Emma & Tom Talk Teaching

We’ve travelled a whole mile away from campus for this episode, for the very first ResearchED Cymru event. ResearchED is an organisation aimed at bringing educational research to teachers in a way they can use, promoting the idea that knowing about the clues to ‘what works’ that current research gives us as teachers can save us chasing myths or getting stuck in practice that’s not the best for our pupils. ResearchED events happen on Saturdays, and this year the organisation came to Wales for the first time. There was a star-studded list of speakers for teachers to choose from… and us!While we waited to give our presentation on cross-curricular pedagogies in the expressive arts (see episode 2 of this season of the podcast for details of what we were talking about), we attended some interesting presentations, watched a video message from the mighty Dylan Wiliam, and grabbed some informal interviews with some of the big-name speakers. Now we’ve glued it all together, along with an interview with Gareth Rein who organised the event, and our own musings on the day, to give a flavour of ResearchED to anyone who hasn’t managed to attend the real thing. Our grateful thanks to everyone who contributed to this episode, and to ResearchED for inviting us to speak! Our contributors this episode, in order of appearance:Gareth Rein (Headteacher of St Joseph’s RC Primary School, Penarth)Dylan Wiliam (Emeritus Professor of educational assessment at UCL, co-author of the seminal Inside the Black Box and AfL guru)Mary Myatt (author of The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence) David Didau (author of Making Kids Cleverer: A Manifesto for Closing the Advantage Gap and loads of other books) We also feature a blog post by John Tomsett, headteacher of Huntington School in York, which you can find here.   ----------Recorded at Cardiff High School on 29th February 2020

With the nation still in lockdown, and no prospect of normal life resuming, our intrepid podcasting pair have used all the ingenuity and bloody-mindedness that comes as standard with classroom teachers everywhere to bring you some light relief, despite our enforced separation now well into its third week (or fifth, by the time this hits your devices).With Emma still speaking down the line from her house, and Tom’s car parked in his street doing sterling work as a recording studio (picking up the all-important WiFi signal through the front room window), we’ve scoured the internet to bring you our trademark mix of high-minded, substantial reflection on the world of education (Emma) and a load of bizarre ramblings from way out of left-field (Tom). We flatter ourselves that the overall effect is something that will at least while away 40 minutes of lockdown time, so kick back, ignore your children trashing the house [or is that just mine? - Tom] and enjoy the audio equivalent of that meal you cooked from things you chipped from the ice encrusting the inside of your freezer when you were too scared to get fresh food from the shops.As an added bonus, listen with a mixture of horror and pity as our flimsy masks of professionalism finally slip and we get an unstoppable case of the giggles courtesy of Tom’s final offering. If you’ve been affected by any of the issues raised in this programme (basically, if you are a senior leader who wants to put the case for misunderstood SLT everywhere, or you have suggestions for crimes against education that are punishable through the medium of cake) please tweet us: @ethayer_cmu or @thomasbreezeWe’ll be back in a fortnight with an audio relic from a distant age, when ‘social distancing’ was that thing you did when you sat at the opposite end of the staff meeting from the person who asks all the awkward questions: namely, our episode from ResearchED Cymru. We’ve got exclusive interviews with Mary Myatt and David Didau, plus a talk from the almighty Dylan Wiliam (of ‘Inside the Black Box’ fame) himself. Stay safe!  ----------Recorded remotely on 1st April 2020

In an unfortunate quirk of the episode schedule, we were originally going to put out a lovely episode about our community of international students who travel to Wales to train as teachers here. But that just seemed like adding insult to injury when we’re all confined to our homes by the global Covid-19 pandemic, so we’ve postponed the release of that episode and cobbled together a lockdown special for you to enjoy, if enjoy is the right word. With Tom sitting in a deserted university campus and Emma speaking down-the-line from her house, we discuss the very sudden transition of educational institutions to remote learning approaches. What can we realistically expect to achieve as teachers in this new environment, and how do we keep a critical eye when investigating the huge flood of resources that have been kindly made available by individuals and institutions as a response to the global lockdown?We’re assisted by a blog post from the mighty Tom Sherrington which gives lots of practical advice to those grappling with a new way of working. With many of us wondering whether we might have more time to read, reflect and ponder the big educational questions, we also bring you a discussion of a chapter of Mary Myatt’s book The Curriculum: Gallimaufry to Coherence which started off as a remote-learning resource for our students before being repackaged for our podcast audience. We’ll do our best to keep our normal service going as much as possible, and hope all our listeners and their families and friends are keeping safe and well.  ----------Recorded remotely on 20th March 2020

While anyone who knows anything about education (and especially primary education) will know that literacy is a Very Big Deal, our guests this episode want to talk about something very specific and slightly different: reading for pleasure. Could it be that such a strong focus on literacy skills might mean that the simple pleasure of reading things for fun might be getting squeezed out? How can we as teachers help our pupils to be motivated to read for pleasure?In the last of our suite of episodes this year on the theme of literacy (the others being episodes 6 and 7), we're joined by Jo Bowers from Cardiff Metropolitan University, Claire Douglas from Clytha Primary School in Newport and Lucy Matthews from Llanedeyrn Primary School in Cardiff to discuss how they have set up a 'reading for pleasure' group for teachers to support them in knowing what books are out there and how to get pupils reading.If you're inspired by this episode to investigate what support is out there to get a reading for pleasure culture going in your school, you can email Jo directly at jbowers@cardiffmet.ac.uk. You can read the report on ethnic diversity in childrens' books that Claire mentions in the episode here.  ----------Recorded in C2.11 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 20th January 2020

Our curriculum design panel mega-episode landed in your feed today, with nearly two hours of thought-provoking presentations and discussion about curriculum design and the new Curriculum for Wales. We actually ran this event twice on the day so that every one of our PGCE students could see it. The second run had a slightly different panel - Kathryn Lewis from Central South Consortium replaced Nicky Hagendyck and Lloyd Hopkin from the Welsh Government replaced Sonny Singh. We retained the services of Dr Kevin Smith, Gareth Rein and Barry Crompton.The second batch of students also had some great questions for the panel, and we didn't want you to miss out on hearing these, so we hope you enjoy an additional 20 minutes with our experts. 

Today, we’re gatecrashing one of the lecture theatres at Cardiff Metropolitan University to join our student teachers as they grapple with some of the big issues in education today. In a special (very) extended edition of the podcast, recorded live in front of an audience of PGCE primary and secondary students, we’ve gathered together a panel of speakers who represent school senior leadership, government, the regional consortia and academia to present and discuss on the topic of curriculum design. Speaking just three days after the publication of the final version of the Curriculum for Wales, due to be implemented in schools from 2022, our panellists are generous with their thoughts and advice to the next generation of the profession, making it clear that we need to become curriculum designers as well as classroom practitioners.Our panel consists of: Dr. Kevin Smith from Cardiff University Gareth Rein from St Joseph’s Roman Catholic Primary School in PenarthBarry Crompton from Stanwell School in PenarthNicky Hagendyk from the Education Achievement Service regional consortiumSonny Singh from the Welsh Government Following their presentations, the panel answer questions posed by the audience. This event took place twice (as we have a lot of student teachers!), and you can hear the audience Q&A from the other session (featuring a slightly different lineup of panellists) in a bonus episode also released today. If you’ve been inspired to ‘read, read, read’, the book recommendations from Kevin and Gareth are listed below to get you started.  Dr. Kevin SmithDewey, J. (1938) Experience and Education. New York, Macmillan.Eisner, E. W. (1979) The educational imagination: on the design and evaluation of school programs. New York: MacmillanFreire, P. (2014). Pedagogy of the Oppressed: 30th Anniversary Edition. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing.Hooks, B. (1994) Teaching to transgress : education as the practice of freedom. New York/London: Routledge.Illich, I.D. (1996) Deschooling society. London: Marion BoyarsMarch, C. J., & Willis, G. (2007) Curriculum: alternative approaches, ongoing issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ: University of Rhode IslandTyler, R.W. (1949) Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction. London: The University of Chicago Press. Gareth ReinHirsch, E. D. (1989). Cultural literacy. Melbourne: SchwartzWillingham, D.T. (2009) Why don't students like school? a cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for your classroom. San Francisco: Jossey-BassChristodoulou, D. (2014) Seven myths about education. London: Routledge ----------This episode was recorded live in lecture theatre 2 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 31st January 2020.

A slightly different episode for February half term - this is our reflection on a talk we attended in September which was presented by the Singaporean ITE specialist Professor Pak Tee Ng. An adviser to the Scottish government on their education reforms, the professor was making a quick trip to Wales to deliver a 'masterclass' entitled 'The Singapore Story'. Singapore is the world's highest-ranking education system according to the international PISA tests (with Wales considerably further down the list!) so we were eager to hear what he had to say, and we weren't disappointed. On returning from the talk back at the start of this academic year, we sat down and recorded a podcast episode with our thoughts, which was then promptly relegated to the 'we have no idea when to put this out' folder, and then became our unofficial 'emergency episode', to fill a gap if something went disastrously wrong with something else! More than four months later, with no sign of a podcast disaster, we decided that if we didn't release the episode soon it would be too old to use, so we hope you enjoy our belated reflections on the force of nature that is Professor Pak Tee Ng. If you'd like to read the Professor's book, it's 'Learning from Singapore: The Power of Paradoxes' published by Routledge. Enjoy!     ---------- This episode was recorded at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 30th September 2019

In an episode recorded in the final hours before we staggered into the sunset for our Christmas break (indeed, just a few hours before we recorded the Christmas special episode!), we travelled the short distance to the other university in Cardiff: the mighty Cardiff University, member of the Russell Group and now officially part of the Cardiff Partnership for Initial Teacher Education.While not involved in the training of school teachers, Cardiff University has an education department staffed with top-flight, internationally-renowned researchers, so we wanted to have a chat with one of them about the various knotty questions around how we can work to close a perceived gap between academic research and classroom practice.Professor David James kindly invited us to his office for a conversation which ranged widely across some really interesting questions in this important area, and we hope you find the discussion as thought-provoking as we did. ----------This episode was recorded at the Glamorgan Building, Cardiff University on 19th December 2019

If you've been with us since the start, you may remember our second-ever episode, in which we sat in Emma's house and discussed coaching and mentoring. We were inspired by a talk by a colleague from another university, Jordan Allers, to chew over the different ways we can help novice teachers (as well as more experienced colleagues) to improve their practice.Well, now we can return to the discussion because the wonderful Jordan Allers has jumped ship and joined us here at Cardiff Met! We managed to track him down and bring him to the microphone to put some substance on the original discussion, and to give us some pointers about how we in the teaching profession can raise our mentoring game!Tackling the regular slots, Jordan reveals himself as a lover of organisation, as well as providing us with some reading material and something to try that relates to today's topic.We hope you enjoy what Jordan has to say. We'll be back in a fortnight, when we'll be discussing the role of educational research with Professor David James of Cardiff University. References Adair, J. (2006) Effective Leadership Development. London: Jaico Publishing House.Campbell, J. (2016) ‘Coaching in Schools’, in Van Nieuwerburgh, C. (ed.) Coaching in Professional Contexts. London: SAGE Publications.Colwell, J. et al. (2015) Reflective Teaching in Early Education. London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.Donaldson, G. (2015) Successful Futures: Independent Review of Curriculum and Assessment Arrangements in Wales. Available at: https://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150225-successful-futures-en.pdf (Accessed 21 August 2018).Estyn (2001) Good Practice in the Leadership and Management of Primary Schools in Wales. Cardiff: Estyn Publications.Fletcher, S. and Mullen, C. (eds) (2012) The Sage Handbook of Mentoring and Coaching in Education. London: SAGE Publications.Furlong, J. (2015) Teaching Tomorrow’s Teachers: Option for the future of initial teacher education in Wales [Online]. Available at: https://gov.wales/docs/dcells/publications/150309-teaching-tomorrows-teachers-final.pdf (Accessed: 22 August 2018Harris, A. (2008) Distributed School Leadership, Developing Tomorrow's Leaders. Oxon: Routledge.Harris, A. (2014) Distributed Leadership Matters. Perspectives, Practicalities, and Potential. London: SAGE Publications.Hughes, M. (2013) Coaching and Mentoring Training Course (School-based CPD), October 2013.Langdon, F. (2017) Learning to mentor: unravelling routine practice to develop adaptive mentoring expertise, Teacher Development. DOI: 10.1080/13664530.2016.1267036 (Accessed: 9 October 2019)Langdon, F. and Ward, L. (2015) Educative Mentoring: a way forward, International Journal of Mentoring and Coaching in Education. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJMCE-03-2015-0006 (Accessed: 9 October 2019)OECD (2018b) The Future of Education and Skills: Education 2030. Available at: https://www.oecd.org/education/2030/E2030%20Position%20Paper%20(05.04.2018).pdf (Accessed 21 December 2018Pask, R. and Joy, B. (2007) Mentoring-coaching, a guide for education professionals. Berkshire: Open University Press.Rhodes, C., Stokes, M. and Hampton, G. (2004) A Practical Guide to Mentoring, Coaching and Peer-networking. Teacher Professional Development in Schools and Colleges. London: RoutledgeFalmer.Spence, G. (2016) ‘Coaching for Optimal Functioning’, in Van Nieuwerburgh, C. (ed.) Coaching in Professional Contexts. London: SAGE Publications.Thomson, B. (2014) First Steps in Coaching. London: SAGE.Warwick, J. and Wolpert, M A. (2014) ‘Making the Most of Your Placements’, in Cremin, T. and Arthur, J. (eds) Learning to Teach in the Primary School. Oxon: Routledge.Welsh Government (2014) Principles of Mentoring and Coaching [Online]. Available at: http://learning.gov.wales/docs/learningwales/publications/140214-curee-leaflet-en.pdf (Accessed: 11 December 2018).Welsh Government (2017) Professional standards for teaching and leadership. [Online]. Available at: http://learning.gov.wales/docs/learningwales/publications/170901-professional-standards-for-teaching-and-leadership-en.pdf (Accessed 20 August 2018). ----------This episode was recorded in studio D0.18 at Cardiff Metropolitan University's Cyncoed campus on 26th November 2019

Happy New Year / Blwyddyn Newydd Dda to you all! We've gone back on the road, battling through torrential rain to the town of Caerphilly, where we tracked down what can only be described as edu-twitter royalty! Yes, it's the mighty Impact Wales, aka Finola and Jane, who provide tailored support to schools. However, for those of us without a school budget to play with, Impact Wales are probably better known for filling Twitter with wonderful sketchnotes, each of them informed by a solid bed of research, and serving up the findings of that research in a single graphic.We know lots of you are, like us, huge fans of their work, so we thought it was high time to get inside Impact Wales HQ and ask them how they ended up as a team, what they do, and how we can all be a bit more impact-focused in our working lives.And while we were there, we couldn't resist asking Finola and Jane for their responses to our regular slots: wellbeing and something interesting - only letting them off 'something to try' because there was so much of that in the main discussion!To see more from Sylvia Duckworth, who inspired Finola's sketchnoting in the first place, go to sylviaduckworth.comFor more from our lovely friends at Impact Wales, you need to go to impact.wales and sign up. Go on, you know you need their sketchnotes in your life!We'll be back in a fortnight, returning to the question of how we effectively coach and mentor student teachers and colleagues in an educational setting. See you then! ----------This episode was recorded at the offices of Impact Wales on 10th December 2019