EdSurge Podcast

“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a teacher, edtech consultant and professor about making small regular improvements.

When their school implemented a new policy requiring students to lock their phones in pouches during the school day, the students had some concerns. This week on the EdSurge Podcast, we share an episode of the student-produced Miseducation podcast that looks at the pros and cons of this unusual new approach to managing smartphone use at schools.

Since the pandemic, more professors are reporting they’re having trouble connecting with their students. That’s according to Bonni Stachowiak, dean of teaching and learning at Vanguard University of Southern California and host of the weekly podcast Teaching in Higher Ed. She shares other trends she’s seeing in teaching, and ways instructors are overcoming them.

It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies of kids to think like philosophers. When big, important questions arise, he says, parents and educators should treat kids like conversational equals.

Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention, and convince them to show up. Check out part two of our series reported from the back of large lecture classes to see how teaching is changing.

For decades, proponents of open access scholarship have worked to make the research in scholarly journals freely readable to all. Will this moment of AI chatbots accelerate the effort?

In 2015, a video went viral showing a white school resource officer violently flipping over a Black student in her desk and dragging her across the room before arresting her. It sparked a lawsuit against a vague South Carolina law that brings the criminal justice system into schools for minor offenses, and a nationwide discussion about systemic racism in school policing.

A growing number of educators are wondering whether the grading system is hindering students rather than helping them learn. A new book explores alternative methods of marking papers in ways that encourage students to continually revise their work rather than quibble over which letter grade they deserve.

Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a once-famous scholar named Lewis Terman. And it turns out his legacy, and the future of gifted programs, are still very much under debate.

These days teachers need some basic training in a number of fields, including mental health and social work, to be effective in the classroom, argues Stephanie Malia Krauss, author of a new book about the importance of teaching holistically in this time of pandemic and social unrest.