Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

Planning - a huge part of the working life of any student teacher, and (in the opinion of many of us who work in ITE) the key to all sorts of aspects of the process of learning to teach. We spend hours banging on about it, our student teachers spend hours writing them, and yet an experienced teacher appears to do the whole thing in their head, and be able to replan the whole thing on the fly during a lesson if needed. To a new member of the profession it looks like magic, and to someone who teaches new teachers, it makes the whole thing pretty tricky to capture and make sense of. Today, Emma and Tom are in the studio discussing a 2011 article by three colleagues from the University of Oxford: Katharine Burn, Hazel Hagger and Trevor Mutton. In it, they use earlier work by Calderhead which outlines what experienced teachers’ planning looks like, and discuss the learning journeys of several student teachers they worked with at Oxford. The findings point to some unexpected light-bulb moments about how the process of learning to plan is deeply intertwined with the process of learning to teach, the way that planning evolves over time, and how we as ITE tutors in university or school might go about supporting new members of the profession as the learn to plan, and plan to learn. Thanks to Katharine, Hazel and Trevor (friends of the podcast all) for the very interesting paper, and we hope we did it some justice in our discussion. ——————————————Recorded in Studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 11th August 2026

As teachers, we can work all the magic we like, but if a pupil’s not in our classroom, there’s not much impact to be had. In the wake of Covid, there are more and more pupils who are missing significant amounts of the school year. Somehow, we’ve got to season 9 without having an episode specifically about this important issue, but today we’ve managed to find a guest who can help with the details. Scott Norman-Stephenson supports attendance for a cluster of primary schools in Cardiff, and he’s with us to discuss something that can often, in the media, be reduced to simple headlines about an ‘attendance crisis’ or descend into finger-pointing at parents. Scott tells us about what supporting attendance looks like on the ground, the kinds of strategies he uses, some of the underlying issues feeding into the problem, and why he’s definitely not like a traffic warden!—————————Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 11th August 2026

We interrupt your Friday off from our podcast to bring you a special episode about Wales’s PISA results!There’s been plenty of commentary about this already, and we wanted to contribute something that chews over the implications. Despite the results landing very inconveniently in the middle of our busiest teaching period of the year, we found a slot when we could both get in front of a microphone, and we’re doing our best to try and work out where we go from here without sugar coating the fact that these PISA results are really, really not good. For those listeners new to these things, we take a brief run around what PISA actually is, then dive into Wales’s results, get a flavour of the commentary, and try to get a sense of where your new Plaid Cymru overlords want to take things next. Were they lucky to get this bombshell early in their tenure? Or are they already too late to avoid another bad news bomb in three years’ time? Tom’s been sniffing around to get a sense of what’s going on behind closed doors in Welsh Government, and has a few things to report about some speedy announcements, and a curriculum review by the end of the year. Thanks to Rhys Williams from ITV News for the clip that opens this episode. You can follow Rhys on X (and we recommend that you do!) at @rhyswilliamstv - his digging around the detail of data and inspection reports is doing a fine service to education journalism in Wales. We’ll be revisiting plenty of the themes covered today over the course of the year. Normal service will be resumed next week!——————————Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 10th September 2026

Welcome back to the podcast for what is, unbelievably, our ninth season!For this first episode, Tom is out and about with his microphones, and has an interview with Dr Gwenllian Lansdown Davies, CEO of Dysgu. Dysgu was set up around a year ago to oversee the professional learning offering for people working in education in Wales. We wanted to find out how it sees its role, what its priorities are, and what would count as success for a nation still grappling with major educational challenges. Thanks to Gwenllian for joining us. --------------------------------------------------------------------------Recorded in Cathays Park, Cardiff on 7th July (interview) and in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 12th August (final discussion)

First of all, welcome back to Emma! Although listeners may not have noticed (thanks to us imprisoning her in a studio for about a week last summer and then putting the episodes out slowly across the year), she has in fact just returned from a whole year away from the mic. In this bonus episode, we look back at season 8, and find out that Emma hasn't been keeping an eye on Tom while he was left to drive the podcast by himself - and it's a good thing he didn't realise or who knows what might have been published? We take a quick look forward to what's coming up in season 9, and invite you to make a date in your diary for the 4th September, when we release our first episode of the new academic year.--------------------------------Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 10th August 2026

We've reached the end of season 8 of Emma and Tom Talk Teaching, and to celebrate the end of another academic year, we're going to take on the end-of-level boss! Learning Styles is a neuromyth (something that people say about how the brain works that sounds attractive but is basically a load of rubbish). Not just any old neuromyth, but THE neuromyth that just refuses to lie down and die. For decades, some in the education world have been beguiled by the notion that all our pupils can be defined as visual, auditory or kinaesthetic learners, and that those who teach them should plan to deliver content in all three of these forms. People have filled in questionnaires to find their learning style, people have made money off the back of the whole notion, and countless amounts of time, money, blood, sweat and tears have been expended on something that, as our guest points out early in the episode, has not only been thoroughly debunked, but is actively detrimental. And yet... and yet... still the myth endures, and still the learning styles monster rears its ugly head from time to time. So Tom has put out the bat signal, and a superhero for our times has answered the call: Dr Louise Allen-Walker from our psychology in education and criminology programmes joins him to engage in an act of public service. In this episode, we strike our own blow at learning styles: the neuromyth that just won't die. Plus, of course, the infamous Neuromyth Van makes an appearance towards the end of the episode, so Louise can put her top three most hated myths (apart from learning styles) in there to be taken away and crushed. Thanks to Louise for joining us today, and thanks to everyone for listening for another year! We'll be back soon. ----------------------------------Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus (with remote guest) on 21st May 2026Thanks to our sound engineer Pete Lambern, and studio manager Adrian Rapps, as well as the whole team at Cardiff Met Sport Broadcast & Media, for their support this year. 

Today we look at our own initial teacher education (ITE) provision here at Cardiff Met, and question how effective the concept of Research and Enquiry has been for our student teachers. Working in a policy environment where teachers are expected to be capable of creating and consuming knowledge about teaching, and bringing to to bear on their own contexts, we provide time and space for our student teachers to learn how to do that. The idea is that this will make them into better teachers - but how successful has this new idea been and what does our idea look like in reality, on the ground? Emma and Tom are joined by fellow researcher Sioned Dafydd to discuss what we found when we carried out some research that was close to home, and found out some interesting things about how things are going on!———————————Recorded in studio D0.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 23rd July 2025

Tom is joined in the non camera-enabled studio today (sorry, YouTube subscribers!) by Sarah McErlaine, who works with schools in Caerphilly county here in Wales. Sarah has just completed her professional doctorate, in which she worked with literacy specialists to try and nail down the key concepts in English. In the absence of much in the way of clues in the Curriculum for Wales framework, this turned out to be an important and difficult undertaking, and resulted in the production of some very handy concept maps to help support those teachers out in school. Sarah talks us through how she went about designing a support package by taking an international view of the key concepts of the subject, and collaborating with school colleagues to come up with something they could use. Thanks to Sarah for taking the time to chat, and apologies from Tom for pressing the wrong buttons in very much the wrong order on the studio desk, resulting in Sarah sounding like she was dialling in on Teams when she was in fact sitting a few feet away!———————————————————————Recorded in studio B2.10A at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 22nd April 2026

This week we welcome two academics from the University of the West of England - Joe Brown and Dr Tim Clark - to the studio. They’re here to discuss their recently published book Debating Childhoods, which gives Tom and Sian the chance to have an in-depth discussion about how we think of childhood and how society’s values influence the things we prioritise and consider when providing education and experiences for children. There’s lots to think about in this extended episode, and if you’re interested in doing some more deep thinking on this topic, Debating Childhoods is published by Sage and available wherever you get your books!——————————————Recorded in studio B2.15 at Cardiff Metropolitan University’s Cyncoed Campus on 10th February 2026

With the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) elections here in Wales just around the corner, the team got together in Cardiff Met's broadcast centre to discuss what we learnt from the six parties in relation to some of the big themes facing education today.Tom is joined on the studio sofa by Dr Gareth Evans from the University of Wales Trinity Saint David and Finola Wilson from Impact Wales to discuss school standards, the future of Curriculum for Wales, funding, teacher recruitment, and more.You can see this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/f_6xr3HAyjkWe hope you found our Senedd Elections Special project interesting - we certainly did!-----------------------------Recorded in studio B0.17 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 20th March 2026For Cardiff Met Sport Broadcast & MediaStudio technical support: Rhys Evans, Jamie Hicks, Caitlin MeredithSound: Peter LambernDirector: Adrian RappsFor Impact WalesProducer: Darren EvansAny opinions expressed by the presenters are their independent views and not those of their respective employers.