’s the bad trad”, in which he observes that in the majority of lessons where he has seen a teacher struggling, it’s not because they’re doing progressive stuff that’s ineffective, but because they’re finding it difficult to do the trad stuff - explaining and questioning and providing feedback and whatnot - well. Which isn’t quite the opposite of what Adam said, but it struck me that at the very least, there’s a conversation to be had here to explore this further. I responded “I’d love to have you and Tom on the podcast sometime to see if we can get to the bottom of this”. To my delight - and slightly to my surprise - they both agreed to take time out of their busy schedules to humour me, and well, here we are. LINKS: The Rethinking Education podcast on iTunes - please give us a 5 star review and leave a comment! - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rethinking-education/id1546512828 Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations (video playlist): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ6mCUmebHJNC-qrWX9gMBCQJtHxoGNh2 Tom’s blog - ‘The groovy prog isn’t the issue: it’s the bad trad’ https://teacherhead.com/2019/11/25/the-groovy-prog-isnt-the-issue-its-the-bad-trad/ The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter. You can join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network here: rethinking-education.mn.co

In this episode I am joined by Fran Morgan and Ellie Costello from Square Peg, a social enterprise that was set up in 2019 to shine a light on the plight of the many young people who struggle to attend school for various reasons. Fran and Ellie were inspired to set up Square Peg following their own experiences as parents of young people who have struggled to attend mainstream. As Fran points out in the conversation, one day her daughter refused to go to school, and it was like being plunged into freezing water - total shock, and an increasing awareness that there is scant help for the parents and carers of young people who struggle to go to school for any length of time. Fran and Ellie have since come to realise that the current situation – with school budget cuts, problems in the SEND and mental health systems and increasing anxiety amongst children and young people – means that things are far worse for families today than theft were even ten years ago. Working closely with another organisation, Not Fine In School, Square Peg has achieved an incredible amount in its first year, including appearances on various national television news programmes, articles in the mainstream and education press and questions being asked in parliament. This is a eye-opening conversation in which we discussed Fran and Ellie’s experiences as parents of young people who were ‘not fine in school’; the jaw-dropping statistics around absenteeism, school refusal and exclusion; and School Differently, a new organisation that Fran and Ellie have set up with Ian Gilbert and others to look at how we might urgently rethink a school system that serves so many young people so poorly. LINKS: Square Peg: https://www.teamsquarepeg.org Poem - https://www.emilyperlkingsley.com/welcome-to-holland School Utopia - https://www.teamsquarepeg.org/school-differently Petition: https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/create-a-new-absence-code-for-school-refusal Book: Changing our minds, by Naomi Fisher: https://www.hachette.co.uk/titles/naomi-fisher/changing-our-minds/9781472145505/ Not fine in school Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/NotFineInSchoolPublicPage/ Book - Hey Warrior: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hey-Warrior-Karen-Young/dp/1912678004 Fran Morgan on Channel 4 news: https://www.channel4.com/news/parents-fined-because-their-sen-children-wont-go-to-school Fran Morgan on BBC Breakfast TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9An8doDKO8&t=3s School differently: https://www.schooldifferently.net/ The Rethinking Education podcast is hosted and produced by Dr James Mannion. You can contact him at https://rethinking-ed.org/contact, or via @RethinkingJames on Twitter. You can join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network here: https://rethinking-education.mn.co

Episode 4 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today, Dr James Mannion, Kate McAllister, Kath Pratt and Natalie Rothwell-Warn are joined by three young people from Pupil Power - Sephora, 18, Yumna, 16, and Zoya, who is in Year 10. This is a powerful conversation in which we discuss, among other things: why education can’t simply be reformed; how children are treated as economic commodities - their words, not mine; and in which we pose the question: “What if… schools nurtured young imaginations?” Here's a link to Yumna's TEDx talk, Re-Imagining Education To Create An Impact In The World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkpeN64AuLU To view the video version, visit: https://youtu.be/1hEOrzmXWLs To view the comment feed, join the (private) Rethinking Education Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/rethinkinged To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: https://rethinking-education.mn.co/feed

Tom Sherrington, a seasoned educator with over 30 years of teaching experience, dives deep into effective instructional strategies and behavior management. He passionately critiques the practice of grading schools, arguing for systemic change to support educators and enhance student outcomes. The conversation also highlights Rosenshine's Principles of Instruction, emphasizing their crucial role in fostering effective teaching. Tom shares insights from his journey, revealing the transformative power of a supportive learning environment in education.

Episode 3 of Rethinking Education Campfire Conversations, a series of live-streamed, group conversations with people who want to rethink and reform education so as to bring about a more harmonious, less hair-raising state of world affairs. Today's episode features a conversation between James Mannion, Kate McAllister, Aliyah York, Lottie Cooke, Grace McAllister, Lox, Andreas, Olivia, Marcos, Sam and Eddie. To view the video version, visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7iOUZRqZWE. To view the comment feed, join the (private) Rethinking Education Facebook Group: www.facebook.com/groups/rethinkinged To join the Rethinking Education Mighty Network, visit: rethinking-education.mn.co/feed