Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

We have so many goodies for you, and so little of the year left, that we're giving you some bonus Saturday releases: for the first time ever, we present BA Bites!As well as our well-known PGCE programmes, the Cardiff Partnership for ITE has an undergraduate BA Primary with QTS programme, and today we bring you our first ever guest from that programme. Lani Codd is a final year student who has carried out classroom-based research into the link between pupils' ability in literacy and their creative capacities.In this research bite, you can hear Lani talking to Emma about her work, and what she found out.You can check out Lani's infographic summarising her findings here, and a video version of this conversation is available at the Cardiff Partnership's professional learning YouTube channel.

Research Bites is back! Showcasing the very best student teacher research from the Cardiff Partnership for Initial Teacher Education, we're proud to present student teachers in conversation with their tutors about the work they've done, and the impact it's had on them and their classrooms.Today, Sonia Fajkis joins us to talk about engagement in blended learning in the language classroom. Sonia talks to her PGCE programme leader, Kerry Bevan, about her review of the literature and the recommendations she made to her school, as well as her next steps as a teacher and a researcher.Sonia has kindly made her summary infographic available for download, which you can find here. Thanks, Sonia!You can also find a video version of this conversation at the Cardiff Partnership's professional learning YouTube channel.Sonia's six main sources were:Chiu, T. K. F., (2021): Applying the self-determination theory (SDT) to explain student engagement in online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, Journal of Research on Technology in Education, Apr 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2021.1891998Chu, T. L. (A.). (2020). ‘Applying positive psychology to foster student engagement and classroom community amid the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond’ Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/stl0000238König, J., Jäger-Biela, D.J. and Glutsch, N. (2020) ‘Adapting to online teaching during COVID-19 school closure: teacher education and teacher competence effects among early career teachers in Germany’, European journal of teacher education, 43(4), pp. 608–622. https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2020.1809650Pelikan, E.R., Lüftenegger, M., Holzer, J. et al. (2021) ‘Learning during COVID-19: the role of self-regulated learning, motivation, and procrastination for perceived competence’, Z Erziehungswiss, 24, pp. 393–418. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70010-6_14.van Roy, R. and Zaman, B. (2019) ‘Unravelling the ambivalent motivational power of gamification: A basic psychological needs perspective’, International journal of human-computer studies, 127, pp. 38–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2018.04.009Ryan, R.M. and Deci, E.L. (2020) ‘Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation from a self-determination theory perspective: Definitions, theory, practices, and future directions’, Contemporary educational psychology, 61, pp. 101860

We're back with the second half of our double-bill discussing the outcomes of joint research carried out by Cardiff Metropolitan University and Cardiff University into the impact of Covid-19 on the education landscape. The research focused particularly on assessment, and looked at both pupils and student teachers.In this second episode we're rejoined by Professor Emmajane Milton from Cardiff University, and also welcome Dr Anna Bryant and Dr Viv John from Cardiff Met. We're discussing the reforms to initial teacher education in Wales, the model of research-informed clinical practice that was adopted in Cardiff, and what happened when Covid-19 hit less than a year into a brand-new (for us) way of educating teachers.We discuss the place of research-informed clinical practice in supporting new teachers to develop despite a rocky start to their careers, differing perceptions between school and university about the way that Covid-19 impacted teacher education, and look at how we move forward and continue developing our vision together with our school partners. What features are the Covid-keepers, and what innovations do we want to throw out and never see again?A reminder that the IPDA is a super-friendly support group for anyone involved in education, and their can be found at ipda.org.uk, with twitter handles at @ipda_prof_learn and @ipdacymru--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recorded in studio D0.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 4th March 2022

It's the Easter break in schools - and who knows, we might even take a few days of annual leave ourselves!It's become a tradition at holiday times for us to break into our normal service with a chat about some interesting, weird and wonderful things we've found online, so here's our Easter offering for you.Tom's on best behaviour this time around and has promised not to drop some nightmarish bombshell on Emma to respond to, and all three of his contributions are actually linked to teaching. Meanwhile, Emma has some interesting stuff of her own to share. We hope you enjoy our free-form chat and find something interesting in there! Have a wonderful break, and we'll be back with the second half of our Covid Assessment Project research double-bill in a fortnight.Find our goodies online:1) BBC World Service: Deeply Human2) Political Thinking with Nick Robinson: Lord (Jonathan) Sumption3) The Guardian: 100 ways to slightly improve your life4) Twitter: Dan Wuori on teacher sacrifice5) New York Times: Wordle6) CNN: All students had to do was read the syllabus--------------------------------------------------------Recorded in studio C2.05 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 31st March 2022

Today we're releasing the first in a double-bill of podcast episodes discussing joint research carried out by the Cardiff Partnership for Initial Teacher Education, and presented at events convened by the International Professional Development Association.We're joined by the newly-professored Emmajane Milton (congratulations to her!) and Dr. Alex Morgan from Cardiff University, who carried out research in a team with colleagues from Cardiff Met. The research, funded by Welsh Government, aimed to discover the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on both pupils and student teachers, with a particular emphasis on assessment.The findings were interesting and concerning for both groups, and what we present today is a no-holds-barred, in-depth discussion about the state of education today as we continue to face challenges from Covid-19, and as we look to reform education in Wales.At the time we release this episode, the report itself had not been publicly released, but on 23rd March we received news that it is now publicly available. You can read them here, and the report being discussed today is research study 4.We'll be back in a fortnight with another episode based on this work, in which we dig deeper into how initial teacher education fared when the pandemic hit.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recorded in studio D0.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 3rd March 2022

Long-time podcast listeners may remember our review of Lucy Crehan's bestseller Cleverlands, in which the author outlined her insights into leading education systems of the world. Crucially, Lucy had actually got on a plan and travelled to the countries, living with teachers and speaking to people involved in education, and so her conclusions about the features of high-performing education systems of the world had more weight behind them. It also helped that her final chapter was crystal clear in summarising what she saw as the common features of world-leading education systems.So you can imagine how excited we were to be able to pack up our wires and microphones and hit the road - not only were we taking the podcast for the first time since Covid hit in 2020, but we had an invitation to Lucy Crehan's house for a long chat about her work supporting teachers in implementing the new curriculum for Wales!Our discussion turned out to be an honest and serious evaluation of how things are going in what should be the final stages before the new curriculum is rolled out in Welsh schools. Are we ready? Are there cautionary notes to be drawn from Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence? How can teachers fill in the gap between the 'big picture' aspirations of the curriculum documents and the nuts and bolts of subject disciplines?All is revealed in this extended interview with Lucy Crehan, and we hope you find the insights useful, no matter where in the world you're listening.-------------------------------Recorded in Swansea on 16th February 2022

It's been quite a while since we discussed the all-important role of the mentor in initial teacher education, and we welcome two guests today: Sally Bethell, veteran of several podcast recordings, and Sian Wickersham, one of our newest colleagues.Sally has spent years becoming our go-to colleagues about all things to do with mentoring, and is in the closing stages of doctoral research on the subject. Meanwhile, Sian has just joined us from a role at an academy chain in London, and her perspective as a new member of the team (and one with experience of initial teacher education over the border in England) adds a new angle.There have been some major changes in the way we work in partnership with our schools to educate new members of the teaching profession in the last few years. How has this manifested itself in the role of the mentor, the person who the student teacher probably sees more than anyone else on the programme? How have our colleagues who train and support mentors changed how they work to take account of this? And how can schools select the very best possible people to be mentors?---------------------------------Recorded in studio D0.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 9th December 2021

Mae wedi bod ychydig yn amser ers i ni glywed ddiwethaf gan ein hathrawon dan hyfforddiant, a heddiw gallwch chi glywed gan sawl un ohonyn nhw! Mae'r cysyniad o ymchwil ac ymholi yn ganolog i fodel ymarfer clinigol addysg gychwynnol ymchwil Caerdydd Met, ac mae'n bleser clywed athrawon dan hyfforddiant yn amlinellu eu gweithgareddau ymchwil ac ymholi cynnar o'u lleoliadau ysgol cyntaf mor groyw.Fe wnaethom sefydlu ein prosiect 'bwth lluniau ymchwil ac ymholi' lle anfonodd ein hathrawon dan hyfforddiant fideos 'hunlun' 2-3 munud yn dweud wrthym beth yr oeddent wedi'i dynnu oddi wrth ddarn o ymchwil ac ymholiad. Mae Sioned a Rhian yn cyflwyno rhai ohonynt yn y bennod hon, ac yn trafod y lle ymchwil ac ymholi mewn addysg gychwynnol athrawon.-------------------------------Recordiwyd ar Gampws Cyncoed Prifysgol Fetropolitan Caerdydd ar 14eg Rhagfyr 2021

It's been a little while since we last heard from our student teachers, and today you can hear from several of them! The concept of research and enquiry is central to Cardiff Met's research-informed clinical practice model of initial teacher education, and it's a joy to hear student teachers outlining their early research and enquiry activities from their first school placements so articulately.We set up our 'research and enquiry photo booth' project in which our student teachers sent 2-3 minute 'selfie' videos telling us what they'd taken away from a piece of research and enquiry. Emma and Tom introduce some of them in this episode, and discuss the place of research and enquiry in initial teacher education.For our Welsh-speaking listeners, there's a bonus this week as we're simultaneously releasing a Welsh version of this episode. Check out our feed for the other episode 13, in which our Emma and Tom's colleagues Sioned Dafydd and Rhian Crooks-Williams take their places to discuss the 'photo booth' submissions of our Welsh-medium student teachers.Thanks, as ever, to all of our students for putting their time and effort into these pieces of work.------------------------------------Recorded in studio D0.18 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 29th November 2021.

Dr. Viv John, recently awarded her doctorate after completing the Cardiff Met EdD programme with flying colours, has been in our sights for a while! After hearing the rave reviews of her viva, we had to get her in front of a microphone to find out what she's been researching.And the answer is that Dr. Viv has been bravely tackling several of the trickier areas relating to music education, taking on so many challenges that even her supervisors wondered if it was wise!In a nutshell, Viv was interested in trying to nail down the tricky concept of creativity as it applies to musicians who embark on the PGCE in secondary music with the aim of becoming classroom music teachers. We've heard many times on the podcast from Tom about the fact that people entering the profession as secondary music teachers skew strongly towards what we call 'classically trained', and Viv was interested in the implications of that for how these musicians see their own creativity and how it changes as they beome teachers. As well as the PGCE students trained in the western classical tradition, a small group of non classically-trained musicians came onto the programme and Viv was able to see how their views of creativity differed, and the challenges that they faced when entering a profession that has largely trained in music in a very different way.Along the road to gaining her EdD, Viv grappled with the sociological theories of Pierre Bordieu as a means of making sense of what was going on, and used the slightly unorthodox research methodology of narrative enquiry to tell the stories of these musicians as they entered the teaching profession during their PGCE year.This episode will be a gift to anyone interested in music education, arts education, creativity, the sociology of education and narrative enquiry, so our grateful thanks to Viv for popping in just before Christmas to bring us such a huge selection of goodies!------------------------------------------------------------------------Recorded in studio D0.12 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed Campus on 14th December 2021